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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
U.S. Is An Empire In Decline
http://media.mmgdailies.topscms.com/...c1830f105.jpeg
NY211_Afghanistan_Me U.S. marines salute as the body of Lance Cpl. Joshua Trigg, 21, is loaded into a truck to begin its transfer back to the air force base in Dover, Del. After nine years of war in Afghanistan, the American people have grown weary of foreign wars. Luis Alvarez, Associated Press
Currency wars. Terrorist attacks. Military conflicts. Rogue regimes pursuing nuclear weapons. Collapsing states. And now, massive leaks of secret documents. What is the cause of such turbulence? The absence of empire.
During the Cold War, the world was divided between the Soviet and U.S. imperial systems. The Soviet imperium — heir to Kievan Rus, medieval Muscovy and the Romanov dynasty — covered Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia and propped up regimes in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The American imperium — heir to maritime Venice and Great Britain — also propped up allies, particularly in Western Europe and East Asia. True to the garrison tradition of imperial Rome, Washington kept bases in West Germany, Turkey, South Korea and Japan, virtually surrounding the Soviet Union.
The breakup of the Soviet empire, though it caused euphoria in the West and led to freedom in Central Europe, also sparked ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and the Caucasus that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and created millions of refugees. (In Tajikistan alone, more than 50,000 people were killed in a civil war that barely registered in the western media in the 1990s.)
The Soviet collapse also unleashed economic and social chaos in Russia itself, as well as the further unmooring of the Middle East. It was no accident that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait less than a year after the Berlin Wall fell, just as it is inconceivable that the United States would have invaded Iraq if the Soviet Union, a staunch patron of Baghdad, still existed in 2003. And had the Soviet empire not fallen apart or ignominiously withdrawn from Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden never would have taken refuge there and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, might not have happened. Such are the wages of imperial collapse.
Now the other pillar of the relative peace of the Cold War, the United States, is slipping, while new powers such as China and India remain unready and unwilling to fill the void. There will be no sudden breakdown the part of the United States which, unlike the Soviet Union, is sturdily maintained by economic and political freedom. Rather, America's ability to bring a modicum of order to the world is simply fading in slow motion.
The days of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency are numbered, just as American diplomacy is hobbled by wide-ranging security leaks that are specific to an age of electronic communication, itself hostile to imperial rule.
Then there is America's military power. Armies win wars, but in an age when the theatre of conflict is global, navies and air forces are more accurate registers of national might. (Any attack on Iran, for example, would be a sea and air campaign.) The U.S. navy has gone from nearly 600 warships in the Ronald Reagan era to fewer than 300 today, while the navies of China and India grow apace. Such trends will accelerate with the defence cuts that are surely coming in order to rescue America from its fiscal crisis.
The United States still dominates the seas and the air and will do so for years ahead, but the distance between it and other nations is narrowing.
Terrorist acts, ethnic atrocities, the yearning after horrible weaponry and the disclosure of secret cables are the work of individuals who cannot escape their own moral responsibility. But the headlines of our era are written in a specific context — that of one deceased empire that used to be the world's pre-eminent land power and of another, the world's pre-eminent sea power, that finds itself less able to affect events than ever before, even as it is less sure than ever of the cause toward which it struggles.
This is no indictment of President Barack Obama's foreign policy. There is slim evidence of a credible alternative to his actions on North Korea, Iran and Iraq, while a feisty debate goes on over the proper course in Afghanistan. But there is simply no doubt that the post-imperial order we inhabit allows for greater disruptions than the Cold War ever permitted.
Husbanding power to slow America's decline in a post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan world would mean avoiding debilitating land entanglements and focusing instead on being more of an offshore balancer: that is, lurking with air and sea forces over the horizon, intervening only when outrages are committed that unquestionably threaten U.S. allies and world order in general. While this may be in America's interest, the very signaling of such an aloof intention may encourage regional bullies, given that rogue regimes are the organizing principles for some pivotal parts of the world.
North Korea already plows onward with its nuclear weapons program, even as it lobs artillery shells on a South Korean island, demonstrating the limits of both U.S. and Chinese power in a semi-anarchic world.
During the Cold War, North Korea was kept in its box by the Soviet Union while the U.S. navy dominated the Pacific as though it were an American lake. Now China's economic dominance of the region, coupled with our distracting land wars in the Middle East, is transforming the western Pacific from a benign and stable environment to a more uncertain and complex one.
China's navy is decades behind America's, but that should offer little consolation. The United States, having just experienced asymmetric warfare on land, should now expect asymmetric challenges at sea. With its improving mine-warfare capability, seabed sonar networks and cyber-warfare in the service of anti-ship ballistic missiles, not to mention its diesel-electric and nuclear submarines, China will make U.S. navy operations more dangerous over the coming years.
