Category Archives: United States

Asia, Government, North Korea, United Nations, United States

America threatens ‘annihilation’ following North Korea’s detonation of H-bomb

NORTH KOREA

Intro: President Trump opens door to an attack after Korea’s most powerful nuclear test.

US officials have said that threats from North Korea will be met with a “massive military response”, after the rogue state announced it had carried out its most powerful nuclear test yet.

America had “many options” which could lead to the “annihilation” of North Korea, Defence Secretary General Jim Mattis said.

“Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response, both effective and overwhelming,” Mr Mattis said.

“Kim Jon-un should take heed of the UN Security Council’s unified voice. We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so.”

Earlier, when asked if he planned to attack Pyongyang, President Trump replied, “We’ll see”, and said he was holding meetings with his military leaders.

Mr Trump also said that talk of appeasement was pointless because North Korea “only understands one thing”, as the state promised further tests.

His hard-line rhetoric was prompted by Pyongyang’s announcement that it had successfully tested a weapon seven times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

The regime described its testing of the hydrogen bomb as a “perfect success”. Kim Jong-un was pictured inspecting the peanut-shaped device – the design and scale of which indicated it had a powerful thermonuclear warhead. State media said it was a bomb intended for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In July, North Korea tested two ICBMs that are believed to be capable of reaching the US mainland.

Analysts say the claims should be treated with caution, but the state’s nuclear capability is clearly advancing. The UN Security Council has been meeting in session to discuss North Korea’s latest test.

The announcement that North Korea had carried out an H-bomb test prompted international condemnation. Prime Minister Theresa May criticised the “reckless” act and is urging a speeding-up of sanctions. Mrs May said North Korea’s actions posed an “unacceptable further threat to the international community” and is calling for “tougher action”.

The British Prime Minister added that she had discussed the “serious and grave threat these dangerous and illegal actions present” with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during her visit to the country last week.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the announcement represented “a new order of threat” before stating that “all options are on the table”. Yet he cautioned there were no easy military solutions, saying North Korea could “basically vaporise large sections of the South Korean population” if the West attacks.

South Korean president Moon Jae-in said claims of North Korea’s sixth nuclear test should be met with the “strongest possible” response, including new sanctions. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said measures should include restrictions on the trade of oil products.

Meanwhile, China, North Korea’s only major ally, declared its “resolute opposition and strong condemnation” of the announcement, saying the state had “ignored” widespread opposition.

Russia, which has also backed the state, said the test defied international law and urged all sides involved to hold talks.

Mr Trump originally responded to the news by firing off a series of tweets hinting at military action.

“Appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing,” he said. He also branded the country a “rogue nation” whose “words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States”. Mr Trump later announced that he would consider suspending trade with countries that “do business” with North Korea – which includes China.

Last month, he resolved to respond to North Korea’s nuclear threats with “fire and fury like the world has never seen”.

The White House said Mr Trump’s national security team was “monitoring [the situation] closely”. But any military action will be opposed by China and Russia, who share a border with the state and will not accept US-backed neighbours.

News of the state’s sixth nuclear test emerged after South Korea reported a magnitude 5.7 earthquake, which the North said was triggered by the detonation of the thermonuclear device. The earthquake was several times stronger than from previous blasts and reportedly shook buildings in China and Russia.

It came a decade after North Korea’s first nuclear test and represents a significant escalation of its programme. North Korea last carried out a nuclear test in September 2016. A week ago, Pyongyang fired a missile over Japanese territory in its most provocative test before the latest announcement.

Although the earthquake and release of photographs of Kim suggest the device was real, there has been no independent verification. North Korea said there would be no radioactive materials to prove the hydrogen bomb’s existence because it was detonated underground.

But intelligence experts have said there is no reason to doubt that the state tested “an advanced nuclear device”.

A spokesperson for the James Martin Centre for Non-proliferation Studies, said: “There is no way of telling if this is the actual device that was exploded in the tunnel – it could even be a model – but the messaging is clear.

“They want to demonstrate that they know what makes a credible nuclear warhead.”

  • Appendage:

The blast from a primary fission component triggers a secondary fusion explosion in a thermonuclear bomb.

How its explosive power is harnessed:

. An ordinary high explosive trigger compresses plutonium into a critical state, causing initial reaction known as “nuclear fission” as atoms are split.

. This “primary” explosion detonates the second device within the warhead. A secondary core is ignited by more plutonium. It also includes hydrogen isotopes – atoms which have a different number of neutrons – which begin a “fusion” reaction. At the same time, a uranium core begins a second “fission” reaction.

. With a split second the resulting explosion releases huge amounts of energy – leading to a devastating blast.

– Also known as a thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb [H-bomb] is so called because it uses the common element in a process called “nuclear fusion”, in which atoms fuse together.

– H-bombs are far more powerful and complex than ordinary atomic bombs, which rely on atom-splitting – known as “fission”.

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Asia, China, Government, History, Japan, North Korea, Politics, United Nations, United States

Essay: North Korea’s revenge for Japan’s forced occupation of Korea (pre-1945)

ASIA

THE North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un very deliberately chose Japan for its greatest act of provocation to date.

Crucially, it wanted to demonstrate the vulnerability of America’s key ally in East Asia – though Kim was playing on North Koreans’ savagely bitter memories of Imperial Japan’s 35-year occupation of Korea until 1945.

Japanese was imposed as the only permitted language in schools, but few Koreans were able to master it well enough to get good jobs.

Any new businesses were owned and run by the Japanese. Only a handful of Koreans were allowed to go on to higher education.

