Also, I swear I remember reading, a while back, that NK had long range missile capability that could reach most of the continental US as well. Is this true or false?
N Korea Said 3 Years From Hitting All 50 States With Missiles
By Dale Hurd Reporter - CBN
2-21-99
CBN News has uncovered more satellite evidence that North Korea is working to perfect a rocket capable of hitting the United States mainland-something that has been confirmed by Japan's defense agency this week.
Despite a continuing famine, this week North Korea pledged to build up its military even further. Now, a report by the Congressional Research Service explains where the North Koreans are getting some of the money for their military. Starvation has killed as much as ten percent of North Korea's population in the past three years, yet North Korea continues to advance its nuclear missile program, and threatens to annihilate the United States.
How does the North Korean regime manage not only to survive, but add to its military power? The answer is crime. North Korea is raising huge sums of cash by selling home grown opium and methamphetamines around the world, and by passing millions in counterfeit U-S currency-even as it scares the west into giving it food and cash. "The North Koreans know how to play brinkmanship. It's always to get concessions. They know how to play Washington, D.C., the Clinton Administration, and they continuously get concessions," says Dr. William Taylor, one of America's foremost experts on North Korea.
It's estimated that North Korea brings in about 100-million dollars a year by drug dealing, smuggling and other criminal enterprises. South Korea says the North prints 15-million dollars in counterfeit U-S currency each year. And criminal proceeds undoubtedly helped fund the Taepo-Dong I intermediate range missile, under development. Work also continues on a longer range missile, the Taepo-Dong II, which someday could hit targets in the western U-S. Satellite imagery shows a very large wind tunnel complex, almost the size of a football field, for testing a very large rocket. It also shows a launch pad with a road leading underground where missiles are stored.
Last year CBN News reported on an underground nuclear complex near Yongbyon where North Korea is hiding a revived nuclear weapons program. It's 25 miles from the nuclear production facility in Yongbyon. Under a 1994 agreement, this plutonium production site was supposed to be shut down. But photos from 1997 show the same type of pollution in the river as it did before the treaty. An expert has concluded the plant was still in operation.
While North Koreans starve, and the U-S gives tens of millions of dollars in food aid, it's reported that Pyongyang has been using farms to grow poppies for opium, rather than food crops. "It's a country that is starving. It can exist, the regime can exist, only on the largesse of the United States, Japan, South Korea, none of whom want a war on the Korean Peninsula," says Taylor.
So aid continues to the North, and Dr. Taylor warns that it has become the number one threat to our national security. "The North Koreans are known to have - this is clear - chemical and biological warheads. The CIA says they have already extracted enough fissionable nuclear material to build one or two nuclear devices. They are away by about three years, from being able to hit anywhere among the U-S 50 states. And we have no missile defense.
The North Koreans understand all this, and they're playing it for what it's worth." Taylor says, too, if the world would only cut off the aid, the North Korean government would fall. But that's unlikely, because of North Korea's campaign of intimidation, and the world's fear.
The two-stage Taepo Dong 2 could hit Alaska, Hawaii and possibly the western continental United States. A three-stage version, which would be more difficult to engineer, could hit targets anywhere in the United States, intelligence analyses say.
That's a big reason behind the U.S. drive to build an anti-missile testing facility in Alaska, which within two years will have five prototype interceptors in silos near Fairbanks.
Regarding re: the Korean peninsula, the prime sites in the South currently targeted by intermediate range N. Korean missiles are the following: Seoul, Osan (US Airforce site), Kunsan (US Airforce site) and several others. These are targeted at launch complexes in the western part of the DPRK, while the East Coast of the DPRK contains complexes (also from which the Taepodong was shot over northern Japan several years ago and came down in the Pacific Ocean), for striking major population centers in Tokyo.
Good question. It's not mine. nK uses their nuclear weapons program for 3 things, IMHO:
I don't think most Americans understand how their thinking on war differs from Europeans and Asians (not that it should drive what we do). We haven't felt the devastating impacts of a war on our soil for 140 years, and never by a foreign invader (I don't count the British as a foreign invader of the US, for obvious reasons). These folks still have living relatives (and lots of dead ones) that remember and scars on the buildings and landscape. Hell, we've still got folks pissed off over the "War of Aggression" here.
It'll be interesting how this pans out, maybe we do strike the facilities. I'd let them sweat it out while we push for support for Iraq.