Archive for Proliferation

N. Korea builds new pad, support facilities at Musudan-ri

February 26, 2013 Missiles One comment

Although it’s certainly possible (maybe even inevitable) that someone else has already noticed this, the first one who pointed it out to me was Jacob Bogle, who posted about it here and emailed me (thanks, Jacob). Here’s an overview of the area showing the old launch gantry and support areas. The new pad is marked with the orange arrows.

Musudan @ 7200 412

The new pad clearly shows the flame channel, similar to the one at the Seohae launch facility.  In April 2010, there was nothing there but empty fields:

Musudan New Pad @ 1000 410

Here’s what it looked like last April:

Musudan New Pad @ 1000 412

The angle of the shadows suggests a disturbing possibility — that rather than an above-ground launch pad, this is a silo, which would would significantly harden the site against air strikes. Whereas the shadow inside the flame channel suggests depth, there is no such shadow at the launch site itself, suggesting the absence of a gantry.  This image also suggests that construction was incomplete, but proceeding rapidly.

A nearby assembly area shows substantial evidence of new construction since the next most-recent image, from April 2010.

Musudan Assy. Area @ 2000 410

Musudan Assy. Area @ 2000 412

Similarly, this support area more ongoing construction … and a substantial amount of demolition, as well.  See the village on the center right?

Musudan Suppt. Area @ 2000 410

 

Now you don’t.  I wonder where those people were shoveled off to.

Musudan Suppt. Area @ 2000 412

Thanks again to Jacob for the find and the tip.

Update:  Imagery from 38 North suggests that this is indeed a silo of some sort.

AP Exclusive! North Korea’s nuke test a cry for peace

February 14, 2013 AP Watch, WMD One comment

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — AP Pyongyang has all the logic and perspective of KCNA Pyongyang and none of the guilty pleasures of KCNA’s prose.  

The way North Korea sees it, only bigger weapons and more threatening provocations will force Washington to come to the table to discuss what Pyongyang says it really wants: peace. [....]

North Korea has long cited the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, and what it considers a nuclear umbrella in the region, as the main reason behind its need for nuclear weapons. North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the bitter, three-year Korean War. That conflict ended in a truce in 1953, and left the peninsula divided by heavily fortified buffer zone manned by the U.S.-led U.N. Command.

Sixty years after the armistice, North Korea has pushed for a peace treaty with the U.S. But when talks fail, as they have for nearly two decades, the North Koreans turn to speaking with their weapons.  [Jean H. Lee, AP]

I realize that Lee frequents a place where war is peace, but peace isn’t the first goal one would attribute to a regime that, less than four years ago, renounced the Korean War cease fire agreement, subsequently carried out two sneak attacks against South Korea, killing 50 of its citizens, and attempted to assassinate several defector-dissidents on South Korean soil.

Is this The Onion, you ask?  No, this is The Onion.

The idea that a peace treaty with North Korea is the solution to our problems with North Korea is nonetheless the stated position of a small pro-North Korean fringe, and just about no one else, no doubt because the negotiations would give that fringe the chance to support North Korea’s preconditions for said peace.  Still, I suppose it’s good to have clarity on where Lee stands.

For something a little better grounded in reality, see this Reuters analysis by Paul Eckert and Michael Martina:

A North Korean nuclear test draws international condemnation, modest U.N. sanctions and expressions of hope in the United States that China will finally rein in its brazen ally.

Beijing chides North Korea, but nothing much happens.

The world has seen this movie before and it’s likely to witness another rerun after North Korea’s third nuclear test on Tuesday.

See also this piece by Jeffrey Lewis and this one by Bruce Klingner, citing evidence that North Korea may already have a miniaturized and functional nuclear weapon that it can deliver on a missile.  Say what you want about the accuracy of North Korea’s long-range missiles; its short and medium range missiles are thought to be accurate and effective enough to pose a real danger to South Korea and Japan.

If that’s not bad enough, consider how many terrorist-sponsoring clients North Korea has in the Middle East for its nuclear and missile technology.  Claudia Rosett has an excellent summary in Forbes.

Guess who just tested a nuke. Now I’m going to sleep.