The Thirties were the height of Emperor Hirohito’s Great East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, an initiative that purported to benefit all of East Asia but which, in reality, had the Japanese installed as the master race and ultimate beneficiaries.

Koreans were dragooned for forced labour and to be cannon fodder in Hirohito’s armies, while some 200,000 women were turned into sex slaves.

At that time Japan’s armies occupied a vast swathe of territory from Korea to New Guinea, and the troops needed company on garrison duty.

So-called ‘comfort women’ were provided by their caring imperial government – Korean women who were shipped around Hirohito’s Pacific Empire as well as into occupied China. They were not only degraded into forced prostitution, but faced the risk of being bombed by the Allies when they attacked Japanese bases.

After World War II, the ‘comfort women’ were deplorably treated by their own people.

They were regarded as collaborators and shunned. In North Korea – Korea was divided into North and South in the aftermath of the war – a charge of collaboration with the Japanese could mean death.

Imperial Japan neither apologised nor paid compensation. In South Korea today, the legacy of this exploitation is still seen as a humiliation for which Japan has not made amends.

Stoking more than a century of Korean-Japanese antagonism is part of Kim’s plan to split America’s allies. At the same time, he is bolstering his dynasty and ramping up national feeling by reminding North Koreans of the potent myth of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, as a resistance hero, defying the Japanese.

In response to the North Korean threat, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to push through changes to his country’s post-war ‘pacifist’ constitution which renounces war and ‘the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.’ And while other players in the regions such as South Korea, China and the Philippines don’t like Kim’s aggression either, they have lurking fears of Japanese rearmament.

What is most alarming for Abe is North Korea’s ability to overfly Japan. Japan’s Patriot missile defence didn’t intercept Kim’s rocket – but it was not because Tokyo chose restraint.

It couldn’t have stopped the missile if it wanted to, because it was launched from a new site in North Korea, most likely from a mobile launcher, and in a very unexpected direction.

This brought the issue of Japan acquiring a nuclear deterrent to the fore.

For millions of Japanese, the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by atomic bombs in 1945, is the only argument needed against going nuclear. The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 has made even civil nuclear power controversial.

But North Korea’s apparent impunity and America’s dithering have brought out Japanese hawks who say their country must go nuclear. Washington is against such a move, but after events earlier this week Japan can legitimately ask if it can really rely on its ally to deter an attack.

 

JAPAN’S role in the world economy is huge and its forces – for the purposes of self-defence under that post-war constitution – are impressive. Since 1945, it has built up a large army and air force, and one of the biggest navies in the world (although the U.S. has made sure Japan lacks aircraft carriers capable of offensive action).

Given Japan’s mix of high-tech industry and nuclear power stations, it could make a nuclear bomb quickly. But there is another player in the region – China’s reaction to such a development would be off the scale.

In Europe, in the seven decades since the end of World War II, the idea of a war between the old enemies seems incredible. But in East Asia, while American power has kept the peace between Japan and her old foes, the deep-rooted enmity between the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese is never far from the surface. Disputes over sea borders, for instance, are just one symptom of the distrust between these nations.

So, while there is method and history attached to Kim’s madness, it does leave the Japanese government facing a huge dilemma. Whether the U.S. will still be able to bear influence over the direction that Japan’s military will take – in being able to properly defend itself –  is likely to be an issue that will gain increasing traction in the weeks and months ahead.

  • Appendage
Koreas Timeline

Koreas: Historical timeline

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Government, North Korea, Politics, United Nations, United States

A world dangerously close to the brink

NORTH KOREA

North-Korea-missile-663759

North Korea launched a ballistic missile in the Sea of Japan. This may have been from a submarine or from a new land based launch site.

THE world has looked on in horror this week as North Korea fired a missile over Japan. That has spread panic among the 6million population of Hokkaido island and is cranking-up tension to snapping-point.

Not since the Cuban missile crisis has the world seemed as close to the brink of a genocidal nuclear exchange.

The difference is that in that terrifying stand-off of 1962, both John F Kennedy and Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev remained open to reason. For all their bluster, they saw full-scale war as unthinkable, and each was prepared to compromise.

But how confidently can the same be said of the arch protagonists in the Korean crisis?

We should all hope and believe that Donald Trump, though hugely unpredictable, is less reckless than he likes to appear. As leader of the world’s greatest democracy, he is also restrained by the US Constitution and independent-minded advisers.

But this is hardly true of the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un. Surrounded by sycophants too terrified or brainwashed to rein him in, he seems as deranged as he is ruthless.

Indeed, his countless victims include his half-brother, poisoned at Kuala Lumpur airport, and an uncle he blew to shreds with heavy artillery at point-blank range. The fear is that anyone capable of such barbarity may be capable of anything.

But are threats of ‘exterminating’ his regime, and demonstrations of military might, the best way to deal with a madman who seems only to fear losing face?

Or will South Korea’s menaces and bombing exercises, and President Trump’s muscle-flexing, merely heighten Kim’s paranoia and sense of isolation, spurring him to ever wilder acts of lunacy?

One thing seems sure. If the North Korean dictator will listen to anyone, it will be to his neighbours the Chinese, who have everything to fear from war in Korea. The West should be using all its energy and efforts by encouraging Beijing to bring him to reason.

Certainly, Mr Trump should leave him in no doubt that the US will support South Korea to the hilt. But if he wants to be remembered as a statesman, he will tone down the language – and, like Kennedy, work tirelessly to broker peace behind the scenes.

Goading this tyrant with threats of ‘fire and fury’ is surely not the answer. Such language is adding fuel to a fire that could become dangerously out of control. It could even provoke the unthinkable: nuclear war.

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