North Korea Warns It Is on Brink of Nuclear War With South

[nadinbrzezinski]

SEOUL, South Korea — As North Korea warned foreigners on Tuesday that they might want to leave South Korea because the peninsula was on the brink of nuclear war — a statement that analysts dismissed as hyperbole — the American commander in the Pacific expressed worries that the North’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, might not have left himself an easy exit to reduce tensions.

A woman returning to South Korea from the Kaesong industrial park in the North on Tuesday.
“His father and his grandfather, as far as I can see, always figured into their provocation cycle an ‘off ramp,’ ” the commander, Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III, said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And it’s not clear to me that he has thought through how to get out of it. And so that’s what makes this scenario, I think, particularly challenging.”

The administration has settled on a strategy of refusing to make concessions to the North and has adopted a new plan to deter any hostilities by promising a proportionate response. In doing so, it hopes to reverse what is considers a long-term pattern in which the West offers aid to calm tensions and then North Korea breaks its promises to halt its nuclear program. But Obama administration officials acknowledge that the new strategy will work only if Mr. Kim either backs down or satisfies himself with a token show of force, like a missile test into the open ocean. The South Koreans have warned such a test could happen as early as this week.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/world/asia/south-korean-leader-seeks-to-end-vicious-cycle-with-north.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


and this just keeps increasing the temperature...

[AverageJoe90]

1. Unless he suddenly stops gabbing so much, I wouldn't get too worried. n/t

[still_one]

2. Nothing will happen. Kim is an idiot. Anyone can play out the likely senarios and

Realize that no one, not even China will back North Korea if they invade South Korea

The best he can do is lob a couple of missiles in the ocean, and say see what a big boy I am

Another thing he can do is hold his breath until he turns blue

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. remember interlocking defense pacts

like a little event in Sarajevo

[ljm2002]

7. South Korea is adjacent to North Korea...

...and he doesn't have to lob missiles into the ocean, he can lob them onto South Korean land.

There is the little matter of his having nuclear bombs, and maybe nuclear warheads for his missiles.

If he were to lob a couple of missiles with nuclear warheads onto South Korean land, he could inflict a lot of damage in very short order. And of course if he did that, South Korea would retaliate. And then treaty obligations on both sides would come into effect.

It's not fun to contemplate what a madman with nukes could incite if he were so inclined.

I hope and pray he is not the madman that he appears to be.

[still_one]

9. and why would he do that? He would NOT have one ally, including China supporting him on that. This

is just to show his army that he is a "tough dude"

It is to retain power with tough talk

[Javaman]

10. Exactly, it's a no win situation for NK like it aways has been.

if he even launches a single conventional rocket into SK, Un's world changes forever.

The opinion in SK has changed dramatically over the last 10 years and people there are really getting tired of the norths antics.

I don't think they will want to open talks after something like that.

[still_one]

11. I just do not think anything will really happen as a result of this. At least I hope so

[Javaman]

16. Me too. nt

[ljm2002]

12. Well, you said...

..."The best he can do is lob a couple of missiles in the ocean". That is not all he can do. Although it may be all he can do without bringing down a rain of destruction on himself and his people.

I agree it sounds like the same overblown rhetoric that always comes from North Korea. And you are of course right that the result would be total disaster for North Korea. But when you are dealing with a crazy person, you can't always count on them being objective when they make their decisions.

I sincerely hope you are correct in your assessment. The language he uses is scary, but then again we have heard crazy rhetoric from people like him before.

Cheers.

[Hugabear]

14. There is only one way that North Korea can hit SK with a nuclear weapon

And that would be to drop it from a plane, the way we did with Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

They can't fit a nuclear warhead on a missile or an artillery shell.

They don't have the ability to create "suitcase nukes"

Any plane heading into South Korea would likely be shot down before it ever got to Seoul.

[ljm2002]

15. I'm glad to hear that...

...and I certainly hope you are correct and they are as hapless as they seem to be.

Because their leadership certainly does not sound sane.

[BlueCheese]

22. Seoul is 35 miles from the border.

An airliner would cover that distance in about three minutes.

I don't really expect any hot conflict on the Korean peninsula, but North Korea could do some serious damage before they were defeated if they wanted to.

[longship]

28. First, his missiles are junk.

They have not been too successful, if at all.

Second, the physics community is pretty much agreed that it's likely that the DPRK has not successfully tested a nuclear weapon.

So, if dim young son tries to attack the ROK with a nuke, it'd more likely dump a dirty bomb on Pyongyang than an actual nuke on Soeul.

Regardless, one has to take this saber rattling seriously... at least publicly. Obama knows more than any of us on this. I trust him here. He's read the Guns of August.

[markiv]

3. he's rattling his sabre for a payoff nt

[Warren DeMontague]

4. They're so damn insular, it's really almost impossible to tell.

It's frightening, because that regime is just not very strongly tethered to reality.

[neverforget]

6. When they start moving troops around, calling up reserves, etc then I'll be really

worried. Now, I'm concerned about a miscalculation, an itchy trigger finger or a terrorist attack in SK.

One thing I am thankful for though is that I didn't take the job I was offered at Kunsan, AB South Korea in February. Instead, I was laid off but it's better than being in a potential war zone.

[zappaman]

8. I fear this goes hot. n/t

[pintobean]

17. Too hot for DU? nt

[sadbear]

13. Lil' Kim is just trying to impress his generals.

I don't think he's really suicidal. He had too much fun with Rodman.

[HereSince1628]

20. Or highly placed treacherous advisers are playing him

Look at world history...there is a long list of powers behind the throne moving coup de etat on weak leaders

[Rex]

18. Except that it doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

And that would be suicide for the people of NK.

[BlueCheese]

23. They do, don't they?

They've even tested them in the past.

[Rex]

24. No.

Not as far as we know they don't. Not saying he could not acquire one, but they do not have the technology as a country or means to build one. I think they have tried to fool the world into thinking they built and tested one, but actually took advantage of the news of a natural earthquake in their area.

[HereSince1628]

19. IMO Kim's likely getting painted into a corner by powers not supporting inherited succession

He's inexperienced and very likely dependent upon military and political advisers.

There is no reason to not believe that one or more of those persons wish to be in power instead of him.

As I see it, enabling Kim to choose increasingly less tenable positions actually undermines his capacity to maintain his dictatorship.

Sooner or later, a 'serious' person must step out of the shadows and put an end to what is clearly a path to national suicide. This new savior of the nation becomes the new "Dear Leader".

The danger is, of course, that a sufficient number of highly placed people will do Kim's bidding until the end. With no place left to go to save himself, annihilation becomes an honor-saving exit.

That's a very bad off-ramp from the current path

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Not that crazy to be honest

In fact, very possible.

[Warren DeMontague]

21. I'll say this; they've ratcheted up the rhetoric about as far as it can go. So, at this point,

every hour or day that goes by without anything actually happening, to me, indicates that it's less and less likely to.

Which is good. Sound and fury but not much more.

[d_b]

26. shit or get off the pot, kimmy

[Vinnie From Indy]

27. I have always thought a real danger in this situation would

be an unstable command officer ordering an artillery barrage on Seoul sparking something much larger. Kind of a Dr. Strangelove scenario.

Cheers!

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. The ever so popular sneeze