Re: North Korea pre-empts sanctions
Well, let them have at it. There is nothing that can be done to change lil kims paranoid mind. The South Koreans have been laboring under the delusion that their “Sunshine” policy can breed warmth and friendship between the north and south. OOOpps. Here is a pretty good editorial from the Chosen Ilbo:
** South Korea’s Survival Strategy After the Nuclear Test
**
North Korea carried out a nuclear test. It closed its ears to the international community’s warning that the day after the test will see a “very different world.” At 10:35 am, Oct. 9, an artificial tremor from an underground nuclear test at Musudan-ri, Hwadae County, North Hamgyeong Province, North Korea was detected, the bridge linking North Korea with the world community was broken. The chance for the one-to-one negotiation with the U.S. the North was so desperate to get, has vanished completely. The path that could have led to an acknowledgement of the North Korean government by the international community along with normal status and economic aid from it, is now helplessly obscured. Twenty-three million North Koreans have to continue a long march of hardship and starvation.
South Korea, too, is driven into “a very different world.” From now on, the South has to confront nuclear-armed North Korea with conventional military might. South Korea is naked and helpless before the North’s nuclear weapons. What can protect South Korea from the North’s nuclear threat is only the nuclear umbrella of our ally the U.S. It is the flag of independence and the slogan of “one nation” this government has persistently waved and shouted in the past three-and-a-half years that have brought us to this pass.
But South Korea’s only ally, the U.S., is no longer the ally it once was. Under this administration, the chains of the alliance have rusted and its walls cracked. Will the government continue to push through with independent exercise of operational control over our forces even in this situation because the president said, “Our sole exercise of wartime operational control has nothing to do with North Korea’s nuclear test?” Will the administration thereby let the country and its people with no adequate protection clash with North Korean nuclear weapons? The administration must make a decision.
Northeast Asia, too, faces “a very different world.” That North Korea has nuclear devices will bring rearmament in Japan. Japan’s rearmament will cause China to boost its defenses. And so on. In order for the whole region not to become an explosive warehouse, the international community must remove the detonator, North Korea’s nuclear weapons. It is in this sense that Washington said it cannot live with a nuclear-armed North Korea under the same sky. The UN Security Council will initiate sanctions against Pyongyang under Charter 7 of the UN Charter, permitting military action. Pressure against the North will continue until it takes its hands off nuclear weapons completely or the North Korean regime falls. The North’s survival strategy relying on nuclear weapons is, in fact, an act of suicide. The problem is whether the North Korean regime intends to drag South Korea along as a partner in its demise.
For eight years since the Kim Dae-jung administration assumed office, South Korea has hung on only to the Sunshine Policy, which two successive administrations claimed to be the only way to let North Korea abandon its nuclear program. The president said in November, “North Korea will give up nuclear weapons because it needs world aid for its economic development. The North’s strategy to induce international community support by using nuclear devices has a reason.” He anticipated the North would fire not missiles, but an artificial satellite. The president and his associates were either ignorant of the essence of the North Korean regime or saw a phantom, shrouded by the “ideology of self-reliance.” As a consequence, the death or life of the entire 70 million compatriots is pushed into a nuclear valley.
Standing away from the international community’s joint posture toward Pyongyang, this administration insisted to the end on resolving the North Korean nuclear standoff through a “comprehensive approach” under Seoul’s leadership. But North Korea didn’t pay any attention to it. While this administration wandered alone in search of an infeasible goal, the North prepared a nuclear test. Had South Korea sent a clear message in unison with the international community to the North, “Nuclear possession is a road to death” even once, we wouldn’t feel so vain.
url: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200610/200610100018.html
