Tag: nuclear weapons

Here is the latest special warfare unit being established by the ROK military:

The South Korean Army’s Special Warfare Command plans to form a commando unit to destroy North Korean strategic weapons facilities.

The special operations command on Wednesday presented the plan in its report to the parliamentary defense committee.

A military official said that the command is looking to set up a special unit to infiltrate enemy territory and strike its key strategic facilities.

The official said that key strategic facilities refer to facilities for long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, mobile missile launchers and weapons of mass destruction.

The official said that the military made the decision to adapt to modern warfare as the North is bolstering asymmetric warfare capabilities.

The command said it also plans to form its own aviation forces for special operations to enhance infiltration capabilities.   [KBS World Radio]

It appears the Kim regime is trying to draw a wedge between South Korea and the United States by staging a major provocation next month with their announced rocket launch and now restarting their nuclear reactors.  Next month also just so happens to be when the Inter-Korean family reunions were announced to happen.  When the provocation occurs this will force the ROK government to decide whether to cancel the reunions which could have domestic political blowback for President Park:

North Korea said Tuesday it has resumed operations at a key nuclear facility and is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the United States.

The posting by the North’s state news agency came a day after Pyongyang said it has the right to conduct rocket launches anytime it chooses, fueling expectations that the provocative communist nation will conduct a satellite test next month as part of 70th anniversary celebrations of its ruling party.

The North is believed to use rocket launches, which it says are intended to put satellites into space for peaceful purposes, as a cover for ballistic missile tests.

On Tuesday, the North’s Korea Central News Agency said “all the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, including the uranium enrichment plant and 5 MW graphite-moderated reactor, were rearranged, changed or readjusted and they started normal operation.”

“If the U.S. and other hostile forces persistently seek their reckless hostile policy towards the DPRK and behave mischievously, the DPRK is fully ready to cope with them with nuclear weapons any time,” KCNA said, referring to the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Activity significantly increases at N. Koreas nuclear site: http://t.co/dxXIZYqLs0 via @YonhapNews

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) September 9, 2015

I don’t know how much more blunt the Kim regime can be that it has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons:

Lately North Korea has been boasting their nuclear arms capabilities a bit more than usual and part of that might be from outside pressure following the Iran nuclear deal.

North Korea’s ambassador to China Ji Jae-ryong made it very clear on Tuesday that the communist country would continue with their developing their arsenal. In fact, any form of dialogue was unwelcome according to him.

“The DPRK (North Korea) is not interested at all in dialogue to discuss its nuclear program,” Ji said at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing according to Yonhap News Agency. “We are a nuclear weapons state both in name and in reality.”

Ji also mentioned during his statement that his country had already completed the development of a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can be mounted on a missile.  [Korea Times]

Like I have said repeatedly before, all the people calling for North Korean nuclear disarmament are wasting their time because they have no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons; why should they?

I guess this means we will no longer see any defenders of the 1994 Agreed Framework considering one of the nation’s top Democrats has now disavowed it:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday the recent landmark deal on Iran’s nuclear program grew out of “the failure of the North Korea experience.”

Kerry also said that Iran and North Korea are different, defending the Iranian deal during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing as Republican senators raised concern the Iranian deal could fall apart like the 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea.

“Iran has also agreed to accept the additional protocol, and the additional protocol is an outgrowth of the failure of the North Korea experience, which put in additional access requirements precisely so that we do know what Iran is doing,” Kerry said.

The 1994 deal with North Korea, known as the Agreed Framework, required North Korea to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for economic and political concessions. But the deal fell apart after the North was found to have been running a secret nuclear program in late 2002.

Kerry stressed that Iran is different from the North.

“Unlike North Korea, that created a nuclear weapon and exploded one and pulled out of the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty), Iran has done none of that,” he said.

The North Korea experience is “what gave birth to the additional protocol” in the Iranian deal, Kerry said.  [Yonhap]

I can still remember the good old days when Democrats claimed the failure of the Agreed Framework was all Bush’s fault.  How times have changed.

