WMD – Page 2

March 12, 2015

Russia’s nuclear cooperation with N. Korea violates at least three UNSC resolutions

My final excerpt from the draft U.N. Panel of Experts report is a lengthy graf (below the fold) describing long-standing and continuing Russian assistance to, and cooperation with, some of the same scientists involved in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. It’s hard for me to understand how this is not a violation of the UNSC sanctions. Despite the fact that key scientists in designated North Korean agencies (for example, its General Bureau of Atomic Energy) were invited to do research in...

Proliferation/Russia & Korea/Sanctions/WMD

March 4, 2015

North Korea evades U.N. sanctions with shell games, spell games, and whack-a-mole

On any given day, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control may publish several pages of new designations for the list of Specially Designated Nationals. Inevitably, most of the designations will be designations of aliases. That’s because one of the oldest sanctions-evasion tricks is renaming an entity, so that when banks type its name into their software, they don’t get a hit that might warn them to decline the transaction, block the account, or file a Suspicious Activity Report....

"United" Nations/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD

January 12, 2015

U.S., S. Korea reject N. Korea’s nuke test offer

North Korea has offered to stop testing nuclear weapons — something that several U.N. Security Council resolutions already prohibit — if President Obama cancels annual military exercises (full KNCA article below the fold.) Which sounds something like a bank robber promising to stop robbing you if you disable your alarm system and leave the safe unlocked. Which is almost exactly what the Korean Defense Ministry thought. To his credit, President Obama saw this for what it was: “The DPRK (North...

North-South/Proliferation/WMD

January 9, 2015

Der Spiegel: N. Koreans helping Syria to nuke up. Again.

Evidently, I refreshed your memory of the 2007 Al-Kibar reactor raid just in time for this cheery piece of news: Der Spiegel, citing anonymous intelligence sources, reports that Syria “has apparently built a new nuclear facility at a secret location” in the mountains near the Lebanese border. The conclusion is based, in part, on signals intelligence: [T]he clearest proof that it is a nuclear facility comes from radio traffic recently intercepted by a network of spies. A voice identified as belonging to a...

Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD

December 29, 2014

If S. Korea’s missile defense worries China, just wait till the neighbors start nuking up.

The deployment of ballistic missile defense systems around North Korea by the United States and its allies could be an effective way to change China’s strategic thinking about Pyongyang, a U.S. congressional report said. The Congressional Research Service made the point in a recent report, “North Korea: U.S. Relations, Nuclear Diplomacy, and Internal Situation,” saying Beijing would find it not in its national interest if provocative actions by the North lead to increased military deployments in the region. [Yonhap] Here’s...

China/Proliferation/WMD

December 29, 2014

Bruce Bechtol on the John Batchelor show

The title: North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era: A New International Security Dilemma. When you’re done with that, Bechtol has written a paper arguing that North Korea’s proliferation activity (contrary to some views) is increasing, and discusses ways to disrupt it. One of the many tragic consequences of the Syrian Civil War is that it has increased an old customer’s demand for North Korea’s wares.

Proliferation/WMD

November 18, 2014

I heard Obama told Putin that Kim Jong Un was too big a wuss to test a nuke to punish the U.N.

Before the committee voted Tuesday, North Korea warned that it might retaliate with further nuclear tests. Trying to punish it over human rights “is compelling us not to refrain any further from conducting nuclear tests,” said Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign-ministry adviser for U.N. and human rights issues, according to the Associated Press. [Washington Post, Anna Fifield] Oh, dear God, please, please do this.

"United" Nations/Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)/WMD

November 4, 2014

How much should we worry about N. Korea’s missiles? Basho explains.

My post on North Korea’s alarming progression toward a nuclear missile capability inspires a knowledgeable reader and friend to send me an extended comment. Because he has asked me to withhold his name and where he works, we’ll call him “Basho, an observer of Things, and international affairs raconteur.” Without saying more, I’m confident that Basho has a basis to know what he’s talking about. I print his comments in their entirety, unedited except that I embedded his hyperlinks. ~ ~ ~ There are...

Anju Links/Missiles/WMD

November 1, 2014

And in other news, North Korea now has nuclear warheads

So last week, when I was busy writing about the U.N. and human rights, the Commanding General of U.S. Forces Korea went to a press conference at the Pentagon and said, “I believe [the North Koreans] have the capability to miniaturize a device at this point and they have the technology to potentially deliver what they say they have.” The general added that even if we haven’t seen a test, we’re at the point where we have to operate under...

