South Korea’s leader warns of North Korea collapse

The F-22 is reportedly a core strategic weapon for the USA and has been operational since 2005.

Since a nuclear test on January 6 and the subsequent satellite launch, North Korean media have gone into overdrive hailing the nation’s technological and scientific progress and its heightened ability to protect itself against attack from its archenemy, the United States.

North Korea’s quest to acquire both nuclear weapons and their delivery systems will be high on the agenda today when United States President Barack Obama meets with Asean leaders at the Sunnylands resort in California.

The US and South Korean governments have been discussing the possible deployment of the high-tech system in the fallout from North Korea’s latest satellite launch, which the US and South Korean sides view as a covert test of ballistic missile technology. However, diplomatic efforts to persuade North Korea to disassociate from ballistic missile measures look impossible. Desperate men and women who risk their lives to escape to China by swimming across the Tumen River.

Park’s speech contained harsh language, describing North Korea as “merciless” and under an “extreme reign of terror” following recent purges of top officials that outside analysts say were aimed at bolstering leader Kim Jong Un’s grip on power.

But first we must rid ourselves of the comforting but wrong-headed notion that we can coerce China into coercing North Korea into taking steps that the Kim regime would regard as suicidal. “Well quite frankly that means that the United States is simply ignoring North Korea, while the develop an atomic weapon”. I believe this has to change for three reasons.

The ministry estimated about 616bn Korean won (£350m, $508m) had been paid to the North over the years. In 2014, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK produced a 400-page report documenting “unspeakable atrocities” unparalleled in the contemporary world.

How advanced is North’s nuclear programme? “It’s not fair. We’ve been living with sanctions for a long time and we are not afraid”. In Japan, the military was put on alert when Pyongyang vowed to follow the nuclear test with a rocket launch — which it did a month later. Its location was that of a former North Korean military camp, hence its construction and inauguration saw the removal of barbed-wire fences, tank traps, and minefields, marking a rare and symbolic moment of bilateral understanding and cooperation.

Yet numerous policy prescriptions making the rounds are based upon two miscalculations: one, that China contains enormous leverage over North Korea, if only it would wield it; and two, that Washington is well placed to impose a considerable price on China if Beijing does not rein in its unruly neighbor. For in parallel to such military responses, the US and South Korea should also contemplate launching more direct discussions with Beijing about the scenarios which will follow North Korea’s collapse.

Shutting the park will be painful for Pyongyang, but it will not cripple it. North Korea is a deeply impoverished country, with little industry and, because of sanctions, little trade with any nation but China.