Reasoning With North Korea

"Based on calculations taking the trajectory into account, the ballistic missile this time around could have had a range capability of 15,000km, depending on the weight of its warhead, and if that's the case, it means the US mainland was within its range."

"We have told [Pyongyang] that we absolutely cannot tolerate such actions." 

Japan's defence minister Yasukazu Hamada

 

"Even if the North does successfully launch the Hwasong-17, the threat will not have significantly increased."

"It must prove it has mastered the technology to be able to mount enough small nuclear warheads onto the ICBM."

Yang Uk, military expert, Asan Institute.

 

"[Threats from the United States and its allies provoked our country to] substantially accelerate the bolstering of its overwhelming nuclear deterrence." 

"Our party and government will resolutely react to nukes with nuclear weapons and to total confrontation with all-out confrontation."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un

Pyongyang is developing a new type of long-range missile   EPA

The most recent launch of an ICBM from North Korea's capital region was detected by South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff in its second major weapons test conducted this month. One that indicated a potential capacity to launch nuclear strikes, possibly on the entire U.S. mainland. North Korea is notoriously secretive about its Intercontinental Cruise Ballistic Missile program, just as it is about its nuclear program to match the ICBMs. Its occasional testy and celebrated tests alert the world to its covert activities.

And while Pyongyang is deliberate about its secret plans, it is also deliberate about flaunting its technical progress. Experts remain uncertain whether the country's production includes functioning nuclear-armed missiles, leading some to hazard that Friday's launch while involving its longest-range missile yet under development, designed to carry multiple nuclear warheads as quite ready to challenge what it insists is the United States' plan to attack North Korea. Nor that its latest ICBM design has the capability of overcoming U.S. missile defence systems.

Its intention of challenging the United States and threats it has the capability of hitting the mainland anywhere along its extensive coast, is without question. Despite its belligerence and the danger inherent in its surprise missile tests unsettling its neighbours, China and Russia continue to block any U.S. moves to strengthen UN sanctions purposing to curb North Korea's nuclear program.

Predictably under the circumstances, the U.S. responded by condemning the launch, promising to take "all necessary measures" for the safety of its territory and that of its allies South Korea and Japan. "We again call for North Korea to stop further unlawful, destabilizing acts. On behalf of the United States, I reaffirm our ironclad commitment to our Indo-Pacific alliances. Together the countries represented here will continue to urge North Korea to commit to serious and sustained diplomacy", stated Kamela Harris, at a regional forum in Bangkok.

A futile promise, since North Korea is not and never has been amenable to reason. It is congenitally, chronically paranoid and the assurances the U.S. gives to its allies only provokes further reaction from Pyongyang. When Donald Trump was president, he made the surprise move of meeting directly with Kim Jong Un, who loved the attention, and played his role alongside that of Mr. Trump, but the war games shared with South Korea in U.S. exercises were and are guaranteed to arouse rage and threats from the North.

 

The North Korean government shows the test-firing of a missile at Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, Nov. 18, 2022. Photo released Nov. 19, 2022.

 

Japanese and South Korea estimated the missile flew 1,000 kilometres with a maximum altitude of 6,000 to 6,100 km.  According to Japanese Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada, depending on the weight of a potential warhead, the missile had a range in excess of 15,000 km -- "In which case it could cover the entire mainland United States". North Korea, believes Kwon Yong Soo, former professor at Korea National Defence University, tested a developmental Hwasong-17 missile which has the capacity to carry three to five nuclear warheads, flying as far as 15,000 km.

A long-range missile like the Hwasong-17, capable of flying a lengthier route to the American mainland to evade the current U.S. missile defence systems is what North Korea needs for the purpose, emphasized Professor Kwon. North Kora has demonstrated its missiles have ICBM-class flight ranges but has not  yet proven warheads could survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry, pointed out missile expert Chang Young-keun at Korea Aerospace University.

Friday's launch, explained Professor Chang, was successful; flight details indicating it was the same type missile North Korea tested in March when it claimed to have launched a Hwasong-17. "Pyongyang must immediately cease its destabilizing actions and instead choose diplomatic engagement; [the launch] needlessly raises tensions", stated U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. To a country and a leader that is tone-deaf to what the international community expects it 'should' do.

 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and his daughter inspect what it says a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile at Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, Nov. 18, 2022. Photo provided by the North Korean government

 

 

 

Mutual Koreas Sabre-Rattling

Kim Yo-jong issued warnings to S.Korea  Getty

"[Pyongyang would destroy major targets in Seoul should South Korea take any] dangerous military action [such as a pre-emptive strike]."

"Pyongyang opposes war], But if South Korea, for any reason -- whether or not it is blinded by misjudgement -- opts for such military actions as 'pre-emptive strike' touted by [Suh Wook], the situation will change."

"In that case, South Korea itself will become a target."

"In case South Korea opts for military confrontation with us, our nuclear combat force will have to inevitably carry out its duty."

Kim Yo-jong, senior official in North Korea's government 

"Yoon's 'pre-emptive strike' comment made the headlines a few months ago, and Pyongyang is seizing Suh's remarks to make a point to the incoming South Korean administration."

