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Category: WMD

June 21, 2010

South Korea Detects Radioactive Xenon Gas After N. Korea Fusion Boast

“Oh, you all laughed at me then!” he hissed, diabolically: Abnormal radiation was detected near the inter-Korean border days after North Korea claimed last month to have achieved a nuclear technology breakthrough, South Korea’s Science Ministry said Monday. [AP, Hyung-Jin Kim] The radiation detected was in the form of xenon gas, in levels eight times higher than normal. Given that none of North Korea’s known nuclear sites is near the DMZ, you have to assume that the plume dissipated considerably...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
May 17, 2010

North Korea Calls Israeli Foreign Minister an “Imbecile”

North Korea has reacted, and predictably, to the allegations of the Israeli Foreign Minister that it’s arming terrorists: A spokesman for Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry described Lieberman as an “ultra-rightist” and “an imbecile in diplomacy.” The spokesman, quoted by the North’s official news agency, said Israel was itself being criticized for its nuclear program and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. He also said it would never pardon Israel for “daring slander the dignified (North) by faking up sheer...
Categories Axis of Evil/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
May 12, 2010

North Korea Arms Terrorists, State Department Dozes

The Foreign Minister of Israel has become the first government official to openly accuse North Korea of arming terrorists since the U.S. government removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008: The Israeli foreign minister said on Wednesday that North Korean weapons seized in Thailand last year were headed for Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. [….] “With huge numbers of different weapons … (it had the) intention to smuggling these weapons to Hamas and to...
Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/Sanctions/Terrorism (NK)/WMD
April 20, 2010

Another Nuke Test in North Korea?

North Korea is preparing for a third atomic test that may come in May or June, South Korean broadcaster YTN reported on Tuesday, an act that could further isolate Pyongyang and complicate already troubled nuclear diplomacy. South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan dismissed the report, saying Seoul had seen no evidence, and the U.S. State Department also voiced doubts about its accuracy. “If North Korea was making such preparations, there would be related circumstances that can be detected … there...
Categories Six-Party Talks/WMD
April 5, 2010

Will South Korea Go Nuclear Next?

For more than a year, the Lee Administration has been talking about “closing the nuclear fuel cycle” with respect to the uranium it currently uses to produce electricity. Denials notwithstanding, I had concluded that President Lee had given up on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program, and worried that the limitations of America’s will weakened the sufficiency, in his mind, of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over which South Korea frets so much. But now, calls for South Korea to go nuclear...
Categories Proliferation/ROK Military/WMD
March 20, 2010

Axis? What Axis?

In the wake of reports that North Korea shipped raw uranium to Syria just before the al-Kibar strike, North Korea is now suspected of exporting yellowcake to Iran: Leonard Spector, a deputy director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, made the remarks Tuesday. Spector quoted reports as saying the 45 tons of what is known as “yellowcake” were then delivered to Iran via Turkey. The material would be sufficient for several nuclear weapons...
Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD
March 7, 2010

Purported Video of Kim Jong Il Commemorating Reopening of Suspected Chemical Weapons Plant

Starting yesterday, several news outlets had reported that North Korea had released recent video of Kim Jong Il appearing in Hamhung to mark the re-opening of a textile factory in Hamhung, but to my intense aggravation, none provided a link to the actual video. YouTube, however, does not disappoint: The video shows Kim waving to an assembled crowd with his right arm, and moving his left arm slightly to applaud … himself, presumably. Heil me. There are no shots showing...
Categories Kim Jong Il/WMD
March 2, 2010

Did North Korea Ship Yellowcake to Syria?

