Now look at those chubby cheeks, I don't feel in the least threatened.
Posted on 12/25/2002 12:07:30 AM PST by HAL9000
SEOUL, Dec 24 (AFP) - North Korea's military upped its rhetoric against the United States on Tuesday, urging all soldiers and civilians to become "human bombs" in the event of war amid an escalating nuclear crisis on the peninsula.The sabre-rattling statement from defence minister Kim Il-Chol came as the North was removing the last UN monitoring equipment from its frozen nuclear facilities in defiance of strong US warnings.
"All the officers and men of the KPA (Korean People's Army) should ... prepare themselves to be human bombs and fighters ready to blow up themselves in order to defend the headquarters of the revolution," the North's defense chief said in a statement.
The statement, which was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), marked the 11th anniversary of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il becoming the communist country's top military commander.
The statement accused the United States of "driving the situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" and said the communist country was ready to hit back.
"If they ... dare provoke a nuclear war, the army and people of the DPRK (North Korea) led by Kim Jong-Il, the invincible commander, will rise up to mete out determined and merciless punishment to the US imperialist aggressors with the might of singlehearted unity more powerful than A-bomb."
The statement was read to a meeting attended by senior North Korean communist party and military officials in Pyongyang Tuesday, KCNA said.
"The US hawks are arrogant enough to groundlessly claim that the DPRK has pushed ahead with a 'nuclear program,' bringing its hostile policy toward the DPRK to an extremely dangerous phase," it added.
The United States and North Korea have been locked in a standoff over Pyongyang's mothballed nuclear weapons program.
The crisis reached a critical point on Tuesday when North Korea finally removed all the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seals and disabled surveillance cameras at its key nuclear facilities.
The nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Pyongyang, was sealed under the 1994 Agreed Framework with the United States.
But North Korea has removed IAEA seals from the Yongbyon site, which includes a five-megawatt reactor, 8,000 spent fuel rods in a cooling pond and a radioactive reprocessing laboratory.
The reactivation of the nuclear facilities could produce weapons-grade plutonium in three to four months, enough to make at least three nuclear bombs.
North Korea said it would unfreeze its nuclear facilities because it was in desperate need of nuclear power to meet its energy crisis.
The United States and its allies, including Japan and South Korea, have since embarked on intense global consultations to pressure North Korea.
The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.
***BBC NEWS: "NORTH KOREA 'REPAIRING' NUCLEAR REACTOR" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "US intelligence officials believe North Korea may already have a small number of nuclear bombs and the material to make more. The outgoing head of the US Senate foreign affairs committee said that the North could now have the potential to make four to five additional nuclear weapons within months.") (122402)
I think we're overdue for a demonstration of some serious whoop-ass, delivered courtesy of the USA. We'll start with Iraq... if they try to roll out the NBC weapons, we NUKE the sorry bastards, and put them out of our misery...
And then we tell Kim Ill-Hung from N.Korea, any more from you... And you're next.
Petty thugs respect only two things- superior firepower, brandished by someone who will use it...
Now look at those chubby cheeks, I don't feel in the least threatened.
The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.
This kind of patter is in the 1950s house style of the Chinese Communist Party. Compare Kim Jong Il's screed with this chestnut, purportedly authored by Mao Tse Tung:
"Riding roughshod everywhere, U.S. imperialism has made itself the enemy of the people of the world and has increasingly isolated itself. Those who refuse to be enslaved will never be cowed by the atom bombs and hydrogen bombs in the hands of the U.S. imperialists. The raging tide of the people of the world against the U.S. aggressors is irresistible. Their struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys will assuredly win still greater victories."
"Statement Supporting the Panamanian People's Just Patriotic Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism" (January 12, 1964), People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys, 2nd ed., pp. 9-10.
This vintage Communist style has certain interesting features from a stylistic point of view. It is cartoonish to the point of parody. America is always 'reactionary, backward, decaying'. The Communists are always 'vigorous, revolutionary and progressive'. It contains elements of apocalyptic speech that would not be out of place in a revival tent. This kind of writing was very common in the 1960s, as American revolutionary wannabes tried to desperately ape the great Mao Tse Tung. American Communists like William Hinton were almost pitch-perfect imitators of this bizzare accent.
But to hear it again in 2002 is almost like hearkening to a voice from out of the tomb. It is like receiving a missive from the Land That Time Forgot. American liberals have altered their style to make it more contemporary, but the North Koreans are so hermetic that their thought patterns are stuck in an era when people watched Gomer Pyble, the original Star Trek and drove VW Kombis.
The scary thing is that these crazy gomers also have nuclear weapons.
The brilliant new military strategy that is sweeping the world.
Herein lies the crux of the biscuit. Either you are in the army and well-fed in NK or you're a starving civilian.
They hate us, SK and most of all Japan. The terrain in NK is much more mountainous than SK... nukes would be less effective.
Out of the 36,000 troops we have there, my guess would be that most of them are support orientated.
If we take them on... it's gonna be a real pisser.
Doesn't S Korea have an army ? Why, after 50+ years are american troops still there ?
vsm
Why the 36K American Forces? They are a spearhead essentially. There are forces all over the Far East that could be brought to bear on the Korean Peninsula. My suspicion is that the "Dear Leader" is masking some internal problems of his own and trying to blackmail the world.
i'd imagine a drone or two well placed near that nuclear plant might change the "dear leaders'" attitude,,blame it on al quaida,,they don't like anybody,,, bwwaaaaahhhaaaaaaaa
vsm
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