North Korea must choose either to have a future or to have nuclear weapons "but it cannot have them both"

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2089944/opinion-chinas-position-north-korea-appears-shift

Blame for the ongoing nuclear crisis is placed foremost on North Korea for pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Niu further notes that regime security (ie, the survival and ongoing supremacy of the Kim family foremost) has become more important than state security in North Korea. Like his fellow historian Shen Zhihua, Niu Jun seems to acknowledge the possibility that North Korea could become an enemy for China.

Both Niu and Shen remind us that any assertions in Chinese state media noting that North Korea should be satisfied with Beijing’s guarantees of security are wildly overoptimistic and unrealistic. For North Korea, no externally generated security guarantees will ever suffice and its nuclear programme will forge forward.

good article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/instead-of-threatening-north-korea-trump-should-try-this-instead/2017/04/23/70119194-2527-11e7-b503-9d616bd5a305_story.html

The one promising thing about Kim Jong Un is that he harbors ambitions to improve North Korea’s economy, and his domestic policies have already generated modest growth. But his first priority is regime survival and national security, and for that, he considers the nuclear deterrent is to be essential (a rational proposition, sadly). Eight years of sanctions and pressure — but for one spasm of diplomacy just prior to Kim Jong Il’s death — did little to disabuse Pyongyang of the sense that it needs nuclear weapons, or to prevent North Korea from improving its capabilities and expanding its arsenal.

The Trump administration proclaims that the Obama approach of “strategic patience” has ended. But if it really wants to start a new era, the way to do so is not by distracting the public with reckless threats of war, while waiting in vain for Chinese President Xi Jinping to bring Kim to his knees. Instead, the prudent move would be to open direct talks with Pyongyang that start by negotiating a freeze on the fissile-material production cycle, return of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and moratorium on testing nuclear devices and long-range ballistic missiles (including satellite launches). In return, the United States should at least entertain Pyongyang’s standing request for suspension of joint military exercises with South Korea. Kim may be willing to accept something less, such as an adjustment in scale. Or he may be open to a different kind of trade — initiating talks to convert the 1953 Armistice Agreement into a proper peace treaty to end the Korean War, for example. The only way to probe these options is to get to the table. With two months of large-scale exercises coming to a close, now is a good time to do so.

A freeze is just the initial move in what needs to be a long-term strategy that changes underlying dynamics and addresses what each side sees as the core of the problem. We cannot really know what Kim wants, and what he might give up to get it, until we initiate dialogue. But since he took power, there have been strong signals that his ambitions go beyond a nuclear deterrent, that his real goal is economic development. Rather than threaten war or deepen sanctions, a more productive path is to nudge Kim down the same road that the major countries in East Asia have all taken: a shift from power to wealth. If Kim wants to be North Korea’s developmental dictator, the United States’ best long-term strategy is to help him do so. We cannot rationally expect him to surrender his nuclear deterrent at the beginning of that process, but it is the only realistic path for getting him to do so eventually.

Now is the time to jump-start a diplomatic initiative that reopens channels, lowers tensions and caps North Korea’s capabilities where they are. Then, working closely with the new government in Seoul and others, the United States should support a long-term strategy that integrates North Korea into regional stability and prosperity. Because the nuclear program is the last budget item that Kim will cut, sanctions only deepen the misery of the North Korean population, and pressure fails to improve human rights abuses on the ground. The best way to alleviate the suffering of the North Korean people is to give them a chance to succeed economically and help open up their country step by step.

By simply inflicting economic pain, threatening military strikes and keeping tensions high, the United States is playing into the worst tendencies of the North Korean system. Kim’s nuclear intentions will harden and North Korea’s capabilities will only grow. It’s time to reverse course.

'It's time to reverse course' = 'Full speed ahead!' in Trumpsylvania.

his first priority is regime survival and national security, and for that, he considers the nuclear deterrent is to be essential (a rational proposition, sadly).

It is sad for the people of NK that they will be the major 'beneficiaries' of regime survival in NK, but anyone who looks carefully at nuclear weapons inescapably concludes that they are total shite as an offensive weapon under current conditions, but most excellent weapons for deterring attack. If it were somehow rendered impossible for them to used by non-state actors or by irrational leaders, then most of their danger would disappear. Because strategically speaking, their only sensible use is to sit idly and deter attack. In this light, NK is acting strategically and rationally. So was Iran. So is Israel. The awful thing about nukes is that simply by existing they could be used. Sometime. Somewhere. By mistake or by miscalculation.

Thank god for the non-proliferation treaty. Because it is the only tool we have for eliminating the obvious rationale for every nation acquiring nukes.

xp

us republicans and south korean republicans pushed to close the kaesong industrial zone back in 2013 i believe

as far as i understand, when it was closed it also meant that the north korean military would leave the major attack route that led to seoul

the us gov't is not completely ignorant, it just likes to play that card to deceive its own people

NYT possibly reprising its Judith Miller shit

@adamjohnsonNYC
The key claim––since repeated by Vox. Yahoo, UPI & others––is attributed to a nebulous blob of "experts studies" and "classified reports".

"Behind the Trump administration’s sudden urgency in dealing with the North Korean nuclear crisis lies a stark calculus: A growing body of expert studies and classified intelligence reports that conclude the country is capable of producing a nuclear bomb every six or seven weeks.

