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North Korea Conducts Nuclear Test
viyh writes "North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Monday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a ruling party official as saying.
A magnitude 4.7 earthquake was recorded by the USGS in North Korea.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has called an emergency meeting of cabinet ministers over the test, Yonhap said."
Yeah, but it only takes one person with access, opportunity, and a death wish to take everyone with them.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2308/the-second-north-korean-nuclear-test provides a sober view of the latest test as well as other Korean and arms control related http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/acw?q=korean&sa=Search topics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCmqzrFL26M
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." --Mark Twain
Whole N Korea thing is something like a troll guy who begs for ''replies'' or getting banned until he gets the ultimate attention.
There were no news about N Korea for a while and bam, they explode a nuke.
Can a country troll? They seem to be able to do it.
If they go Nuclear, you won't be able to figure it.
Exploding nukes underground is so backwards technology or done to get attention. See the top500.org , you will see they are the documented ones. Japan has hit number 1 very easily just 2 years ago. They have companies like NEC, Hitachi and many more. They can build a super computer or use existing super computer instead of actually blowing stuff up.
I am saying this to people who thinks just because Russia and USA doesn't blow stuff up, nukes are over. Nukes just explode digitally these days which means they must be progressing way better than ''Lets blow this thing and see what it does'' ages.
I'm not referring specifically to nuke tests. I'm referring to the threats that North Korea has made to the West, mostly relating to medium-range missile tests. Also, I'm not American and I couldn't care less about partisan politics in that country. As far as I'm concerned, there are very few differences between the two major parties as they're both financed and mostly controlled by major corporations.
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I am saying this to people who thinks just because Russia and USA doesn't blow stuff up, nukes are over. Nukes just explode digitally these days which means they must be progressing way better than ''Lets blow this thing and see what it does'' ages.
There is a difference. The nuke testing done on computers by the USA and Russia is done for purposes of maintenance of current stockpiles and was key to implementing the 1992 moratorium on testing. The simulations aren't generally about simulating explosions, they are about simulating decay and related aging of the current stockpiles so that we can know what nukes will still go boom if we launch them.
In the US, the federal program that handles this stuff (and puts a lot of systems on the Top500 list) is ASCI - the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Seems to be working fairly well so far.
That's because the US is a Republic, not a Democracy.
I knew the Bene Gesserit had to have something to do with it!!!
Yes India and Pakistan, not to mention the other ones that are suspect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
It isn't necessarily a nuke that could be fitted into a missile
The test is being reported as an 'Hiroshima' size yield: around 20 kilotons.
This doesn't mean they have a fully-funtional nuke in the moden sense of the word. The Hiroshima bomb was basically a large gun that fired a chunk of 90% U-235 into another chunk of Uranium, and was a proof-of-concept that was simple and guaranteed to work. And big: not possible to mount on a Taepodong-2. They have hundreds of kilos of Uranium from their pre-2007 nuclear power industry that can be enriched for this type of bomb.
Until they can show they're testing nukes using shaped Plutonium and timed explosives, this could be just bravado to stir up support for the military as Kim Jong-Il hands power over to one of his sons. Not necessaily technical achievement.
Well, Im not going to even comment on the rest of your post, but in your mind, if Korea destroys itself, the first thing that comes into your mind are Korean car companies?
And you know, this being slashdot and all, maybe you heard of a little company named Samsung, which is just one the biggest semiconductor companies in the entire world and the largest manufacturer of DRAM and Flash memory chips, not to mention hard disks and LCD technology?
As for the rest, suffice to say that I strongly disagree with you.
Which just furthers my point. If the Chinese goverment really worries about an invasion of U.S. soliders, they are seriously deluded.
Heck, in WWII, the planed invasion of Japan, a beaten, firebombed nation (although not nuked yet) with less than a twentieth the population of China now, was estimated to cause a MILLION or more allied casualties. That was one of the biggest arguments that was given to nuke Japan. Even if we take nukes off the table, a plain old-invasion of China would make WWII casualty figures look like chump change.
