NKorea: Sanctions Are Declaration of War

[freethefly 6]

I wonder, do the common people of N.Korea know exactly what's at stake. Their leaders are very close to turning their country into a wasteland. Any invasion at this point would be justified but, with a tremendous cost to human life. What side would China and Russia take and would the U.S. have to take this on alone? Something clearly has to be done before they are capable of sending warheads to the U.S. mainland or any other country.


NKorea: Sanctions Are Declaration of War
10/17/2006

Associated Press/AP Online
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea on Tuesday blasted U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing the country for its nuclear test, saying the measures amount to a declaration of war and that the nation wouldn't cave in to such pressure now that it's a nuclear weapons power.

The bellicose remarks - the central government's first response to the U.N. measures imposed last weekend - came as China warned the North against stoking tensions and the American nuclear envoy arrived in South Korea for talks.

The North broke two days of silence about the U.N. resolution adopted after its Oct. 9 nuclear test, issuing a Foreign Ministry statement on its official Korean Central News Agency.

"The resolution cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of a war" against the North, also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North warned it "wants peace but is not afraid of war" and that it would "deal merciless blows" against anyone who violates its sovereignty.

The communist nation "had remained unfazed in any storm and stress in the past when it had no nuclear weapons," the statement said. "It is quite nonsensical to expect the DPRK to yield to the pressure and threat of someone at this time when it has become a nuclear weapons state."

China has long been one of North Korea's few friends, but relations have been frayed in recent months by Pyongyang's missile tests and last week's nuclear blast.

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao warned Pyongyang against aggravating tensions and said the North should help resolve the situation "through dialogue and consultation."

The verbal volley came as the U.S. pressed on with a round of diplomacy in Asia aimed at finding consensus on how to implement the sanctions. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was expected to arrive in Japan on Wednesday before traveling to South Korea and China.

After landing in Seoul on Tuesday, the U.S. nuclear envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said he couldn't confirm media reports that the North may be preparing for another test explosion.

But Hill stressed that the international community should make the North pay a "high price" for its "reckless behavior."

Hill told reporters he wanted to talk to South Korean officials about reports the North was getting ready for a second nuclear test. Japan's government also had "information" about another possible blast, Foreign Minister Taro Aso told reporters, without elaborating.

But a senior South Korean official told foreign journalists that despite signs of a possible second test, it was unlikely to happen immediately.

"We have yet to confirm any imminent signs of a second nuclear test," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

China, whose support for the sanctions is key to whether they will have any impact on neighboring North Korea, began examining trucks at the North Korean border.

The measures ban trade with the North in major weapons and materials that could be used in its ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. They call for all countries to inspect cargo to and from North Korea to enforce the prohibition.

Hill planned to meet his South Korean counterpart, Chun Yung-woo, and the two were to hold a three-way meeting with their Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev, who has been in Seoul since Sunday.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov was also due in Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart. North Korea was expected to top their agenda.

South Korea has said it would fully comply with the sanctions but has also indicated that it has no intention of halting key economic projects with the North, despite concerns that they may help fund the North's nuclear and missile programs.

"Sanctions against North Korea should be done in a way that draws North Korea to the dialogue table," South Korean Prime Minister Han Myung-sook said Tuesday ahead of her meeting with Fradkov, according to Yonhap news agency. "There should never be a way that causes armed clashes."

In Washington, U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's office said Monday that air samples gathered last week contain radioactive materials that confirm that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion.

In a short statement posted on its Web site, Negroponte's office also confirmed that the size of the explosion was less than 1 kiloton, a comparatively small nuclear detonation. Each kiloton is equal to the force produced by 1,000 tons of TNT.

It was the first official confirmation from the United States that a nuclear detonation took place, as Pyongyang has claimed.

Meanwhile, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, Jay Lefkowitz, urged China and South Korea to rethink aid policies to North Korea, saying unmonitored assistance could prop up a "criminal regime."

China and South Korea provide large amounts of badly needed economic and energy aid. Both Beijing and Seoul worry that a collapsed regime in Pyongyang could send refugees flooding over their borders.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[Frenchy68 0]

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What side would China and Russia take and would the U.S. have to take this on alone?