February 11, 2013 Proliferation, WMD 5 comments

Here’s the USGS report, coming in at 4.9,  and here’s the first report saying it looks like a nuke test.  In case you’re keeping track, North Korea’s 2009 test measured 4.7 on the Richter scale after a yield estimated between 2 and 8 kilotons. Its 2006 test registered 4.2, at a yield of just under a kiloton.  Remember — this is a logarithmic scale, which means that a 5 is ten times larger than a 4.

Anyway, a nuclear test site isn’t the only thing newsworthy in that vicinity.  If you wonder if the North Koreans are evil enough to actually use one of their new toys, well, have a look around the neighborhood.

Open Sources: Special Nukewatch Edition

February 7, 2013 Proliferation, WMD 15 comments

ANYONE UP FOR A NUKE POOL? So North Korea didn’t test a nuke on Monday, as rumor had it, but Sung Yoon Lee was on the record (in an email to me) before that, saying it would happen around February 10th.

If it’s a uranium device, the closest guess gets my autograph on your copy of “Meltdown.”  I say this knowing that there might be two winners, and that it might be a while before we know, if we ever do. For more on that, you may find Sig Hecker’s thoughts to be of interest, but be mindful that Hecker has sometimes gone astray when he let his political views influence his scientific conclusions; for example, he was a long-time skeptic of a growing body of open-source evidence that North Korea violated the 1994 Agreed Framework by assembling a uranium enrichment program.  Even now, he still finds North Korea’s pursuit of a uranium enrichment program “puzzling,” yet former SecDef Bill Perry thinks the North Koreans actually have at least two HEU facilities.

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WHILE OUR EYES WERE ON PUNGGYE-RI, the Israelis just bombed another WMD facility in Syria with a North Korean connection.

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ONE THING I CLEARLY SENSE is that the mood in Washington is much more open to ideas like this than at any time in the last five years.  Centrists of both parties are acknowledging that diplomacy has failed — Perry refers to it as “the same losing diplomatic strategy” — and guys like Bill Richardson, who continue to advocate appeasement, have been marginalized.  Most North Korea-watchers still seem uncomfortable with their cautious and qualified support for new sanctions, but thankfully, some people know exactly where they stand.  We don’t to guess where Ed Royce’s head is:

In an interview in Seoul with Yonhap News Agency, Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the U.S. Treasury Department’s 2005 blacklisting of a Macau-based bank accused of laundering money for the North Korean regime proved to be “the most effective” means to deal with Pyongyang’s provocative behaviors.  [....]

“When we did that with the Banco Delta Asia, the impact they created was the situation where the North Korean regime could not pay its generals, could not get the hard currency they needed in order to continue its nuclear program,” Royce said, referring to the Macau-based bank.

If North Korea detonates a nuclear device again, Royce said, “I will suggest those types of sanctions to the Treasury Department and its executive branches in order to create deterrence this type of behavior.”  [Yonhap]

Royce is a man after my own heart.  The problem is that these actions can’t work unless the Executive Branch is willing to enforce them.  The last time the boys at Treasury tried that, State rolled them.  And of course, the China and Korea lobbies will do everything in their power to insulate their own North Korea-enabling corporations and banks from the effect of these measures.

It’s good to see U.S. and South Korean diplomats already coordinating about what new sanctions they’ll pile on, but what effect will it have on Kaesong?  It’s too early to judge Park Geun-Hye, and the Obama Administration has never looked less serious.  You can see it in the Obama Administration’s retreat on U.N. sanctions, and its anemic application of Executive Order 13,382.  But at least the stage is set for a public debate about North Korea policy, and in the current political environment, there’s almost no chance State can get Congress to fund the aid that North Korea would demand as the price of Agreed Framework III.

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I WELCOME THE HARDENING OF ATTITUDES toward North Korea, but let’s be a little smarter about it.  Someone needs to take a deep breath and chill.

 

Sometimes, a missile is just a missile

February 6, 2013 Anju Links, Anti-Americanism, Propaganda, WMD, WTF? 2 comments

Every time North Korea tests a rocket, Hans Blix sheds a little tear and Ban Ki Moon’s fluffy white tail stops wagging, because North Korean rocket tests violate three U.N. Security Council Resolutions — 1695 (which bans “all activities related to its ballistic missile programme”), UNSCR 1718 (ditto, and requires N. Korea to “re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching”), and 1874 (which bans “any launch using ballistic missile technology”).  North Korea’s official response is that it is launching peaceful satellites, not testing ICBMs.  You may be wondering if anyone on the Outer Earth is still fool enough to believe this.