"North Korea has thus far refrained from criticizing Yoon at any authoritative level, but it certainly seems to be laying the groundwork for it."

Rachel Min-young Lee, analyst, 38 North project, United States

On Friday, South Korean Defence Minister Suh Wook had stated that his country's military possessed a variety of missiles whose range had been significantly updated, with greater accuracy and power and "the ability to accurately and quickly hit any target in North Korea". A surprisingly candid and extremely provocative statement, not one to be casually remarked upon with the expectation that there would be no response amounting to a none-too-casual threat from North Korea.

 

Ms Kim is often believed to be the “number two” of the North Korean leadership.  Getty Images

 

That response came courtesy of the sister of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un who possesses a good degree of authority within the regime of the irascible leader. Analysts read Ms.Kim's response as a veiled message whose recipient-target would most likely be the incoming conservative president of South Korea. Displays of military strength on the part of both Koreas have increased following the test-firing by North Korea of a range of increasingly powerful missiles in 2022 alone.

Incoming South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol has called for a more muscular defence against threats issued by North Korea. In return the statements issued by Kim may indicate that Pyongyang is in the process of preparing the country's population for a planned shift in direction of inter-Korean relations, with the near prospect of Yoon taking office in May.

Meeting with American officials in Washington this week, a delegation from Yoon's team was welcomed, with American officials reiterating assurance of the U.S. commitment to the defence of South Korea, outlined in a statement by the U.S. State Department. How reassuring that might be to South Korea with Beijing comfortably taking authority in the area and North Korea being seen as a protege of Beijing, is anyone's guess. 

 

All the more so as Washington's pledges to its allies have not quite matched its actions of late.

North Korea claimed it had fired multiple missiles in March, which the US said was a test for parts of an ICBM system   Getty Images

Starkly Unwelcome News from South Korea

"We are aware of these reports of individuals who have tested negative for COVID-19 using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing and then after some days testing positive again."
"We are closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases. It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly,"{
"As COVID-19 is a new disease, we need more epidemiological data to draw any conclusions."
World Health Organization spokesperson

"[The virus may have] reactivated [in the patients, as opposed to the patients being re-infected again]."
"While we are putting more weight on reactivation as the possible cause, we are conducting a comprehensive study on this."
"There have been many cases when a patient during treatment will test negative one day and positive another."
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Science Alert

"There are different interpretations and many variables."
"The government needs to come up with responses for each of them."
Jung Ki-suck, professor of pulmonary medicine, Hallym University

"We say that a patient has fully recovered when he or she tests negative twice within 24 hours."
"But the fact that some of them tested positive again in a short period means that the virus remains longer than we thought."
Son Young-rae, spokesman, South Korean Health and Welfare Ministry

How this discovery will impact the theory of herd immunity -- that when enough individuals in any given population have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus to form a majority, a herd immunity effect will take place, protecting those who were not exposed, bringing the community up over the hump of ongoing infections -- is yet to be known as is so much about the threat properties of the novel coronavirus, and its after-effects.

And the hope that by extracting from once-infected patients the antibodies produced by their immune system that helped them control and survive the novel coronavirus attack, to be used in creating a protective serum for a new vaccine to inoculate a population may now be called into question. Unless it can be proven that these patients were not in fact, reinfected, but that the still-existing virus in their bodies simply flared up on the way to disappearing.

South Korean army soldiers spray disinfectant as a precaution against the novel coronavirus at a traditional market in Daegu, South Korea on Wednesday. (Kim Do-hoon/Yonhap/The Associated Press)

Research will have to be conducted to determine whether the re-infected patients' viral condition also is infectious, or whether the infection properties of the virus have been demolished.There are so many complex variables in this new disease that is proving to be data-elusive while sweeping its deathly menace through the globe, that scientists are probing desperately in all directions in an effort to find its weak spots whereby it exploits the vulnerability of human beings to enable its replication and spread.

It will take, evidently a week at least until preliminary findings can be depended upon. The theory that at fault were false test results is another straw being grasped at. The possibility that the remnants of the virus still circulating in patients' systems, pose no risk to themselves or those around them, would be a best-case scenario.

Hailed as a success story following its clockwork implementation of a mass testing regime to halt the spread of the virus, a lower fatality rate ensued in South Korea, defying the global average. In the early stages of the outbreak outside China, South Korea was held to have suffered one of the worst outbreaks of the coronavirus spread, yet speedily brought it under control in the space of two months.

A total of 27 new cases was reported last Friday, representing the lowest figure since the peak of daily cases in late February, while the death toll rose to 211 by seven additional fatalities.

More than half of all South Korea's total infections have taken place in Daegu, and it had reported no new cases at all, the first time since late February. Fears of a fresh outbreak have been sparked however, by these new reports of patients felt to have recovered, testing positive once again when the 91 recovered coronavirus patients tested positive.

