October 9th, 2006 by Atomictumor
Well, like they’ve been warning since the early 90s, North Korea, the economic powerhouse of the Asia Pacific area, is now packing a nuke. Or at least, they were, until they blew it up the other day. Its a safe bet they have another.
That, and they also allegedly have a missile capable of reaching, if not the west coast of America, then certainly any old coast of Japan or South Korea.
Well, it took 50 years, but now we have a crazy ass regime that’s all nuked up.
October 9th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
As a political weapon, KJI may have handed W a big bump in the polls.
As a military weapon, not so much:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1230/nork-data-it-was-a-dud
October 9th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Sorry to disagree, but N. Korea is as far from being an economic powerhouse as Kingston is from being the State Capital.
However, they are now part of the Atomic Club.
October 9th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Ah, I see you are familar with my sarcasm…?
Joel, I don’t know that this’ll really do much of anything. W has been so lackluster WRT NK, I don’t really see how they can parley this into something for the next election. Now, by 2008, maybe.
October 9th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
My skills as a political prognosticator are mixed at best. However, military threats–when they are perceived as such–generally have the effect of rallying the people to their leader. Even Goering knew that.
October 9th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
More from armscontrolwonk:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1231/dropping-the-f-bomb-on-norks
October 9th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Oooo, faiiiiiilure.
Thats a fun word when combined with nukems.
October 10th, 2006 at 6:36 am
More on the motivation of the N. Korean’s here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901035.html
The nut graf:
“Paradoxical as it may seem, Pyongyang staged the test as a last-ditch effort to jump-start a bilateral dialogue on the normalization of relations that the United States has so far spurned. Over and over, I was told that Pyongyang wants bilateral negotiations to set the stage for implementation of the denuclearization agreement it concluded in Beijing on Sept. 19, 2005, with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.”
October 10th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Looks like Korea has neither a long-range missile nor a functional nuclear warhead:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/10/korea.nuclear.test/index.html
Kim jung-Il has exposed himself as the worst kind of despot–an incompetent one. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him overthrown by his own military soon.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
There is a theory that they might have simply detonated a large supply of TnT and called it a small nuclear warhead. So far there hasn’t been any detection of an actual nuclear explosion.