North Korea Rocket Launch Fails
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Japan voices fears over N. Korea nuke test
TOKYO: A senior Japanese defence official on Saturday urged "crisis-management measures" ahead of a possible nuclear test by North Korea after its humiliating failure to launch a rocket.
The launch was supposed to be the centrepiece of weekend commemorations marking the centenary of the birth of North Korean founding leader Kim Il-Sung, and helping to formalise a new cult of personality around Kim Jong-Un.
But the rocket flew for just over two minutes before it broke up and fell into the Yellow Sea, with the North admitting a satellite had failed to enter orbit.
"We'd better keep in mind that they may conduct a nuclear test," Senior Vice Minister of Defence Shu Watanabe told a weekly news programme on the private TV Tokyo network.
"We must prepare crisis-management measures by remembering that they will surely do something in order to restore their damaged dignity," he said, amid fears that Pyongyang will hold another nuclear test.
Analysts say satellite imagery showing what looks like preparations, and the communist regime's previous patterns of behaviour -- with missile tests followed by bomb tests -- suggest a third nuclear test could be imminent.
North Korea has said its rocket launch was a peaceful attempt to put a satellite into orbit but the United States, South Korea and Japan have condemned it as a poorly disguised ballistic missile test.
Watanabe said countries should not have high hopes for change under Kim Jong-Un, who inherited the regime from his father Kim Jong-Il, who died in December.
"We'd better not have hopes for the man, Kim Jong-Un," the vice minister said.
"The man is just a beginner of brinksmanship diplomacy. The cronies from the Kim Jong-Il era choreograph him. The country will continue to be a source of global instability even after its leaders changed," he said.
"What we should fear is that they may go ahead with missile and nuclear tests again even though the technologies are inadequate," he said.
- AFP/al -
Shit happens, to anyone.
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North Korea's Kim Jong Un Says World Can't Blackmail His Regime
April 16 (Bloomberg) -- North Korea won't be bullied by its nuclear-armed enemies, third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un said in his first public address at a military parade as South Korea warned that his regime may conduct an atomic test.
Dressed in a dark Mao suit and standing on a podium high above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang yesterday, the new leader said, "the days of enemies threatening and blackmailing us with nuclear weapons are forever over." Goose-stepping soldiers, mobile rocket launchers and tanks rumbled through the streets below in a celebration broadcast on state television.
North Korea's humiliation from a long-range rocket that disintegrated within minutes of liftoff two days earlier increases the chance of Kim ordering an atomic test to regain face, South Korean Deputy Defense Minister Lim Kwan Bin said on April 13. The launch also ended a U.S. food-aid deal.
"Kim is very aware of how powerful the military is and knows his only strategy is to keep selling the 'military-first' policy," said Koh Yu Hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Seoul's Dongguk University. "Stability is what the young Kim needs most and he needs the full support of the military."
The parade was broadcast on North Korean state television and held to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Kim's late grandfather, state founder Kim Il Sung. The younger Kim is thought to be less than 30 years old and assumed power after his father, Kim Jong Il, died of a heart attack on Dec. 17.
Ballistic Missile
It also featured what appeared to be a new, larger ballistic missile, said Baek Seung Joo, who studies Pyongyang's military at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul. South Korea's Defense Ministry was unable to comment on the design or whether it was a real missile.
North Korea, which technically remains at war with the South since their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty, has 1.2 million people in its armed forces and has twice detonated an atomic device, in 2006 and 2009.
"In order to realize our goal of building a socialist, strong and prosperous nation, we must first, second and third strengthen the people's army on all fronts," said Kim, who shuffled his feet as he read from notes. "We have grown into a powerful military, equipped with our own means of defense and attack in any modern war."He didn't mention the rocket launch or his regime's atomic weapons program during the speech, which lasted 20 minutes. While North Korea said the launch was intended to put a satellite into orbit, the U.S. said it violated United Nations Sanctions 1718 and 1874, which ban any usage of ballistic missile and nuclear technologies.
Washington scrapped the February plan to provide 240,000 tons of food aid after the rocket was fired...