As for Taiwan, China has 1,500 short-range ballistic missiles pointed at the island, even as hundreds of commercial flights each week link Taiwan with the mainland in peaceful commerce. When China effectively incorporates Taiwan in the years to come, that will signal the arrival of a truly multipolar and less predictable military environment in East Asia.
In the Middle East we see the real collapse of the Cold War imperial order. The neat Israeli-Arab dichotomy that mirrored the American-Soviet one has been replaced by a less stable power arrangement, with a zone of Iranian influence stretching from Lebanon to western Afghanistan, pitted against both Israel and the Sunni Arab world, and with a newly Islamic, and no longer pro-Western, Turkey rising as a balancing power.
Yes, empires impose order, but that order is not necessarily benevolent, as Iran's budding imperial domain shows. U.S. threats against Iran lack credibility precisely because of American imperial fatigue resulting from Iraq and Afghanistan. Out of self-interest the U.S. will probably not involve itself in another war in the Middle East — even as that very self-interest could consign the region to a nuclear standoff.
One standard narrative is that as we recede, China will step up as part of a benign post-American world. But this presupposes that all imperial powers are the same, even when history clearly demonstrates that they are not. Nor does one empire sequentially fill the gap left by another.
While the Soviet Union and the United States were both missionary powers motivated by ideals — communism and liberal democracy — through which they might order the world, China has no such grand conception. It is driven abroad by the hunger for natural resources (hydrocarbons, minerals and metals) that it requires to raise hundreds of millions of its citizens into the middle class.
This could abet the development of a trading system between the Indian Ocean, Africa and Central Asia that might maintain peace with minimal American involvement. But who is to fill the moral void? Does China really care if Tehran develops nuclear weapons, so long as it has access to Iran's natural gas? And Beijing may not be entirely comfortable with the North Korean regime, which keeps its population in a state of freeze-frame semi-starvation, but China props it up nevertheless.
It can be argued that with power comes moral responsibility, but it will probably be decades before China has the kind of navy and air force that would lead it to become an authentic partner in an international security system. For the moment, Beijing gets a free ride off the protection of the world's sea lanes that the U.S. navy helps provide, and watches us struggle to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan so that China can one day extract their natural resources.
If the Cold War was an epoch of relative stability, guaranteed by a tacit understanding among empires, we now have one waning empire, that of the United States, trying to bring order amid a world of rising and sometimes hostile powers.
Looming over all of this is the densely crowded global map. Across Eurasia, rural populations have given way to megacities prone to incitement by mass media and to destruction by environmental catastrophe. Lumbering, hard-to-deploy armies are being replaced with overlapping ballistic missile ranges that demonstrate the delivery capabilities of weapons of mass destruction. New technologies make everything affect everything else at a faster and more lethal rate than ever before. The free flow of information, as the WikiLeaks scandal makes clear, and the miniaturization of weaponry, as the terrorist bombings in Pakistani cities make clear, work against the rise and sustenance of imperial orders.
The American empire has always been more structural than spiritual. Its network of alliances certainly resembles those of empires past, and the challenges facing its troops abroad are comparable to those of imperial forces of yore, though the American public, especially after the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in no mood for any more of the land-centric adventures that have been the stuff of imperialism since antiquity.
Americans rightly lack an imperial mentality. But lessening engagement with the world would have devastating consequences for humanity. The disruptions we witness today are but a taste of what is to come should the U.S. flinch from its international responsibilities.
Robert D. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a correspondent for Atlantic magazine. He is the author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.
(Washington Post)
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
From Steve herman on Twitter:
- State Dept: Campbell has serious sinus infection. Will visit ROK, Japan early next year. 37 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- US envoy Kurt Campbell cancels Asia trip due to illness. #Koreas about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Military responds to Tokyo Shimbun’s prediction of strike on Gyeonggi Province
The Hankyoreh - December 4, 2010
By Kwon Hyuck-chul, Staff Writer
» North Korean soldiers line up in rows near a post in Gaepung County, North Hwanghae Province Dec. 3. (Photo by Lee Jong-keun)
Since North Korea’s artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island, there has been concern that North Korea could use its long-range guns to fire on the greater Seoul area. Quoting a “source knowledgeable about North Korea,” the Tokyo Shimbun reported Thursday that an official in the North Korean Defense Ministry’s reconnaissance bureau said North Korea could launch new artillery strikes at Gyeonggi Province within the month.
A South Korean military official also said Friday that to prepare for this possibility, the military was examining ways to neutralize North Korea’s long-range artillery concentrated along the western sector of the front line.