There’s little reason to doubt North Korea’s claim that it simply wants to put a satellite into space.  [John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus]

Maybe John Feffer just needs more reason, so he can reason his way to what’s obvious to the rest of us.

North Korea exhibited the fuselage of what is presumed to be the long-range rocket it launched in December, and explicitly called it a ballistic missile, despite its claims to the outside world that the Unha-3 was part of its peaceful space development program, a report said Monday.

The report by Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun quoted North Korean sources as saying that the fuselage was displayed under the name “Hwasong-13″ among the exhibitions of the country’s missile lineup in an exhibition hall in Pyongyang. The Hwasong line also includes shorter-range scud missiles, which the country has produced since the 1980′s.  [Yonhap]

Well, you say, if they’re missiles, then they must be for strictly defensive deterrence.  No need to infer any malicious intent here, right?  So we now have this, via North Korea’s quasi-official Uriminzokkiri:

Uriminzokkiri roughly translates to “among our race only” and is aimed at South Korean norksimps. It is reportedly run from China, a country that selectively decides what speech should be permitted based on the state’s value judgments about its content.  Or so you may have heard.  (Hat tip)

If your memory is long enough, may recall that other norksimps in South Korea, the Korean Teachers’ Union, produced an equally sickening video for schoolchildren before the 2005 APEC Forum in Busan, featuring replays of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, set to “What a Wonderful World.”  A theme seems to be emerging.

I’m sure that all across the more progressive quarters of this world, there are fevered minds with room enough for the conflicting lunacies that the Jews and neocons pulled off 9/11, and also that on 9/11, nineteen great martyrs fulfilled a divine mandate of vengeance against toddlers, flight attendants, and office workers.  Similarly, there’s clearly some market in some quarters of Korea for fantasies of North Korea’s peaceful satellites destroying American cities.  I hope that market is a whole lot smaller than it was a decade ago.

If nothing else, it’s a useful reminder that the North Koreans aren’t just fucking around.  We already know what they’re capable of, morally speaking.  Faster, please.

Rumor Control: Nuke Test Imminent

January 31, 2013 Proliferation, WMD 5 comments

Thanks to those of you who emailed the tips.  I’m hearing either this weekend or Monday.  I guess we’ll know soon enough if that’s disinformation.

Over at Foreign Policy …

January 9, 2013 Counterfeiting, Missiles, Money Laundering, North-South, Proliferation, Sanctions, WMD 3 comments

… Professor Sung Yoon Lee and I have a piece up discussing the world’s next, almost-certain-to-be-lost opportunity to respond to North Korea more effectively than having Susan Rice continue to beat her cranium against the Great Wall of China at the Security Council.  It’s a blend of Professor Lee’s prognostications about what the North will do next, and some of the financial constriction ideas I’ve been pushing as one of those Three C’s.

I’ll say this about FP — it’s certainly a great place to find an audience that isn’t, erm, accustomed to reading that sort of proposal, which makes me all the more appreciative that they decided to publish it.  I’m sure the comments will be just … fascinating.

I want to offer my sincere thanks to Professor Lee for his co-authorship, without which I doubt FP would have given this serious consideration.  Admittedly, there are many people who share his linguistic head start toward understanding the pathology of North Korea; very few who are his equal in judgment, intellect, and knowledge; and none who can communicate that understanding so cogently to those of us who aren’t Korean.  Honestly, I think his English is actually several levels better than mine.  That’s what makes him such a unique resource.

Update:  Here’s Prof. Lee saying many of the same things in 2009.

Guest Post: It Pays to Provoke

December 14, 2012 Missiles, NK Military, North-South 2 comments

Prof. Sung Yoon Lee is the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at Tufts University, a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs, and a good friend of mine.  If you’re wondering how he lowered his standards so far so fast, the answer is that he wrote a comment that outgrew the comments section, and he graciously agreed to let me publish it as a guest post.

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North Korea’s long-range ballistic missile on Dec 12, 2012, was almost pre-ordained. For Pyongyang, it almost always pays to provoke, and never hurts to do it. What’s more, the constellation of events in mid-December made provoking its longstanding adversaries, Seoul and Washington, near irresistible.

