North Korea

[Flygator 0]

Easy! I know Korea very well and parts of N Korea. I also read, write and speak hongul. I could take the little pansy (Kim Jong Il) with a little help from intelligence and a night jump.

The secret to life is not arriving at the grave in a well preserved body but sliding in sideways completely worn out yelling "holy crap" what a ride!!!

[Gawain 0]

Here's one perspective from ArabNews.com, it's an editorial. Fairly edgy...mirrors a lot of my sentiments.

---

The Link

Editorial: Bluff and Brinkmanship
3 October 2003

North Korea has announced that it has processed 8,000 nuclear fuel rods, enough to make six nuclear bombs. The North Korean official who made the announcement also added that the country is already in possession of nuclear weapons and intends to expand its arsenal.

This is very worrying. North Korea is a maverick state that has only one political objective — keeping its Stalinist regime in power. To that end it is prepared to blackmail the rest of the world, and more specifically the US, with threats of nuclear conflagration to force it to provide the energy and food which its own incompetent economy cannot produce, and so ensure that its impoverished people do not rise up in rebellion. The danger is that such brinkmanship could take on a momentum of its own and result in completely uncontrollable consequences.

Coming just a month after Pyongyang threatened to test a nuclear bomb, blackmail is what this latest announcement is all about. The North Koreans have repeatedly tied their nuclear plans to aid from the US; if they are given the latter they will give up the former. Back in April, during the talks in Beijing with US officials, they offered to scrap their nuclear program in exchange for major concessions from the United States. In fact, aid was being provided by the US until a year ago, but as far as the North Koreans were concerned, it was not enough. That is when they went into the nuclear blackmail business, first admitting that they had a secret nuclear arms program, then reactivating the nuclear power program, expelling IAEA inspectors, withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, threatening to make pre-emptive strikes against the South, and all the time talking up their nuclear capabilities. The problem is that the North Koreans have constantly misplayed the game. Their nuclear threats have not increased US aid, but cut it off. That has only served to ratchet up the tension. Pyongyang’s arrogant sense of its own importance, and probably its fear of being seen to climb down, allows only for more threats.

It may well be that the blackmail is a bluff. Six-party talks in Beijing in August involving China, Russia, South Korea and Japan as well as the US and North Korea, ended in an impasse. Pyongyang could be simply trying yet again to frighten them all ahead of the next round of talks, due to take place shortly. It cannot be discounted.

But bluffs have to be taken seriously. We see a North Korea which, whether it has nuclear weapons or not, is too puffed-up with its own importance to back down and offer concessions; we see a US that has to assume it does; and we see stalemate. Sooner or later, one or the other is going to react with force.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!