Medical staff wearing protective suits take samples from a person with suspected symptoms of the new coronavirus at a drive-thru test facility in Goyang, South Korea, last month. Officials on Friday reported that 91 patients in the country thought to have recovered from the new coronavirus had tested positive again. | AP

 

Hostage To Conflict

"This is more useful than my own children, who all live outside [the Korean Demilitarized Zone separating North and South]."
"There is no use calling 911, because they can't come here [in the case of emergencies]."
Go Geum-sik, 73, Taesung Freedom Village, South Korea

"Don't let appearances fool you."
"It's not your average place. It's a place where all the peace is secured by dedicated soldiers [despite the hope of eased tensions]."
Chun In-bum, retired South Korean Army general

"Despite political leaders talking about easing tensions, we still live with them as the militaries face off with each other."
Kim Yong-sung, 49, village bean farmer

South Korea's Taesung Freedom village, April 24, 2018, in Paju, South Korea.

South Korea's Taesung Freedom village, April 24, 2018, in Paju, South Korea  .Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

By no stretch of the imagination can this town in the DMZ be called normal. It is, rather, the image of a village under perpetual siege, requiring constant military protection. It is a village of 188 residents, all South Koreans who have chosen to remain in a very sensitive, vulnerable geographic location, encouraged by their government to do so, as a symbolic gesture that the two Koreas could some day live together in amity, unthinkable at the present time given the aggressive militancy of the North.

There is the village with its enclosed, protective status, and there is "outside". The South Korean government thought of ways indicating special status that would seem attractive to villagers to compensate for their remote isolation, living their lives in a seriously dangerous climate of intimidation. And so, men living in Taesung Freedom Village are exempted from military service. The 46 households receive the benefit of special tax cuts.

The Freedom Village is located within the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone, a bit of irony right there.... The village residents represent the only place where South Korean civilians live within that zone separating South from North. Another gift to the villagers recently came their way when KT Corp., South Korea's major mobile phone carrier, installed a fifth-generation ultrafast communications network there, one of the first such networks in fact, in South Korea.

South Korea's Taesung Freedom village 

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

People now are able to simply push a button to communicate, should a medical or any other type of emergency arise. That would put them directly and instantly through to the mayor, and to the community center, among others.

The Demilitarized Zone was created as a bridging gap to keep the two warring armies at a distance from one another in 1953, representing a truce, for neither 'surrendered' to the other. Ever since, the South has yearned for re-unification as it went on its democratic free-enterprise capitalist system becoming wealthy over the years, and the North became ever more rigid in its Communist idealism, becoming more poverty-stricken as time went on.

Villagers who once lived within the four-kilometer-wide buffer zone, representing the world's most heavily fortified frontiers punctuated with minefields and sealed off, where battle-ready troops stand at the ready on both sides, were cleared away, with only two villages permitted to remain: Taesung in the South Korean half of the DMZ and across the border, the North Korean Kijong village, with no communication permitted between them. 82-year-pld Park Pil-seon, living in Taesung, cannot see his brother in Kijong, much less know whether he is still alive.

Both towns were pawns in a propaganda war, both Koreas investing in 'model villages' enabling them to extol the virtues of their political systems, so adverse to one another. Kijong at the present time, is almost abandoned, with Taesung remaining a going concern. Villagers in Taesung, however, are not free to do whatever they wish, bearing little resemblance to other South Korean villages there freedom is taken for granted. Their security must be assured by the presence of the military.

Military stand guard at their check area at Taesung Freedom village

Ryu Seung-il/Polaris

Each time they plan to venture to their rice paddies close by the borderline, South Korean soldiers shadow them. There is a midnight-to-sunrise curfew, and a nightly roll-call. Should they invite friends from outside the DMZ to visit, an application for approval two weeks in advance must be obtained. All visitors must be escorted by soldiers. There is no hospital, no supermarket, no restaurant in the village, though a bus arrives four times daily.

The new 5G service will ease some of the villagers' irritations as when before its arrival, rice farmers had to ask for a military escort to enable them to make use of a water pump, and now this can be done through an app on their smartphones. The same app can control the sprinklers in their bean patches. Village women who had for years been interested in taking  yoga classes can now access lessons streamed at the community center. The sole school now offers interactive online games for students.

South Korean children take a class at the Taesung elementary school, April 24, 2018, in Paju, South Korea.

South Korean children take a class at the Taesung elementary school, April 24, 2018, in Paju, South Korea.Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Students attending the school enjoy the benefits of a high teacher-student ratio, with 21 teachers and staff for 35 pupils, some of whom are bused in daily from Munsan, the town closest outside the DMZ. Decades earlier, villagers were in constant danger of stepping on stray mines left over from the war. There was, in addition, danger of abductions by North Korean soldiers. During times of high tensions villagers were evacuated frequently from their fields into underground shelters. Twice yearly evacuations are still conducted.

