North Korea warns of attack if ships checked

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090527/ts_nm/us_korea_north
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea, facing international sanction for this week's nuclear test, threatened on Wednesday to attack the South after Seoul joined a U.S.-led initiative to check vessels suspected of carrying equipment for weapons of mass destruction.

A North Korean army spokesman also said the country was no longer bound by the armistice signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War because Washington had ignored its responsibility as a signatory by drawing South Korea into its naval initiative.

The threat comes after South Korean media reported earlier that Pyongyang had restarted a plant that makes weapons-grade plutonium.

"Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels including search and seizure will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike," the spokesman for the North's army was quoted as saying by the official KCNA news agency.

South Korea announced on Tuesday it was joining the naval exercise, called the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Pyongyang also appeared to have fired a third short-range missile late on Tuesday after it added to tensions with a launch of two others earlier in the day, the South's Yonhap news agency quoted a unnamed government source as saying.

U.S. President Barack Obama is working to form a united response to Monday's nuclear test, widely denounced as a major threat to stability that violates U.N. resolutions and brings the reclusive North closer to having a reliable nuclear bomb.

The secretive state appears to have made good on a threat issued in April of restarting a facility at its Yongbyon nuclear plant that extracts plutonium, South Korea's largest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported.

"There are various indications that reprocessing facilities in Yongbyon resumed operation (and) have been detected by U.S. surveillance satellite, and these including steam coming out of the facility," it quoted an unnamed government source as saying.

The Soviet-era Yongbyon plant was being taken apart under a six-country disarmament-for-aid deal and there were no signs yet that the North, which conducted its only prior nuclear test in October 2006, was again separating plutonium.

Seoul's financial markets, which had fallen in the wake of the nuclear test, rose on Wednesday though traders said investors were still nervous about when the North would try to be more provocative and ratchet up tension in the region.

Analysts say Pyongyang's military grandstanding is partly aimed at tightening leader Kim Jong-il's grip on power so he can better engineer his succession and divert attention from the country's weak economy, which has fallen into near ruin since he took over in 1994.

Many speculate Kim's suspected stroke in August raised concerns about succession and he wants his third son to be the next leader of Asia's only communist dynasty.

MILITARY THREATS

The country, which has a history of using military threats to squeeze concessions out of global powers, may have ramped up its provocations early in Obama's presidency in order to have more cards to play during his time in office.

There may be little the international community can do to deter the North, which has been punished for years by sanctions and is so poor it relies on aid to feed its 23 million people.

A U.S. Treasury Department official said it was weighing possible action to isolate the North financially.

A 2005 U.S. clampdown on a Macau bank suspected of laundering money for Pyongyang effectively cut the country off from the international banking system.

Japan's upper house of parliament denounced the test and said in a resolution the government should step up its sanctions.

North Koreans celebrated, with a rally in the capital of top cadres, KCNA said.

"The nuclear test was a grand undertaking to protect the supreme interests of the DPRK (North Korea) and defend the dignity and sovereignty of the country and nation," it quoted a communist party official as saying.

North Korea's meager supply of fissile material is likely down to enough for five to seven bombs after Monday's test, experts have said. It could probably extract enough plutonium from spent rods at the plant for another bomb's worth of plutonium by the end of this year.

The North's next step may to be resume operations at all of Yongbyon, with experts saying it could take the North up to a year to reverse disablement steps. Once running, it can produce enough plutonium for a bomb a year.

The test raised concern about Pyongyang spreading its weapons to other countries and groups. The United States has accused it of trying try to sell nuclear know-how to Syria and others.

The hermit state has also threatened to launch a long-range ballistic missile if the Security Council does not apologize for tightening sanctions to punish it for an April launch widely seen as a missile test that violated U.N. measures.

North Korea is so eager for a missile crisis, I don't see why we don't oblige.

I'm starting to worry about this situation. How exactly will deterrence work? What exactly is the north korean leadership trying to accomplish? What do they want? From the darwinist viewpoint, leaders would want to be leaders because leadership positions increase their breeding opportunities and increase the likelihood of survival of offspring. How does contrived drama fit into this model? Will deterrence work at all if it turns out that the north korean leaders are biologically defective, from the standpoint of wanting to ensure the survival of themselves, their offspring, and their genetically similar subjects?

Kim Jong Il is merely crying out for attention. His emotional development's been arrested since he was a child, and that's stunted his intellectual and emotional growth.

The man is insane, but for good reason; after all, if your dad secretly hated and was jealous of you but had everyone call you the 'son of God' as a kid, how would YOU end up?