Some past patterns to consider:

North Korea has a long history of provoking South Korea and the US at a time it determines to be in its strategic interest; that is, when its adversaries are weak or distracted. Pyongyang also delights in adding insult to injury by provoking on major holidays. It also finds Sundays an opportune time to cause trouble, thereby capturing the global headlines for the rest of the week and putting added pressure on its adversaries to respond with concessionary diplomacy.

For example, Pyongyang calculated that the US would find it exceedingly risky to escalate tension with a belligerent North Korea in 1968 and 1969, when the Vietnam War became a political liability back home. Hence, North Korea seized the USS Pueblo on January 23, 1968, and held the crew of 82 as captives for 11 months, often torturing them. North Korea sent 31 commandos into Seoul to assassinate the South Korean president earlier that month. That fall, Pyongyang dispatched hundreds of armed guerrilla fighters into the South to foment communist rebellion. North Korea shot down a US surveillance plane on April 15, 1969, on Kim Il Sung’s birthday. North Korea shot down a US helicopter in August, and ambushed and killed four US patrolmen along the Demilitarized Zone in Oct 1969. With each provocation, there was no military response of any sort by the US or South Korea.

As for marking holidays with a bang, Pyongyang’s first nuclear test came on October 9, 2006, the eve of Party Founding Day—one of the most important national holidays in North Korea. That led to the resumption of diplomatic negotiations by the George W Bush administration and, sequentially, new rounds of diplomacy, the lifting of financial sanctions, the resumption of food aid, and the removal of North Korea from the US State Dept. list of state sponsors of terrorism. This landmark event, Pyongyang’s first nuclear test, was preceded in July by a seven-rocket salute on America’s birthday, when it fired off six short-range missiles and one long-range missile on the morning of July 5, 2006 (the afternoon of July 4, Independence Day, in Washington DC). North Korea’s second nuclear test was on May 25, Memorial Day in the US. The 1983 Rangoon bombing also took place on the eve of Party Founding Day, which also happened to be a Sunday.

As for Pyongyang’s penchant for provoking on a Sunday, its first long-range missile test took place on Sunday, Aug 31, 1998. That led to a flurry of diplomatic activity on Washington’s part and the transfer from the US to North Korea of $177 million worth of food aid through the WFP (400,000 tons) in 1999, in return for the privilege of inspecting an empty cave in Kumchangri. The North’s third long-range missile test took place on Sunday, April 5, 2009. The North also blew up a Korean Airliner on Sunday, Nov 29, 1987.

Moreover, Pyongyang also likes to rain on Seoul’s parade. There are too many examples to mention—I’ll just cite one: On November 12, 2010, Pyongyang conducted a “poor man’s” uranium bomb test when it showcased its modern uranium enrichment facility to Dr. Siegfried Hecker, as Seoul was hosting what it had been touting as one of the most important international events ever, the G20 Summit.

Now, mid-December 2012, is a most opportune time for NK to set the table again vis-a-vis the powers in the region, raise the stakes with provocations, and try to paint the new leadership in DC, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, and Moscow into a corner by creating a security problem that calls for concessionary diplomacy.

So, the real question is not why did Pyongyang conduct a long-range missile test, but why wouldn’t it have—provided the capability was there and the weather didn’t stand in the way? With exactly one week to go before South Korea’s presidential election, and five days before the anniversary of Kim Jong Il’s death, and barely a month away from Kim Jong Un’s birthday on January 8, the temptation to stir things up must have been compelling.

Now is the best time for Pyongyang to jolt the South’s electorate, instill in the public the fear of possible war and the consequent loss of lives and treasure, and intimidate ordinary citizens into voting for the candidate of “peace and reconciliation,” the pro-North Korea leaning progressive Moon Jae-In, former chief of staff of President Roh Moo Hyun. North Korea has ten years of experience reaping rewards for periodic provocations against the South during the sunshine years, 1998-2008, when Seoul kept pumping unconditional aid worth nearly 10 billion dollars in cash, food, and fertilizer into Pyongyang’s palace economy. A return to that kind of favorable arrangement would enhance Kim Jong Un’s leadership credentials at home and enable the young inexperienced leader to deal with Seoul from a position of strength. 

