exactly.
-
Join the MyBroadband community
South Africa’s biggest forum. Discuss, discover, and connect with thousands of members.
-
Question of the Day: What is your preferred Chinese car brand?
Official North Korean Thread
- Thread starter killadoob
- Start date
exactly.
Grant
Honorary Master
Perhaps Fatboy is wanting to meet Littleboy.
Arthur
Honorary Master
Kim is a has-been.
Hosehead
Executive Member
I don't believe Kiddie-Un is acting unilaterally. Those men dressed in Green, wearing silly hats are the de facto leaders of NK- a Military Junta in everything but name, and Kiddie-Un is their Public face. (He's not that stupid- he's Swiss educated after all, unless the Swiss have started turning out Clowns from their educational system)
Albereth
Honorary Master
Is this 'official' thread any different to the official WWIII thread?
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
N. Korea Pulls Workers out of Kaesong Industrial Zone
North Korea announced Monday it would pull all its 53,000 workers out of the Kaesong joint industrial zone with South Korea and suspend all commercial operations in the complex, blaming "military warmongers".
North Korea "will withdraw all its employees from the zone", Kim Yang-Gon, a senior ruling party official, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
At the same time, Pyongyang "will temporarily suspend the operations in the zone and examine the issue of whether it will allow its existence or close it", Kim added.
Kim, who toured Kaesong Monday morning, said the action had been forced by "military warmongers" seeking to make Kaesong a point of confrontation amid escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula.
"How the situation will develop in the days ahead will entirely depend on the attitude of the South Korean authorities," he added.
The North has banned South Korean managers and personnel from crossing the border to enter the complex -- 10 kilometres (six miles) inside North Korea -- since Wednesday.
So far 13 of the 123 South Korean firms operating there have been forced to halt production due to fuel and raw material shortages.
More than 300 South Koreans who were working in Kaesong when the ban was imposed have returned to the North, but more than 500 remain in the complex.
Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 08 Apr 2013 10:38
North Korea announced Monday it would pull all its 53,000 workers out of the Kaesong joint industrial zone with South Korea and suspend all commercial operations in the complex, blaming "military warmongers".
North Korea "will withdraw all its employees from the zone", Kim Yang-Gon, a senior ruling party official, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
At the same time, Pyongyang "will temporarily suspend the operations in the zone and examine the issue of whether it will allow its existence or close it", Kim added.
Kim, who toured Kaesong Monday morning, said the action had been forced by "military warmongers" seeking to make Kaesong a point of confrontation amid escalating military tensions on the Korean peninsula.
"How the situation will develop in the days ahead will entirely depend on the attitude of the South Korean authorities," he added.
The North has banned South Korean managers and personnel from crossing the border to enter the complex -- 10 kilometres (six miles) inside North Korea -- since Wednesday.
So far 13 of the 123 South Korean firms operating there have been forced to halt production due to fuel and raw material shortages.
More than 300 South Koreans who were working in Kaesong when the ban was imposed have returned to the North, but more than 500 remain in the complex.
Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 08 Apr 2013 10:38
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
OrbitalDawn
Ulysses Everett McGill
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
Japan Increasingly Nervous About North Korea Nukes
It's easy to write off North Korean threats to strike the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile as bluster: it has never demonstrated the capability to deploy a missile that could reach the Pacific island of Guam let alone the mainland U.S.
But what about Japan?
Though it remains a highly unlikely scenario, Japanese officials have long feared that if North Korea ever decides to play its nuclear card it has not only the means but several potential motives for launching an attack on Tokyo or major U.S. military installations on Japan's main island. And while a conventional missile attack is far more likely, Tokyo is taking North Korea's nuclear rhetoric seriously.
On Monday, amid reports North Korea is preparing a missile launch or another nuclear test, Japanese officials said they have stepped up measures to ensure the nation's safety. Japanese media reported over the weekend that the defense minister has put destroyers with missile interception systems on alert to shoot down any missile or missile debris that appears to be headed for Japanese territory.
"We are doing all we can to protect the safety of our nation," said chief Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga, though he and defense ministry officials refused to confirm the reports about the naval alert, saying they do not want to "show their cards" to North Korea.
North Korea, meanwhile, issued a new threat against Japan.
"We once again warn Japan against blindly toeing the U.S. policy," said an editorial Monday in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of its ruling party. "It will have to pay a dear price for its imprudent behavior."
Following North Korea's third nuclear test in February, Japanese experts have increasingly voiced concerns that North Korea may already be able to hit - or at least target - U.S. bases and major population centers with nuclear warheads loaded onto its medium-range Rodong missiles.
"The threat level has jumped" following the nuclear test, said Narushige Michi****a, a former Ministry of Defense official and director of the Security and International Studies Program at Tokyo's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
Unlike North Korea's still-under-construction intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, program, its arsenal of about 300 deployed Rodong missiles has been flight tested and is thought to have a range of about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles).