Missiles/WMD

September 9, 2014

IAEA: Yongbyon is running

“Since late August 2013, the Agency has observed, through analysis of satellite imagery, steam discharges and the outflow of cooling water at the 5 MW(e) reactor, signatures which are consistent with the reactor’s operation.” [via Reuters] If I’m nonplussed, it’s because I keep hearing this reported again and again. I’ll know that South Korea is more serious about disarming North Korea than it is about profiteering from slave labor when Park Geun-Hye tells Kim Jong-Un to choose between Yonbyon and Kaesong.

WMD

August 6, 2014

Insiders debate North Korea’s EMP capability

The simplest electro-magnetic pulse or EMP weapons are, put simply, nuclear weapons detonated at high altitude. A high-altitude nuclear blast would overload and destroy electrical circuits and infrastructure, and create blackouts over wide areas for extended periods of time. Imagine your life without the internet, telephone, electricity, or cars — in short, being part of a 21st Century population trying to sustain itself with Colonial Williamsburg technology — and you get the idea. Without the means to recover from that sort of attack...

NK Military/ROK Military/WMD

August 4, 2014

Obama’s soft line on North Korea sanctions has failed.

AT LEAST ONE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER thinks North Korea has never been nastier to the United States, and if its racist attacks on President Obama aren’t proof enough of that, maybe this message from North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador, Ri Tong-Il, is: He accused the United States of using its military power to deliberately subvert any dialogue between North and South Korea — which is also a standard North Korean assertion. But in a variant of that theme, he said...

"United" Nations/Appeasement/Missiles/Proliferation/WMD

May 9, 2014

N. Korea threatens annual missile, nuke tests

Our setting is a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the prevention of WMD proliferation, last Wednesday. Ironically, a diplomat from South Korea, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, chaired the meeting. The turn of North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador, Ri Tong Il, came. When it did, Ri added further evidence to support the Theory of North Korean Exceptionalism — that is, North Korea is neither inclined nor expected to follow the simplest of rules that apply to everyone else on earth. Ri...

"United" Nations/WMD

April 29, 2014

Just test the damn thing already.

So the news this week is that the Obama Administration, which for the last five years has stayed its hand from sanctioning North Korea because of Chinese sensitivities, has just blocked the assets of top members of Vladimir Putin’s government over their seizure of the Crimea. That sounds like an effective way to piss them off, but I can’t see how it poses a serious threat to Russia’s economy or Putin’s domestic support, or how it will deter his next aggression. (If you want to...

Sanctions/U.S. & Korea/WMD

November 27, 2013

North Korea approaching provocation phase of its “vicious cycle”

North Korea’s bipolar cycle is now familiar to most Korea watchers, including the President of South Korea. The North pursues its nuclear weapons capability with consistent determination in all phases of that cycle, but not always with consistent ostentation. There are periodic acts of satellite theater — a new excavation here, a new launch pad there, or steam from a cooling tower. Words vacillate between conciliation (often cryptic) and belligerence (but mostly, belligerence). You can’t really time North Korea’s cycles...

Propaganda/WMD

September 12, 2013

Can North Korea have both Kaesong and Yongbyon?

Who is the real Park Geun Hye? The uneasy coexistence of two headlines may soon tell us. The first headline tells us that, six months after North Korea withdrew its workers, the Kaesong Industrial Park will soon restart. The second tells us that North Korea’s reactor at Yongbyon already has. Both of these developments are bad news for those who want to see North Korea disarmed, for reasons I explained here. But if Park is really as tough as some...

North-South/Sunshine/WMD

September 11, 2013

The Syria-North Korea Axis

After watching North Korea get away with shipping anti-aircraft missiles to terrorists and its past chemical and nuclear proliferation to Syria, it’s gratifying to see people catch onto North Korea’s role in the tragedy in Syria. There are several more op-eds and stories on this today, all of them well worth reading: Bruce Bechtol, writing in the Korea Times: “North Korea has designed and built at least two chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Indeed, despite the lack of statements coming from...

Axis of Evil/Geopolitics/Proliferation/WMD

February 14, 2013

AP Exclusive! North Korea’s nuke test a cry for peace

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — AP Pyongyang has all the logic and perspective of KCNA Pyongyang and none of the guilty pleasures of KCNA’s prose. The way North Korea sees it, only bigger weapons and more threatening provocations will force Washington to come to the table to discuss what Pyongyang says it really wants: peace. [….] North Korea has long cited the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, and what it considers a...

AP Watch/WMD

Category: WMD