The North Koreans have just confirmed what I have been saying they have no intention of giving up their nuclear weapons:

North Korea said Tuesday that it’s not interested in an Iran-type nuclear disarmament deal, saying it won’t abandon its atomic weapons as long as the United States maintains hostile policies toward the country.

The North’s nuclear deterrent is “not a plaything to be put on the negotiating table,” an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. It was the country’s first official response to the Iran nuclear accord reached earlier this month.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

This deal with Iran does not mean much for North Korea because they have already gone down this road two times before with two different US presidential administrations and cheated on the deals both times.

The South’s unification minister, Hong Yong-pyo, was blunt in comments Tuesday about what to expect. “Conclusion of Iranian negotiations will not lead to solution of the nuclear problem” in North Korea he told foreign correspondents here. But as the North now represents “the only country … to exercise nuclear power to intimidate the rest of the world…the agreement will at least give some pressure on North Korea.”

It is not known whether negotiators in Vienna discussed or agreed privately to address the broader issue of Tehran’s assistance or cooperation with Pyongyang.

WILL TEHRAN STOP AIDING PYONGYANG?

Analysts like Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations say that how North Korea now responds to the new deal “ultimately will depend on whether US negotiators also have a tacit understanding with Iran to curtail questionable relationships with North Korea in these areas.” If North Korea “loses another customer,” Mr. Snyder believes, “Pyongyang may take notice.”

So far Pyongyang has kept its silence. The North Korean media has yet to report on the historic accord with Iran, much less offer any commentary.

The Iran deal does give Pyongyang something new to worry about, says Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “I bet their gut reaction will be along the lines of, ‘We are more isolated than ever, with even Iran making peace with Washington,’” he says.  [Christian Science Monitor]

You can read the rest, but if anything the Iranians took solace in the fact that the North Koreans were able to cheat on their deals for many years with the US turning a blind eye to their activities due to other pressing concerns in the world at the time.  If the North Koreans feel like they can cut yet another deal and get a lot free goodies for little or nothing in return they would probably do it.  However, I don’t think the Obama administration is going to be as eager to cut a deal with North Korea simply because of their history of cheating on past deals.  As always time will tell.

https://twitter.com/Max_Fisher/status/621019725464739840

I think it depends on what one defines economic development as meaning.  If making enough money to keep the ruling elites in power is the goal of the Kim regime they are doing a good job of that along with developing their nuclear weapons:

The United States and China will use next week’s high-level strategic talks to discuss ways to get North Korea out of the “fantasy” that it can revive its broken economy without having to give up its nuclear program, a senior U.S. diplomat said Thursday.

Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel made the remark during a Foreign Press Center briefing previewing the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) to be held in Washington from Monday through Wednesday, saying Washington and Beijing share the same goal of ending Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

“North Korea harbors the fantasy that it can have its cake and eat it too,” Russel said. “North Korea is hoping to be able to rescue itself from the economic failure of its system through external aid while simultaneously and brazenly carrying forward on its nuclear and missile program. That’s just not going to happen.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but as I have long said there is right now no good reason why the North Koreans should stop their pursuit of nuclear weapons.  Promises of “economic development” only matter if the Kim regime cared about the welfare of all their citizens.  Right now they are doing enough to keep the elites in power by getting enough aid from China and managing their global illicit operations.

I wonder if this means there is some kind of back channel negotiations going on or this could just be simple propaganda BS:

North Korea claimed through its state-controlled media Saturday that the United States has recognized it as a nuclear weapons state, a claim that has never been acknowledged by Washington.

Rodong Sinmun, an official newspaper of the North’s ruling Communist Party of Korea, said in an editorial that the United States is reluctantly moving to accept Pyongyang as a nuclear power.

The editorial, carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), said that the Communist country, in reality, has nuclear weapons, whether other countries recognize it or not.

After carrying out underground nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, North Korea has openly declared itself as a nuclear weapons state and is now demanding that the U.S. and other countries accept it as a fact.

The United States, South Korea, Japan and other regional players have refused to comply with the North’s demand, saying that their position on the matter won’t change.

North Korea, in that newspaper article, did not say why it thought the U.S. has acknowledged its nuclear status but it has long been demanding that the United States sit with it at the negotiating table to discuss mutual disarmament.  [Yonhap]