That is good enough to reach Tokyo and key U.S. military bases -including Yokota Air Base, which is the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Air Force; Yokosuka Naval Base, where the USS George Washington aircraft carrier and its battle group are home-based; and Misawa Air Base, a key launching point for U.S. F-16 fighters.
Michi****a, in an analysis published late last year, said a Rodong missile launched from North Korea would reach Japan within five to 10 minutes and, if aimed at the center of Tokyo, would have a 50-percent probability of falling somewhere within the perimeter of Tokyo's main subway system.
He said Japan would be a particularly tempting target because it is close enough to feasibly reach with a conventionally or nuclear-armed missile, and the persistent animosity and distrust dating back to Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula in 1910 provides an ideological motive.
Also, a threat against Japan could be used to drive a wedge between Tokyo and Washington. Pyongyang could, for example, fire one or more Rodong missiles toward Tokyo but have them fall short to frighten Japan's leaders into making concessions, stay out of a conflict on the peninsula or oppose moves by the U.S. forces in Japan to assist the South Koreans, lest Tokyo suffer a real attack.
"Given North Korea's past adventurism, this scenario is within the range of its rational choices," Michi****a wrote.
Officials stress that simply having the ability to launch an attack does not mean it would be a success. They also say North Korea is not known to have actually deployed any nuclear-tipped missiles.
Tokyo and Washington have invested billions of dollars in what is probably the world's most sophisticated ballistic missile defense shield since North Korea sent a long-range Taepodong missile over Japan's main island in 1998. Japan now has its own land- and sea-based interceptors and began launching spy satellites after the "Taepodong shock" to keep its own tabs on military activities inside North Korea.
For the time being, most experts believe, North Korea cannot attack the United States with a nuclear warhead because it can't yet fashion one light enough to mount atop a long-range ICBM. But Japanese analysts are not alone in believing North Korea has cleared the "miniaturization" problem for its medium-range weapons.
In April 2005, Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea had the capability to arm a missile with a nuclear device. In 2011, the same intelligence agency said North Korea "may now have" plutonium-based nuclear warheads that it can deliver by ballistic missiles, aircraft or "unconventional means."
The Pentagon has since backtracked, saying it isn't clear how small a nuclear warhead the North can produce.
But David Albright, a physicist at the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank, said in an email he believes the North can arm Rodong missiles with nuclear warheads weighing as much as several hundred kilograms (pounds) and packing a yield in the low kilotons.
That is far smaller than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki but big enough to cause significant casualties in an urban area.
Japan also is a better target than traditional enemy South Korea because striking so close to home with a nuclear weapon will blanket a good part of its own population with the fallout.
Regardless of whom North Korea strikes - with a nuclear or conventional weapon - it can be assured of one thing: a devastating counterattack by the United States.
Source : Sapa-AP /pk
Date : 08 Apr 2013 11:31
It's easy to write off North Korean threats to strike the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile as bluster: it has never demonstrated the capability to deploy a missile that could reach the Pacific island of Guam let alone the mainland U.S.
But what about Japan?
Though it remains a highly unlikely scenario, Japanese officials have long feared that if North Korea ever decides to play its nuclear card it has not only the means but several potential motives for launching an attack on Tokyo or major U.S. military installations on Japan's main island. And while a conventional missile attack is far more likely, Tokyo is taking North Korea's nuclear rhetoric seriously.
On Monday, amid reports North Korea is preparing a missile launch or another nuclear test, Japanese officials said they have stepped up measures to ensure the nation's safety. Japanese media reported over the weekend that the defense minister has put destroyers with missile interception systems on alert to shoot down any missile or missile debris that appears to be headed for Japanese territory.
"We are doing all we can to protect the safety of our nation," said chief Cabinet spokesman Yoshihide Suga, though he and defense ministry officials refused to confirm the reports about the naval alert, saying they do not want to "show their cards" to North Korea.
North Korea, meanwhile, issued a new threat against Japan.
"We once again warn Japan against blindly toeing the U.S. policy," said an editorial Monday in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of its ruling party. "It will have to pay a dear price for its imprudent behavior."
Following North Korea's third nuclear test in February, Japanese experts have increasingly voiced concerns that North Korea may already be able to hit - or at least target - U.S. bases and major population centers with nuclear warheads loaded onto its medium-range Rodong missiles.
"The threat level has jumped" following the nuclear test, said Narushige Michi****a, a former Ministry of Defense official and director of the Security and International Studies Program at Tokyo's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
Unlike North Korea's still-under-construction intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, program, its arsenal of about 300 deployed Rodong missiles has been flight tested and is thought to have a range of about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles).
