You know, it used to be that when a nuclear nation threatened us, it made bigger headlines.
(CNN)North Korea threatened to “retaliate against the U.S. with tremendous muscle” if it didn’t cancel multinational military exercises scheduled to begin Monday.
South Korea conducts the yearly exercises, called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, with the United States and other allies “to enhance … readiness, protect the region and maintain stability on the Korean peninsula,” according to a statement from the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command.
Just as the event itself is annual, so too are the condemnations and threats of retaliation from the reclusive North Korean regime.
That cautionary example is, of course, North Korea. The United States went down this road with the “Hermit Kingdom” in 1994, with the negotiation of the so-called Agreed Framework. Under its terms, North Korea was supposed to dismantle its nuclear facilities — then capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium — and receive, in return, help building less advanced reactors for peaceful purposes, as well as shipments of heavy fuel oil to offset energy shortages. But in 2002, U.S. intelligence discovered that the North was cheating — buying materials apparently intended for uranium enrichment. After years of contentious negotiations, North Korea finally fessed up in 2010.
Over the past decade, North Korea has carried out three nuclear tests and now has about 10 bombs. Within five years it could have another 10, according to the U.S.-Korea Institute at my university. The North also has a robust missile program, with a fleet of short- and medium-range missiles, and claims it could mount a nuclear warhead on one. The head of the U.S. Northern Command has publicly agreed. Since the 1990s, North Korea has been working on a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM); given its successful launch of a space satellite with a large, three-stage rocket in 2012, it appears just short of that goal.
In the wake of the Iran agreement, North Korea is now coming under U.S. and international pressure to return to the bargaining table, which it abandoned in 2008 after years of what were called “six-party talks” (the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea). But the North’s ambassadors in China and Russia slammed the door on a renewal just last week.
Why is North Korea so adamantly against talks, and what are the prospects for changing that? The primary motive is simple: regime survival. Long squeezed by international sanctions and regarded as the globe’s most repressive political system, North Korea revolves around a cult of personality centered on the Kim dynasty. The leadership has long seen nuclear weapons as the key to survival, often citing Libya as its own cautionary example. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi surrendered his nuclear program in 2004 and was killed in 2011, as his regime collapsed during Libya’s violent version of the so-called Arab Spring.
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea executed its defense chief by putting him in front of an anti-aircraft gun at a firing range, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers, which would be the latest in a series of high-level purges since Kim Jong Un took charge.
Hyon Yong Chol, who headed the isolated nuclear-capable country’s military, was charged with treason, including disobeying Kim and falling asleep during an event at which North Korea’s young leader was present, according to South Korean lawmakers briefed in a closed-door meeting with the spy agency on Wednesday.
His execution was watched by hundreds of people, according to NIS intelligence shared with lawmakers.
While steadfastly denying involvement in the hack, North Korea accused U.S. President Barack Obama of calling for “symmetric counteraction.”
“The DPRK has already launched the toughest counteraction. Nothing is more serious miscalculation than guessing that just a single movie production company is the target of this counteraction. Our target is all the citadels of the U.S. imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans,” a report on state-run KCNA read.
“Our toughest counteraction will be boldly taken against the White House, the Pentagon and the whole U.S. mainland, the cesspool of terrorism,” the report said, adding that “fighters for justice” including the “Guardians of Peace” — a group that claimed responsibility for the Sony attack — “are sharpening bayonets not only in the U.S. mainland but in all other parts of the world.”
