North Korea conducts underground nuclear test

[RoyG]

Ramanaji, take a look at this:

NORTH KOREA
FAZ: German economic experts advising North Korea

The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper says German economists and jurists are advising reclusive North Korea on ways to open up to western investors. The nuclear aspirant has long faced sanctions based on UN resolutions.
An unnamed scientist quoted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) said the regime, headed by its new leader Kim Jong-Un, was particularly interested in adopting modern legislation that would attract selected investors.
"They are rather more interested in the Vietnamese blueprint, whereby selected enterprises for investment are picked out," said the advisor.
North avoiding Chinese model
According to FAZ, powerful figures within North Korea, including its military, wanted to allow entry to select firms of the Western industrialized world, including those of Japan and South Korea.
They wanted to avoid past practices of attracting Chinese companies or copying the Chinese model of setting up special economic zones, FAZ said.
The North Korea military did not want to relinquish control over North Korea's massive raw material reserves in which Chinese companies were primarily interested, said an anonymous German economic scientist quoted by FAZ.
It said he had made numerous visits to the impoverished nation.
In a rare message at New Year, Kim Jong-un, who became leader in late 2011 after the death of his father, called for a "radical turnabout" within North Korea's state-directed economy and predicted an easing of tensions with South Korea.
Kim also praised an internationally condemned rocket launch made by the isolated communist state on December 12, saying a similar effort was needed to "build an economic giant."
Kim's speech was the first of its kind for 19 years, since the death of his grandfather Kim Il-Sung. His late father, Kim Jong-il, largely avoided public pronouncements.
According to United Nations agencies, millions of North Koreans struggle daily to feed themselves in a repressive nation crippled by electricity and material shortages. North Korea performed nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
South Korea's president-elect Park Guen-Hye, who will take office in February, recently signaled her desire for greater engagement with Pyongyang.
Richardson to visit North
The US State Department has criticized a visit planned to North Korea by former New Mexico state government Bill Richardson and Eric Schmidt, the chairman of the internet giant Google.
Richardson, a former US ambassador at the UN and veteran intermediary, said their joint trip would focus on humanitarian issues in a "very tense" North Korea. One aim was to obtain the release of a US citizen of Korean descent, Kenneth Bae.
There was an "opportunity for dialogue," said Richardson. "Perhaps a new approach is needed in dealing with North Korea," he added.
Richardson said he had invited Schmidt to join the trip because "he's interested in foreign policy, he's a friend of mine, and I felt that it was important that there be a broader perspective of our visit."
State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said their intended trip was "not particularly helpful," adding that Richardson and Schmidt would be traveling as private citizens.
ipj/sej (dpa, AFP)

http://www.dw.de/faz-german-economic-ex ... a-16500357

[member_22872]

If indeed NK opens it's doors to western(US) companies, US will shut up, all this NoKo being a terrorist state with nukes pointed at it tamasha will vanish.

[ramana]

Hindu Article

Link

India sees Pakistan imprint in North Korean nuclear test

Sandeep Dikshit

Benazir was a key player in furthering clandestine linkages

India seized on two developments at the Conference on Disarmament to draw attention to the close links between North Korea and Pakistan in developing nuclear weapons.

With the U.N. disarmament forum taking up the issues of North Korea’s surprise nuclear test and Pakistan restating its opposition to the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, sources here drew attention to the close links between the two countries that enabled Pyongyang to proceed further on the weaponisation route.

If indeed uranium was used in the nuclear explosion, the sources said, Pakistan’s imprint was more than visible. As The Hindu earlier reported, the former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, was a key player in furthering clandestine nuclear linkages between Islamabad and Pyongyang by personally taking compact discs to and from North Korea.

According to a book by her Oxford collegemate and journalist Shyam Bhatia, who subsequently kept in regular touch with her, North Korea offered to provide Pakistan long-range missiles to offset its imbalance with India’s integrated guided missile development programme then led by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

In the controversial book "Goodbye Shahzadi", Mr. Bhatia says that by 1993, Pakistan was under the spotlight as never before (on bartering enrichment technology for missiles), with Russia, India and western secret services monitoring every nuance of its military research.

“This was where Benazir came in useful. As she was due to visit North Korea at the end of 1993, she was asked and readily agreed to carry critical nuclear data on her person and hand it over on arrival in Pyongyang…..The gist of what she told me was that before leaving Islamabad she shopped for an overcoat with the deepest possible pockets into which she transferred CDs containing the scientific data about uranium which the North Korean wanted.”

This narration was not reported by Mr. Bhatia till her assassination. Benazir was never to repeat that conversation whenever tape recorders were in sight and she always insisted during on-record interviews that the North Korean missile was acquired in a cash deal and unaccompanied by a quid pro quo in the form of transfer of technology, according to Mr. Bhatia.

While the sources dwelt on the North Korea-Pakistan missile-for-nuclear weapons links, the reaction from the Ministry for External Affairs was much milder than that from the European Union and the rest of the West.

The External Affairs Ministry said the latest nuclear test was a matter of deep concern with North Korea acting in violation of its international commitments in this regard. “We call upon DPRK to refrain from such actions which adversely impact on peace and stability in the region,” it said.

What to expect of euunchs?

BTW, NoKo informed US of intention to conduct a test per US spokesperson!!! No testing while everyone was sleeping. It acted like a nuke weapon power.

[shyamd]

South Korean intel agency saying more tests on the way by NoKo

[kenop]

OT
Personal equations persist beyond borders and camps. However..
IIRC Sham Bhatia wrote many articles quite critical of Pukis when he was with (also the editor till about late 80s when he died) The Tribune (Chandigarh). It was only much later that I read about his personal connections with BB. To contrast with the other generation of jamoora-lists like K. Thppad who also had some connections with BB it suffices to quote Madhu Trehan from her Newlaundry interview when she (approximately) said "people say you have handlers across the border. The way you present their viewpoint is so distinct".

[Raja Ram]

The recent NK tests certainly has stirred up some interesting paradoxes for the great leaders of the western world. They waxed so eloquently on Non-proliferation and came up with so many treaties and arrangements to prevent it. Yet Karma is karma.