Denuclearizing North Korea

"If you think the North Koreans would revolt or the regime would collapse because of sanctions, you don't know anything about the North Koreans."
"These are people who survived the famine by eating weeds and even talk proudly about it."
Kang Mi-jin, North Korean defector, South Korea

"I can feel they [the Korean public] are not satisfied with the government, and if the authorities cannot resolve the sanctions problem, such dissatisfaction will go on and on."
"They have lost the [peoples'] loyalty toward the regime."
Terry, Chinese trader

"Once we start talking, the United States will know that I am not a person to launch nuclear weapons at South Korea, the Pacific or the United States."
If we maintain frequent meetings and build trust with the United States and receive promises for an end to the war and a non-aggression treaty, then why would we need to live in difficulty by keeping our nuclear weapons?"
"Some say that we are terminating facilities that are not functioning, but you will see that they are in good condition."
Kim Jong Un, North Korean President

An earthquake expert presents evidence of a seismic event at the nuclear test site near Mount Mantapsan in North Korea      Credit:  AP

"They imply a phased process with reciprocal concessions."
"It is not clear that the Trump administration will accept that kind of protracted program."
Adam Mount, senior defence analyst, Federation of American Scientists

South Korean President Moon Jae-in really believes that a breakthrough in relations has occurred between Seoul and Pyongyang, the love-in between himself and North Korean President Kim Jong Un on Friday at Panmunjom was a demonstration of warmth, trust and yearning. On his part, in any event; it is generally acknowledged that Kim loves game-playing as much as he enjoys pushing limits and there is no ignoring the fact that the North established a reputation of gaming the South and the U.S. in previous attempts to persuade the Kim dynasty to surrender its nuclear ambitions.

On previous occasions it did so, exhibiting in the process a level of authentic, believable commitment, mothballing its nuclear research, only to soon afterward fire it up again, taking up where it left off, after accepting the promised international aid to lift the North out of dire economic and social straits. Gaming the gullible West just as the Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly done, then in stealth resuming its research under cover of a signed and sealed agreement otherwise.

There is little resemblance to logic but much cognitive dissonance for the West to now believe that North Korea, after expending time, energy, lucre and secret intelligence and technological exchanges in establishing the reality of nuclear success paired with the engineering technology required to succeed in producing ICBMs, that it would be prepared to surrender all of it now, set it aside permanently as a sacrifice to achieve peace between it and its neighbour and the international community.

Before and after images show the Punggye-ri test site where on September 3, 2017, North Korea claimed to have conducted the underground explosion of a hydrogen bomb Credit: AFP/Planet

This is a regime, after all, which failed to be deterred by robust threats by the U.S. administration of full-blast Trump, going on to test its latest, most successful nuclear device and ballistic missiles in full provocation mode. As for pressure brought to bear by more seriously-imposed sanctions, even those supported by China, reports surface of witnessed border trade where tungsten, lead, zinc, copper and gold concentrates, banned for export under UN sanctions are spirited into China.

In return, nightly transports are smuggled into North Korea carrying sugar, flour, fertilizers and other living necessities in exchange for the Chinese-sought natural resources. Factories in North Korea may have been shuttered and fishermen leaving their boats unattended while military units resort to charcoal-engine vehicles for transport, but shortages aside, vital consumer prices remain stable and no food shortages loom in the near future, according to North Korean defectors.

Electricity doesn't appear lacking where street lights are kept on all night in Pyongyang according to South Korean journalists on a recent visit. Everyone seems equipped with a cellphone, and women appeared in fashionable dresses, far more than previously. "We have seen no big disruption in markets yet that could be attributed to sanctions", according to Jiru Ishimaru, operating Asia Press, a website based in Japan monitoring North Korea. "North Korean markets  have proved quite resilient."

Perhaps it's likelier that Kim is enjoying his little cat-and-mouse game. The nuclear installation that he claims will be shuttered will indeed be, since the mountain under which it was built has been utterly destabilized by the succession of nuclear blasts set off for test purposes, resulting in quakes, requiring that a new nuclear installation be built, in a less environmentally disruptive area of the North to enable it to resume its nuclear program.

Denuclearizing North Korea? Doesn't seem all that likely.

The nuclear tests have taken place in a system of tunnels dug below Mount Mantap, near the Punggye-ri site.

Fool Me Once, Shame on You: Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

"To secure transparency on the suspension of nuclear tests, we will close the republic's northern nuclear test site."
"[A] great victory [has been attained in the nation's official] 'byungjin' [policy line; pursuing economic and nuclear development in synchronicity]." 
"Nuclear development has proceeded scientifically and in due order and the development of the delivery strike means also proceeded scientifically and verified the completion of nuclear weapons."
"We no longer need any nuclear test or test launches of international and intercontinental range ballistic missiles and because of this the northern nuclear test site has finished its mission."Statement, Korean Workers' Party's Central Committee

"There is nothing in North Korea's statement that signals a willingness to give up their nukes."
"On the contrary, the tone of the message is one of confidence and strength."
Benjamin Silberstein, North Korea researcher, University of Pennsylvania

Attendees at the Third Plenary Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea  Credit: Reuters

There, it's done -- the long-awaited announcement made after a meeting of North Korea's full Central Committee, focusing on its "new stage" of policies and national directions. The committee saw fit to unanimously resolve to concentrate its national efforts to consolidate a strong socialist economy for the purpose of embarking on "groundbreaking improvements in people's lives". So, it is clear after all that the Kin dynasty is not heartlessly oblivious to the plight of its starving people, envisioning a glorious future of strong economic and social growth.

