Posted on 12/01/2002 6:35:15 PM PST by Dixie Mom
North Korean missiles could hit Australia
December 02, 2002
THE line on the map arcs disconcertingly through far-north Queensland, across the Gulf of Carpentaria and westward into the Northern Territory, before leaving land near Derby in Western Australia.
This charts the anticipated range of the Taepodong 2 missile, one of a number that North Korea has in development.
The opposite end of the arc shows the far north of the US is also in range from within the fortress borders of the secretive communist state, with the Taepodong's expected 6000km limit sufficient to reach Alaska.
After North Korea frightened the wits out of Japan in August 1998 by test-firing a Taepodong across Japan's main island of Honshu and into the northern Pacific Ocean, international outrage prompted its unpredictable "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il to declare a moratorium on further test firing.
The international community believes development has continued, but the missile's current delivery range, or its readiness to carry a warhead to foreign shores, is unclear.
What is clear is that the uneasy political climate in northeast Asia and two extraordinary recent admissions from the Kim Government make the Taepodong missile issue more than just an interesting cartographical aside. North Korea's military capability is now one of the hottest security issues on the planet.
North Korea, where aid agencies report hungry people are eating grass and stripping bark from the trees to boil up for nourishment as the Government continues to run arms development programs and back its military, has comprehensively blown recent attempts to engage diplomatically with those most likely to cast an economic lifeline to the country.
The Red Cross predicts thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of deaths from starvation and cold over North Korea's harsh winter as emergency provisions from the international community dry up.
But Washington is not talking to Kim Jong-il's regime and froze from this month – the start of the northern winter – the 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil the US has agreed to supply each year.
Tokyo's efforts to re-establish diplomatic ties with Pyongyang have been halted indefinitely over the fate of five Japanese citizens who survived being abducted by North Korea in 1977 and eight others who died in captivity.
Japan is dangling an estimated $US10 billion ($17.8 billion) in economic assistance in front of North Korean officials as the price for progress. South Korea is in the middle of a presidential election campaign in which the leading candidate, conservative Lee Hoi-chang, is talking tough about halting Seoul's Sunshine Policy of reconciliation with the North after more than two years in which little progress has been achieved.
Some countries with their backs against such a threatening wall might blink. Not North Korea. Instead the country included alongside Iran and Iraq in US President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" for its alleged program to develop and sell weapons of mass destruction, has gone on the offensive.
Pyongyang has made two admissions, which in the content and the manner of their making dramatically sheet home the immediate risks that face neighbours and adversaries of the volatile North Korean regime.
The first was in October when US Deputy Secretary of State James Kelly visited Pyongyang and accused his hosts of secretly developing nuclear weapons in contravention of an agreement made in 1994 to halt its nuclear program in exchange for non-military nuclear reactors, oil and aid supplies. The accusation was met with a surprising and unrepentant yes. This infuriated the Bush administration, which never liked or trusted the deal struck by former president Bill Clinton. The US Central Intelligence Agency believes North Korea has two nuclear weapons ready, with the capacity to make several more. Chinese intelligence says there could be up to five bombs.
The second admission occurred three weeks ago amid rapidly disintegrating talks between Japan and North Korea to improve the bilateral relationship. As the two nations bickered over whether the five abductees who have returned to Japan are only visiting or will be kept permanently, a North Korean official blithely said his country was "reconsidering" the missile-testing moratorium.
Subsequent efforts by Pyongyang to soften the remarks have been at best half-hearted, particularly given that Kim Jong-il agreed to extend the moratorium beyond 2003 in his historic September meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The two statements, although typical of the brinkmanship style of negotiating North Korea has employed for decades in extracting international aid from the West, should not be downplayed.
Combined, they paint a picture of North Korea running a nuclear weapons program, with the high probability it already has nuclear weapons, and considering resuming testing to develop a missile that could deliver nuclear warheads 6000km away.
Add to the mix the international intelligence that suggests North Korea has manufactured huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons over the past decade, and the cocktail is, on paper at least, potentially cataclysmic.
It is therefore timely to examine just what sort of military threat the rogue state poses, both to near-neighbours Japan and South Korea, to the US and to the wider international community.
What does Kim Jong-il have at his disposal in terms of hardware and would he ever use it? If so, against whom and where?
"The first step is to look at North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and then to examine the potential delivery mechanisms," North Korea expert Professor Satoshi Morimoto, recently retired from Japanese political think-tank Nomura Securities, told The Australian.
"I'm one of those who don't think North Korea yet has a nuclear bomb," Professor Morimoto said. "Though I have no doubt they have the ambition and the enrichment equipment required to produce one.
"What I am certain about is that they have both chemical and biological weapons that can be targeted into water systems and big cities. This is a serious problem."