The greatest defender of freedom, the bastion of non-proliferation regime, the GOTUS is certainly paying for some bad karma. The "wink and a nod" to their trusted All lie, Pakistan has come to roost. For years together, they actively kept winking as Pakistan went about quite openly and scrounged around the world to get material, blueprints and what not.

The second one is our Great Northern Neighbour, poised at touching distance to be the great Super Power of the new era, they actively cultivated a deniable proxy in NK to keep supplying missiles to their Israel, Pakistan.

Now their trust and benevolence towards Pakistan has been amply rewarded by NK getting nuke tech and materials and Iran getting ready.

Lot of karma getting repaid.

btw, the gentle rakshak, pentiah's posting style reminds me of my old friend here - the one who went by the names of Spinster, Umrao John and John Snow is it the latest avatar of that veteran?

[Philip]

Great show by the Kim of the day.You've got to admire him.He announced to the US that he was going to fart in their face and they did bugger all to stop him! Can you imagine any member of this UPA-2 having 1% of Kim's b*lls? Here we can't even deal with the "Maldy sprats" who are shoving their fishing tackle up Mini Man's dhoti!

The bigger issue is what do WE do now,that the NoKo test is suspected of being a Paki proxy too.Unless wee refine our own arsenal,when the baloon goes up we may find ourselves outgunned and unarmed sufficiently to deter a pre-emptive N-attack.

[shiv]

btw, the gentle rakshak, pentiah's posting style reminds me of my old friend here - the one who went by the names of Spinster, Umrao John and John Snow is it the latest avatar of that veteran?

Raja Ram - you have been Rip van Winkle all these days.

[pentaiah]

Rajaram Saar ji namaskaram
Please do post as often as possible

[ramana]

A gaggle of reports on NoKo test:

NoKo test offer Intelligence windfall

Actuallyis a hopeful article with usual NPA underplaying the test yields. A 5.1 Richter scale is being said to be 4-5kt at best!!!! As isaid the Richter scale will be upped after initial estimates. It was 4.9 on early estimate and now 5.1!

NoKo earlier tests were 4.1 and 4.3. This one is one magnitude bigger than the first one. And yet is being called 4-5 kts at best.

And Indian NPA and govt officals wine and dine these deluded spin meisters.

More useful ones from Nightwatch:

Nightwatch 11 Feb 2013

North Korea: During this Watch, on 12 February in North Korea, the US Geological Survey reported seismic activity in North Korea that could represent a man-made detonation.

The US Geological Survey said the 4.9 magnitude tremor occurred at a depth of 1km. It put the epicenter close to North Korea's nuclear test site. Chinese, Japanese and South Korean earthquake and meteorological agencies also detected the event. The Chinese Earthquake Administration described it as "a suspected explosion."

South Korean forces are on alert. Japan has convened its national security council.

On 12 February, a meeting of the Korean Workers' Party politburo "called for staging an all-out action of high intensity," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported, but did not mention a nuclear test. The politburo also "stressed the need to continue launching satellites ... and powerful long-range rockets."

Comment: North Korea most likely has attempted its third nuclear test. The weight of analytical opinion last week favored a detonation on 12 February to upstage the State of the Union Address by the US President and to honor Kim Chong-il's birthday on the 16th.

A review of selected North Korean behavior since 5 February is instructive.

Real indicators. On 5 February, a radio station run by North Korean defectors reported that North Korean authorities closed Kilchu County to all movement. Kilchu County is the location of the nuclear test site. The North did the same thing, according to residents of the area, before the 2006 detonation in the same county. Military Policemen were reported to be barring all traffic and were refusing to accept bribes.

Comment: The significance of the travel ban lies in its economic impact and timing. All trade through this county has ceased, causing real economic costs and local hardship. More importantly, the closure stranded many people in adjacent counties during the Lunar New Year holiday last weekend, when it is the Asian custom to visit families and bring food.

The costs signify serious preparations. They do not mean that a detonation is inevitable, but it does mean that it is highly likely barring a black swan event. The payment of significant civilian economic costs is always a reliable indicator of real and serious intentions by national leaders in any state. In this case, the high-cost civilian indicators are diagnostic and predictive… even for North Korea.

Propaganda deception. On 8 February, the North Korea propaganda weekly, Tongil Sinbo published, "The US and hostile forces jumped to conclusions that the republic (i.e., North Korea) is planning the third nuclear test, citing their hypothesis and argument."

The weekly said the US and other countries know little about what important state measures North Korea will take and whether the measures involve a nuclear test or anything worse.

Comment: The article did not deny Allied judgments that the North was planning a nuclear test. It belittled them for being uninformed. This article was a deliberate, albeit poor, attempt at dissembling.

{Weak indicator.}

Physical deception. South Korean government sources reported on 11 February that North Korea has pulled manpower and equipment from its nuclear test site. No personnel or equipment moves have been observed since Friday, 8 February.

"When manpower and equipment are withdrawn, it can be an indication that a nuclear test is imminent," a source said. "We're watching the developments closely to know whether a nuclear test is imminent or it's another deceptive tactic."

Comment: Prior to the space launch in December North Korea went through the motions of disassembling the rocket, as part of its deception plan. The apparent abandonment of the test site is most likely a similar deception move.
{But did not deceive any one. So waste move.}

And

13 Feb 20123

South Korea: South Korea's military will deploy cruise missiles capable of striking North Korea and accelerate the development of ballistic missiles, officials said on 12 February.


Comment: The significance of this development, when implemented, is that it would represent the public manifestation of an arms race that has been evolving for decades. Unable to support an air force, the North Koreans developed ballistic missiles to give them the ability to strike their enemies beyond the peninsula, in other words, to hold the populations of South Korea, Japan and lately Guam or possibly part of the western US at risk.


Constrained by the US and by international arms control agreements from building its own ballistic missiles, South Korea has continued to modernize its air force and has developed cruise missiles against which North Korea has no defense. It has not fielded the cruise missiles, but probably can do so quickly. The combination of North Korean long range rocket tests and nuclear detonations has removed most reasons for South Korean restraint.
{Same thing happened with India in 1998. The constraint on India from US and international pressure became unbearable once the Ghauri was test proving that TSP had the delivery vehicles for their proven CHIC-4 warheads from PRC. The response has to be a nuke test and not a missile test..}


If North Korean assertions about the success and potential sophistication of the device are accurate, South Korea might deem itself more vulnerable than ever, despite US assurances, and justified in quietly starting or continuing its own nuclear or other weapons research.