North Korea reportedly has about 10,000 artillery pieces deployed near the DMZ. Of these, about 200 are 170mm self-propelled artillery and 200 are 240mm multiple rocket launchers deployed in the western sector, with ranges far enough to hit the greater Seoul area. The maximum range of the 240mm multiple rocket launcher is 60km, while the long-range guns can hit northern Gyeonggi Province, all of Seoul, Gwacheon, Anyang and Siheung.
Military officials say North Korea’s long-range guns could launch up to 17,000 shells at the greater Seoul area in an hour. If this were to happen, they say some 3.25 million civilians and soldiers could be killed or wounded.
The military, however, does not believe this many casualties would result. This is because the 3.25 million number is based on two unrealistic premises: that South Korea and the United States could not detect signs of an impending North Korean long-range artillery attack, and that North Korea’s long-range guns would continue to fire for an hour without taking any losses.
A military source said, “Of the 170 rounds fired at Yeonpyeong Island, about 90 landed in the sea, and of the 80 rounds that hit Yeonpyeong Island, 20 were duds, so of the 170 rounds fired, only about 60 were effective.”
Military authorities believe the low accuracy even in a surprise first strike is because North Korea’s ordinance, including its gunpowder and fuses, is old.
Since the early 1990s, the South Korean and U.S. militaries have prepared counterbattery measures to neutralize North Korea’s long-range guns in the event of an emergency.
A military official said, “ Unlike an attack on a small island like Yeonpyeong, if North Korea were going to use long-range guns to attack the capital region, with a broad area, all the artillery units along the DMZ would have to start at the same time.” The official continued, “To start such an attack, the number of troops preparing for the strike would increase noticeably at each artillery unit near the DMZ.”
North Korea’s 170mm self-propelled guns need 12 troops and its 240mm multiple rocket launchers need six troops, so to operate the roughly 400 long-range guns in the area, the artillery units alone would need about 3,600 troops. If this number of troops were to show unusual movements or the number of inter-unit communications were to suddenly increase, South Korean and U.S. military satellites or reconnaissance planes would reportedly be able to detect signs of the attack before it happened.
Even if North Korea did not commence an attack, if there is clear evidence that an attack is imminent, “aggressive counterfire” would begin. For example, if the entrances of North Korea’s long-range gun caves were to open and the guns were to emerge, South Korean and U.S. fighter-bombers and artillery like the K-9 and MLRS to collapse the cave positions.
If the surviving guns press with an attack on the Seoul area, South Korean and U.S. counter-battery radar would detect the positions of North Korea’s long-range guns, which would be attacked in responsive counterfire.
South Korea and the United States normally collect information on the position of North Korea’s long-range guns needed for counterfire operations, using Air Force reconnaissance planes to determine the position of additional guns. Based on this information, the South Korean and US militaries compose an “Integrated Tasking Order” in which it is ordered beforehand which long-range guns would be destroyed and by which method.
Military officials explain that unlike the Yeonpyeong Island attack, it is possible to knock-out many of North Korea’s long-range guns threatening the greater Seoul area before an attack. Military officials worry, however, about the public’s shock and fear and the ill effect it would have on the economy if North Korea’s long-range guns that survive an aggressive counterfire fire rounds into downtown Seoul.
Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Rick, thanks for the correction of my post.
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Army on Alert Over Korea
The Moscow Times
15 December 2010
General Nikolai Makarov said Tuesday that he has put the military on alert in the country’s Far East because of increased tension on the Korean Peninsula.
“Without a doubt, we have taken measures to increase the combat-readiness of our forces,” said Makarov, who heads the General Staff, Interfax reported.
He said the military was “continuing to monitor” the situation after North Korea’s deadly shelling of a South Korean island last month.
(Reuters)
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
North Korean Nuclear Ability Seen to Far Outpace Iran’s
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: December 14, 2010
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has concluded that North Korea’s new plant to enrich nuclear fuel uses technology that is “significantly more advanced” than what Iran has struggled over two decades to assemble, according to senior administration and intelligence officials.
In carefully worded public comments in recent days, both senior American and South Korean officials have also argued that the the new plant, a facility shown to a Stanford University expert last month, could not have been constructed so quickly unless there was a sophisticated network of other secret sites — and perhaps a fully running uranium enrichment plant — elsewhere in the country.
