NKorea warns of attack, says truce no longer valid
Published: May 27, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
SEOUL, (AFP) - North Korea said it was abandoning the truce that ended the Korean war and warned it could launch a military attack, deepening tensions two days after testing an atomic bomb for the second time.
The strongly worded announcement came amid reports the secretive North, which outraged the international community with its bomb test Monday, was also restarting nuclear fuel work that could make plutonium for an atomic weapon.
Defying international condemnation, the regime of Kim Jong-Il said it could no longer guarantee the safety of US and South Korean ships off its west coast and that the Korean peninsula was veering back to a state of war.
“Those who have provoked us will face unimaginable merciless punishment,” the statement on the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, blaming Washington and Seoul for the latest turn of events.
The North’s anger was provoked by the South’s decision to join a US-led international security initiative, established after the September 11 attacks, to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
South Korea joined the so-called PSI after the North Monday carried out a second nuclear bomb test which was far more powerful than the first test in October 2006.
The PSI, which includes more than 90 nations, provides for the stopping of vessels to ensure they are not carrying weapons of mass destruction or the components to make them.
“Any tiny hostile acts against our republic, including the stopping and searching of our peaceful vessels… will face an immediate and strong military strike in response,” the North Korean statement said.
It said its military would “no longer be bound” by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean war — in which the United States fought on the side of the South — because Washington had drawn Seoul into the PSI.
With no binding ceasefire, it said, “the Korean peninsula will go back to a state of war.”
The North has taken an increasingly harder line with the international community in recent months, testing a long-range rocket in April, several missiles over the past few days and its second-ever nuclear test on Monday.
Analysts say Kim Jong-Il, 67, is likely carrying out the shows of strength to reassert his control in the impoverished hermit state. He reportedly had a stroke in August, which has renewed questions about who might succeed him.
“Kim is trying (with the nuclear test) to impress the cadres and the elite in general… to convince powerholders that his family is the one that should be ruling the country,” Peter Beck of American University in Washington told AFP on Tuesday.
“It is not unreasonable to conclude that they are no longer interested in nuclear diplomacy,” Beck, a Korea expert, said.
Almost six years of international disarmament talks aimed at getting the North to abandon its nuclear programmes in exchange for energy aid and security guarantees have failed to get Pyongyang to give them up.
The international community, including the North’s main ally China, strongly condemned its latest nuclear test.
But diplomats at the UN Security Council said they would need time to agree on a new resolution against the North.
“It is a ludicrous idea for the US to think that it can defeat us by sanctions,” the North’s official cabinet newspaper Minju Joson said.
“We have been living under US sanctions for decades,” it said. “The US hostile policy towards us is like beating a rock with a rotten egg.”
In the meantime, South Korean reports said, steam has been seen coming from a plant at the North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon — a sign it was trying to produce more weapons-grade plutonium.
The North had previously agreed to dismantle Yongbyon under a 2007 deal that was hailed as a breakthrough. But the follow-up agreements to that deal fell apart, and the six-nation talks that worked out that agreement have since stalled.
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Here we go again, where is the M*A*S*H 4077th, Hawkeye, BJ, Hot Lips, and Ferret Face when you need them?
If China were to find either the will or balls to impose sanctions on North Korea, it would spell the end of North Korea’s never ending blasts of hot air and saber rattling.
Are we heading towards a war with North Korea?
http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=5360
.
sounds like they’re publishing their ’suicide note’…..
I could be belligerent and say it’s time now to go in and clean the clocks of these prancing sissies, but nukes are no laughing matter.
‘resistor’ has a good point–China needs to rediscover the political will (as opposed to to the financial will they’ve shown the last several years) to act on concert with their neighbors to do something about this suicidal nutjob on their border. Either shut them down or shut them up…
The game of life, is hard to play…
Gonna lose it anyway,
that’s all I’ve really got to say,
I’m going to kill myself today-ay-ay!
Cause’ suicide is painless,
it brings on many changes,
and I can take or leave it if please.
Just give him a few billion to behave. That’s all he wants. Clinton did it and so did Chimpy McFlightsuit.
War? but there’s no oil. What would be the point after the reconstruction contracts run out?
Posturing. That’s all it is. He’s an egomaniac but he’s not stupid.
There is (from all reports I’ve seen) horrendous poverty in the country and therefore an absolute need for the government to provide jobs, mostly military, for it’s citizens. So, any rapproachment which would end their siege mentality would have to be sabotaged by the military.
How far would they go? How far can they go?
Do we have anti-missile defenses in the area?
Do the Koreans have a strong military?
Can China intercede in any meaningful way?
I sometimes listen to N.Korea and wonder if they aren’t a tool of some other force. Their involvement with A.Q.Khan makes me wonder how independent they are in their thinking.
Maybe we’re getting close to completely destroying Al Qaeda and so they have to stir up trouble to distract us. Or maybe they’re entirely self-centered and out of control.
It appears to be time for China to show they’re ready for the big time. Are they ready? Are they capable? Are they willing?
There are lots of questions and far too few answers, so State had better get cracking. I suppose it’s also fortunate Spkr Pelosi and a Congressional delegation are in China (or at least they were recently) and can also speak with their leadership.
markh:
for a siege to work you need a besieger. Today 30000 US soldiers in South Korea, the US never ending a war that they lost big time. Linking Khan and Al Qaeda and NK is positively a republicality. Are you a shill or just daft?
Few Americans know that South Korea invaded North Korea early on June 25, 1950. MacArthur was disgusted at how Americans were turning their backs on their Empire ‘military duties’ after WWII, wanting an end to war and getting on with building up the Suburbs and enjoying the 50’s. MacArthur and wingnut Dictator Syngman Rhee (who rigged elections, embezzled $millions, and eventually had to flee the country in a CIA airplane in 1960…) concocted the tactic for getting Americans enraged: attack in the dead of night, then fall back quickly before the counter-attacking North Koreans, back over the 38th, and widely publicize the “invasion”. MacArthur, who was as much a politician as he was a General, planned it brilliantly, from ‘denying’ Rhee basic defensive equipment, to “saving the day” after he got Trumans attention, and that of the average American, after the “evil Communists attacked”.
They knew North Korea would win any Korea-wide real election, since the nationalistic patriots were in the North, and the Japanese collaborators were the Government in the South. What they didn’t count on was the ferocity of the Koreans to remain free of a new controlling power, after the Japanese had ruled them for decades: 1 out of 3 “North” Koreans died in the American counter-invasion, and Eisenhower thought the casualties were too high, too soon after WWII, so brought the war to a fuzzy conclusion (armistice).
No American President has offered to sign a Peace Treaty, which is what the North Koreans want: an end to the war, and a promise not to invade. Americans like to keep the “option” of illegal war on the table, and when North Korea doesn’t like it, accuse them of being ‘insane”, “rogue”, “crazy”.