US and Allied deterrence measures have prevented war for six decades, but lately have had no measurable influence in deterring North Korean provocations, preventing the development of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems or in stopping sales of North Korean missiles and conventional weapons to Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Libya. The US also has shown itself recently to be slow or unable to respond to provocations in a timely fashion. As a result, the new North Korean leader seems less intimidated by the US than were his forbears.


China cannot or will not restrain North Korea.

There is a strategic imbalance in northeast Asia now. North Korea is a nuclear weapons state and South Korea is not. Having an Allied counter-attack capability is far less comforting than having a first strike doctrine and capability at hand. That was the key point made by the South Korean Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in testimony last week

North Korea: For the record. There follows excerpts from key North Korean statements on 12 February.

Test Announcement. "The Korean Central News Agency released the following report on Tuesday: The scientific field for national defence of the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK) succeeded in the third underground nuclear test at the site for underground nuclear test in the northern part of the DPRK on Tuesday."


"The test was carried out as part of practical measures of counteraction to defend the country's security and sovereignty in the face of the ferocious hostile act of the U.S. which wantonly violated the DPRK's legitimate right to launch satellite for peaceful purposes."


"The test was conducted in a safe and perfect way on a high level with the use of a smaller and light A-bomb unlike the previous ones, yet with great explosive power."

"It was confirmed that the test did not give any adverse effect to the surrounding ecological environment."


North Korean Commentary. "Our third nuclear test is a resolute self-defensive measure to counter the United States' hostile act against the DPRK."

"The successful launch of the second version of the artificial earth satellite Kwangmyo'ngso'ng-3 in December last year, to all its intents and purposes, was a project for peaceful purposes, which was carried out according to the scientific and technological development plan for economic construction and for the improvement of the people's living standards."


"The main purpose of the nuclear test this time is to show our army and people's surging indignation at the United States' brigandish hostile act and to demonstrate the determination and capabilities of military-first Korea to defend the sovereignty of the country to the end…"


"Our nuclear test is an absolutely just self-defensive measure that violates no international law…"


"It is since long ago that the United States has put our country in the list of the targets for preemptive nuclear strikes…


"The nuclear test conducted this time is the first round of countermeasures that we have carried out by exercising maximum self-restraint…."


"If the United States makes the situation complicated by remaining hostile through to the end, we will have no choice but to take serial measures with more intense second and third response."


Comment: The North Koreans sell anything that earns hard currency. There is no evidence yet in the public domain, but it is highly likely that there were Iranian observers of the nuclear detonation, as there reportedly were for the so-called space launch in December.


China-North Korea: China's official reaction. China "firmly" opposes the latest nuclear test conducted by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), according to a statement issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday.


"On 12 February 2013, the DPRK conducted another nuclear test in disregard of the common opposition of the international community," said the statement. "The Chinese government is firmly opposed to this act."


The DPRK's official KCNA news agency has confirmed the nuclear test took place.

The Foreign Ministry said in the statement that it is the firm stand of the Chinese side to bring about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, prevent nuclear proliferation and safeguard peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

Comment: The Chinese are likely to vote for more sanctions in the UN, but they are unlikely to announce in public the punishments they will inflict on North Korea for disregarding Chinese advice, if any. An easy first start is to cut off the flow of crude through the Chinese pipeline which supplies up to a million tons a year, nearly the entire North Korean supply. The range of Chinese economic pressure points on North Korea is quite extensive.

China's private reaction to the North Korean test will be a measure of its maturity as a rising world power as well as the regional hegemon. If China cannot control North Korea, it does not deserve to be considered a world power.

{China wants to use the NoKo as a pit bull to scare Japan. Just as it uses TSP to scare India. This is its way to be considered a world power. These pit bulls can't/wont scare anyone else. So they are safe pitbulls. No one is going to attack PRC for the actions of these pitbulls. But they serve to intimidate the PRC potential regional competetiors and make them wary of any US alliances as they become front-line states. So it keeps the US in check regionally.}

Its all very useful. And he is the only site to give all this info for the public.

[Gerard]

NY Times ... toilet paper of record
A Secretive Country Gives Experts Few Clues to Judge Its Nuclear Program

As is usual with tests by the secretive North, it was not even clear if the underground test was nuclear, rather than conventional bomb blasts meant to mimic an underground nuclear test.

[Gerard]

Nuclear 'Fingerprinting' Shows Just How Potent North Korean Nukes Have Become

“Look at the three lines showing the test blasts of 2006, 2009 and 2013,” Steven J. Gibbons, senior research geophysicist at NORSAR, told IEEE Spectrum. “The ripples on the seismograms look identical, except for the difference in amplitude. That’s because the seismic waves have traveled through exactly the same rock, the same rock boundaries.”

Matching these seismographs up yields interesting conclusions. One, the North Koreans used roughly the same location for all three tests. And two, the yield of the blasts increased markedly over the last five years.

“If you increase the yield by a factor of 10, you increase the amplitude on the seismograph by a factor of log 10,” Gibbons explained to IEEE. “We think North Korea’s yields have increased tenfold — from 1 kiloton in 2006 to 5 kilotons in 2009 and to 10, in 2013.”

[ramana]

vsunder had long ago linked a graph that shows the clear difference in the seismic signals between the two types of blasts.

Bottomline:A conventional blast cannot mimic a nuke blast.

[Gerard]

Non Proliferation Ayatollahs need to agree on doctrine and obtain nihil obstat before releasing latest encyclicals...
Yield Estimation Placeholder
Ayatollah Lewis ...

It’s late, I am tired. I’ve got the better part of a post done, but I’ll finish it in the morning.

Short version: don’t spend too much time estimating yield using the USGS Mb number. It gives you only a very rough approximation and there are better ways for seismologists to do it. Until then, it’s “several” kilotons or use a range. A very big range.

[ramana]

Nightwatch, 14 Feb 2013

South Korea: South Korea staged large military training and disclosed that it has a new cruise missile capable of hitting any target in North Korea.
"The cruise missile being unveiled today is a precision-guided weapon that can identify and strike the window of the office of North Korea's leadership," ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters."