South Korea's intelligence agency recently warned that North Korea possessed about 5000 tonnes of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve gas, and an unknown supply of biological weapons that could produce outbreaks of anthrax, plague, yellow fever and other diseases.
It is believed Kim Jong-il's father, the late Kim Il-sung, ordered the acceleration of the country's biological weapons program in 1980, and there are still scientists and facilities devoted to the task. North Korea has refused to sign up to UN Chemical Weapons Convention, which imposes strict inspection requirements.
"North Korea is . . . believed to have several installations capable of producing chemical agents and to have vast stocks of such chemicals. It is also believed to have a certain level of production base for the manufacture of biological weapons," the Japanese Government's Defence of Japan 2000 paper states.
How Pyongyang will deliver those threats is the next question. North Korea has hundreds of Scud missiles and other similar devices for close targets such as South Korea. The Japanese are acutely aware of the North's No-dong missiles. The missiles have a range of about 1500km, which puts all Japan's major cities as well as US military bases in Japan – home to 43,000 US troops – in the frame.
The Pentagon estimates North Korea has about 100 of these missiles deployed, mostly on mobile launchers. Japan wants North Korea to divest itself of the missiles – which Tokyo believes have been developed with Japan in mind – as a part quid pro quo for its billions in economic aid.
"There is no evidence North Korea can equip a nuclear device to a No-dong missile's warhead, but it can certainly do it with chemical and biological weapons," Professor Morimoto said.
As for further afield, the Taepodong missiles, and even more advanced missiles such as the NKSL range that could offer global coverage, remain an unknown quantity.
However, despite the Taepodong's potential reach so graphically illustrated on the world map, Australia remains an unlikely target for a North Korean missile. Australia is one of a handful of Western countries that has established diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.
"The objective of the Taepodong weapons system is to use it as military leverage in dealing with the US," Professor Morimoto said. "North Korea thinks it should deal with the US on an equal footing, and this, along with the nuclear scenario, is its stake in the game."
At least as far as Japan and South Korea are concerned, North Korea has the capacity to deliver catastrophic devastation. For Japan, with its history as the only country ever to have been subjected to a nuclear attack, the situation is extremely disturbing.
And as South Korea knows, North Korea is not afraid to fight. As recently as June 29, on the eve of the soccer World Cup co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, North and South Korean naval vessels engaged in a firefight that left an estimated 30 dead. North Korea would not confirm its number of casualties, saying only that it had suffered some.
But the prevailing wisdom remains that Kim Jong-il, while difficult to pin down, is too wily to use the arsenal of dirty tricks at his disposal, for it would surely be the end of his regime. The US would immediately step into any conflict involving Japan or South Korea.
There is also some international consensus for the view that unlike with Clinton, Mr Kim is genuinely fearful of the Bush administration's threats to his country.
This has been borne out in the rhetoric emanating from Pyongyang over recent issues. Whereas during a period of heightened tensions in 1993 North Korea made repeated threats to declare war and "turn Seoul into a sea of fire", the language this time around has been far less vitriolic. Further, it has made some efforts to embrace market concepts into its communist system, perhaps looking to China about 20 years ago as a model.
"I think the Republicans will be re-elected in the 2004 election, and they will make regime change in North Korea their top foreign policy objective. That would be very hard for the North Korean regime to resist," Professor Morimoto said.
"The US is already exerting serious diplomatic pressure to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction, but I don't know if the regime can survive domestically if it bends to the US. It's in a real bind, and its weapons are its only real bargaining chip."
There is also some international consensus for the view that unlike with Clinton, Mr Kim is genuinely fearful of the Bush administration's threats to his country.
And why not? They survive on extorting money and goods. Kim sees himself as the major world leader of the 21st century.
OICexchange.com ("Source: HI/OB/IINA"): Jeddah, Ramadhan. "YEMEN PAYS UP US$ 1.5 MILLION TO AQSA FUND" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Oman is also said to have paid in a sum of US$ 3,000,000, while Saudi Arabia has paid US$ 21,000,000.") (December 2, 2002)
FOX NEWS.com: "SENATORS URGE PROBE OF ALLEGED LINK OF SAUDI ROYAL FAMILY TO 9-11" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The FBI is investigating financial records indicating that Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador, wrote monthly checks that ultimately went into the accounts of Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan. Two hijackers of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon may have gotten money from those men while the terrorists were living in the United States.") (112402)
FOX NEWS.com:"STATEMENT ATTRIBUTED TO AL QAEDA WARNS OF MORE ATTACKS ON NEW YORK, WASHINGTON" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A statement attributed to Al Qaeda threatened more attacks in New York and Washington unless America stops supporting Israel and converts to Islam, an Arab TV reporter who received the unsigned document said Saturday.")(111602)
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