I don't know about Russia, but China will certainly not tolerate a force such as the US being at its border. No more than the US would have a woody seeing Chinese forces across the Rio Grande.
Therefore, there will not be a US invasion, as all parties are going to hammer out a deal.
It is still, in my opinion, about positioning to gain leverage in the upcoming negotiations...

"For once you have tasted Absinthe you will walk the earth with your eyes turned towards the gutter, for there you have been and there you will long to return."

[lawrocket 3]

This is great. I LOVE politics. The sort of thing where "war" is not "war" but "sanctions" are "war." Depends on what the definition of the word "is" is.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Andy9o8 2]

Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but: I don't really care what the North Koreans say. I only care what they do.

[StreetScooby 5]

Now that's it's been confirmed that a nuclear bomb was indeed tested, it's become even more frightening. It was a small bomb. One that could probably be mounted on a missle. Small bombs are very hard to make. Looks like NK is on its way...

We are all engines of karma

[Andy9o8 2]

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It was a small bomb. One that could probably be mounted on a missle. Small bombs are very hard to make.

Let's not confuse small with low-yield. It certainly was low-yield. I'm not sure there's independent evidence yet as to its physical size.

[nerdgirl 0]

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It was a small bomb. One that could probably be mounted on a missle. Small bombs are very hard to make.

Let's not confuse small with low-yield. It certainly was low-yield. I'm not sure there's independent evidence yet as to its physical size.

Furthering Andy's point:

See recent write-up in Chemical & Engineering News, http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i42/8442notw4.html

"The consensus of scientists involved in nuclear nonproliferation is that the big underground disturbance in North Korea last week was not an earthquake nor was it generated by conventional explosives. It was almost certainly a nuclear test that did not go quite as planned."

"The test registered around 4.0 on the Richter scale, indicating an explosive yield of between about 500 and 1,000 tons of TNT."

"Richard L. Garwin, a key designer of the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s and a member of science- and defense-related government boards, explains that other nations' initial tests have been in the range of 5,000-15,000 tons for a relatively simple starter warhead."

"He describes the North Korean test as a fizzle and a "waste of plutonium." He speculates the low yield was due to either poor design or preignition-the blowing apart of the device before it had fully functioned."

"Paul G. Richards, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and who has long been involved in the study of nuclear weapons tests, stresses that a 500-1,000-ton TNT explosion is still enormous. He says the seismograph of the North Korean explosion is different from those for earthquakes or conventional explosions. It also indicates the blast was shallow, a characteristic of a test."

"Peter Zimmerman, an arms control expert now at King's College London, comments that "the North Koreans may have just taken the gold medal for the world's worst first nuclear test.""

As you probably know, some reasonable (guest-)estimation w/r/t the "size" should back-calculatable. Since the CTBT is not in effect, the data is considered confidential and is shared only with those states who have signed the test ban treaty.*

*This policy was modified after the December 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami. There are seismic monitors on the ocean floor http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/bsv/ctbto/ims.html; India and a few other southeast/south Asia countries are not signatories. Policy was changed to allow sharing seismic & hydroacoustic data related to tsunami warning.

VR,
Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[Elisha 1]

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Depends on what the definition of the word "is" is.

I know that this was mentioned during the Clinton/Lewinsky "scandal". Is there a wikipedia entry? I don't even get what the "is" debate was about.

[billvon 3,118]

>It was a small bomb.

The explosion was small; the bomb was likely not small.

Nuclear bombs are relatively easy to make. With enough U-235, you can make one with some pretty basic machining and military hardware. The machining is pretty hazardous, but if you don't care if you lose a few people doing it, then it's doable with a basic machine shop.

Problem is that the simple bombs are also the largest. A simple gun-type bomb with 90% enriched U-235 would weigh tens of thousands of pounds and be physically big. Little Boy was made with 95%+ enriched uranium and was minituarized as much as possible, and it still weighed 10,000 lbs and was 10 feet long. And it was a relatively low yield - 13 kilotons or so.

Other problem is that U-235 generally comes from ore, not reactors - in other words, it's mined and enriched, not made then enriched. It's likely that NK had plenty of plutonium from its reactors but not as much heavily enriched U-235. So they probably were trying a plutonium based weapon, and they have to be implosion weapons - they can't use gun-type assemblies.