The view that took hold in the past few days that perhaps Chinese pressure had forced Pyongyang to take a step back on the rocket launch and postpone it discounts history and Pyongyang’s strategic considerations. North Korea has never caved into Chinese pressure on matters of vital national interest. “Kwangmyungsong,” the name of the satellite, is after all the honorific name given to Kim Jong Il. Putting it aside to appease Beijing makes as much sense as Kim Jong Un going on a diet to placate Joshua. Moreover, North Korea has a long history of resorting to maskrovka, or strategic deception (e.g., suggesting “unification” talks one week before June 25, 1950; or asking Beijing to pass on a message to Washington that it seeks diplomatic talks with the US on the eve of the Rangoon bombing on Oct 9, 1983, etc.). By mentioning technical difficulties signaling it may postpone the test, Pyongyang was merely attempting to dupe its foes, a ploy that worked.

As for concerns of any military or harsh political reprisal, even in the most egregious provocations like assassination attempts on the South Korean president (January 1968 and October 1983) or shooting down a U.S. spy plane in international air space (April 1969), neither Seoul nor Washington has ever retaliated. In more recent times, even under the so-called “hardline” President Lee Myung Bak, the more Pyongyang has provoked Seoul, the more the Seoul has tried to appease Pyongyang. Less than two months after holding live ammunition drills in the wake of the North’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, President Lee announced that he would be open to a summit meeting with the North Korean leader. In May 2011, the North and South held secret meetings, with Seoul even asking for not just one, but a series of summits with Kim Jong Il.

Hence, North Korea was virtually bound to provoke when it did. In particular, it had powerful incentives to go ahead with the test before the December 19 election, ideally, on December 12, which would leave a one-week window of opportunity for the matter to matter in the presidential race without fading from memory. And it will probably not stop with just the missile test. I would now watch out for a follow-up provocation soon, perhaps even in the next day or two, for a special South Korean public-tailored provocation. If Kim Jong Un stops with just the missile blast, then that would indicate that Kim III is not nearly a formidable foe as Kim II or Kim I.

As to how to respond, I second Joshua’s “novel and serious” response idea. Like Joshua, I also feel those who actually make policy will probably shy away from it, even in the face of another nuclear test. Perhaps Pyongyang’s future demonstration of its capability to combine an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead may finally tilt this balance. In the meantime, I would suggest launching a sustained human rights campaign against the Kim regime and actively sponsoring efforts to transmit information into the North. I realize this is also quite unlikely to be implemented, for it will not bring about an immediate change in Pyongyang’s behavior or create the diplomacy-summitry-friendly atmospherics favored by statesmen. But nor will it lead to the collapse of the Kim regime, an eventuality that Pyongyang’s neighbors fear. Rather, what it will do is incentivize the North Korean people gradually to demand more of their own leaders, even if that demand is only a modest step in protecting their most basic civil liberties. It will also encourage more North Koreans to depart their gulag nation. And that means saving lives.

North Korea’s missile test will be Susan Rice’s big chance to be effective (for a change). Update: They did it.

December 6, 2012 "United" Nations, Missiles, Sanctions 13 comments

As North Korea completes preparations for its latest ICBM test, the United States, Japan, and South Korea are trying to deter it with state-of-the art, laser-guided words.  Success, while unlikely, isn’t completely out of the question; after all, Kim Jong Un seemed to be preparing to conduct a nuke test several months ago, but never went through with it.  If Kim Jong Un really did defer a nuke test, I have no idea why, but it probably wasn’t because he wants a fresh start in his relations with Earth.

So far, the public face of U.S. deterrence has been to threaten what has never worked before – to take North Korea to the Security Council.  Our diplomats aren’t specifying what measures we’ll take against Kim Jong Un’s regime, but they’re hinting at more sanctions:

A senior security aide to President Barack Obama said Monday the U.S. is concentrating efforts in cooperation with South Korea, China, Russia and Japan to dissuade North Korea from pressing ahead with another rocket launch.

Gary Samore emphasized that if the launch takes place Washington will take “appropriate actions.”