Comment: As they said on the 13th, the South Koreans wasted no time demonstrating that they are not technologically behind the North in weapons design and development. That is probably also true of nuclear weapons development. South Korea is not known to have an active weapons program, but it operates 23 nuclear reactors at four power generating stations that produce about 30% of its electricity requirement. It also exports reactors. It certainly has the know-how or can find it quickly, should it need it.

As for the Hyunmoo, South Korean authorities first disclosed the existence of the Hyunmoo (Eagle) III series of cruise missiles in April 2012, after the failure of the first North Korean satellite launch in the Kim Jong Un era. Today they showed its versatility, with film clips of launches from a surface ship and a submarine.

Last April the South Korean defense sources indicated it had a range of 930 miles, which is more than enough to reach any installation in North Korea and some in China. The Hyunmoo III C reportedly has a range of 1,500 miles.

The claims of accuracy are not exaggerated. Some news reporters have called it a ballistic missile. South Korea has short-range ballistic missiles, but what it showed today is a cruise missile, "similar to the US Tomahawk," according to one description.


North Korea: The communist Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun published a commentary on Thursday that proclaimed, "'We no longer hide but publicly declare: If the imperialists have nuclear weapons, we must have them, and if they have intercontinental ballistic missiles, we must have them, too."

Around 100,000 North Koreans took part in a rally in Pyongyang on Thursday to celebrate the nuclear detonation. Kim Jong Un did not attend.


Comment: The late Kim Chong-il was reluctant to allow North Korean news outlets to mention the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. He seemed to operate in the old Soviet security mindset in which strategic systems were never considered an appropriate topic for public discussion.

The more open mention of strategic systems is almost certainly traceable to Kim Jong Un and his Swiss education.

[ramana]

A realistic appraisal of the NoKo test by unnamed US source:

NoKo now immune from attack


Greg Sheridan

Greg Sheridan North Korea now immune from attack by: GREG SHERIDAN, FOREIGN EDITOR From: The Australian February 16, 2013

"NORTH Korea is moving to become an existential threat to the US." This is the stark, sobering judgment of a former senior US official on Pyongyang's nuclear test this week. It was the most powerful of North Korea's three nuclear tests so far, providing a bomb of perhaps half the strength of that which devastated Hiroshima in World War II.
It is still unclear whether it was a plutonium device, like the previous two, or one that used highly enriched uranium. If it is the latter, North Korea now has two sources of fuel.

The truth is, Western intelligence knows very little about what goes on inside North Korea, especially inside the head of Pyongyang's bombastic young dictator, Kim Jong-un.

No one watches North Korea more closely than Seoul. But in the 1980s and 90s Seoul was famous for producing faulty intelligence on the North.

I have interviewed the past four South Korean presidents. The only one I found convincing on North Korea was Lee Myung-bak, who leaves office on February 25. He said that on critical North Korea issues: "We don't have accurate information."

...Pyongyang has been intensely neuralgic for the US and North Asia for decades. But Kim may have changed things fundamentally. He has posed acute, new challenges for his three key interlocutors: the US, South Korea and China.

The North Koreans claim their new nuclear device is miniaturised, which implies they could put it on their missiles. This is probably untrue. US intelligence believes Pyongyang is still a few years away from this, but Washington is aware of the limitations of its intelligence.

Pyongyang is obsessed with the US. The normal diplomatic equations are US-China and North-South Korea. Pyongyang refuses to accept this and wants always to deal directly with Washington. George W. Bush, like Bill Clinton, was alternately tough, then engaging, with Pyongyang. Neither policy reaped any dividends. A decade ago I broke a story about the Pentagon's contingency plans to strike North Korea militarily to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons. The arguments against such a strike were always very strong and prudence governed Washington's decision not to act.

That may have been the right decision. But now North Korea possesses at least several nuclear devices and is immune from attack. The Americans have found Kim maddeningly contradictory and completely unpredictable. Before he became North Korea's undisputed leader, Kim was behind the decision to sink a South Korean naval vessel, with large loss of life, and to fire artillery shells on to the civilian population of a South Korean island.

This was attributed to his need to establish himself internally as a tough guy. He has been the subject of the most intense US intelligence investigations. When he assumed office, Kim gave several signals of wanting more engagement with the West. He allowed Western clothing styles. In a typically eccentric move, he promoted Disney images and characters, especially at amusement parks. He invited Google boss Eric Schmidt to visit.

There is some evidence of increased independence for farmers in selling their own produce, greater decision-making at the village level, official collusion in a booming contraband border trade with China and the development of rudimentary market life in Pyongyang, which now boasts a small but significant middle class.

Even more encouragingly, at the start of last year Kim concluded bilateral agreements with the US, involving the exchange of US aid for the North's suspension of certain nuclear activities.

This was all very hopeful in its way. But what followed? Two ballistic missile launches and a new nuclear test, and, inter alia, a bizarre YouTube video from the North featuring sequences of New York incinerated in a nuclear explosion.

North Korea could not only threaten the US (and Australia for that matter) directly with ballistic missiles, it plays a central role in global nuclear and missile proliferation.

The story of nuclear proliferation goes basically like this. The North first got its nuclear expertise from China, though it has had nothing from that source for many years. The North has been successful in developing missile technology. Pakistan got its nuclear capacity directly from China. Pakistan has helped North Korea with nuclear technology in exchange for missile technology.

Pakistan has helped Iran with nuclear technology while North Korea has helped it with missile development. North Korea was also helping Syria build a nuclear reactor, which the Israelis destroyed with a bombing mission.

North Korea has also served as a profoundly important example for Iran. Bush's "axis of evil" consisted of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iraq did not have nuclear weapons and was invaded and its regime destroyed. North Korea does have nukes and is inviolate. Tehran sees itself choosing between the fate of Baghdad and Pyongyang, and it chooses the latter.

In his State of the Union speech this week US President Barack Obama condemned North Korea, said he would stop Iran getting nuclear weapons and identified nuclear proliferation as one of the most profound security challenges the US faces. North Korea, impoverished, bizarre, sometimes famine-stricken, is defying the US, and in a sense defeating it, on all these fronts.

Kim's challenge to South Korea is also very tough. Park Geun-hye takes over as president of the South on February 25. Though she is a centre-right politician, she had sought a less confrontational and more engaged relationship with the North. What can she do now?