That is good enough to reach Tokyo and key U.S. military bases -including Yokota Air Base, which is the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Air Force; Yokosuka Naval Base, where the USS George Washington aircraft carrier and its battle group are home-based; and Misawa Air Base, a key launching point for U.S. F-16 fighters.
Michi****a, in an analysis published late last year, said a Rodong missile launched from North Korea would reach Japan within five to 10 minutes and, if aimed at the center of Tokyo, would have a 50-percent probability of falling somewhere within the perimeter of Tokyo's main subway system.
He said Japan would be a particularly tempting target because it is close enough to feasibly reach with a conventionally or nuclear-armed missile, and the persistent animosity and distrust dating back to Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula in 1910 provides an ideological motive.
Also, a threat against Japan could be used to drive a wedge between Tokyo and Washington. Pyongyang could, for example, fire one or more Rodong missiles toward Tokyo but have them fall short to frighten Japan's leaders into making concessions, stay out of a conflict on the peninsula or oppose moves by the U.S. forces in Japan to assist the South Koreans, lest Tokyo suffer a real attack.
"Given North Korea's past adventurism, this scenario is within the range of its rational choices," Michi****a wrote.
Officials stress that simply having the ability to launch an attack does not mean it would be a success. They also say North Korea is not known to have actually deployed any nuclear-tipped missiles.
Tokyo and Washington have invested billions of dollars in what is probably the world's most sophisticated ballistic missile defense shield since North Korea sent a long-range Taepodong missile over Japan's main island in 1998. Japan now has its own land- and sea-based interceptors and began launching spy satellites after the "Taepodong shock" to keep its own tabs on military activities inside North Korea.
For the time being, most experts believe, North Korea cannot attack the United States with a nuclear warhead because it can't yet fashion one light enough to mount atop a long-range ICBM. But Japanese analysts are not alone in believing North Korea has cleared the "miniaturization" problem for its medium-range weapons.
In April 2005, Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea had the capability to arm a missile with a nuclear device. In 2011, the same intelligence agency said North Korea "may now have" plutonium-based nuclear warheads that it can deliver by ballistic missiles, aircraft or "unconventional means."
The Pentagon has since backtracked, saying it isn't clear how small a nuclear warhead the North can produce.
But David Albright, a physicist at the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank, said in an email he believes the North can arm Rodong missiles with nuclear warheads weighing as much as several hundred kilograms (pounds) and packing a yield in the low kilotons.
That is far smaller than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki but big enough to cause significant casualties in an urban area.
Japan also is a better target than traditional enemy South Korea because striking so close to home with a nuclear weapon will blanket a good part of its own population with the fallout.
Regardless of whom North Korea strikes - with a nuclear or conventional weapon - it can be assured of one thing: a devastating counterattack by the United States.
Source : Sapa-AP /pk
Date : 08 Apr 2013 11:31
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
US Plans Tit-forTat Response to North Korea's Actions
The United States and South Korea have drawn up plans for a measured tit-for-tat response to North Korean actions, which will be limited in order to prevent an escalation to broader war, The New York Times reported.
Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper late Sunday said the new "counter-provocation" plan is calling for an immediate but proportional "response in kind" to North Korea if it decides to launch a ground attack or a missile.
Under the plan, the source of any North Korean attack will be hit with similar weapons, the report said.
If the North Koreans were to shell a South Korean island that had military installations, the plan calls for the South to retaliate quickly with a barrage of artillery of similar intensity, the paper noted.
Kim Jang-Soo, chief national security adviser to South Korea President Park Geun-Hye, said Sunday that North Korea may test-launch a missile this week, as the United States delayed its own missile test due to soaring tensions on the peninsula.
Kim said a test-launch or other provocation could come before or after Wednesday, the date by which the North has suggested that diplomats leave Pyongyang.
If the North launches one of its new Musudan missiles, Pentagon officials said they would be ready to calculate its trajectory within seconds and try to shoot it down if it appeared headed toward impact in South Korea, Japan or Guam, The Times said.
But they planned to do nothing if it were headed toward open water, even if it went over Japan, the paper added.
According to The Times, the officials doubted that North Korean new leader Kim Jung-un would risk aiming the missile at the United States or its allies.
US President Barack Obama has ruled out striking at the missiles while they are on their launchers unless there is evidence they are being fitted with nuclear warheads, which intelligence officials doubt North Korea yet possesses, the paper said.
Source : Sapa-AFP /sm
Date : 08 Apr 2013 04:42
The United States and South Korea have drawn up plans for a measured tit-for-tat response to North Korean actions, which will be limited in order to prevent an escalation to broader war, The New York Times reported.
Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper late Sunday said the new "counter-provocation" plan is calling for an immediate but proportional "response in kind" to North Korea if it decides to launch a ground attack or a missile.
Under the plan, the source of any North Korean attack will be hit with similar weapons, the report said.