“We’ve made it very clear that we consider this to be a very unfortunate provocative event, which is not going help North Korea nor the people of North Korea,” Samore told Yonhap News Agency.  [Yonhap]

Ed Royce calls the missile test a “wake-up call” that the administration’s policy toward North Korea has been ineffective, which is my first cue to link to my list of unused sanctions options and how those options fit into a more effective North Korea policy – one that could force even China to engage in good-faith efforts to disarm North Korea.  The Daily NK interviews other experts who also see the need for a more comprehensive sanctions effort:

Cho Bong Hyun, a researcher with the Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) Economic Research Institute told Daily NK, “If we do not cut off North Korea’s lines of credit then sanctions cannot be effective. Therefore, they will try to strengthen economic sanctions. The trade that is currently going normally could be faced with more difficult conditions, and humanitarian assistance could be stopped, too.”

Cho added, “In addition, it looks like a number more individuals and institutions will be added to the UN Security Council sanction list.”

Another anonymous researcher commented, “The best thing would be to apply financial sanctions in order to freeze North Korean funds, as was done with Banco Delta Asia (BDA). The BDA issue created fresh resistance in North Korea; however, freezing North Korean funds can still inflict a huge blow on their money channels.”

Some voices have suggested that the role of the UN North Korea Sanctions Committee should be improved, with disciplinary actions for those who fail to support it.

Baek Seung Joo of Korea Institute for Defense Analyses said, “Currently, sanctions against North Korea have been implemented across multi-faceted areas, but the problem is whether or not the sanctions are being implemented correctly. There need to be measures to warn those countries who are not actively taking part in the sanctions, and more monitoring of those countries which must apply them.”  [Daily NK]

These are good ideas; it’s too bad we won’t make use of them.  But at least Susan Rice will get a chance not to be our worst U.N. Ambassador since “Kim Jong Bill” Richardson.

I suppose I should explain.  The first rule of deterrence is progressive discipline — the principle that each similar misdeed will be met with more (not less) severe punishment.  Yet when North Korea launched its first missile of the Obama Administration in 2009, Rice did no better at the Security Council than a weak Presidential Statement.  The resolution she obtained after North Korea’s 2009 nuke test, UNSCR 1874, was little more than a warmed-over version of John Bolton’s UNSCR 1718, and was no better enforced (links to both resolutions in the sidebar).  When North Korea sank the ROKS Cheonan, the best Rice could get was another non-binding Presidential Statement that didn’t even name North Korea.  When North Korea later shelled Yeongpyeong Island and killed four civilians, the Security Council did bupkes.  Ditto with respect to North Korea’s brazen nuclear proliferation during Rice’s tenure.  And when North Korea launched a missile earlier this year, the Administration quickly decided not to seek further Security Council action after China made clear its intent to block it.  Rice got eaten by the Chinese every time (sorry).

Depending on your perspective, you might also think that Rice disqualified herself from higher office for responding to a premeditated Al Qaeda attack by scapegoating one man’s exercise of his right to free speech.  Rice’s statements weren’t true, but they would be just as objectionable if they were.  Non-violent speech is never a defense to the culpability of those who practice violence.  It does not explain it, and it does not mitigate it.

Yet with all this having said, I could more easily abide a weakened and timid Susan Rice than the arrogant incompetence of John Kerry.  All of which is sad, because off-hand, I can think of several prominent Democrats and members of this administration who would be great for Secretary of State, starting with Samore.  Lieberman, you say?  No, that would be asking too much.

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Update, Dec. 12, 2012:  Reuters is reporting that North Korea launched it, and there seems to be a general consensus that the missile reached orbit.

“The satellite has entered the planned orbit,” a North Korean television news reader clad in traditional Korean garb announced, after which the station played patriotic songs with the lyrics “Chosun (Korea) does what it says”.

The rocket was launched just before 10 a.m. (0100 GMT), according to defense officials in South Korea and Japan, and was more successful than a rocket launched in April that flew for less than two minutes.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said that it “deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit”, the first time an independent body has verified North Korean claims.

The North claims that the rocket boosted a weather satellite into orbit.

Foreign observers are suggesting that this will boost Kim Jong Un’s domestic legitimacy inside North Korea, but I’m wary of these counterfactual analyses.  It will probably increase North Koreans’ sense of awe of their overlords, and cause them (and us) to grudgingly acknowledge their competence at matters they deem to be state priorities.  On the other hand, it could also serve to highlight the state’s comparative failure to feed the people ahead of a cold winter and a hungry spring.

