N. Korea: ‘Satellite’ Shootdown Will Mean War

We will retaliate (over) any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counterstrikes by the most powerful military means,” the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army as saying.

If countries such as the United States, Japan or South Korea try to intercept the launch, the North Korean military will carry out “a just retaliatory strike operation not only against all the interceptor means involved but against the strongholds” of the countries, it said.

“Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war,” it added. [AP, via Breitbart]

North Korea’s peaceful “satellite” launch, which would be just the latest flagrant violation of U.N. resolutions 1695 and 1718, is brought to you by the same people who brought you plutonium reprocessing for the “peaceful” generation of electricity. Of course, it isn’t satellites that North Korea is said to be earning $1.5 billion each year exporting to Middle Eastern regimes. If that statistic is accurate, it would dramatically change our picture of where North Korea earns its cash.

Related: Our new special envoy (here’s an interesting article on him, btw) tells the North Koreans to chill. The most interesting fact about Stephen Bosworth must be his striking resemblance to the late Larry “Bud” Melman.