American officials said the thousands of centrifuges in the plant appear to be an advanced type known as the P-2, a Pakistani design that was sold on the global nuclear black market. The centrifuges spin incredibly fast to enrich uranium, which can fuel reactors or bombs.These conclusions strongly suggest that North Korea has evaded the many layers of economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council and America’s allies in Asia. The conclusions also greatly complicate the task for American diplomats — including a senior delegation of State Department and White House officials who left for China on Tuesday — who have been struggling for weeks now to fashion a plan to contain North Korea’s nuclear advances and prevent a repetition of its recent attack on the South.
North Korea already has the fuel for six to a dozen weapons and has conducted two nuclear tests, a capability it developed from harvesting plutonium from a recently shuttered nuclear reactor. The uranium enrichment facility could give the country another pathway to increasing its nuclear arsenal.
But in interviews American officials said that was not their main concern.
Instead, they are worried that the real intent of showing off the new capability to the Stanford expert, Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and two of his Stanford colleagues, was to advertise North Korea’s wares. Dr. Hecker said he was “stunned” that North Korea had succeeded in building the plant so quickly.
Last Friday, Gary Samore, President Obama’s chief nuclear adviser, said for the first time that “the North Korean program appears to be much more advanced in and efficient than the Iranian program, which is running into problems.” Reports from international inspectors indicate that the Iranians are experimenting with advanced centrifuges, but have not installed them on an industrial scale, despite years of efforts. Those efforts have been slowed by sabotage, officials said.
“The U.S. and its allies are doing everything we can to try to make sure that we complicate matters for them,” Mr. Samore added.
After alluding to a secret North Korean effort to help Syria build an entire nuclear reactor, which was ultimately destroyed by Israel in a 2007 bombing raid, Mr. Samore said that the new North Korean centrifuges could be attractive to other nations. He added that “a critical element” of American strategy must now be “to insure that the North Koreans don’t sell to the Middle East.”
But that has been attempted before, and efforts to halt shipments have been spotty at best. According to secret State Department cables made public by Wikileaks, the United States believes North Korea successfully shipped 19 advanced missiles to Iran five years ago, and that other technology has passed through the Beijing airport on its way to Iran.
Three weeks after North Korea’s nuclear revelations, the United States, China, Japan and South Korea have been unable to fashion a response, even a common agreement to crack down on further transactions. “The Chinese admit this was a huge violation of North Korea’s previous commitments to denuclearize,” one senior official said last week, “but they don’t say what we should do about that, other than to re-enter the same old negotiations again, which we are not going to do.”
A week ago, in Beijing, several Chinese officials and academics who deal with North Korean issues argued it would be counterproductive to seek more sanctions or resolutions at the United Nations Security Council — all efforts that have been tried before, and that have largely failed.
“It only makes them speed up,” one former senior Chinese official said.
American, South Korean and Chinese officials have all acknowledged in recent days that despite their intense focus on the North’s efforts to obtain uranium enrichment technology, they all missed the assembly of the plant at Yongbyon, North Korea’s main nuclear complex. The area is under intense scrutiny from American satellites, but the new plant was built inside an old structure — and satellites cannot see through the roof. Intelligence officials have said in the past that they have few human spies in North Korea with access to the most sensitive facilities.
Oftentimes, breakthroughs have come through cooperation with allied intelligence services. It was South Korea that first notified Washington, a decade ago, that North Korea was buying components for uranium enrichment. It was the head of Israel’s Mossad who came to Washington in 2007 and dropped photographs of the North Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria on the coffee table of Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush’s national security adviser.
But American intelligence officials argue that they have documented North Korea’s efforts for years, and the revelation of the new facility only confirmed what has long appeared in intelligence reports. “It’s no surprise to anyone that they have been working on uranium enrichment — we’ve known that for a decade,” said one senior official involved in the administration’s counter-proliferation efforts. “The surprise is that they have succeeded in technologies that are still driving the Iranians crazy.”
They caution that it is not clear the North Koreans can get the new facility running: Dr. Hecker was given a quick, carefully limited view, and could not confirm the centrifuges were running. But what he saw was enough to convince him, and American intelligence experts, that the facility could not have been built that fast unless a network of centrifuge construction facilities and uranium processing plants existed elsewhere.
“It is likely that North Korea had been pursuing an enrichment capability long before the April, 2009 date it now claims,” Glyn Davies, the American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, said last week. If so, he said, there was a clear likelihood that North Korea “has built other uranium enrichment-related facilities in its territory.”
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and William J. Broad from New York.
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Quote:
Originally Posted by
BRVoice
Rick, thanks for the correction of my post.
no correction, I just made sure we could actually read the lines in there. They were white text on a white background. I hate that crap when I'm trying to post and miss it myself a lot. :)
No problem though.
