May 15th, 2013 at 3:11 am » Comments (11)

I have been saying this for years and now it seems everyone is getting on board with the idea that North Korea never had any intention of denuclearizing: The former chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says it might be time to give up on the idea of convincing North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program and instead focus on deterring its acts of aggression. “When we look back at the past 20 years of international efforts to resolve this nuclear issue … we can’t help but
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April 20th, 2013 at 4:08 am » Comments (6)

The North Koreans are once again getting closer to setting the conditions for deescalation since they are now saying they are willing to negotiate disarmament and not denuclearization: North Korea reiterated on Saturday that it would not give up its nuclear weapons, rejecting a U.S. condition for talks although it said it was willing to discuss disarmament. North Korea, in a sign of a possible end to weeks of heightened hostility on the Korean peninsula, offered the United States and South Korea a list of conditions on Thursday for talks,
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April 19th, 2013 at 8:56 am » Comments (13)

That is what Tom Coyner who publish the Korea Economic Reader thinks in this Joong Ang Ilbo article: Image of Little John Tactical Nuke from Wikipedia. All of which argues that the United States and its allies need to come up with a substantial departure from past diplomatic strategies. Once more we witness a U.S. secretary of state swinging through the region, conferring with heads of state and assuring that substantial discussions have been made. So far, there is no news whether there is a new strategy more responsive to
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April 4th, 2013 at 2:16 am » Comments (5)

North Korea keeps making their daily threats in a continuing effort to rally the population around Kim Jong-un: Ratcheting up the rhetoric, North Korea warned early Thursday that its military has been cleared to wage an attack on the U.S. using “smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons. The Pentagon, meanwhile, said in Washington that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack from North Korea. The defense secretary said the U.S. was seeking to defuse the
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April 2nd, 2013 at 7:43 am » Comments (0)

The North Koreans say they are reopening the Yongbyon nuclear facility in response to the increased tension on the peninsula which they were the ones to create in the first place.  This just shows that they had this planned all along to use the increase tensions as an excuse to reopen Yongbyon: North Korea announced plans on Tuesday to restart a mothballed nuclear reactor that has been closed since 2007, but emphasized it was seeking a deterrent capacity, rather than repeating recent threats to attack South Korea and the United
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March 12th, 2013 at 8:26 am » Comments (12)

This is likely just a demonstration of US resolve to protect South Korea because I cannot believe anyone is taking the North’s threats of launching a nuclear attack seriously: After two Korea-U.S. joint military drills end, American vessels equipped with nuclear weapons will stay in South Korean waters to fully guarantee the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” in case North Korea attacks. A high-ranking South Korean government official told the JoongAng Ilbo yesterday, “If North Korea makes a nuclear attack, retaliation can come from U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in Okinawa or Guam.
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February 23rd, 2013 at 6:06 am » Comments (7)

Here is an update on the hunt to detect particles from the North Korean’s recent nuclear test: U.S. and allied spy agencies have found no traces of telltale nuclear-related particles from North Korea’s Feb. 12 nuclear bomb test, leaving unresolved basic questions about the device’s design, according to officials in the United States, Europe and South Korea. unanswered about the type of fissile material used in the test, which was detected by seismic sensors. It also leaves unaddressed questions about how far the North has advanced in its bomb design.
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February 20th, 2013 at 6:27 pm » Comments (8)

Via the Korea Economic Reader comes this interesting article in the Financial Times about how the North Korean’s nuclear test was just as much a signal towards China as it was the US: Sir, Hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers, including Chairman Mao Zedong’s eldest son, gave their lives to prevent North Korea’s demise during the Korean war. Since then, the relationship between China and North Korea has been governed by what the Chinese call Chun Wang Chi Han: “If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold.” In
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February 19th, 2013 at 6:36 pm » Comments (13)

That is what some ruling party lawmakers in South Korea think: Some lawmakers of the ruling Saenuri Party yesterday intensified their hardline stance on North Korea, calling on Seoul to establish its own nuclear deterrence capability to cope with the growing threat from Pyongyang. “The only way to defend our survival would be to maintain a balance of terror that confronts nuclear with nuclear,” said Representative Shim Jae-cheol in a Supreme Council meeting held yesterday at the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul. Shim was referring to the North’s continued
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February 19th, 2013 at 8:23 am » Comments (2)

That is what scientists in Korea are saying to explain why no nuclear materials have been found after the North’s recent nuclear test: After conducting its first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea changed the internal structure of its underground site in Punggye-ri in North Hamgyong Province so that it does not allow any radioactive leakage for other countries to analyze, an official from Seoul’s Ministry of Defense said yesterday. “A monitoring station in Canada once detected traces of [radioactive material called] xenon right after [the North’s] first nuclear test
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