North Korea fires missles

[classicman]

Will US send envoy after NKorea jails reporters?

The sentencing of two American journalists to 12 years' hard labor in North Korea on Monday sets the stage for possible negotiations with the reclusive nation for their release — perhaps involving an envoy from the United States.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Obama administration is "pursuing every possible approach that we can consider in order to persuade the North Koreans to release them and send these young women home."

She stressed that the reporters' case and Washington's efforts to punish North Korea for its recent nuclear test are "entirely separate matters."

"We think the imprisonment, trial and sentencing of Laura and Euna should be viewed as a humanitarian matter," Clinton said. "We hope that the North Koreans will grant clemency and deport them."

Pyongyang will likely try to use them as bargaining chips in an increasingly tense standoff with the U.S. over the North's recent nuclear and missile tests.

President Barack Obama "is deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities, and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release," said deputy White House spokesman William Burton.

Hope, concern... Kim has been doing this shit since I can remember. Newsweek had a great article (I can't find it online) on how he has repeatedly screwed the west "diplomatically."
China must get involved or nothing good is going to come of this. There is no way that diplomacy is going to solve the situation. Kim isn't interested and thats what it will take for it to work.

While it now appears to be only a question of time until an envoy is despatched, the Obama administration is treading carefully.

"If the Obama administration sends an envoy now to negotiate the release of the prisoners, it's highly likely that North Korea will want to discuss everything," Nicholas Szechenyi from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"So that individual, whoever it may be, will have to have something in response to the North Korean demands on the nuclear side."

What are we willing to concede if our ultimate goal in zero nukes? Whatever we offer, Kim sure isn't going to give up on them easily, if at all.

We can predict what will almost certainly follow. The Security Council will, at best, adopt another resolution that won’t be implemented; Russia and China, while expressing “outrage,” will call for a “balanced” approach; the U.S. Special Envoy on North Korea will speak at every opportunity about the need to resume the Talks while the State Department regional bureau will work over time to give Pyongyang what it wants in exchange for returning to the negotiations. For its part, when it determines that it has gone far enough, North Korea may offer a gesture of “good will,” such as freeing the two captive journalists after their show trial for “hostile acts.” And in time, the North will likely pause its reprocessing campaign, perhaps when it runs out of spent fuel rods. The United States will then provide oil and other assistance to get the North back. But back to normal means Pyongyang will be paid even more to stay at the table, while all the time resisting meaningful constraints on its nuclear programs. And then there will be another walk out, another crisis, and the process will start again. I know the playbook, having several times seen the sequence of events unfold from positions in the White House and State Department under President George W. Bush and earlier in a number of policy offices at the Pentagon.

Whatever the administration decides to do, the clock is certainly ticking on this one.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by classicman

China must get involved or nothing good is going to come of this. There is no way that diplomacy is going to solve the situation. Kim isn't interested and thats what it will take for it to work.

I would be really surprised if China did decide to do anything. Their "outrage" is bulllshit. The nukes are probably their technology.

What are we willing to concede if our ultimate goal in zero nukes? Whatever we offer, Kim sure isn't going to give up on them easily, if at all.

I don't think there is anything realistic that can be done to stop NK from getting more nuclear weapons. An attack is out of the question, economic sanctions won't have an effect, and China (the regional power) is not going to work with us on it.


Here is an article laying out the military capabilities of North Korea. They are quite impressive.

Following North Korea's latest spate of brinkmanship -- including everything from nuclear and missile tests to bombastic rhetoric -- one cannot help but wonder how worried we should be. Suddenly, military confrontation or worse, full-scale conflict on the Korean Peninsula, looks less like a far-off nightmare and more like an impending threat. If it happened, what kind of punches could North Korea throw?

Many assume that the country's military -- like its people -- has been starved by the regime's isolation. But the opposite is true: The key reason why the populace is so short on resources (particularly fuel and food) is because the majority of these have been routed directly to troops. As easy as it seems to dismiss the starved country and its sickly leader, North Korea's conventional military has adjusted to dire economic times and is far more capable than many analysts realize. Pyongyang's armed forces, not just its nukes, could wreak havoc on the region.

