North Korea warns final showdown with US will be a nuclear one

Herald Correspondent in Tokyo and agencies ^ | February 8 2003 | By Shane Green

[WellsFargo94]

A South Korean soldier patrols along a barbed wire fence in Imjingak, at the entrance of the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea. Photo: AFP

An increasingly belligerent North Korea has warned of "total war" with the United States, predicting a conflict with it would develop into a nuclear one.

And in a further deterioration of the nuclear crisis, the chief of the North Korean Army, Kim Yong-chun, called on his generals to win a "brilliant victory in the final showdown with US imperialists".

The White House said it was ready to meet any threat, but at the same time, tried to avoid a sense of impending crisis, reaffirming its commitment to a diplomatic solution.

"We've heard much talk from North Korea before," a White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said. "The United States is very prepared, with robust plans, for any contingencies."

North Korea's battle cries follow its claim earlier this week it has the right to make a pre-emptive strike against the US, and preparations by the US to deploy 24 long rang-range bombers to its air base in Guam, south-east of the Korean peninsula.

The Stalinist state has frequently talked of war since it admitted it was reactivating its nuclear arms program. But the latest warning has a new intensity, and comes amid reports from the country's capital, Pyongyang, that the regime is preparing its people for war, this week staging air raid drills.

The threat of a nuclear war was raised on Thursday by the official North Korean newspaper, Rodong Sinmum. It said the build-up of US forces meant that "a new war will inevitably break out on the Korean peninsula and it will develop to be a nuclear war". The paper said North Korea would answer "total war with total war".

In a separate statement yesterday, a North Korean news agency claimed the US forces build-up was "a very dangerous move that can only take place on the eve of or in times of war". It said the Korean peninsula would be deva-stated and suffer from a nuclear war unless the build-up stopped.

North Korea is already believed to have one or two nuclear weapons. Last month, US spy satellites detected trucks moving near fuel rods at the country's nuclear plant at Yongbyon. Some analysts say North Korea may be ready to use the rods to produce up to half a dozen more nuclear weapons.

One of North Korea's potential missile targets, Japan, has begun preparations to launch its first spy satellite, which will be an important tool in dealing with any threat from Pyongyang.

The spy satellite program began in earnest after North Korea fired a test missile over Japan in 1998, which landed in the Pacific. Japan had no warning of the launch.

Yesterday, the rocket used to deploy the satellite, one of two, arrived under heavy security at a port near the Tanegashima Space Centre in southern Japan for next month's launch.

[WellsFargo94]

Whenever I see these articles I think back st the time that my husband was stationed for a year in the DMZ. The funniest occurance was the North Koreans calling up commanders, and heads of state concerned and complaining about our troops being issued, "Hand held nuclear weapons" which turned out to be metal coated coffee Thermos'bought by the soldiers themselves (not Government issues). The troops loved those aquisations, and it really help improve moral by providing a lot of laughs. Even now.

[CWOJackson]

I'm wondering how long it will be before this lunatic is assassinated by his own people of by agents of China, Japan or the south.

[G.Mason]

Will someone please tell these blathering idiots that Truman is no longer President.

What do they put in that rice?

[pt17]

Seems like the closer we get to dealing with Iraq, the more noise these lunatics make. Does Saddam owe them money too?

[Chapita]

I agree with the tactic of publically ignoring the NK's. They may very well be collapsing from within and need an external enemy.

They may start a war but that's an option they've always had [Pueblo comes to mind!]

Then again, the population may be fed up with their station in life and blame their regime rather than the "Imperialists".

I believe that their need for money drives their insistence upon "direct negotiations" with the US. They are putting their faith in alarming our left-wingers to the point that the left will force Bush to send them some money!

[wretchard]

An increasingly belligerent North Korea has warned of "total war" with the United States, predicting a conflict with it would develop into a nuclear one.

Nuclear weapons are the fountain of youth for corrupt and dysfunctional regimes. They guarantee survival in despite of everything, including internal starvation, because the possession of nukes enables a regime to extort whatever it needs to keep going. It is the extension into the sphere of international relations of the regime's domestic policy of compulsion and confiscation.