Of course that future could have been achievable in the past, had it laid aside its commitment to its communist-era pledge and aligned itself with its South Korean cousins who have long since achieved pride in self-sufficiency that it created as an Asian Tiger of stellar technological achievement and production reaching into international corridors of trade and becoming wealthy in the process; the South's robust economy a stark contrast to the North's.

The South has demonstrated incalculable patience with its wayward cousin to the North where -- despite being constantly threatened, suffering violence and loss of life at the vicious whims of Jim Jong Un, putting the South to the test -- it now hopes to usher in a new era, convincing Kim there is nothing to fear from its neighbours, much less the United States, and everything to gain.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in claims Kim's expression of interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons is genuine, that they plan to meet to discuss this and other areas of common interest in Panmunjom during a summit to resolve the standoff with Pyongyang. Sadly, North Korea's idea of "denuclearization" fails to accord with the American definition; it is an issue that remains live; nuclear development to resume unless Washington removes its troops from the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Jong Un's view of himself as a supreme leader, one whose prestige and power resides in his ability to bellicosely threaten his perceived enemies teeters on the brink of acceding to the demands of those enemies, and it just simply does not appear to jive with the former commitment into which so much treasury and effort has been poured. Still, there are those who find the newer statements of accommodation believable.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington is certainly one among them, taking comfort that North Korea is signalling it is prepared to freeze its program; a significant first step -- with others equally welcome -- to follow, they would like to believe, despite past such episodes being turned upside down and inside out, as examples of what can go wrong.

North Korean launching of the Hwasong-15 missile which is capable of reaching all parts of the US in November 2017 Credit: AFP/ KCNA VIA KNS

International Allies Versus North Korea

"The meeting of the Vancouver Group is going to be another visible sign that the international community is acting in concert to speak to the government of North Korea and to say this is threatening us all, and the pressure will increase until the behaviour changes."
"Having said that, we are confident that this campaign of international pressure will lead to the best outcome for the whole world, I think the only outcome for the whole world, which is a diplomatic path to a resolution to this crisis."
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland

"At this stage, we are not sure what kind of meeting it will be. We have not made decisions."
"The danger which Canada may feel will be more and more. Canada should be one of the main players."
Japanese official

"What's important for North Korea to know is that this pressure campaign will not abate, we will not be rolling any of it back, it will only intensify as time goes by."
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Diplomacy has accomplished nothing with North Korea in the past; pacts have been signed, promises made and flouted. Attempts to wheedle North Korea away from its inexorable path to nuclear weaponry and intercontinental ballistic missiles, along with threats have been hugely disappointing. Efforts to appease the Kims have resulted in nothing but temporary and largely illusory halts in the regime of the People's Republic's steady and accelerating mission, and to continue to rely on the hope that further talks could conceivably result in an understanding and accommodation on the part of Kim to backtrack on his trajectory remains an illusion.

The uncompromising stance of defiance and bellicose threats emanating from Kim Jong Un remain unchanged. He heeds no one, not the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, nor the Chinese patrons who have supported the Kim dynasty whose presence represents a dike in the Chinese regime's castle. Now news that Kim has reacted with the ultimate finality toward a principal architect of his nuclear program by 'dismissing' him from existence through execution. Park In Young, officially responsible for the Punggye-ri nuclear test site is no more.

That news carried to South Korea through the defection of yet another North Korean soldier. This man, formerly chief of Bureau 131 of the ruling Central Committee supervised military facilities such as the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test facility and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Some feel his execution is linked to the October nuclear test, the country’s sixth, a 100-kiloton hydrogen bomb seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

The test facility is located south of a mountain, Mantapsan, and a series of small earthquakes shook the area after a September test launch, leaving fears the mountain, may no longer be stable. A number of tunnels collapsed, killing up to 200 people. "If North Korea were to attempt to continue testing under this mountain , then we would expect to see new tunneling in the future near the North Portal, still under Mt. Mantap,". explained Frank Pabian and Jack Liu, researchers who wrote a report published on the North Korea monitoring website 38 North.

A South Korean scientist shows seismic waves taking place in North Korea on a screen at the Korea Meteorological Administration center on September 3 in Seoul. More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility. North Korea is believed to have punished an official responsible for the test site, according to reports in Japanese newspaper Asahi

So there is some internal destabilization linked to North Korea's indelible venture to destabilize the parts of the world he ascribes threats emanating from, toward North Korea. An stealth American training initiative that almost sounds like a combination of Bay of Pigs and Osama bin Laden assassination has been underway, where American soldiers have been training with their South Korean counterparts in potential rescue operations should war break out. According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, the exercise was meant to simulate "infiltrating North Korea and removing weapons of mass destruction in case of conflict." 

In the meanwhile, the United States, Japan, South Korea have been placed on notice that they are all tagged by North Korea as possible targets should Kim Jong Un feel convinced at any time that his country is under direct threat of invasion, when a missile carrying a nuclear payload could be armed and aimed in their direction. As far as Canada is concerned, in aiming for the U.S. mainland, such a missile could conceivably go astray and fall short of its target, hitting Canada. A reality that brings Canada into the planning fray.

