Comments on: Quick note on the NK Nuke Test

By: Bryce

Bryce — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:56:53 +0000

“A bomb that won’t fit on a missile is hardly going to fit in a suitcase.”

Haha. Well spotted. I should have thought before typing. Now that I think about it, I actually remember reading somewhere that experts were divided over whether a nuke could get that small.

Here’s an article from a some realist from Nagoya. I hate how the English speaking world seems to be painting this as some kind of new Asian arms race.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20551897-7583,00.html

I wonder how she feels now that Abe has made his “no nukes” statement.

By: Richardson

Richardson — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 04:10:07 +0000

It was the day Ban Ki-moon was formally nominated as UN SG. Probably more important than any of the other dates. Same type of steal-your-thunder-SK-event happened over the summer of 2002; SK has the World Cup, NK has … the Arirang Festival. Lesson; nuke tests get a little more coverage than Arirang.

By: Mutantfrog

Mutantfrog — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:06:44 +0000

A bomb that won’t fit on a missile is hardly going to fit in a suitcase.

I haven’t yet heard anyone actually mention the NK nuke thing over here, but since I don’t own a TV anyone with internet access is as well equipped to check the media reaction as I am. I’m sure next week’s weekly magazines will have a lot of great reactionary articles though, so I’ll try and pick up something nice and right-wing.

By: Bryce

Bryce — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:52:42 +0000

I wonder how much of the ‘landscape’ this really does change. North Korea has had a deterrent capability for decades now. Kim can just say the word and hundreds of thousands of South Koreans would be toast through conventional artillery fire. So what is he going to do with a nuke that he can’t put on a missile? A suitcase bomb in Tokyo? Japan (in conjunction with the U.S. – even if we don’t consider the nuclear umbrella factor) has the firepower to make that a disaster for his regime. And of course, there is no guarantee that the few delivery options he has will work. Symbolically, a nuke is a nuke, of course, and NK can now claim to be playing with the big boys, but I don’t see how strategically this is in NK’s interests.

I’m really interested in how Abe will pitch this to the Japanese public, in particular, whether he will draw on public hysteria to push forward his constitutional revision agenda. You guys on the ground in Japan, how is this playing over there?

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:52:33 +0000

And now that they have “Nuclear Test Day”, NK can declare this their version of “Golden Week”.... though where anyone’s gonna go or what they might buy remains a mystery.

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:03:21 +0000

Not to mention that Abe was in South Korea when the tests were carried out. What a message. It’s like Kim’s looking across the border, saying, “Let me decide your agenda for you.”

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:30:40 +0000

I don’t think it has anything to do with long weekends, but surely it’s not a coincidence that NK’s tests happen on holidays related to the creation of the United States. I’m always taken aback by Kim Jong Il’s rantings about how he needs nuclear arms to “protect” NK from the US … meanwhile the only reason that most of the US even cares about NK at all is that we don’t want them to have nuclear weapons. Ironically enough if they were “only” abusing the civil rights of their citizens, they probably wouldn’t be as much of a target for scrutiny and criticism.