And what of the guardians at the gates? The deference paid by the UN to rogue regimes like Pyongyang will have the same effect on its authority as that on the sheriff who lets all the town punks drink in his office while he polishes their boots. Kofi Annan showed his mettle as the head of peackeeping operations during the Rwanda atrocity. He hasn't grown since, but the threat has. Churchill said it best:

"And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip-- the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proferred to us year by year-- "

[agitator]

I wonder how you sing "They're coming to take me away ha-ha, hee-hee, ho-ho,..." in Korean.

[RightOnline]

One strike.........their pathetic capital gets turned into a smoking hole........and that s**thole of a country is back to the Stone Age (they have one foot there already). The mouse can roar all he wants...............

[Timesink]

They guarantee survival in despite of everything, including internal starvation, because the possession of nukes enables a regime to extort whatever it needs to keep going.

That's what they think. We'll tread more carefully with NK than Iraq, but when the time comes, the NK regime will be destroyed, nukes or no nukes.

The mistake they make in their beligerrance is that we realize that if they're this nuts with one or two nukes now, they can NEVER be allowed to end up with 20 or 30, or given a few years to develop missiles that can hit the US mainland. And, no matter how sad it might be to face, the reality is that it's better them than us (with "them" = anyone in that general region, be it North or South Koreans, or Japanese).

Which, by the way, is why it's in our best interest to get Japan nuked up ASAP. It would be much preferable politically if the Japanense government was the one to launch a first strike. Besides, they're in several magnitudes more danger from NK than we are.

[MeekOneGOP]

Mark Steyn (click below for entire article):

Take a look at a satellite picture of the peninsula by night: South Korea ablaze in electric light, the North in darkness. In Far East Asia, North Korea’s the hole in the doughnut.

North Korea at Night

[Edmund Burke]

Perhaps Iraq and N. Korea have an alliance that commits the other to war if one is attacked.

[MeekOneGOP]

[wretchard]

You are right of course. North Korea will have to be faced, sooner for preference, rather than later. But it takes time for hundreds of millions of people to stare at the bald truth when it is so ugly.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats, each for their own reasons, would willingly compare President Bush with Franklin Roosevelt: yet they share the same unenviable task. They must convince an unbelieving world to risk their blood, the blood of their sons and their treasure in a thankless task simply because it must be done.

I knew someone with a bad case of diabetes who got to the point where an extremity had to be amputated or gangrene would follow. We are in that case. I can't blame most people for hoping that this cup would pass away. No one is looking forward to that kind of tomorrow. Yet we have to accept that it is our only chance of any tomorrow at all.

[Chi-townChief]

Pyongyang looks like it's hoppin'!

[Moby Grape]

So it will be a nuclear exchange....sounds great....Kim Krispy Kritter would be a fitting end.

[M Kehoe]

I guess prozac isn't sold in N. Korea.

5.56mm

[aruanan]

North Korea warns final showdown with US will be a nuclear one

"Hey, HEY! America! We're dangerous too! How dare you take a military route against Saddam and diplomatic with us! Argh. ARGH!! We'll roast you in nuclear fire. America? Is anybody there? I said we'll destroy you with nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Yoo hoo! Weapons of mass destruction. Aren't those the magic words we need to use to get recognized as a threat to the U.S. and become a big swinging dong of the anti-U.S. crowd? We're NOT irrelevant. We're NOT irrelevant! Carter helped us out and Clinton licked our boots. Listen to us now or ELSE!"

[dasboot]

Hmmmm:

How many nuke subs we got in the pacific?

How many missiles on all thos subs?

How many separately-targetable tactical warheads on each missile?

Gee, maybe Bush should move one into position. (sarc)

Talk about yer death wish.

[Moby Grape]

A year or two ago, two teenagers from North Korea swam across a river to China and made it to the US embassy. They drew pictures of life in North Korea...the executions, mothers killing babies they could not feed, etc.....at the same time that these pictures were published (I think in Newsweek), the UN was worried about Koyoto and about SUV's......The UN SHOULD be calling for the forced removal of Kim....instead they worry about the usual clap trap that silly liberals worry about.

[The Wizard]

Pueblo was mishandled, as was the whole Korean war, IMHO, like Viet Namn, we punted, and in that one, (Korea) we should have leveled them