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Fighter Jets to Buzz Seoul as South Korea Simulates Attack
By Bomi Lim and Shinhye Kang - Dec 14, 2010 1:00 PM GMT-0200
Bloomberg
Fighter jets will buzz Seoul today to simulate an attack by North Korea as the South conducts its biggest emergency drill in response to the deadly shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.
Sirens will sound across the country at 2 p.m. local time, when workers from the National Emergency Management Agency will help guide people to more than 25,000 shelters, the group, known as NEMA, said in a statement yesterday. Traffic will stop for 15 minutes and drivers and pedestrians will be asked to take cover in nearby office basements and subway stations, the agency said.
The government scaled back monthly civil defense drills to as few as three per year by 1992 as South Koreans turned their attention to building an economy that’s made them 18 times richer on average than their communist neighbors, according to the central bank. The Nov. 23 strike that killed four people refocused attention on the border and the 250 North Korean long- range artillery pieces that U.S. Forces Korea says can strike the Seoul metropolitan area and its 23 million people.
“South Koreans became nonchalant to North Korean threats because most of their assaults happened off the coast or overseas,” said Ahn Cheol Hyun, head of the Ahn’s Institute of Crisis Management in Seoul. “The Yeonpyeong attack was a wake- up call to many and bolstering civil defense drills will be one way of raising people’s awareness of the real threat.”
Last month’s artillery attack, the first on South Korean soil since the 1950-53 war, followed the March sinking of a warship. An international investigation concluded that a North Korean torpedo was responsible for the incident, in which 46 South Korea sailors died.
ASSASSINATIONS ATTEMPTS
The North has been implicated in previous attacks on South Korea, including the 1987 bombing of a civilian airliner that killed 115 people, assassination attempts on presidents and incursions by submarines carrying commandos.
“These drills are taking place at a time when the threat of war is becoming more visible,” Park Yeon Soo, the chief of NEMA, told reporters yesterday in Seoul. “They will help us build confidence in dealing with North Korea’s provocations.”
Twelve Navy KF-16 jets will fly low over cities including Seoul and Busan, NEMA said. Classes in schools will be suspended as students evacuate to nearby shelters or wait for emergency instructions over the radio.
It will be the first time since 2000 that citizens are guided to shelters during the drills, which had typically been limited to forbidding pedestrians from crossing roads and requiring cars to pull off to the side.
SCHOOL DRILLS
Byeon Hyun Su, a 15-year-old middle school student from Guri on Seoul’s eastern outskirts, said previous exercises were inadequate. During a 2009 drill for chemical and biological threats he and his classmates were simply told to crawl under their desks.
“We just chatted the whole time about how glad we were to be missing class,” said Byeon. “What good is training or hiding in the basement? We are all going to die anyway if North Korea fires missiles.”
The attack on Yeonpyeong, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Seoul near the disputed sea border, shattered the windows of a school during class, set 30 houses ablaze and scorched 25 hectares of land.
North Korea deploys 70 percent of its 1.2 million troops within 90 kilometers of the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two counties, according to an October report by the U.S. Forces Korea. Seoul is about 40 kilometers south of the dividing line.
LITTLE WARNING
There is likely to be “little warning of attack” if North Korea ever attempts to invade, the U.S. State Department says on its website.
Most of the shelters in South Korea, including about 4,000 in Seoul, are subway stations and the basements of large buildings with thick concrete walls that make them safe from strikes, according to NEMA. Only a small number are purpose built air-raid shelters, the agency said.
The country’s 3.9 million civil defense corps members, made up of men aged between 20 and 40, are responsible for ensuring the safety of citizens in case of war, according to the National Disaster Information Center.
Corps members receive an annual four-hour training session in first aid, putting out fires and using gas masks in their first four years. From the fifth year, they receive one hour of training annually, the information center said on its website.
“South Koreans are among the least sensitive to risks,” said Steven Chon, country manager of Hill & Associates Ltd., a unit of G4S Plc, the world’s largest security company.
To contact the reporters on this story: Bomi Lim in Seoul at blim30@bloomberg.net; Shinhye Kang in Seoul at skang24@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Activity at N.Korean Nuclear Sites Sparks Frenzied Speculation
The Chosun Ilbo - December 15, 2010
North Korea has dug a new tunnel more than 500 m deep at a nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, North Hamgyong Province, intelligence sources said Tuesday. The North is also reportedly accelerating massive excavation work and construction of a new building at its main nuclear site in Yongbyon.
"North Korea seems to be busy digging even in winter when the ground is frozen" at Punggye-ri and Yongbyon, an intelligence officer said.
Based on an estimate of the amount of earth dug up, the intelligence officer speculated that the North has already dug a cave more than 500 m deep in Punggye-ri.