Canada offered Vancouver as a meeting site, for a meeting called the "United Nations Command Sending States Meeting", outlined in a briefing by a U.S. State Department official. The countries in question were members of the United Nations Command representing military grouping countries such as South Korea, the United States and fifteen others, including Canada, all of which contributed to defense of the South during the 1950 to 1953 Korean war. All the Korean war states are to be invited to attend along with Japan, India and Sweden.

Japan, the one nation that has suffered two ICBMs flying over and into its airspace, falling into the Sea of Japan, appears to be uncertain about the purpose and the potential outcome of such a conference. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono hesitated to commit his country to any move before year's end. The Japanese offer a realistic point of view that dialogue simply for the sake of dialogue is essentially meaningless. The strategy at present is to place sufficient pressure on North Korea through economic sanctions to force it to seek a mutual agreement.

This too has never worked in the past. While ordinary people in the North become ever more impoverished and the spectre of starvation hangs over the countryside, Kim Jong Un's privileged officials will never lack for both fundamentals and luxury items to ease their passage in life. And China, while genuinely expressing alarm over the impetuously dangerous actions that Kim mounts -- deliberately oblivious to the danger he places himself and his country in, using the blackmail of imposing mass death and destruction on the South -- yet hesitates to abandon its client state.

North Korean Refugees : Canada

"If I go back [to South Korea], the adults, me and my husband, will survive somehow."
"But the kids who were born here and the oldest, it's not their fault that they ended up as my kids. I'm really sorry that we've told false stories [in 2010] but it was only for our survival and I hope the Canadian government gives us an opportunity to stay."
"Please give hope to my kids."
Hyekyung Jo, North Korean defector, Toronto

Hyekyung Jo admitted she and her husband misled Canadian officials when they arrived in Toronto as asylum seekers, but says her family's prospects are bleak if they are forced to return to South Korea, where they lived briefly after defecting from the North.   Torstar News Service

"It's almost impossible to get a good job [for North Koreans living in South Korea]. That's the reality."
"[North Koreans are] brainwashed by [immigration] brokers to tell lies [to Canadian officials that they arrived in Canada directly from China]."
"They [North Koreans seeking immigrant status] think it [changing names, dates of birth, etc.] is the only way to get into Canada. ... They just don't know any better."
Conservative MPP Raymond Cho, immigration critic

Clearly, living as oppressed and fearful citizens under a tyrannical regime such as North Korea's where its dynastic ruler sacrifices the peoples' well-being for his ambitions to achieve long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads to enable him to foment global destabilization through threats doesn't represent reason enough for the Liberal-led Government of Canada to instruct the Immigration Department to view North Koreans defecting from their dysfunctionally dangerous country as suitable to become landed immigrants in Canada.

How the government differentiates in favour of Syrian families fleeing the tyranny of the Syrian regime's Bashar al-Assad's horrendous attacks on his Sunni majority population in a bloody sectarian war, preferring to re-victimize North Koreans by abandoning their need, is a strange conundrum. One of the elected Members of Parliament that Justin Trudeau had elevated to a ministerial position, Afghanistan-heritage Maryam Monsef was discovered to have incorrectly listed her place of birth as Afghanistan when she was born in Iran.

An error she claims was revealed to her only recently by her mother who had identified Afghanistan not Iran on her refugee application. Belief can be suspended, given that Maryam arrived in Canada at age 11 with her mother and siblings, but they had been living in Iran, not Afghanistan where her mother had fled to escape Taliban rule, so the explanation that she did not know seems rather ingenuous. Is Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada prepared to send a letter to this Member of Parliament that she will be deported to Iran?

Just such a letter had been received by a number of North Koreans, up to fifty families living around the greater Toronto area. They were formally informed that their requests for permanent residency are on the verge of being revoked, with deportation to South Korea to follow. What concerns these North Koreans who have settled in Canada and have lived there for years is that North Korean nationals face outright social hostility in South Korea.

The October 30 advisement from Immigration Canada is based on the belief that the South Korean government grants automatic citizenship to North Koreans, and South Korea is recognized by Canada as a safe haven for refugees Hyekyung Jo and her husband in seeking asylum in 2010 informed refugee board authorities they had arrived in Canada directly from China, not from South Korea where they had lived for several years after escaping their country of birth.

Her husband had been under investigation for espionage in South Korea, making their return doubly problematical. Their oldest child was two when they arrived in Canada. Their six year-old and 9 month-old were both born in Canada, over the seven years they have lived in the country, where her husband, Kang works as a sushi chef. The Federation of North Korean Defectors organized a news conference to highlight the plight of these North Korean families in the Toronto area.

A few provincial Parliamentarians attended the conference, all of whom expressed their support for the North Koreans facing deportation. The Federal Government had compiled a list of 35 countries in 2013 considered safe for refugees, and South Korea is one of the countries on that list. MPP David Zimmer, minister of Indigenous relations and reconciliation stated he felt "strongly" that the "federal government should find a way to allow for special circumstances for North Korean defectors", and he planned to raise the issue with  his federal counterparts.

