N. Korea Tells US to Nix S. Korea Drill

[American Patriot]

N. Korea Tells US to Nix S. Korea Drill

March 02, 2009
Associated Press




SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea demanded Monday that the U.S. call off its annual military drill with South Korea, a report said, as rare talks between the North and U.N. forces ended without clear progress on defusing tensions.


South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the North made the demand during talks with the U.S.-led U.N. Command at the Korean border village of Panmunjom, held for the first time in nearly seven years. It came amid fears the North is gearing up to test-launch a missile believed capable of reaching U.S. territory.


Yonhap quoted an unnamed South Korean military official as saying the North warned the upcoming drill would "further stir up" tensions on the Korean peninsula.


The report said the U.N. Command insisted that the exercise - involving 26,000 American troops, an unspecified number of South Korean soldiers and a U.S. aircraft carrier - is purely defensive and not preparation for an invasion as the North claims.


North Korea has routinely condemned the regular U.S.-South Korea military drills as preparation for an invasion, although the allies have said they have no intention to attack.


Both the U.N. Command and the South Korean Defense Ministry said they couldn't confirm the report.


The U.N. Command only said the sides discussed "measures to reduce tension and introduce transparency" and agreed to further meetings during a half-hour of talks.


"The UNC welcomed this discussion with North Korea which holds the prospect for building trust and preventing misunderstandings between both sides," the statement quoted the command's chief delegate Maj. Gen. Johnny Weida as saying.


Command spokesman Kim Yong-kyu declined to comment whether the potential missile launch was discussed during the talks.
North Korea had called for the hastily arranged talks last week, saying it wants to discuss ways to reduce tensions, according to the U.N. Command, which monitors a cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
North Korea and the U.N. Command has held 14 rounds of such high-level military talks "when necessary" since 1998, according to command spokesman Kim.


Relations between the two Koreas are at their lowest point in a decade, with North Korea bristling over South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's hard-line policy toward Pyongyang. The tensions have intensified in recent weeks amid reports that North Korea is preparing to test a long-range missile.


Analysts say communist North Korea also wants to capture President Barack Obama's attention at a time when international disarmament talks with the regime remain stalled.


The North last week called its impending launch a peaceful bid to push its space program forward by sending a communications satellite into orbit and warned it would "punish" anyone who attempts to disrupt its plans.
Neighboring governments believe the satellite claim may be a cover for a missile launch and have warned the regime such a move would invite international sanctions. North Korea, which in 2006 tested a nuclear weapon and unsuccessfully fired a long-range missile, is banned from engaging in any ballistic missile activity under a U.N. Security Council resolution.


Obama is dispatching his envoy for North Korea, Stephen W. Bosworth, to Asia this week to discuss the nuclear dispute. Bosworth plans to meet with officials in China, Japan and South Korea, and will consult separately with Russian officials, the State Department said.


South Korea on Monday named career diplomat Wi Sung-lac, a former head of the Foreign Ministry's North American affairs bureau, as its new top nuclear envoy. Departing envoy Kim Sook has been appointed deputy head of the country's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service.


The two Koreas remain divided by the world's most heavily fortified border.


Although other nations contributed forces during the Korean War, U.S. troops are the only foreign combat forces left on the peninsula. The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea.

[vector7]

Impoverished North Korea seems to be spoiling for a fight

By KEN KAMOCHEPosted Saturday, February 28 2009 at 18:38

The hermit state of North Korea may be isolated, starving and poverty-stricken, but they proudly hang on to their ability to saber-rattle with threats of attacks on their southern cousins.

Their food stocks may be dwindling, if not totally exhausted, but they still have money to invest in advanced warfare technology though, with the impoverished nation, one uses the word advanced with caution.

For much of last year, the health status of Kim Jong-il was shrouded in mystery. He finally emerged looking much the worse for wear, though there is no end to the intrigue. Some even claim he died years ago and has been replaced in public appearances by look-alikes.

It is the sort of gimmick North Korea is capable of pulling, with their obsession with the personality cult of Kim Jong-il and his even more revered late father. These god-like characters will continue to loom large in the national psyche long after they are gone.

The president’s illness, such as it was, must have made an impact because of the subsequent renewed talk of an heir. As is common with palace succession intrigue, it is never clear who is most likely to continue the family dynasty. The eldest son was once thought to be the obvious choice.

But he fell out of favour after being caught trying to enter Japan with a forged passport and was promptly deported to China.

The incident was probably less embarrassing to King Jong-nam than it was to his father, and possibly to China.

However, China remains a staunch ally, and has continued to provide, among other things, medical care for the ailing dictator.

Which of the other sons is currently the favoured one is like a game of musical chairs, complete with propaganda campaigns by the military and ruling party who convey their preference or possibly the ruler’s preference by publicly applauding the qualities of the mother, living or deceased, of the favoured son.

To get an inkling as to who is currently in the frame, it helps to see what the praise singers are saying about the mother.

The outlook for North Korea changed dramatically when the South discontinued the practice of providing food aid with no strings attached. The hermit regime has not taken too kindly to this slight. But rather than mend their ways, they have instead become even more belligerent.

For too long they had taken a privilege for a right, and grown accustomed to donations of free food from a neighbour who treated them like family, because of their joint ethnic and historical roots.

ONE IS REMINDED OF THE STORY of a man who made a habit of stopping on his way to work to hand over a chunk of bread and a cup of hot steaming tea to a struggling neighbour down the road.

One day he passed by without the regular and the shocked neighbour demanded to know what had happened to his breakfast that morning.

Kim Jong-il did not just throw a tantrum and demand his free breakfast. He decided it was time to teach a lesson to the inconsiderate neighbours as well as the men who supposedly manipulate the strings in their back from faraway Washington.
Launching a satellite into orbit is their euphemism for testing a long range missile. Ten years ago they fired a rocket across Japan and then reported they had launched a satellite.

This is a country that plays according to its own rules and has a rare capacity to give meanings to actions and words in a manner that is decidedly Kafkaesque.

Launching a missile, or firing a satellite, whatever you want to call it, is a warning to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak to go easy on his poor cousins.

Equally significant, it is an attempt to dictate the US-North Korea agenda. It is a warning to President Barack Obama not to continue the hardline approach of his predecessor, who forced them to abandon or at least call a halt on their nuclear ambitions, even to the point of blowing up part of a nuclear reactor.
They are also hoping to hold Obama to his word – in his presidential campaign he promised to talk to people like Kim Jong-il rather than “nuke” them, in the flowery words of one of his opponents.

One suspects that if Obama indeed chooses to engage with Kim Jong-il, it is to remind him of his inaugural speech promises to the effect that those who support freedom will be America’s friends.

And those who do not, well, will find themselves “on the wrong side of history”.

The fact that the satellite/missile now being readied for launching is said to be capable of reaching the US could well be Obama’s first major test. It is also making the South a little jittery.

A launch will trigger further economic sanctions, escalate tensions and provoke the North into even more desperate and unpredictable actions. It’s the last kicks of a dying horse.

For now, some are counting on their shabby technological past to carry the day. The Taepodong-2 they launched in 2006 fizzled away within seconds.

If technological advancement has delivered a superior missile in the last three years, and if this missile causes real damage, North Korea could have bitten off more than it can chew.

Professor Ken Kamoche is an academic and writer

[Toad]

I hope 'Lil Kim, who's suffered a stroke, declining health, and a taste of his oncoming mortality, is't going to flip the world the finger and a F.U. and start something big because he knows he's on his way out. But past history points to him being just that kind of vindictive asshole.