You can't handle this guy as a regular dictator; he's so psychologically messed up that his idea of reality makes no sense, even to his own cabinet.

The whole situation is about self-determination and power with a little bit of paranoia thrown in. Weak countries that don't agree with one of the big countries either get invaded, bullied or hit with a trade embargo. All the while the united nations does absolutely nothing, infact countries use the united nations to further their own purposes, it's no more than a tool for aggression. All the rheutoric that is thrown at north korea is veiwed in a paranoid fashion, north korea believes it is next and that's why they want a nuclear bomb. You'd have to be crazy to attack or ignore a country with nukes. Of course, north korea has absolutely nothing of value so the actual chance of them getting invaded is very slim.

It's really sad but i think the world needs a nuclear bomb to go off in a western country. Perhaps then we'd all grow up a little and stop looking at issues like this with such blatent bias, the question isn't "if" a nuke goes off, it's "when". I'd rather it happen sooner rather than later, because if it happens later it'll probably involve a lot more nukes and a bigger proportion of the earth will be scared.


Case and point, we act like children and treat a country like absolute crap for 60 years, then they do something childish in retaliation (acting out) to bring attention to their plight and it's suddenly okay to fire missiles at them? You know, on the forums here nearly everyone claims that taking things away from an autistic (or NT) teenager is only likely to make things worse. Yet as soon as it comes to politics we all jump on a side and completely ignore logic. Countries are run by PEOPLE and these people should be treated as if they were human. The actions of the past few years with regards to north korea have been laughable...

"Here's a nice juicy carrot Kim Jong Il, let us look at your nuclear production facilities and you can have it"
"Okay, you can have a look, give me that carrot!"
"Well actually, we've changed our minds, we want you to destroy your nukes and then you can have half a carrot"
"Uh... wait? what? half a carrot?"
"Well actually, we've just changed our minds again, destroy your nukes and give your people the vote or bad things will happen!"
"You know what, screw you guys!"
"Okay, well we're going to freeze your assets, embargo your country, harrass your boats while threatening your destruction daily!"

It's almost as if all the foreign secretaries of the world have a mean age of 4 years old.

North Korea is all about ego and pride, and nuclear missiles is their viagra.

We have had no interaction with North Korea for something like 45 of those 60 years until Jim Jong Il started making demands that ammount to nuclear blackmail.

WHO CARES?! CARPET BOMB THE DAMN PLACE!!


damn the children, damn their toys.

warhawks ftw!

You are aware that China is under the belief that they OWN North Korea, right?

If we "CARPET BOMB THE DAMN PLACE", we'd be indirectly attacking China.

There goes your cheap goods and services, and thus would begin another big war - this time very likely without ANY international support.

There are easier ways to deflate and dismantle North Korea.

North Korea threatens war if we even change the channel...

as said before, he's a real-world version of an internet troll.

Maybe we should use one of those small, bunker penetrating nukes on wherever Kim Jong Il hides out...

From history, it's quite obvious that the united states army cannot differentiate between hospitals full of children and a bunker. Not to mention that the only country that has used nukes against another country is the united states. Also by bombing north korea you'd only be radicalising people, i don't think you realise the effect all these stupid united nations decree's limiting trade do. They're not punishing Kim Jong Il, they're punishing ordinary north koreans, people who have been brought up on propaganda. A bomb being fired on their country is all they need to legitamise their world-veiw. You really don't want to radicalise a bunch of people who have access to nuclear material.

hah? I'd like to see how the North Koreans could be any more radicalized than they are now.... Even an 'evil empire' like the US can have real enemies...

Japan started the war against the U.S. The use of any weapon against a city with military personel in it and anti-aircraft can is perfectly kosher. The Geneva Convention in 1945 did not forbid nuclear weapons. The U.S. killed more civilians in the March attack against Tokyo using conventional incendiary bombs on Tokyo. Sixteen square miles of Tokyo were burned to the ground in the largest man made fire storm ever produced. 125,000 died in one night and 1.25 million others were de-housed. So what is the problem? We killed nearly one million Japanese civilians in the course of the Pacific war. Nearly one million German civilians were killed by air attack in the course of the European war between 1940 and 1945. It was done with high explosive and incendiary munitions. So what is your problem?

In addition LeMary flew several leaflet missions over many Japanese cities including Kyto, Nagasaki, Hiroshimi, Kakura and Kobe warning the residents to leave as they would face new and more terrible weapons (nukes). The people of these cities were warned to get out of town. They stayed. Sh*t happens.

In addition to which the Japanese were not signatories to the Geneva Convention and they used poison gas against Chinese civilians. The long and short is they deserved whatever happened to them.

ruveyn