Choose Your Poison Carefully

"You have to ride a horse to know whether it's the right mount for you."
"I have tried, and the South is not for me. I want to go home to the North to reunite with my ex-wife and 16-year-old son."
"They [South Korean employers] called me names, treating me like an idiot, and didn't pay me as much as others doing the same work, just because I was from the North."
"In the North, I may not be rich, but I would better understand people around me and wouldn't be treated like dirt as I have been in the South."
Kwon Choi-nam, North Korean defector, Seoul, South Korea

A man at a barbed wire fence in Paju, South Korea, looking over into North Korea    Express

What is that old line about freedom, liberty, being more important than riches? On the other hand, home is where the heart is, isn't it? Where familiarity and the comfort of routine exists, where you know your neighbours and they know you, speaking the same cultural language, sharing social customs and traditions. So as far as Mr. Kwon is concerned, he resents being thought of as different from South Koreans, somehow lesser, not as intelligent, unworthy of regard.

That sense of social alienation is enough to convince this man who undertook a long, hazardous and painful journey away from his native soil that it was an effort wasted. Having escaped the nation of his birth ruled by an egocentric and dangerous dictator whom the military keeps in power -- and whom the people are taught from birth to venerate even as his regime prefers to use scarce national funding for weapons over food security -- he has decided to return.

He had crossed a river border at night, in 2014, crawled over a barbed-wire fence, walked through a Laos jungle to reach Thailand from where he was able to fly on to South Korea where a new life awaited him. His several years living in freedom in South Korea has failed to assure him that the abandonment of life in his country of birth had advanced his fortunes in any way. South Koreans were disappointingly inhospitable.

He missed his own, repressive country with its gulags and its threats against those like him who dared to flee that repression. But his experience as a "second-class citizen" in South Korea soured him. Where evidently he has forgotten, in his bitterness the third-class status he lived in a North Korea that arrests and imprisons any who dare criticize Kim Jong-Un, classifying them as traitors and sentencing them to life in prison or hard labour in the gulags.

Of the more than 30,000 North Koreans who left the North for the South since the 1990 famine, 25 have chosen to return to the North in the past five years. They are suspected by South Korean officials of being "repeat defectors", a classification given those who return to the North, possibly lured to China, and possibly kidnapped back to the North where the government uses them for propaganda purposes, creating scenarios where they speak of the "living  hell" they experienced in the South.

All defectors automatically become South Korean citizens on arrival in the South. And since it is illegal for any South Koreans to visit the North without especial permission of the government, anyone who attempts to return to the North is viewed as having contravened the law, and becomes a subject of suspicion. Mr. Kwon had made an attempt to return to the North but was detained and jailed in the South for several months.

He is busy trying a new tack, by becoming the second defector over the years to ask the South to repatriate him to North Korea. The two countries remain legally at war, given the agreed-upon armistice, so there is no legal formula by which Mr. Kwon's request to the South to extradite him to the North can be accomplished under South Korean law.

Mr. Kwon's experience with the South's hyperactive competitive capitalism failed to impress him and left him nostalgic for the regimented totalitarian culture he left behind in the North. In South Korea he went from farm to construction work but those physically demanding jobs failed to appeal to him. He then moved to Seoul, living in homeless shelters.

Diplomacy Failed, Sanctions Failed: Military Option?

"It is not only [a] ballistic missile defense system — it has real function. That is why it is alarming. And it is [a] direct threat to Russia. We are convinced that it will increase the tensions of the region. That is our principle position.''
"Economical restrictions should be a kind of tool to invoke North Korea to a peaceful process of resolving the dispute and conflict, and not to once again deteriorate the economic solution in North Korea."
"All states involved in territorial disagreements in the South China Sea need to adhere [to] the principle of the non-use of force."
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un looks on during the test-launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang July 5, 2017.
KCNA/via REUTERS

"Well, there was a failure [in the second-to-last missile test, April]. I don’t know why it failed except there’s been quite a high rate of failure over the last year, and my guess is that’s mainly due to a very rushed pace of development. The North Korean missile program is making some progress, but I think that Kim Jong-un is willing to tolerate a very high rate of failure in his effort to try to develop a more credible long-range capability as quickly as possible. He may feel that he’s got a window of time to try to perfect some of these long-range systems, and he doesn’t seem to be deterred by all of the threats that the U.S. and China and other countries have been trying to dissuade him from continuing testing. But obviously, that’s not working."
"I think this is all just noise. Both sides are rattling sabers, but neither side is going to start a war. We recognize that a military attack on North Korea would probably not be effective in terms of destroying North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program and would run the risk of a North Korean retaliation against South Korea and Japan, which could cost hundreds of thousands of lives. And the North Koreans know that any attack on U.S. allies in the region would provoke an American response that would destroy them. So I think both sides are posturing, but I think the risk of war is very low."
Nuclear security analyst Gary Samore, executive director, research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, second from right, inspects the preparation of the launch of a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM, in North Korea’s northwest on July 4, 2017. Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP

A lot can happen in the world in the space of a month or so to shatter any sense of possible complacency such as that expressed by Mr. Samore back in April, that the likelihood of Kim Jong-un's threat of "all-out war" is simply verbal over-reach, the kind of empty threat that he appears to enjoy indulging in. Since that earlier missile test fizzled, another hugely more successful test, purported by experts in South Korea and the United States to have been an introductory intercontinental ballistic missile with a range approaching the coast of the U.S.   

