Category: WMD

“Oh, you all laughed at me then!” he hissed, diabolically: Abnormal radiation was detected near the inter-Korean border days after North Korea claimed last month to have achieved a nuclear technology breakthrough, South Korea’s Science Ministry said Monday. [AP, Hyung-Jin Kim] The radiation detected was in the form of xenon gas, in levels eight times higher than normal. Given that none of North Korea’s known nuclear sites is near the DMZ, you have to assume that the plume dissipated considerably...

The debate is mostly over now, but should we forget what we learned from it? Not so fast.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said North Korea likely began its controversial uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons development in 1996, soon after it had agreed to halt its nuclear program in a deal with the United States. In an interview with Yonhap, Yu said much remains unknown about the North’s uranium program and how advanced it is. But he said it is clear that the program was launched “quite early. “It seems to me that the North began...

Reports from unnamed government sources in the capital have stated that the four containers impounded in the port of Busan, and reported in the Handy Shipping Guide story recently, contained clothing “to guard against nuclear, biological or chemical infection. Syria was also pronounced as the intended destination and the goods were declared as either of Russian manufacture or copied from Russian original designs, probably by North Korea, where the items apparently originated. [Handy Shipping Guide] And to think we only...

On Saturday, I had coffee with a very well-connected South Korean friend, who suggested in passing that North Korea might respond to this-or-that sanction with another nuke test. After having expostulated for the next 45 seconds about why such a move wouldn’t further North Korea’s interests at this time, I think I now understand why my friend just sat there and smiled while I yammered on: According to a high-level source in North Korea, Kim Jong-Il instructed at the meeting...