Korea: forgotten nuclear threats
By Bruce Cumings
The media claim that North Korea is trying to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction.Yet the United States, which opposes this strategy, has used or threatened to use such weapons in northeast Asia since the 1940s, when it did drop atomic bombs on Japan......Boite received from MacArthur an early suggestion for the tactical use of atomic weapons and an indication of MacArthur’s extraordinary ambitions for the war, which included occupying the North and handling potential Chinese - or Soviet - intervention:“I would cut them off in North Korea . . . I visualise a cul-de-sac. The only passages leading from Manchuria and Vladivostok have many tunnels and bridges. I see here a unique use for the atomic bomb - to strike a blocking blow - which would require a six months’ repair job. Sweeten up my B-29 force.”...In interviews published posthumously, MacArthur said he had a plan that would have won the war in 10 days:“I would have dropped 30 or so atomic bombs . . . strung across the neck of Manchuria”. Then he would have introduced half a million Chinese Nationalist troops at the Yalu and then “spread behind us - from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea - a belt of radioactive cobalt . . . it has an active life of between 60 and 120 years.For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North.” He was certain that the Russians would have done nothing about this extreme strategy: “My plan was a cinch”North Korea won't be bullied by its nuclear-armed enemies, third-generation dictator Kim Jong Un said in his first public address at a military parade as South Korea warned that his regime may conduct an atomic test.
Dressed in a dark Mao suit and standing on a podium high above Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang yesterday, the new leader said, "the days of enemies threatening and blackmailing us with nuclear weapons are forever over."
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I rather everyone stop funnneling aid to the North Korean govt
starve it of cash, parts
see how long it can continue with its tyrannical ways
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For Revolutionary Reunification of Korea!
http://www.internationalist.org/northkoreawarneverended1012.html
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Seriously, why does everyone keep tolerating North Korea?
Push it to self collapse better
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Originally posted by Mr Milo:
Seriously, why does everyone keep tolerating North Korea?
Push it to self collapse better
everyone should just treat it as if it doesn't exist... and if the idiots try to shoot rockets out, a few anti-ballistic missiles should do the trick...
then just ignore them again...
until everything goes to shit or Kim Jong Un runs out of cake
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Cake?
Go toilet can make lots of cake leh
Red, Brown, Green also got
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Originally posted by Mr Milo:
Seriously, why does everyone keep tolerating North Korea?
Same as why everybody tolerate Israel?
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more successful launch
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N. Korea threatens war as Seoul unveils missile
North Korea demanded Thursday that South Korea apologise for what it called insults during major anniversary festivities, or face a "sacred war", as Seoul unveiled a new missile to deter its neighbour.
Regional tensions have risen since Pyongyang went ahead with a long-range rocket launch last Friday, defying international calls to desist.
The event was to have been a centrepiece of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary Sunday of the "Day of the Sun", the birthday of Kim Il-Sung who founded the communist nation and the dynasty which still rules it.
But the rocket, which the North said was designed to launch a satellite, disintegrated after some two minutes of flight.
"The puppet regime of traitors must apologise immediately for their grave crime of smearing our Day of Sun festivities," said a government statement on Pyongyang's official news agency.
Otherwise, it said, the North Korean people and military "will release their volcanic anger and stage a sacred war of retaliation to wipe out traitors on this land".
The North has several times demanded that the South apologise for perceived slights or face war since its longtime leader Kim Jong-Il died in December. Under his son and new leader Kim Jong-Un, it has struck a hostile tone with the South.
South Korea announced Thursday it has deployed new cruise missiles capable of destroying targets such as missile and nuclear bases anywhere in the North.
"With such capabilities, our military will sternly and thoroughly punish reckless provocations by North Korea while maintaining our firm readiness," Major General Shin Won-Sik told reporters.
Yonhap news agency said the new cruise missile could travel more than 1,000 kilometres (625 miles).
Cross-border tensions have been high since conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in Seoul in 2008 and scrapped a near-unconditional aid policy.
"If our power is strong, we can deter enemy provocations," Lee said Thursday, describing the North as "the world's most hostile force".
The North hit back at critical comments by Lee and by conservative media, which questioned the overall cost of the celebrations in a nation suffering acute food shortages.
Lee had said the estimated $850 million cost of the launch could have bought 2.5 million tons of corn.
"Traitor Lee Myung-Bak took the lead in vituperation during the festivities," said a joint statement by the North's government, party and social groups.
"This is an intolerable insult to our leader, system and people and a hideous provocation that sparked seething anger among the whole people."
The North said its only aim was to launch a peaceful satellite, but the United States and its allies said this was a flimsy excuse for a test by the nuclear-armed nation of ballistic missile technology.
On Monday the United Nations Security Council including Pyongyang's ally China strongly condemned the launch. Washington said it also breached a bilateral deal and suspended plans for food aid.