"If progress goes on at the current pace, the North will have dug a cave 1 km deep, the depth where it is possible to conduct a nuclear test, between March and May next year," the officer said.
Voice of America, quoting a U.S. Congressional Research Service report, reported on Dec. 7 that the North could conduct a nuclear test as a proxy for nuclear weapons developing nations such as Iran.
The North is also carrying out massive construction in Yongbyon. Experts including Siegfried Hecker, a U.S. nuclear scientist who visited Yongbyon last month, believe that the North is building a 25-30 MW reactor.
But a security official said, "The North has never admitted what it is building. We're just speculating that it's building a nuclear facility whose purpose is unclear."
Government officials believe the North does not have enough technical wherewithal to build a light-water reactor power plant that uses enriched uranium as fuel and suspect it is now openly attempting to build a highly-enriched uranium facility to produce nuclear weapons. They also suspect that the North has three or four more undisclosed uranium enrichment facilities in addition to the one in Yongbyon it showed Hecker last month.
South Korea and the U.S. are worried that the North could heighten tensions on the peninsula by using a nuclear threat after the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island. It apparently aims to sway public opinion in the international community and South Korea in favor of early talks with the North by either conducting a third nuclear test or boosting its uranium-based nuclear capability.
Former chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill was quoted by VOA as saying that the North's disclosure of the uranium enrichment plant proves that the regime lied in the six-party talks.
englishnews@chosun.com / Dec. 15, 2010 08:12 KST
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
S. Korea to turn on Christmas lights near border with N. Korea
SEOUL, Dec. 15 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's defense ministry has allowed a local church to turn on Christmas lights near the border with North Korea, upping the ante in anti-Pyongyang propaganda following the North's fatal artillery attack last month, officials said Wednesday.
The permission, granted for the first in seven years, came as the South's military is stepping up its propaganda offensive after the North bombarded the South Korean front-line island of Yeonpyeong on Nov. 23, killing four people and destroying homes.
The Seoul-based Yoido Full Gospel Church, which boasts the nation's biggest Protestant Christian congregation, recently asked the ministry if it could set up Christmas lanterns on a steel tower on a hill at a military post in Gimpo, northwest of Seoul.
Called "Aegibong," the 155-meter-high hill is just three kilometers from the Demilitarized Zone that bisects the Korean Peninsula. People can see North Korean villages with the naked eye from the hill.
"Early this month, Yoido Full Gospel Church asked us if they could set up Christmas lanterns on the steel tower in the Aegibong and we decided to allow it," a ministry official said, adding the lights would likely be switched on around Dec. 21 there.
In 2004, Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to stop government-level cross-border propaganda at a time of warming ties. But Seoul has resumed its propaganda operations since Pyongyang's torpedo attack on the Cheonan warship in March that left 46 sailors dead.
http://img.yonhapnews.co.kr/etc/inne...00315_01_i.jpg
This file photo shows a Christmas lighting ceremony on a South Korean hill called "Aegibong" near the Demilitarized Zone in 1992. (Yonhap)
Immediately after the North's shelling on Yeonpyeong, the South's military sent hundreds of thousands of leaflets denouncing Pyongyang's leadership and warned it is ready to blare anti-North messages via a massive array of loudspeakers installed at the border.
"As we have resumed the anti-North propaganda war since the North's attack on the Cheonan warship, there is no reason to block a religious group from turning on Christmas lanterns there," the ministry official said.
The Aegibong area is under the jurisdiction of a unit of the 2nd Marine Division.
Before the 2004 inter-Korean agreement, people there had lit up numerous electric lamps on the 30-meter-high tower on Christmas and Buddha's birthday every year.
Two civilians and as many marines were killed in the North's Nov. 23 attack on Yeonpyeong, marking the first assault on a civilian area on the South's territory since the 1950-53 Korean War.
The two Koreas are still technically at war because the three-year war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
kdh@yna.co.kr
(END)
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
South Korea stages largest-scale civil defense drill amid tension with North Korea
SEOUL, Dec. 15 (Yonhap) -- South Korea staged a nationwide civil defense drill Wednesday against possible attacks by North Korea as cross-border tensions run high after the North's shelling of a border island last month.
The exercise began at 2 p.m. with all South Koreans asked to flee to nearby air raid shelters, subway stations or other designated underground facilities at the sound of the raid sirens.
Ten mock North Korean aircraft flew over major cities, including Seoul and Busan, and people driving cars were asked to immediately park along roads and go to shelters.