Say it with me: thank God Chris Hill came along in time to keep us safe: Syria in 2007 received approximately 45 tons of raw uranium from North Korea for use in producing fuel for a secret nuclear reactor, informed military and diplomatic sources told Kyodo News on Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 26). An Israeli air assault destroyed the undeclared reactor not long after Syria received shipment of the material and the “yellowcake” uranium is thought to have been sent...
Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD
February 13, 2010

Axis of Evil Watch

South Korea has told the Security Council that it seized garments “deemed to have military uses for chemical protection,” according to a report from Turkish Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, chairman of a committee that monitors implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea. The incident was one of four brought to the attention of the Security Council because of possible violations of sanctions intended to halt North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. Apakan also reported on Italy’s seizure of two luxury yachts...
Categories Axis of Evil/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
January 9, 2010

ROK Foreign Minister: North Korea Began Uranium Enrichment Program in Mid-1990’s

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said North Korea likely began its controversial uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons development in 1996, soon after it had agreed to halt its nuclear program in a deal with the United States. In an interview with Yonhap, Yu said much remains unknown about the North’s uranium program and how advanced it is. But he said it is clear that the program was launched “quite early. “It seems to me that the North began...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
December 17, 2009

North Korean Arms Shipment Linked to Iran and China

Did I call it or what? Weapons seized in Thailand from an impounded plane traveling from North Korea were likely destined for Iran, a high-ranking Thai government security official was quoted by Reuters as saying regarding the findings of a team investigating the arms. “Some experts believe the weapons may be going to Iran, which has bought arms from North Korea in the past,” said the official. The official was quoted as saying the Thai investigating team considered Iran the...
Categories "United" Nations/Axis of Evil/China & Korea/Iran/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
November 20, 2009

Der Spiegel on the Al Kibar Strike (or Axis, Schmaxis, Part 10)

Der Spiegel has printed a very extensive story on the Syrian nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar, the Israeli air strike that destroyed it, and the aftermath. I haven’t had time to get through the whole thing, but one thing I can say is how much more soundly I sleep knowing that all that “axis of evil” nonsense is finally behind us: According to information SPIEGEL has obtained from sources in Damascus, Assad has been considering taking a sensational political step. He...
Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD
November 17, 2009

It’s time for another installment of the KCNA drinking game!

I do not think that word means what you think it means. Citing facts to prove that from a historical point of view the imperialists look down upon those countries with weak military power, force them to meet their unilateral and brigandish demands and consider them as targets of their armed intervention and aggression, the article goes on: [KCNA, Nov. 9. 2009] Take a drink! If a country, though small, increases defence capability, attaching importance to military affairs, the imperialists...
Categories Propaganda/Unintended Humor/WMD
November 2, 2009

Yongbyon Reprocessing Plant “Restored to Its Earlier Conditions”

Who remembers the heyday of Agreed Framework II, when the foreign policy establishment united to educate the hoi polloi about all of the great unfolding achievements of diplomacy with the North Koreans? They told us that North Korea was removing fuel rods and dismantling in earnest.  Siegfried Hecker went to Yongbyon and returned to report, with a few qualifications, that “the DPRK leadership has made the decision to permanently shut down plutonium production” and that “the disablement actions taken to...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/WMD
October 28, 2009

Treasury Knocks Over Yet Another North Korean Bank

Phillip Goldberg and Stuart Levey have done more to advance U.S. interests in five months than the entire East Asia Bureau of our State Department has done in two decades: Treasury said in a statement that Amroggang Development Bank was being added to a list of proliferators of mass destruction because it was owned or controlled by North Korea’s Tanchon Commercial Bank. Tanchon was previously hit with sanctions by both the United States and the United Nations Security Council for...
Categories Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
October 9, 2009

N. Korean Containers Seized in S. Korea Contained Hazmat Suits Bound for Syria

Reports from unnamed government sources in the capital have stated that the four containers impounded in the port of Busan, and reported in the Handy Shipping Guide story recently, contained clothing “to guard against nuclear, biological or chemical infection. Syria was also pronounced as the intended destination and the goods were declared as either of Russian manufacture or copied from Russian original designs, probably by North Korea, where the items apparently originated. [Handy Shipping Guide] And to think we only...
Categories Proliferation/WMD
September 14, 2009

Another Nuke Test?

On Saturday, I had coffee with a very well-connected South Korean friend, who suggested in passing that North Korea might respond to this-or-that sanction with another nuke test. After having expostulated for the next 45 seconds about why such a move wouldn’t further North Korea’s interests at this time, I think I now understand why my friend just sat there and smiled while I yammered on: According to a high-level source in North Korea, Kim Jong-Il instructed at the meeting...
Categories Proliferation/WMD