There are two aspects of today's North Korean military that warrant a careful look. The first is the near two-decades-old build up of North Korea's asymmetric forces (in this case, forces that carry out unconventional missions). The second matter is reorganization -- much of which has resulted in a significant portion of the conventional forces being moved closer to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) such that they are perpetually poised to attack the South.

North Korea has three types of asymmetric forces poised to attack South Korea, organized into long-range artillery units, short-range ballistic missile units (SRBMs), and Special Operations Forces. In the first case, Pyongyang's long-range artillery includes indigenously produced versions of Soviet 240-mm multiple rocket launchers and 170-mm guns. The country has significantly beefed up the numbers of both weapons systems along the DMZ since the late 1990s. And because the systems have ranges of 40,000 meters or more, this means that at least 250 of them are now positioned in range of Seoul. They could target the South Korean capital and surrounding areas in Kyonggi province on a moment's notice. And to exacerbate the threat, between 5 and 20 percent of the systems are thought to be equipped with chemical munitions.

All this means that the potential damage from artillery alone, according to estimates from both South Korean and U.S. Defense officials, could reach 200,000 casualties -- and that's just on the first day of an attack. If war broke out, North Korea's artillery could shell Seoul, South Korea's political, commercial, and cultural center, back to the 1980s in a matter of hours.

Short-range ballistic missiles are the second asymmetric component of North Korea's arsenal. Since the 1990s, Pyongyang has worked to enhance its ballistic missile capability in numbers, command and control, and doctrine. The North Koreans now possess 200 No Dong missiles and more than 600 SCUDs, the latter with ranges between 300 and 850 km -- enough to target literally every inch of the South Korean landmass. North Korea has also added the SS-21 system, an old Soviet platform, to its missile arsenal. Known as the KN-02, this indigenously produced version of the SS-21 uses solid fuel and can be moved very quickly. With a range of at least 120 km and greater accuracy than most other missiles, it could easily target U.S. bases south of Seoul.

These first two components -- artillery and missile -- would be used in tandem if an attack took place, thanks to a reorganization of North Korea's military during the late 1990s. Both types of forces are now commanded by artillery officers, who would (in accordance with their training doctrine) consider missile systems to simply be artillery systems with a longer range and would target them accordingly. In an attack, many of North Korea's artillery systems might aim for Seoul and much of the surrounding province, while simultaneous missile attacks hit every key node in South Korea.

As for North Korea's Special Operations Forces (SOFs), South Korean estimates now place their numbers at as many as 180,000 men. North Korean SOFs are probably among the best- trained, best fed, and most motivated of all the forces in their military. They routinely undergo intense training that includes carrying 50 pounds of sand for 10 km in one hour, hiking in extreme cold weather, martial arts methodologies that include fighting with three to 15 opponents, and even using spoons and forks as weapons. Troops also engage in intense marksmanship training and even daily knife-throwing training. They can attack quickly, reaching key nodes in South Korea by aircraft, through tunnels in the DMZ, or even by maritime vessel.

The combined use of North Korea's asymmetric forces would almost certainly incite panic during any attack on the South. In the confusion, it is possible that enough cracks might open in South Korea's and the United States' defenses to allow Northern maneuver forces (infantry, armor, and mechanized forces) to move forward and take ground. (It is no coincidence that, over the past 15 years, North Korea has moved many of its conventional forces to forward positions -- often near invasion corridors along the border.) Put all this together, and an attack would inflict casualties to the tune of hundreds of thousands -- the majority of them civilian and many in Seoul.

Despite the primitive state of many of North Korea's systems compared with those of the United States and South Korea, Pyongyang's ability to make creative use of its limited resources is indeed alarming. The world would do well to look beyond just the nukes.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...?story_id=4972