"That acceleration in pace—impossible to verify until experts get beyond the limited access to North Korean facilities that ended years ago—explains why President Trump and his aides fear they are running out of time."

http://fair.org/home/nyts-impossible-to-verify-north-korea-nuke-claim-spreads-unchecked-by-media/

yeah I smell bullshit too

so apparently this big meeting at the WH yesterday was basically nothing, just Trump trying to do something important-looking before the 100 day mark

I heard it from a reliable source that he invited every senator into the Oval Office, locked the doors, and then farted.

http://cdn.charismanews.com/images/stories/2017/01/POTUS-Oval-Office-Resolute-Desk-Smiling-Reuters.jpg

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-and-north-korea-on-the-border/article34817039/

“Going ahead with the nuclear test will constitute a serious provocation to the international community, and will bring the most serious sanctions, including oil,” says Prof. Lu. Severing oil shipments to North Korea – which relies almost exclusively on imported crude, most of it from China – would paralyze the country’s economy and military. But mention of this option in China’s state-sanctioned media has suddenly made it a topic of serious discussion.

Such a step would be tantamount to “a nuclear bomb” lobbed toward Pyongyang, says Cheng Xiaohe, deputy director of the Centre for China’s International Strategic Studies at Renmin University. “That would probably be the last economic resort.”

But Beijing has a menu of lesser options that it could consider first, including evicting the tens of thousands of North Korean labourers who have been allowed into China in recent years to work in factories and restaurants.

...

Chinese imports of North Korean gold, iron, tin and rare earths all stopped last year, he said, further evidence of China’s adhering to sanctions. “Big bulk-goods trade of any kind,” Mr. Cui says, “is all now impossible.”

...

The prospect of military conflict doesn’t much worry Mr. Cui. If fighting breaks out, “we will make a fortune,” he predicts, confident that Chinese troops would move into North Korea in order to keep refugees on home soil, thus allowing his business to continue unaffected.

Such insouciance is commonplace in an area where decades of rising and falling tensions have bred boredom – and disdain for those who suggest that this time is any different from previous rounds of anxiety. In Yanji, Chinese tourist agencies have continued booking trips across the border to nearby towns and tourist attractions.

At the Chinese border town of Tumen, tourists still gather on a local boardwalk to gaze across at portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, and at the North Korean guards patrolling the far banks of the river on foot. They feel little cause for concern. “The U.S. is just posturing in order to frighten North Korea,” says Wang Jianbin, a young traveller from China’s Hebei province, who travelled here with a friend.

A short drive away, near the city of Hoeryong, North Korean border guards engage in an intense game of outdoor volleyball, their shouts echoing up to a small Chinese hill overlooking the scene. The game disbands when trucks arrive at the two-lane concrete bridge that forms the border here, a picture of peaceful order.

Then, moments later, an SUV filled with Chinese men in uniform arrives at the overlook. They are bearing binoculars, a reminder that this is the front line of a place that North Korea itself has termed “the world’s biggest hot spot.”

Still, even with recent tensions, “it’s no problem getting across the border. It’s the same as usual,” says Han Bing, another Hunchun businessman with a seafood-packaging factory in North Korea. There is a disconnect, he said during an interview in his store – which was jammed with North Korean shellfish and Russian chocolate – between fear on television and what he sees on the ground. Prices are the same. Business continues.

Besides, he says, the idea of violent disruption in a place pinched between the world’s powers – Russia, China and the U.S. – seems so cataclysmic that it’s not even worth contemplating. “Wouldn’t that mean the start to World War Three?” he asks. That would “not be the same as the Second World War. It would be a nuclear war. And once it starts, the Earth will be destroyed.”

as long as it's not "major major"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LFujE3Y-ZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsJjP3He4h8

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/world/asia/south-korea-election-president-moon-jae-in.html

when your trying to have a nice quiet walk but the revolutionary masses won't leave you alone pic.twitter.com/Qe7JX54Q2D

— sadbukharin (@sadladbukharin) May 12, 2017

https://qz.com/1004330/north-korea-is-sitting-on-trillions-of-dollars-on-untapped-wealth-and-its-neighbors-want-a-piece-of-it/

North Korea’s neighbors have long had their eyes on its bonanza of mineral wealth. About five years ago China spent some $10 billion on an infrastructure project near the border with North Korea, primarily to give it easier access to the mineral resources. Conveniently North Korea’s largest iron ore deposits, in Musan County, are right by the border. An analysis of satellite images published last October by 38 North, a website affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, showed mining activity was alive and well in the area.

China particularly covets North Korea’s rare earth minerals. Pyongyang knows this. It punished Beijing in March by suspending exports of the metals to China in retaliation for the coal trade restrictions.

Meanwhile Russia, which also shares a (smaller) border with North Korea, in 2014 developed plans to overhaul North Korea’s rail network in exchange for access to the country’s mineral resources. That particular plan lost steam (pdf, p. 8), but the general sentiment is still alive.

But South Korea has its own plans for the mineral resources. It sees them as a way to help pay for reunification (should it finally come to pass), which is expected to take decades and cost hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars. (Germany knows a few things about that.) Overhauling the North’s decrepit infrastructure, including the aging railway line, will be part of the enormous bill.
In May, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport invited companies to submit bids on possible infrastructure projects in North Korea, especially ones regarding the mining sector. It argued that (paywall) the underground resources could “cover the expense of repairing the North’s poor infrastructure.”

Breaking News: Japan warned some residents to seek shelter after North Korea fired a missile, which flew over the country and landed in the Pacific Ocean.https://t.co/URp51s3wUd

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 3, 2022

oops. i meant to bump another north korea thread.