Although the launch has probably helped the political right win election in Japan, my best guess is that a provocation that primarily threatens the United States will be popular among many South Koreans who harbor intense but latent anti-Americanism and pan-Korean nationalism.  To this extent this has a significant effect on the South Korean election, it’s more likely to help the political left, which supports appeasing North Korea.

North Korea’s technical success may mean that Americans will start to take North Korea seriously as a threat again. With Richard Lugar now out of the way, John McCain is getting a seat in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where for years, Republicans had effectively abstained from the policy debate about North Korea. With Ed Royce and John McCain soon to be the most prominent Republican voices on foreign policy in Congress, maybe we’ll finally have a debate about whether appeasement, payoffs, unenforced U.N. resolutions, overlooking China’s duplicity, and Agreed Framework III are really the best way to deal with this problem.  For his part, Royce is saying the right thing — that we ought to scour the world’s moldiest corners for North Korean assets to freeze.

What would be a novel and serious way to respond to this?  First, we’d publicly announce that we’re not seeking any new resolutions at the U.N., and follow that with some off-the-record comments that the resolutions themselves are fine — the problem is that China willfully facilitates the violation of those resolutions.  Second, we’d make it clear that instead of wasting our energy with the U.N. and its weak (pro-appeasement South Korean) General Secretary, we’ll work with our allies and trading partners to isolate North Korea economically in the same way our Treasury Department did with the Banco Delta Asia sanctions of 2006, only much more comprehensively.  Third and most critically, we must use those sanctions to target and freeze the assets of North Korea’s foreign trading partners, including those in China and South Korea.

Given the North Korean regime’s dependency on foreign hard currency, if we pursued and enforced a policy like that, I doubt there would even be a North Korea two years from now.  So much the better for all of humanity.

 

Nuke Test Watch: One Disease, Many Symptoms

May 25, 2012 Appeasement, China & Korea, Diplomacy, Missiles, Proliferation, WMD 5 comments

OK, I admit it — I’m disappointed in the North Koreans for wimping out:

North Korea on Tuesday ruled out an imminent nuclear weapon test, but vowed to expand and bolster its nuclear deterrence as well as its sovereign right to launch satellites, while slamming the Group of Eight nations’ condemnation of its failed long-range rocket launch in April.

In a remark given to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency, a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that the North didn’t have a plan for a nuclear test from the beginning, because it sought to launch a scientific and technical satellite.

“From the beginning, we did not envisage such a military measure as a nuclear test as we planned to launch a scientific and technical satellite for peaceful purposes,” said the official.

“Several weeks ago, we informed the U.S. side of the fact that we are restraining ourselves in real actions though we are no longer bound to the February 29 DPRK-U.S. agreement, taking the concerns voiced by the U.S. into consideration for the purpose of ensuring the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula necessary for focusing every effort on the peaceful development.” [Yonhap]

Well, damn. I wanted an election-year demonstration of how our desperate diplomatic appeals and offers failed to buy North Korea out of the headlines. I wanted someone else to point out how we allowed our obsession with treating each symptom to interfere with our diagnosis and treatment of the disease. I wanted someone else to wonder how it is that even now, our diplomats seem befuddled that North Korea doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to when appeased. And maybe I’ll still get what I want. Keep hope alive!

If North Korea puts this off, the most plausible reason is that China pressured North Korea to put it off. This will be both temporary and inadequate. If the North Koreans don’t test a nuke before Election Day, it’s a safe bet they’ll test one shortly thereafter.

Earlier Tuesday, James Hardy, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly said that images taken by two satellite companies, DigitalGlobe and GeoEye, in the past month showed more earth being removed from a tunnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea’s northeast.

There is a trope in this town that China — despite being the portal for the vast majority of North Korea’s regime-sustaining trade and aid, both legal and illegal — really can’t control North Korea. I’ve long suspected that China merely chooses not to control North Korea, except just before American and South Korean election seasons. But we’re never more than one excuse way from North Korea doing something completely different from what it just said.

Of course, most diseases have many symptoms. Have a look at what the North Koreans are doing at the Cape Musudan test site. Yes, 38 North can be interesting when it’s adding something new to the discussion.

On October 11, 2008, North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism for its progress toward nuclear disarmament. Discuss among yourselves.

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