The North has warned of unspecified retaliation. Some experts believe it will conduct a new nuclear test or further long-range missile tests, while others predict a border clash with the South.
An unrepentant Pyongyang last Sunday displayed an apparently new medium-range missile at a parade featuring thousands of goose-stepping troops and almost 900 pieces of weaponry.
A leading defence journal said Thursday that UN officials are investigating whether China supplied technology for its launcher vehicle, in a possible breach of UN sanctions.
IHS Jane's Defence Weekly quoted a senior official close to a United Nations Security Council sanctions committee as saying that an associated panel of experts was "aware of the situation and will pursue enquiries".
IHS Janes's reported earlier that China appeared to have supplied either the design or the actual vehicle to the North.
It said the 16-wheel transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) is apparently based on a design from the 9th Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation.
China said it had actively abided by UN resolutions while practising "strict export control of proliferation materials".
"China is always against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the carrier equipment for such weapons," foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in Beijing.
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Their patience with the North is thinning out
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haha what n.korea have done is just plain wasting time and they have completely thrown away their "face" liao
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On the other hand, a hugely embarassed North Korea might just launch an attack on South Korea
and which will eventually lead to defeat and more humiliation
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Originally posted by Mr Milo:
On the other hand, a hugely embarassed North Korea might just launch an attack on South Korea
and which will eventually lead to defeat and more humiliation
I rather they attack the U.S then South Korea.
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Lolz
with the equipment North Korea has, its armed forces will be totally wiped out while e in transit
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and i favour the South having its cruise missile, deployed against all threats. any more provocations and one of their military installations will be gone
one provocation, one is gone
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and i favour the South having its cruise missile, deployed against all threats. any more provocations and one of their military installations will be gone
one provocation, one is gone
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An old paper on North Korean war strategy against the U.S, interesting read:
North Korea's War Strategy of Massive Retaliations against US Attacks
North Korea has not only the military power but also the political will to wage total war against the United States.
1. North Korea Can Engage the US in Total War
North Korea is one of the few nations that can engage in a total war with the United States.
The US war planners recognize this fact. For example, on March 7, 2000, Gen. Thomas A Schwartz, the US commander in Korea at the time, testified at a US congressional hearing that "North Korea is the country most likely to involve the United States in a large-scale war."
North Korea, which can and is willing to face up to the sole military superpower of the world, cannot be called a weak nation. Nevertheless, Western press and analysts distort the truth and depict North Korea as an "impoverished" nation, starving and on the brink of imminent collapse. An impoverished, starving nation cannot face down a military superpower. Today few nations have military assets strong enough to challenge the US military. Russia, though weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union, has enough assets to face up to the US. China, somewhat weaker than Russia, too, has strong military that can challenge the US. However, both Russia and China lack the political will to face down the US.
In contrast, North Korea has not only the military power but also the political will to wage total war against the United States. North Korea has made it clear that it will strike all US targets with all means, if the US mounted military attacks on North Korea. That North Korea's threat is no bluff can be seen from the aggressive actions taken by North Korea since the Korean War armistice, most recent of which is North Korea's attempt to capture an American spy plane.
In the morning of March 1, 2003, an American RC-132S spy plane, Cobra Ball, took off from a US airbase in Okinawa, and cruised along the East coast of North Korea collecting electronic signals. The US intelligence suspected that North Korea was about to test a long-range missile and the plane was there to monitor the suspected missile launch.
When the US plane reached a point about 193 km from the coast of North Korea, two MiG-29 and two MiG-21 fighter planes showed up unexpectedly. The North Korean planes approached within 16 m and signaled the US plane to follow them. The US pilot refused to follow the command and left the scene posthaste. The US plane was tailed by the hostiles for about 22 min but let the US spy plane go. There are two key points to be observed here.
First, the hostile planes waited for the US plane at the Uhrang airbase, located about 200 km from the point of air encounter. They knew that the US plane was coming. The North Korean planes flew 200 km to intercept the US plane. Did the US plane see them coming? If it did, why no evasive action? After intercepting the US plane, the hostile planes dogged it for 22 min. Why no American planes for the rescue? The US crew must have informed the base of the danger they were in, but no action was taken by the base. If Kim Jong Il had given the command, the MiGs would have shot down the US plane and returned to their base before the US could have scrambled war planes.
Second, North Korea intercepted an American spy plane flying 200 km from its coast. According to the international norm, a nation's territorial air space extends 19 km from its coast line. The US is the exception and claims air space of 370 km from its coast line; any foreign airplane violating this extended air space is challenged or shot down by the US military.