The North has struck South Korea militarily with impunity. More than that, Pyongyang seems to have turned altogether against the South. If the North embraces economic reform, as all the world wants it to, especially if this involves co-operation with Seoul, this is as good as admitting the South was right in the Korean war because, on economic grounds, the South is superior.

In truth Pyongyang is only really interested in fitful bursts of co-operation with Seoul as part of an elaborate dance to gain American attention.

Finally, what of Pyongyang's challenge to China? Paradoxically, North Korea is the one Asian nation to have wholly defied Beijing with complete success. China did not want this latest nuclear test. It is a maximum global embarrassment to Beijing. China's ultra-nationalistic netizens, and some of its mass media, have been venting against North Korea.

But Kim understands the profound depth of Beijing's strategic commitment to North Korea. China needs North Korea as a buffer state. It does not want, in a reunified Korean Peninsula, a US ally on its borders.

More than this, Beijing's strategic ultra-hardheads assess Pyongyang as an asset in another way. If there were ever conflict, or even deep tension, with the US in North Asia, over Taiwan or some other issue, North Korea would be another strategic variable of immense consequence and unpredictability the US would have to deal with. At a time of serious decline in US defence expenditure, Pyongyang could easily ensure Washington would have troops, air and naval resources committed to the Korean Peninsula. As a result of these considerations there is no chance of Beijing taking serious action against Pyongyang.

Kim is capricious, self-indulgent and probably suffers a serious personality disorder, but so far he is making three vastly more powerful nations dance to his tune. In a strategy paradoxically born of weakness, it is the power of the bomb, ruthlessly applied. Dictators everywhere will take note.

[pentaiah]

Next Steps

Iran will be punished for centrifuge (thats the refuge to west for attack)

North Korea will be accomodated (Because PRC says NoKo is errant teenager, I will take care of him)

TS Pakistan will be rewarded for co operation in non proliferation efforts


****

If the North embraces economic reform, as all the world wants it to, especially if this involves co-operation with Seoul, this is as good as admitting the South was right in the Korean war because, on economic grounds, the South is superior.

the same rationale for TSP to ever wage war against India

[abhijitm]

Wearing conspiracy theory hat, what if the nuke test was a wink wink between the US and NK? What if Kim has sold his soul to unkil? Contolling NK means controlling almost the entire black market of nuke material and tech, and probably checkmate for china. JMT.

[Anujan]

SoKo Hyunmoo cruise missile looks suspiciously similar to Pakistani barber missile

[pentaiah]

SoKo Hyunmoo cruise missile looks suspiciously similar to Pakistani barber missile

Instead, the new missile's designs are strikingly similar to the United States Tomahawk cruise missile and also the Babur cruise missile of the Pakistan military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyunmoo-3

[Anujan]

What is the possibility that Pakis have entered into a "arms for spilling all NoKo nuke secret" pact with SoKo?

SoKo already has presence in Pakistan. They run their bus services. Pakis will sell out their mothers if the price is right. Unkil would have definitely demanded that pakis should spill the beans vis-a-vis Iran and NoKo.

[ramana]

SoKo Hyunmoo cruise missile looks suspiciously similar to Pakistani barber missile

Instead, the new missile's designs are strikingly similar to the United States Tomahawk cruise missile and also the Babur cruise missile of the Pakistan military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyunmoo-3

Recall in 1998 there were cruise missile strikes on terrorist camps in Afghanistan by Clinton Admin and a few fell short of range in TSP. Subsequently there were reports of PRC getting some of the articles. Babur is a PRC copy of the Tomahawk. Sure enough ten years later (typical development program timeline) Babur shows up in TSP arse nal.

So nothing pindigenous about the Paki missiles.

[Anujan]

Tomahawk's airframe is not that secret, neither is the configuration.

I think far more important components are the engine and guidance. Not sure how much the tomahawk components helped in that. More plausible is that Pakis mooched it off of some other country. SoKo, South Africa or some such. Do cheenis have something that is baber equivalent?

[Prasad]

Didn't the cheenis get hold of a number of unexploded and fragments of the tomahawk when unkil was going gung-ho and phyrring tomahawks from their ships into afghanistan?

[ramana]

Is Iran About to Test a Nuclear Bomb In North Korea

Read more:
LINK

That was about Dec 2010.

Now Nightwatch reports:


Link: http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/Ni ... 00045.aspx

North Korea- Iran: A Japanese news outlet has reported that Iranian scientists were likely present when North Korea conducted nuclear test on 12 February, according to an unidentified Western source.

The source reported that last November Iranian authorities approved a proposal to ask North Korea for permission to observe and paid for it in Chinese Yuan.


Comment: This information has not been corroborated by other sources, but North Korea lacks the ability to execute a series of tests and launches, which it has threatened, without outside financing. Iranian scientists have been reported to be present at most, if not all, North Korean nuclear tests and missile launches.

If this information is accurate, then the North Korean nuclear bomb should also be considered the Iranian bomb.

Western source means most likely massa.
--
Added graphic on NoKo intentions/capabilities:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/13 ... ntentions/

[shyamd]

PRC/NoKo relations are not very good. PRC Intel authorised leaks of 5th & 6th planned nuke tests. Also they will launch a new long range missile. These leaks are attempts to pressure the new No Ko ruler.

[RoyG]

PRC/NoKo relations are not very good. PRC Intel authorised leaks of 5th & 6th planned nuke tests. Also they will launch a new long range missile. These leaks are attempts to pressure the new No Ko ruler.

There will be ups and downs in the relationship but the Chinese and North Koreans will remain very close strategic partners.

[pentaiah]

Its all tamasha, have you read Iran wants PRC to mediate in Nuke talks....

[Philip]

NoKo threatens pre-emptive N-strikes against enemies.


US defies North Korea's threat of 'pre-emptive nuclear strike' as UN votes for new sanctions over missile tests
Pyongyang defied existing sanctions to conduct a nuclear test last month to provoke the US

Nikhil Kumar Author
New York
Thursday 07 March 2013

US Pentagon chief calls North Korea's military intentions a 'serious threat' following another nuclear test in defiance of UN orders

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to approve a new set of sanctions on North Korea in response to Pyongyang’s third nuclear test last month, notching up the pressure on the secretive state only hours after it vowed to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States.