If the North Koreans were to shell a South Korean island that had military installations, the plan calls for the South to retaliate quickly with a barrage of artillery of similar intensity, the paper noted.
Kim Jang-Soo, chief national security adviser to South Korea President Park Geun-Hye, said Sunday that North Korea may test-launch a missile this week, as the United States delayed its own missile test due to soaring tensions on the peninsula.
Kim said a test-launch or other provocation could come before or after Wednesday, the date by which the North has suggested that diplomats leave Pyongyang.
If the North launches one of its new Musudan missiles, Pentagon officials said they would be ready to calculate its trajectory within seconds and try to shoot it down if it appeared headed toward impact in South Korea, Japan or Guam, The Times said.
But they planned to do nothing if it were headed toward open water, even if it went over Japan, the paper added.
According to The Times, the officials doubted that North Korean new leader Kim Jung-un would risk aiming the missile at the United States or its allies.
US President Barack Obama has ruled out striking at the missiles while they are on their launchers unless there is evidence they are being fitted with nuclear warheads, which intelligence officials doubt North Korea yet possesses, the paper said.
Source : Sapa-AFP /sm
Date : 08 Apr 2013 04:42
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
OrbitalDawn
Ulysses Everett McGill
Hmm, I'd imagine that if North Korea does launch some kind of attack, then the US would strategically nail their airbases, artillery sites, maybe docks? Basically anything they can use to launch ranged attacks with.
They've got enough bombers (and fighter planes to protect them) to accomplish this within a relatively short span of time.
They've got enough bombers (and fighter planes to protect them) to accomplish this within a relatively short span of time.
Fulcrum29
Honorary Master
killadoob
Honorary Master
Then it isn't at all like iraq. If it was like iraq you would be seeing a mushroom or there would be a war.
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
Putin Says that North Korean Conflict Could be Worse than Chernobyl
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Monday that any military conflict on the Korean peninsula had the potential to be worse than the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl.
"If something happens, God forbid, (then) Chernobyl which we all know about very well would simply seem like a children's fairy tale," he told reporters at an industrial fair in Germany.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin welcomed a US decision to delay the test of an international ballistic missile to avoid stoking tensions with North Korea.
"I think the United States took a very important step in delaying the test of a ballistic missile," he said.
"We should thank the United States for this important step," he added. "I hope it will be noticed by our partners including North Korea and that everyone will calm down and work together to seek a solution to the various problems."
With an eye to China, Merkel said world powers with influence in the region needed to work together to smooth tensions.
"We agreed that the international community must work to have a calming effect on the situation and toward North Korea stopping its provocations," she said.
North Korea's bellicose rhetoric has reached fever pitch in recent weeks, with near-daily threats of attacks on US military bases and South Korea in response to ongoing South Korea-US military exercises.
The United States, which has met the North's threats with some military muscle-flexing of its own, offered a calibrated concession Saturday by delaying a planned inter-continental ballistic missile test.
Washington had said it feared the Minuteman 3 test could be misconstrued as an attempt to exacerbate the crisis.
China, Pyongyang's sole major ally for decades and its biggest trading partner, said Sunday it had told North Korea it would not tolerate "troublemaking" on its doorstep.
Source : Sapa-AFP /sdv
Date : 08 Apr 2013 14:01
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Monday that any military conflict on the Korean peninsula had the potential to be worse than the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl.
"If something happens, God forbid, (then) Chernobyl which we all know about very well would simply seem like a children's fairy tale," he told reporters at an industrial fair in Germany.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin welcomed a US decision to delay the test of an international ballistic missile to avoid stoking tensions with North Korea.
"I think the United States took a very important step in delaying the test of a ballistic missile," he said.
"We should thank the United States for this important step," he added. "I hope it will be noticed by our partners including North Korea and that everyone will calm down and work together to seek a solution to the various problems."
With an eye to China, Merkel said world powers with influence in the region needed to work together to smooth tensions.
"We agreed that the international community must work to have a calming effect on the situation and toward North Korea stopping its provocations," she said.
North Korea's bellicose rhetoric has reached fever pitch in recent weeks, with near-daily threats of attacks on US military bases and South Korea in response to ongoing South Korea-US military exercises.
The United States, which has met the North's threats with some military muscle-flexing of its own, offered a calibrated concession Saturday by delaying a planned inter-continental ballistic missile test.
Washington had said it feared the Minuteman 3 test could be misconstrued as an attempt to exacerbate the crisis.
China, Pyongyang's sole major ally for decades and its biggest trading partner, said Sunday it had told North Korea it would not tolerate "troublemaking" on its doorstep.
Source : Sapa-AFP /sdv
Date : 08 Apr 2013 14:01
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
killadoob
Honorary Master
/waits for people to say putin is attacking the US and blaming them 
.
.You are making my day, Gary! Please, show me more!