2. North Korea's Massive Retaliation Strategy
North Korea's war plan in case of an US attack is total war, not the 'low-intensity limited warfare' or 'regional conflict' talked about among the Western analysts. North Korea will mount a total war if attacked by the US. There are three aspects to this war plan.
First, total war is North Korea's avowed strategy in case of US preemptive attacks. The US war on Iraq shows that the US can and will mount preemptive strikes in clear violation of international laws, and the United Nations is powerless to stop the US. Any nation that is weak militarily may be attacked by the US at will. It is reasonable for North Korea to deter US attacks with threats of total war...
i) Artillery
North Korea has 2 artillery corps and 30 artillery brigades equipped with 120mm self-propelled guns, 152mm self-propelled mortars, 170mm guns with a range of 50 km, 240 mm multiple rocket launchers with a range of 45 km, and other heavy guns. North Korea has about 18,000 heavy guns. North Korea's 170mm Goksan gun and 240mm multiple-tube rocket launchers are the most powerful guns of the world. These guns can lob shells as far south as Suwon miles beyond Seoul. The big guns are hidden in caves. Many of them are mounted on rails and can fire in all directions. They can rain 500,000 conventional and biochemical shells per hour on US troops near the DMZ. The US army bases at Yijong-bu, Paju, Yon-chun, Munsan, Ding-gu-chun, and Pochun will be obliterated in a matter of hours.
The US army in Korea is equipped with Paladin anti-artillery guns that can trace enemy shells back to the guns and fire shells at the enemy guns with pin-point accuracy. However, it takes for the Paladins about 10 min to locate the enemy guns, during which time the Paladins would be targeted by the enemy guns Gen. Thomas A Schwartz, a former US army commander in Korea, stated that the US army in Korea would be destroyed in less than three hours...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3099.htm
If U.S dares to launch a war against North Korea like it did against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, I think North Korea will have no choice but to mount a total war of massive retaliation against the U.S.
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Bring it on then, North Korea
Whatever they got, the US will bomb the shit out of them
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Originally posted by Mr Milo:
Bring it on then, North Korea
Whatever they got, the US will bomb the shit out of them
If U.S bombs the shit out of North Korea as it did in last korean war, I hope North Korea can wipe out completely the entire U.S west coast.
Save China and others the trouble.
Without even using such “novel weapons” - although napalm was very new - the air war levelled North Korea and killed millions of civilians. North Koreans tell you that for three years they faced a daily threat of being burned with napalm: “You couldn’t escape it,” one told me in 1981. By 1952 just about everything in northern and central Korea had been completely levelled. What was left of the population survived in caves.
Over the course of the war, Conrad Crane wrote, the US air force “had wreaked terrible destruction all across North Korea. Bomb damage assessment at the armistice revealed that 18 of 22 major cities had been at least half obliterated.” A table he provided showed that the big industrial cities of Hamhung and Hungnam were 80-85% destroyed, Sariwon 95%, Sinanju 100%, the port of Chinnampo 80% and Pyongyang 75%. A British reporter described one of the thousands of obliterated villages as “a low, wide mound of violet ashes”. General William Dean, who was captured after the battle of Taejon in July 1950 and taken to the North, later said that most of the towns and villages he saw were just “rubble or snowy open spaces”. Just about every Korean he met, Dean wrote, had had a relative killed in a bombing raid (17). Even Winston Churchill, late in the war, was moved to tell Washington that when napalm was invented, no one contemplated that it would be “splashed” all over a civilian population (18).
This was Korea, “the limited war”. The views of its architect, Curtis LeMay, serve as its epitaph. After it started, he said: “We slipped a note kind of under the door into the Pentagon and said let us go up there . . . and burn down five of the biggest towns in North Korea - and they’re not very big - and that ought to stop it. Well, the answer to that was four or five screams - ‘You’ll kill a lot of non-combatants’ and ‘It’s too horrible’. Yet over a period of three years or so . . . we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too . . . Now, over a period of three years this is palatable, but to kill a few people to stop this from happening - a lot of people can’t stomach it” (19).
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oh, i meant destroying the armed forces, not civilians
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Originally posted by Mr Milo:
oh, i meant destroying the armed forces, not civilians
yup, civilians are innocent.
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and i suppose the US has some new toys they want to test out in the battlefield, so, if a war breaks out, they will have the excuse to do so