I see why the North Koreans would really like nukes, but it still doesn't make sense to me from China's point of view. I would place stronger odds on the Koreas' uniting sometime in the next 50 years than not. Language, culture and blood are much stronger long-term ties than country. Then, they'll have a unified, nuclear armed Korea right on their border. Which will likely encourage a nuclear armed Japan (which they might do much sooner as a result of North Korea's tests anyway). Is encouraging a nuclear arms race on your borders really a good idea? I can't see how having a few more heavily armed, somewhat paranoid neighbors benefits you.
You wrote "I think the only way that communism can succeed is if the people in charge can manage to keep all outside influences from reaching their people."
Very insightful and perceptive. It's Lifton's first condition.
dude i dunno if you have worked at a big company, but they pretty much pay people the same no matter what they do, as well. except for certain jobs, like some managers... they typically try to pay as little as the market allows, and give as much as possible to their top brass and CEO. the people who improve processes or do good work on projects get no bonuses or raises, and often the credit for their work gets stolen by brown nosing butt lickers who climb the corporate ladder.
Number 1 is not technically true, they have a very large reserve army which can give that appearance..but South Korea has a similarly sized armed force which is much more heavily armed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_size_of_armed_forces
The Wood Engineer
Maybe? The US gives nearly $10M a day in aid to Israel in direct cash, and billions a year in military equipment/assistance/discounting. It gives more aid to the average Israeli citizen than it does the average US citizen. I think the "neither confirm or deny" stance of Israel on nuclear weaponry is stretching even the most avid Michael Bay movie fan's sense of plausible and credible deniability at this point.
... South East Asia...
I think you mean North East Asia.
Secondly North Korea has vast amounts of artillery aimed at Seoul, the capital of South Korea. It is theorized that if attacked they would shell Seoul.
This point can't be emphasized enough: not only are there literally thousands of (somewhat crude) artillery pieces along the North/South Korean border, but it's widely believed that they are equipped with chemical warfare shells. In practice, North Korea doesn't really need nukes to bring massive devastation and megadeaths to South Korea: their artillery can do much more damage than a dozen 50 Kiloton nukes. Before taken out, the Korean artillery can bring pandemonium to the South, and the NK leadership wouldn't hesitate a second to do this - after all, they didn't much mind about millions of their own people who starved to death, or hundreds of thousands being killed in their concentration camps.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Educate thyself.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
Where and when did communism work?
Never met a Hudderite? There's plenty of small-scale communes that've worked just fine.
Of course, the GP is wrong in that no large scale deployment of communism has ever existed.
Japan occupied Korea for the first half of the 20th century and ran the entire country like a concentration camp. Koreans weren't allowed to speak their own language or acknowledge their own heritage. They didn't even keep their own names.
The occupation didn't end until the end of World War 2 and underscored the more well-known rape of Eastern China, commonly known as "the Rape of Nanjing."
There is a lot to be said about this, so here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule
Japan was once a violent empire. This ended roughly around the same time it had two nuclear bombs dropped on it. Strangely enough, this made Japan one of the most peaceful countries in the world.
Japan hides it's brutal history from it's children, unfortunately.
Sadly, Korea has very little left from the time before the occupation. Most historic places in Korea were built ten-to-twenty years ago.
I think your figures are wrong. When I made my military service in the artillery our guns could shoot about 21 km and they where of an older model. The newer model could shot further and this was standard 15 cm artillery.
As far as I know, battleships of WWII could fire to the horizon and could possible fire beyond it today with better aiming - according to Wikipedia an Iowa class battleship could fire it's 40cm guns at targets 39km away.
I wouldn't be suprised if NK has artillery that can reach at least 40 km which is close enough to hit Seoul if you add chemical or biological weapons.
Yep, the stuff is still front-loaded. Several years ago on Nightline, when Ted Koppel was still host, he asked the retired American general who had been in charge what would happen if worse came to worse and the balloon went up. The old warrior thought for a moment, and responded "We would see a period of high-intensity warfare not see since WWII, if then." I still think that that's the scariest thing I've ever heard on television... and it's a scenario which might yet play out. The DPRK couldn't sustain high-intesnity warfare for as long nowdays, but punching big holes in Seoul would be the least of it...
The North Korean nuclear program is based on technology acquired from Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, not so far as I know from either China or the former USSR.
I think both the Chinese and the Russians understand that a nuclear armed Korea represents a threat to them. Their occasional diplomatic wavering probably has much more to do with internal political struggles than with blindness or deception.