At the UN, the resolution was drafted by the US and China – the North’s longstanding benefactor – and was backed by all 15 nations on the Security Council. It will tighten financial, travel and trade restrictions on Pyongyang, and limit the country from importing a number of specific luxury items such as yachts and high-end cars.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the move was an “unequivocal message” to the country that the world “will not tolerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons.” Earlier, North Korea, which is led by Kim Jong-il’s youthful successor Kim Jong-un, launched an inflammatory tirade aimed at the US, warning of a pre-emptive strike.

“Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to pre-emptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest,” an unnamed foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official North Korean KCNA news agency.

“The US is massively deploying armed forces for aggression, including nuclear carrier task force and strategic bombers, enough to fight a nuclear war under the smokescreen of ‘annual drills’.”

With typical bluster, the statement also warned the UN against committing what Pyongyang said would be “another big blunder”. Despite its threats, the country is not considered to have an advanced enough capability to launch a strike against the US.

Today, Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said that America was “fully capable of dealing with any North Korean missile threat” and that Pyongyang’s stance would “further isolate the country and its people and undermine international efforts to promote peace and stability in north-east Asia.”

Ms Rice added that: “[The] entire world stands united in our commitment to the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and in our demand that North Korea complies with its international obligations.”

The tighter controls come after Pyongyang defied existing sanctions to conduct a nuclear test on 12 February. The explosion was timed to provoke the US, coming just hours before President Obama made his annual State of the Union Address to the US Congress.

“Provocations... will only isolate [North Korea] further, as we stand by our allies, strengthen our own missile defence, and lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats,” Mr Obama said in the speech at the time.

The UN resolution ban on specific luxury items is intended to close a loophole that previously allowed countries to decide for themselves what constitutes luxury goods. “The strength, breadth and severity of these sanctions will raise the cost to North Korea of its illicit nuclear program and further constrain its ability to finance and source materials and technology for its ballistic missile, conventional and nuclear weapons program,” said Ms Rice

[Satya_anveshi]

I hope experts here are also noting and evaluating the reaction of US to the threats of nuclear attack by NoKo.

[RoyG]

Blah Blah, nuclear strike rhetoric isn't really taken seriously by anyone. Sanctions will not do anything either. NoKo is just trying to get its starving people to look elsewhere. Sure it's nukes will eventually threaten Japan and South Korea but it won't go as far as the US. Wouldn't be surprised if Japan and SoKo haven't started work on nuclear weapons now. The dragon has rattled everyone and the Bear is smiling. If you think about it, the Bear is the real winner in all this. They have the resources (oil, gas, etc), they are stockpiling gold, they are getting closer to the Germans, and they are getting China to do all their dirty work by protecting their southern flank and sharing the burden in protecting the East. They are playing a deep game of chess it seems.

[shyamd]

Its all tamasha, have you read Iran wants PRC to mediate in Nuke talks....

they are part of P5 already and they have tried the tactic of splitting them up by appealing to Russia and china in the talks. Didn't work in the round previous to this.
Algeria is going to mediate as an independent soon.

Won't work though

[Philip]

Why not indeed? Are N-weapons the sole perogative of the white western world only?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 28292.html

North Korea: ‘If the US has nuclear weapons, why can’t we?’

North Korea’s nuclear test drew international censure. But Pyongyang rejoiced, says Andrew MacLeod, in a rare dispatch from the pariah state

News of North Korea’s third nuclear test has been received with widespread condemnation and United Nations sanctions, and brought a significant deterioration of relations between Pyongyang and Seoul. Yet when the test was announced on 12 February, I saw the people of Pyongyang celebrating.

Convinced that South Korea has over 800 nuclear warheads pointing their way, people in the North believe nuclear weapons are essential for the safety of their country.

For the world, concern grew over whether the device had used plutonium rather than enriched uranium – a major technological advance if true. But for our North Korean guides, the capacity to have nuclear technology was a point of pride. It was also a point of fairness. If others have nuclear weapons and power, why can’t they?

My Scandinavian travel companions and I (an Australian) put forward the view that, in our countries, we see it as a sign of strength to be free of the weapons. “But what about the Americans?” came the reply from our guides. The people of North Korea share some of their sense of security with policymakers in China, France, the US and UK – all nuclear-armed states. It is one of the few things we have in common with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Outside Pyongyang airport, the differences are marked. I told myself the lack of cars on the road must have been due to the lunar new year holiday. But I was surprised over the next five days to find the roads were the busiest of the trip.

Our guide told us the government encourages people to walk or cycle.

“How much do cars cost here?” one of our group asked. “Cost?” the guide asked, bewildered. “Well, the state gives them,” he said.

Successful athletes, artists, actors or senior bureaucrats are given cars as rewards for service to Kim Jong-un’s regime. It is not possible for ordinary people to buy them, even if they had the money.

Aid agencies estimate that up to two million people have died since the mid-1990s because of food shortages caused by economic problems and natural disasters.

Both Kim Il-sung, the father of Communist North Korea, and his son Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011, lie in state in the former’s “office”, which looks more like a palace or fortress. It serves as a grand demonstration of the inequality of dictatorship.

When I arrived at Pyongyang’s shrines to its departed leaders, I did not anticipate the gentle sobbing of the people who looked upon their images. For most North Koreans, brought up on a diet of propaganda extolling the semi-divine nature of the Kims, their rule is like a religion.

Though they lived in acres of marble lit by millions of dollars’ worth of chandeliers while much of the country starved, the emotion shown by mourners is real.

As we took photographs, most people fled. We waved, and a few small children waved back, but they were quickly grabbed by their parents and stopped. Yet, under all the reservation and fear, some did reach out and say hello. There is friendliness held back by indoctrination.

At the Study House, we were shown the hall where students were allowed to access “the internet”. In reality, they only have access to a local area network with pre-saved sites, mainly in Korean.

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, I would have liked to have stayed in touch with our guide. But there is no option to do so by electronic means.

So here we have it: two potential friends reaching across political and cultural divides, separated by politics with no way of staying in touch. That, more than nuclear weapons, is the tragedy of North Korea.