Modern small fusion-boosted plutonium implosion weapons can be made very small indeed, and they can yield in the hundreds of kilotons. Very very small nuclear devices can weigh around 200 lbs and yield over a kiloton using such tricks as fusion boosting, but they are among the hardest to design (and most difficult to maintain.)

The North Koreans were most likely attempting to detonate a basic implosion-type plutonium-based weapon, and either a lensing failure or preignition reduced the yield from the design goal. Preignition is probably most likely, since that's one result of using improperly prepared plutonium.

[bch7773 0]

north korea seems to only know how to respond with threats and insults.

I personally think we should cut off all food aid, let kim jong il try to explain to his peasents why he can't feed them, after thousands starve, they might overthrow him.

I'm pretty disgusted with the countires that want his government to stay in power so they don't have to worry about refugees

MB 3528, RB 1182

[StreetScooby 5]

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Let's not confuse small with low-yield. It certainly was low-yield. I'm not sure there's independent evidence yet as to its physical size.

Agreed.

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

Bill, thanks for the reply. Very informative, as usual

We are all engines of karma

[freethefly 6]

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I personally think we should cut off all food aid, let kim jong il try to explain to his peasents why he can't feed them, after thousands starve, they might overthrow him.

On several grounds, doing such would only cause more hatred towards the West. Many in N. Korea have very little idea what goes on beyond their border. They only know what they are told by their government. I suspect they are lied to on a daily basis. Starving the innocent would just be wrong. So much is just wrong about N.Korea and there is no easy way to handle the situation. The whole world should be aware of just how close we are to the drain and the point of no return.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[billvon 3,118]

Did a bit more research -

One defector claimed that NK was trying for a one-ton (2000 lb) bomb based on a 4kg plutonium pit. That's close to the theoretical minimum for a plutonium weapon, and both the plutonium and the implosion lensing have to be damn near perfect for it to get its theoretical maximum yield (about 15 kilotons.) It makes sense that they would test such a weapon, since that's the kind of weapon that really needs testing. (A gun-type uranium weapon, OTOH, is so reliable that it doesn't really need testing. We never tested Little Man before we dropped it, because we felt we didn't need to. And it worked just fine.)

The one-ton limitiation also makes sense from the delivery vehicle aspect. If your missiles are small and range-limited, the smaller the weapon the better. So the test would be good news in that it probably didn't succeed 100%, but bad news in that they're learning.

[lummy 4]

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I personally think we should cut off all food aid, let kim jong il try to explain to his peasents why he can't feed them, after thousands starve, they might overthrow him.

There were reports that Kim Jung has diverted billions towards his missile and nuclear testing even while his own army was starving. If he wasn't overthrown then, I doubt it would happen now.

I'll have to refind the article to source it

I promise not to TP Davis under canopy.. I promise not to TP Davis under canopy.. eat sushi, get smoochieTTK#1

[StreetScooby 5]

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So the test would be good news in that it probably didn't succeed 100%, but bad news in that they're learning.

Exactly.

We are all engines of karma

[SpeedRacer 1]

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north korea seems to only know how to respond with threats and insults.

I personally think we should cut off all food aid, let kim jong il try to explain to his peasents why he can't feed them, after thousands starve, they might overthrow him.

I'm pretty disgusted with the countires that want his government to stay in power so they don't have to worry about refugees

North Korea is basically one giant cult. The North Koreans are far too brainwashed to overthrow him. He could easily convince the people that it's all the fault of the USA & allies. He would be seen as a hero standiung up against the West.

Actually, keeping the people in poverty works out well for Jungle Kim: It re-enforces their belief in their total dependency on the state run by Kim.

Only people who at least have a vision of self-sufficiency would think to overthrow such a dictator.

That's the power of being a communist dictator: The poverty of the people actually makes their faith in you stronger.

Speed Racer
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[mr2mk1g 10]

The news on this side of the pond is that they're winding up for a second test. Pundits think they'll probably time it so that it comes as their response to the sanctions kicking in.

[Amazon 7]

The problem though.. is backing a whacko into a corner.. where you feed his paranoia.. and he sees no other good option than to attack across the border...