North Korea May Be Preparing Missile Launch
September 23, 2004
he United States and Japan have detected signs that North Korea is preparing to launch a ballistic missile capable of reaching almost anywhere in Japan, Japanese government sources said on Thursday.
The preparations were detected after the reclusive communist state refused to take part in a fourth round of six-party talks on ending its nuclear ambitions and said it would never give up its nuclear deterrent.
Tokyo and Washington had detected the signs after analyzing data from reconnaissance satellites and radio traffic, the Japanese government sources said.
North Korean military vehicles, soldiers and possibly missile engineers were converging on several Rodong missile bases in the northeastern part of the isolated communist state, they said.
The signs were first detected on Tuesday, the sources said.
"At this stage we don't think North Korea's missile launch is imminent," one source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "But we still don't know whether North Korea is serious about missile launches."
Pyongyang said on Thursday the United States had chosen Japan as a "strategic vantage point" to implement a pre-emptive attack, a move it said aimed to bring North Korea under U.S. control.
"(The United States) plans to use Japan as an advance base in hurling into the Korean Peninsula a task force from its mainland and other areas in case of its emergency," said Rodong Sinmun, the North's main daily newspaper. (snipped)
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It looks this morning as if everyone is trying to calm the situation. Saying it is an exercise and giving them a way of walking this back.
The threat to turn Japan into a "sea of nuclear fire" is the most explicit threat in years if not decades. They didn't threaten a retaliatory nuclear strike on Japan for an American nuclear strike on North Korea.
They threatened a *pre-emptive* and *nuclear* strike against Japan even if we never so much as lift a finger to attack them.
Running your mouth off like that during a period of extreme tension is a provocative and reckless brinkmanship even for the North Koreans.
Saying that kind of thing while you are at that moment mobilizing troops and equipment at missile bases is not "brinkmanship".
It is an attempt at "suicide by cop".
Kim is losing it. The boys in Beijing better do something quick or we will end up staring each other down through nuclear gunsights.
World War I started with an individual act of violence and pulled all the nations of Europe into a war none of them expected or wanted.
The next World War could start with a sudden and unexpected act that escalates into open war that pulls us all into an Asian conflagration that no one wanted.