Andrew MacLeod is a former aid worker, who travelled to North Korea as a tourist

[Philip]

The recent escalation of tension in the Korean peninsula after NoKo's latest round of N-tests,has caught the world by surprise.The siiu now described by the NoKos as being that of a "state of war" with SoKo,hot lines severed,rocket forces on "standby" is a recipe for disaster if a trigger happy military on either side decides to "score".The US also sending in its stealth bombers on dummy strike runs,is adding more fuel to the fire.

The key issue is that of the sanctions which the NoKo regime has been slapped with after its N-tests.It is therefore upping the ante hoping that Uncle Sam and SoKo will blink first.Threats to strike the continental US,Hawaii,Guam,etc.,are meant to "disturb the peace" in the west coast of the US.Though such crises in the past have been more of "bluff and bluster" rather than action on the ground,it would be foolish to underestimate the mind of the "Young Leader" ,who wishes to make more than just a statement.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ma ... ea-threats

US warns North Korea of increased isolation if threats escalate further
White House says US will not be intimidated by 'bellicose rhetoric' and is fully capable of defending itself and its allies

US warns North Korea of increased isolation if threats escalate further

White House says US will not be intimidated by 'bellicose rhetoric' and is fully capable of defending itself and its allies

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 March 2013 18.33 GMT

North Koreans rally in Pyongyang
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reiterated on Friday that forces had been placed on high alert. Photograph: Jon Chol Jin/AP

The White House warned North Korea on Friday that the rapidly escalating military confrontation would lead to further isolation, as the Pentagon declared that the US was fully capable of defending itself and its allies against a missile attack.

After North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared that rockets were ready to be fired at American bases in the Pacific – a response to the US flying two nuclear-capable B2 stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula this week – the White House blamed Pyongyang for the increased tensions.

"The bellicose rhetoric emanating from North Korea only deepens that nation's isolation. The United States remains committed to safeguarding our allies in the region and our interests that are located there," deputy press spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters travelling with Barack Obama on Air Force One to Miami.

Asked if the joint US-South Korean military exercises and the use of the stealth bombers had fuelled the escalation, Earnest replied: "It's clear that the escalation is taking place from the North Koreans based on their rhetoric and on their actions."

The Pentagon said on Friday that the US would not be intimidated, and was ready to defend both its bases and its allies in the region. Lt Col Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the US would not be intimidated. "The United States is fully capable of defending itself and our allies against a North Korean attack. We are firmly committed to the defence of South Korea and Japan," she said.

Secretary of state John Kerry will visit the region in a week or so for meetings with Japan, China and South Korea, the State Department said.

North Korea announced that its forces had been placed on high alert on Tuesday but the threats became graver when a picture was published of Kim reiterating the order at an emergency meeting on Friday.

The US Defense Department keeps secret its assessment of the distance North Korea's missiles can reach. But Admiral James Winnefeld, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a fortnight ago it had one type of missile capable of reaching the US.

But while defence analysts agreed that while North Korea is theoretically capable of firing a missile, they expressed scepticism about whether its technology is as advanced as it claims and were doubtful about the accuracy in hitting targets.

But there is more concern than usual in Washington compared with previous standoffs with North Korea because Kim is a new leader, young and inexperienced and a largely unknown quantity in the west.

A major worry is that if North Korea was to attack a South Korean ship – it was blamed for the sinking a South Korean vessel in 2010 – or a land target, Seoul has said that it would retaliate this time.

Wilkinson said: "North Korea's bellicose rhetoric and threats follow a pattern designed to raise tensions and intimidate others. DPRK will achieve nothing by threats or provocations, which will only further isolate North Korea and undermine international efforts to ensure peace and stability in north-east Asia.

"We continue to urge the North Korean leadership to heed President Obama's call to choose the path of peace and come into compliance with its international obligations."

She added: "We remain committed to ensuring peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. This means deterring North Korean aggression, protecting our allies and the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. The United States will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state; nor will we stand by while it seeks to develop a nuclear-armed missile that can target the United States."

At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, defence secretary Chuck Hagel said: "There are a lot of unknowns here. But we have to take seriously every provocative, bellicose word and action that this new, young leader has taken so far since he's come to power."

Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation and disarmament programme of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, played down the threat. "North Korea is upping its rhetoric to a world-class level, but it's still just rhetoric. They have no capability to hit the US mainland with anything – except through cyberspace. Their only tested missiles can fly a maximum of 1,600km, less than half the distance to Guam."

Fitzpatrick, who is scheduled to lead a thinktank discussion at the institute's Washington office next Thursday on whether the US policy of patience has run its course and instead it should pursue reunification of the Korean peninsula, said Friday that while North Korea is limited in its ability to hit US targets, it poses a threat to South Korea and Japan.

"Their Scuds and Nodongs can hit anywhere in South Korea and Japan. Using them would be suicidal, of course. The far more likely scenario is a pin-prick attack in the nature of the 2010 attacks. This time, however, South Korea is determined to respond with an eye for an eye, in order to restore deterrence. North Korea's ensuing response could trigger a larger conflagration."

Jim Walsh, a specialist on security and nuclear weapons at MIT, played down the prospect of an attack on the US, but said: "The reason it is scary is: you can get war even when no one intends to have a war. All the sides – South Korea, North Korea and others – are now leaning into each other, and if someone makes a mistake, I am concerned that that mistake will escalate into something larger than anyone expected.

"Suddenly you have a young man in a closed country who has to decide whether he is going to respond to your actions."

The risk was not of a North Korean attack on the US but on South Korea that would bring in the US, he said.

Walsh, who has visited North Korea and has had talks with its officials in Switzerland, Sweden and the US, said the present confrontation felt different because of the harsher rhetoric from North Korea, the secret defence pact agreed by the US and South Korea and the US military drills this week.

"If we are lucky it will all be bluster on everyone's side. That is the good outcome," Walsh said. "The bad outcome is that it is bluster until someone screws up and then war happens."

Michael O'Hanlon, one of the leading military analysts in the US, expressed worries that the US approach of tit-for-tat and imposition of additional permanent sanctions after its third nuclear test could exacerbate the situation. Like Walsh, he sees this confrontation as being different from previous ones.