The 15-minute drill was the largest in the country since such drills began in 1975, according to the National Emergency Management Agency.
http://img.yonhapnews.co.kr/etc/inne...00315_01_i.jpg
Seoul citizens rush to an air raid shelter in the city center during a civil defense drill held nationwide on Dec. 15. (Yonhap)
South Korea, which remains technically at war with the North because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, has been conducting the drills eight times a year. However, they were often largely ignored and not complied with fully by the public.
"This is the first time since 2000 that mock enemy aircraft are flown and drivers are asked to park their cars and evacuate to safety during a drill," said Choi Hong-yeong, a publicity official at the agency.
"Overall, it is the largest drill since 1975," he added.
Passengers at seven subway stations in the capital learned how to use gas masks during a special evacuation drill.
In border areas with the North, public officials received training against North Korea's chemical, biological and radiological attacks.
Some citizens were still disobedient, with drivers caught by the siren in the congested Gwanghwamun intersection of central Seoul sitting out the entire drill inside their cars.
Flights and ferries operated normally. Trains and vehicles on highways were asked to slow down for the first three minutes of the drill.
Also exempt from the drill were areas hit by the foot-and-mouth disease, such as North Gyeongsang Province, Yeoncheon and Yangju, officials said.
The drill was held as tensions run high on the Korean Peninsula following the North's Nov. 23 artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island near the tense Yellow Sea border that killed four people.
The bombardment also injured 18 people and destroyed dozens of homes, marking the first attack by the North on a civilian area on the South's soil since the end of the Korean War.
sshim@yna.co.kr
(END)
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Steve Herman from Twitter:
- Interviewed one motorist caught in traffic. Said he was in a hurry so was upset about the 20 min. hiatus. about 5 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- All motorists and pedestrians I saw in Seoul complied with warden and police requests to halt although some grumbled. about 5 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Nationwide air raid drill ends in #ROK. about 5 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Nationwide air raid drill underway in S. Korea. about 5 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Steve Herman from Twitter:
- Gen. Sharp's speech first mention that future US-ROK joint exercises will also include focus on repealing limited #DPRK attacks. 34 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Gen. Sharp concludes EAI speech saying ROK and US face "challenging times" on Korean peninsula. about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Gen. Sharp: USFK and ROK "will not tolerate attacks (by #DPRK) on civilians." #Koreas about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- USFK Gen. Sharp calls on #DPRK to cease developing & testing WMDs. about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Gen. Sharp: By 2016 USFK will drop total camps from 110 to about 48 but force strength will stay the same. #Koreas about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Gen. Sharp: Future joint drills will include scenarios for both limited & full-scale #DPRK attacks. about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Gen. Sharp reiterates more joint US-ROK military exercises coming. #Koreas about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- USFK Commander, Gen. Sharp: Yeonpyeong attack "crossed a significant threshold." #Koreas about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- The commander is speaking to the East Asia Institute in Seoul. I'm live tweeting on site. about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- Gen. Sharp: A belligerent #DPRK persists in attacking #ROK. #Koreas about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
- USFK Commander, Gen. Sharp about to make his first public speech since the Yeonpyeong shelling. #Koreas about 1 hour ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
One nuclear backpack makes Seoul sea of fire; NK residents
The Korea Times - 12-15-2010 15:24
North Korean soldiers and residents have mentioned the possibility that nuclear weapons may be used against South Korea amid the recent radical claims of “nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula” by the North, Open Radio for North Korea reported Tuesday.
Earlier, Nodong Sinmun, a mouthpiece paper of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, reported that “the betrayal of South Korea has heightened the tension between the North and South and created dark cloud of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.”
“We will make Seoul a sea of fire without fail if anyone invade our territory, airspace and waters even by 0.001 millimeter,” Uriminzok, the Internet site of North Korea’s Commission for Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland, also said on Nov. 28
According to the radio, an inside source of North Korea said that there are rumors spreading among North Korean residents that “Seoul could be a sea of fire when we detonate a nuclear bomb brought in a backpack and then immediately South Korea surrenders.”
A man, who participated in the military drill at the Samjiyeon Airport on Nov. 25, said an Air Force officer had also made a similar remark. “We can win with only one nuclear weapon.”
Such a remark came when several soldiers questioned during the drill, “Isn’t it problem that (fighter jets) could not be used due to lack of fuel.”
“Why do you say such a thing although you know all?” an officer said. “We don’t need good jets. Nuclear weapons are all. We can win (with nuclear weapons) when our General is with us.”
There are mixed opinions about the existence of nuclear backpacks in the North. Most of experts have the opinion that North Korea has no technology to make the nuclear weapons to the smaller size of backpack as it has yet to make the nuclear head smaller for missiles.
However, some have presumed that 48 of the 132 nuclear backpacks were lost when the Soviet Union got disbanded and several of them seemed to come into the North. As a result, they claimed that they could not rule out the possibility of the North to use the nuclear backpacks.
