Free Republic

President Obama has a situation on his hands where charisma and media support do him no good. He is dealing with a nuclear-armed regime with a history of military attacks, provocations as a means of extortion, and brutality. Now they have announced they are restarting a reactor that produces enough plutonium to make a bomb a year -- a reactor that had been shut down before as part of a previous deal in which the North Koreans got things of value in exchange for shuttering it. Worse yet, the dictatorship is now in the midst of a possible power struggle....

The United States has made it clear that it will not accept North Korea as a "nuclear state." This was stated by Secretary of State John Kerry during a joint press conference with his visiting South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Washington on Tuesday. "What Kim Jong-un has been choosing to do is provocative, it is dangerous, reckless, and the United States will not accept the DPRK as a nuclearstate,"hesaid in referenceto theyoung North Korean leader's ambitious nuclear policy. Kerry reiterated that "the United States will do what isnecessary to defend ourselvesand defend our allies, Korea and Japan. We are...

Top U.S. intelligence officials testified Tuesday that they're "very concerned" the "belligerent" rhetoric out of North Korea could presage an attack on its southern neighbor. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, along with the heads of the CIA and FBI, delivered the intelligence community's overview of global threats before the Senate Intelligence Committee. They were pressed on the recent and persistent warnings from Pyongyang, which just announced it was "completely scrapping" the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

Missile Defense: As Pyongyang threatens a nuclear strike, the administration says our missile defenses can handle anything they can throw against us or our allies. If so it's not because of anything the president did. 'I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Thursday after North Korea's raging runt, Kim Jong-un, said Pyongyang was scrapping the 1953 armistice deal that ended the Korean War. He threatened a "preemptive" nuclear strike against the U.S. Carney added that "our recent success in returning...

South Korea vows strong response if provoked North Korea's armed forces are reported to be awaiting a "final order" from the country's supreme leader Kim Jong-un before launching a campaign against South Korea. Ahead of a ten-day joint computer-simulated drill to be conducted by the US and South Korea on 11 March, the North's most widely circulated mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said: "Our front-line military groups, the army, the navy and the air force, the anti-aircraft units and the strategic rocket units, who have entered the final all-out war stage, are awaiting the final order to strike." The mouthpiece said the...