In an email, O'Hanlon, a security specialist at Washington's Brookings Institution, told the Guardian: "I favour temporary sanctions in response to the third nuclear test, to give Pyongyang an incentive not to provoke again." He argues that by setting a time-limit such as two, three or four years, it could encourage North Korea not to conduct another nuclear test.

"I am talking about automatic sunset provisions with a specific time frame, unless of course there is another nuclear test or another act of violence," O'Hanlon wrote.

[Philip]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 54260.html

North Korea 'readies rockets to attack United States targets'

Kim Jong-un responded to use of the B-2 bombers by the United States by saying his rocket forces were ready 'to settle accounts with the US'.


American and South Korean intelligence officials were watching for unusual troop or hardware movements in North Korea tonight hours after the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, publicly ordered that his rocket arsenals be readied to strike at targets including military bases in the Pacific and the United States mainland.

There is doubt whether North Korean missiles could reach the western seaboard of the US or even Hawaii, but no one is ready to ignore the sudden spike in belligerent rhetoric. Earlier this month US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that $1bn would be spent strengthening America’s ballistic missile interception system in Alaska. North Korea possesses Soviet-era Scud missiles that could reach Seoul, while its long-range weapons could bring American bases in Guam and Okinawa, Japan, into range.

“If they make a reckless provocation with huge strategic forces, [we] should mercilessly strike the US mainland, their stronghold, their military bases in the operational theatres in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in South Korea,” the North Korean news agency reported yesterday. It cited Kim Jong-un decreeing that the “time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation”.

The North Korean President has been issuing increasingly fiery statements in recent days as the US and South Korea have conducted joint military drills on the peninsula, which included America flying two of its B-2 stealth bombers from a base in Missouri to drop dummy bombs on an uninhabited South Korean archipelago. The UN tightened sanctions on North Korea following a three-stage missile launch last December and an underground nuclear device explosion in February, while America and countries including Japan and Australia have also recently imposed new economic sanctions on Pyongyang.

The rising tensions were evident on the streets of the North Korean capital yesterday, where thousands gathered, punching their fists in the air and chanting “death to the US imperialists”.

Earlier last week Pyongyang announced it was ending its compliance with the nearly 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War and severing a military communications hotline with the South. While statements about targeting US bases in the region and South Korea also trickled out last week, the threat was given more force yesterday because for the first time it was delivered personally by the President.

Seoul confirmed it was monitoring the North closely. “We believe they are taking follow-up steps,” said Kim Min-seok, spokesman of the South Korean Defense Ministry, alluding to movements of North Korean military units.

Images released by the state-run KCNA news agency showed the leader, who took over when his father, Kim Jong-Il, died suddenly in 2011, in a military situation room apparently signing the order to put the weapons on standby. On the wall is a map entitled “Strategic Forces’ US Mainland Striking Plan”, showing missile trajectories heading towards Washington DC, Los Angeles and, oddly, Austin, Texas.

“North Korea continues to openly threaten the United States,” the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul, said in Washington yesterday. “While it is unlikely that the regime has the capability to carry out its plots, we still cannot ignore its violent intentions. We must remain vigilant against this escalating enemy.”

China, which ostensibly remains North Korea’s only ally, urged restraint while making no mention of the flight of the B2 bombers. Moscow was less circumspect. “We are concerned that alongside the adequate, collective reaction of the UN Security Council, unilateral action is being taken around North Korea that is increasing military activity,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, adding: “The situation could simply get out of control.”

US allies in the region that could be threatened by North Korea should be reassured by the B-2 over-flights, officials said. “The reaction to the B-2 that we’re most concerned about is not necessarily the reaction it might elicit in North Korea, but rather among our Japanese and Korean allies,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon. “Those exercises are mostly to assure our allies that they can count on us to be prepared and to help them deter conflict.”

Nations refuse to sign 'flawed' arms treaty

AP

Iran, Syria and North Korea have blocked the adoption of the first international treaty to regulate the $70bn global conventional arms trade, complaining that it was flawed and failed to ban weapons sales to rebel groups.

UN member states began meeting last week in a push to hammer out a binding international treaty to end the lack of regulation over cross-border conventional arms sales.

Human rights groups say a treaty is needed to halt the uncontrolled flow of arms that they say fuels wars and rights abuses. Delegates to the conference said they were close to approving the treaty, before Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked it.

[quote][/quote]

[Comer]

I hope Indian MEA counsels calm and restraint between two nations with nuclear weapons. Hope that both sides will avoid taking steps that will unnecessarily raise tensions during these already tense times.
And Indian news should carry a synopsis after their news report - USA and North Korea have fought a war between them and have number of incidents in the heavily militarized Korean border. USA has exploded two nuclear weapons earlier.

[Supratik]

The NK regime should be taken out. It is a nuclear armed dictatorship run by a lunatic family and poses grave danger to the world. Both Pak and Iran are testing nuclear weapons through it. India should participate in any multilateral military intervention in taking out the dictatorship as nuclear testing by Pak in NK is dangerous to it.

[RoyG]

The NK regime should be taken out. It is a nuclear armed dictatorship run by a lunatic family and poses grave danger to the world. Both Pak and Iran are testing nuclear weapons through it. India should participate in any multilateral military intervention in taking out the dictatorship as nuclear testing by Pak in NK is dangerous to it.

China and Russia are enabling NK to up the ante b/c of the renewed American interest to intervene in Syria and Iran. This will divert a bit of the pressure. India has to look out for it's own interests. Right now Iran is leading the way in trading oil in non-dollar currencies which will serve us well and they are helping keep Sunni influence in ME in check. North Korea testing nuclear devices and high explosive lenses will give us some leg room as well as far as testing is concerned.

[pentaiah]

There is good reason NK regime has to survive for the good of the World.

If the world is completely free of axis of evil then where is the need for allies of the willing coercion

[disha]

I hope Indian MEA counsels calm and restraint between two nations with nuclear weapons. Hope that both sides will avoid taking steps that will unnecessarily raise tensions during these already tense times.

And Indian news should carry a synopsis after their news report - USA and North Korea have fought a war between them and have number of incidents in the heavily militarized Korean border. USA has exploded two nuclear weapons earlier.

+1. And now Alaska is a nuclear flashpoint. And I propose division and secession of South China Sea among Vietnam, Phillipines and Malaysia to calm anger in North Korea.