The nuclear backpack is officially called “special atomic demolition munitions” which commandos carry on their back to penetrate deep into the enemy’s rear area to hit air force bases, dams and other important buildings.
The backpack weighs about 30 kilograms, ranging in power fro 10 tons of TNT to 1 kiloton. The nuclear bomb, which exploded in Hiroshima, Japan, during the second World War, was equivalent to 12 kilotons of TNT in destruction power.
The radio said it has become apparent that the North could threaten a nuclear war against the South although it is hard to conclude that the North may actually use the nuclear weapons, when all the recent inside information is taken into account.
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
This report is from the KCNA, the Official News Site of North Korea:
Yonphyong Island Shelling Branded as Provocation to DPRK
Pyongyang, December 14 (KCNA) -- The south Korean authorities have misled public opinion by asserting that the recent case of the Yonphyong Island shelling occurred due to the DPRK. This is nothing but a revelation of the scheme to dodge their criminal responsibility for the grave military provocation and finally ignite a war of aggression against the DPRK by kicking off another armed clash on a larger scale.
Rodong Sinmun Tuesday says this in a signed article.
Terming the shelling incident a provocation to the DPRK as it was carefully worked out in advance and deliberately perpetrated by the south Korean warmongers under the wire-pulling of the U.S. from A to Z, the article goes on to say:
The gravity of the incident finds itself in the fact that it was an intentional firing to kick off the military clash with the DPRK and a premeditated provocation aimed at thoroughly destroying the inter-Korean relations and igniting a war of aggression against the DPRK.
This is clearly evidenced by the racket for confrontation and war frantically staged by the puppet forces with the incident as a momentum.
The puppet group, in collusion with the U.S., has already worked out various scenarios for preemptive attack on the DPRK and is watching for a chance to put them into practice. What remains for them to do is to kick off a tremendous armed provocation going beyond the Yonphyong Island shelling and then ignite another Korean war.
The south Korean bellicose forces can never take issue with the legitimate self-defensive countermeasure taken by the DPRK nor can they dodge the blame for having committed the hideous provocation to drive the Korean Peninsula into touch-and-go situation.
It is a pipedream for the south Korean authorities to seek a way out in doing harm to the fellow countrymen by force of arms with help of foreign forces. Their desperate moves for confrontation with the DPRK and provocation to unleash a war against it will only reveal their bellicose nature before the entire nation and the world.
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
This report is from the KCNA, the Official News Site of North Korea:
US Imperialists' Crafty Psychological Warfare Assailed
Pyongyang, December 14 (KCNA) -- The U.S. imperialists are waging a vicious psychological warfare on the basis of modern science and technology after designating the anti-imperialist independent countries as targets of their attack, observes Rodong Sinmun Tuesday in a signed article.
It is the national policy of the U.S. imperialists to conduct the above-said warfare by use of modern scientific and technological means, the article notes, and goes on:
They worked out a detailed plan for psychological warfare in advance against those countries which they had designated as targets of their attack and included it in the "state general strategy and political tactics" in a bid to push it forward in a coordinated manner in political, economic, diplomatic, military and other fields.
U.S. intelligence gathering bodies and their affiliated institutions are now busy widely using modern scientific and technological means for the psychological warfare. A huge amount of money is now being allocated for this and plots are being hatched to make a maximum use of it in practice.
The U.S. imperialists' criminal psychological warfare teaches a bitter lesson to the anti-imperialist independent countries.
Now that the above-said warfare is getting more frantic as the days go by it is necessary not to neglect the ideological education of the people and youth and children, in particular, even a moment.
The present IT age calls for channeling big efforts into the development of science, technology and IT. This provides an important way for effectively countering the U.S. imperialists' psychological warfare.
It is also necessary to strengthen the education aimed to help the people properly understand the methods, danger and harmfulness of the above-said warfare.
Only when the anti-imperialist independent countries stand firm against the said warfare, can they protect the sovereignty of the country and nation and emerge victorious in the anti-U.S. struggle.
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Re: North And South Korea On The Brink Of War, Russian Diplomat Warns
Quote:
A man, who participated in the military drill at the Samjiyeon Airport on Nov. 25, said an Air Force officer had also made a similar remark. “We can win with only one nuclear weapon.”
This is, and has been my greatest fear. The people of Seoul do not deserve this. And there won't be any winners because the North will be bombed into oblivion - and if we don't bring out own nukes into play (or someone else) I will be surprised.
If the North pulls something like that, all bets are off. I couldn't say who will win, lose or draw on this one. But, it surely won't be us staying out of the fight.