Not much was seen in the Western-based news sources that an earlier missile had hit close to Russia, a next-door neighbour of North Korea, which appears to be preaching patient tolerance, diplomacy rather than responding in kind to North Korean provocations. Neither Russia nor China has a wish to see the collapse of North Korea by any means, ending with the unification of the two Koreas under South Korea with its alarming (to China and Russia) firm links to the United States, leaving no bulwark between them and U.S. interests.

And nor does either happily contemplate the kind of acceleration that would see both South Korea and Japan, concerned for their own security and defence, securing their own nuclear arms and ICBMs, with the consent of the United States. There can be no mistaking the alarm felt in both South Korea and Japan over the danger that Kim's North Korea poses to them. Public service announcements were being run in Japan to warn citizens to stay clear of windows should a missile attack strike.

Photo by Wong Maye-E/AP

North Korean women soldiers march across Kim Il Sung Square during a military parade in celebration of Kim il Sung's 105th birthday. Gary Samore, executive director for research at the Belfer Center, sees little substantial change in the decades-long stalemate with North Korea, but with economic sanctions imposed even by China, a longtime ally, the hermit nation may be running out of options to sustain its nuclear ambitions.

The Japanese are well versed in how they must react in such earth-shaking conditions, knowing full well how to take refuge, since they are accustomed to reacting to earthquakes on a regular basis, in their earthquake-prone geography. Although the Russian representative to the recent ASEAN Shangri-La conference in Singapore urged restraint in response to North Korean threats, it is extremely difficult to set aside the reality that it is simply not possible for rational debate with North Korea with Kim Jong-un at its helm.

China, its only regional ally, has had ample experience in trying to guide North Korea's actions, to no avail. Even though China has long been North Korea's regional mentor, it too has not been immune from experiencing Kim's glum threats and petty retorts to what it feels is interference in North Korea's affairs. All the more so since Beijing has been lately taking Pyongyang's provocations far more seriously, resulting in its own sanctions hitting the North Korean economy, eliciting more threats from Kim.

Kim Jong-un's reputation has been well earned. This is a man, after all, who summarily arrested and ordered his trusted uncle by marriage, who had guided him in the early days of his presidency, to be killed. The mysterious death of his older half-brother was not really a mystery, representing as it does yet another instance of Kim's penchant for ridding himself of those he no longer finds useful or views as threats.

The Hwasong-14 missile fired into the Sea of Japan with its capacity to fly 6,700 kilometres by U.S. expert estimate, represents a direct threat to Alaska. Other competing estimates of its powerful range go up to 8,500 kilometres, and once it is fine-tuned even more, and fitted out with a miniaturized nuclear head, it becomes a viable threat to the United States and Canada. There are, as it happens, NORAD fighter bases in Alberta and Quebec and they would make achievable targets for this man whose ambitions threaten world order.

The Normality of Shrill War-Mongering

"The puppet military gangsters shot at our sacred fatherland, bringing clouds of fiery war while we are leading a happy life close together with our leader."
"How can we put up with this? I think what our party has decided to do is completely right, and we should take revenge."
Pyongyang citizen Kang Ju Hyob

This man could be angling for notice and approval by his Dear Leader through his bombast, perhaps visualizing himself being recognized as prime material to be appointed a top general whose military prowess would lead North Korea to a final victory over its nemesis South Korea, the wealthy, progressive, democratic half of a once-whole nation. Brain-washed to believe that they're the fortunate and peaceful half, North Koreans seem resigned to their elevated status in life; privation and isolation their blissful lot.

South Korea blamed North Korea over a landmine blast that recently injured two South Korean soldiers. Since North Korea denied it had anything to do with any blasted landmine explosion, the South initiated a campaign of denouncing the North as liars and violators of a truce between the two countries. A furious North Korea demanded that the loudspeakers be taken down, and cease blasting their propaganda into North Korea.

And the South Koreans said that would be done only after an apology was received from North Korea, admitting they were behind the blast. In response, the normally belligerent and perennially affronted North declared themselves at "quasi-war" with the South, warning that their threats would follow through. South Korean defence officials released findings that 70% of the North's over 70 submarines and undersea vehicles had left their bases.

The North had, in addition, doubled its front-line artillery forces. The South reiterated it would continue the broadcasts. The North denied they had done anything to occasion the loud verbal assaults. President Park Geun-hye insisted that without a clear and unambiguous apology from North Korea for the mine attack the anti-Pyongyang propaganda would continue.

The infuriated North threatened that meant war. Behind the scenes of the belligerent rhetoric representatives of both countries were meeting Foremost on the table was a means by which each could evade losing face. But the talks were evidently mature and civil enough at the village of Panmunjom, that both agreed to pull back from broadcast on the part of the South acknowledging apology from the North and the resumption of relations.

North Korea's preparations, moving a high number of troops and submarines to the border came to a halt. A simple matter of expressing regret brought both countries back from the brink of belligerence.

North Koreans themselves seem somewhat inured to the fear of war breaking out between the two countries. They have been indoctrinated into the belief that the South plans dire action against them for so long, and have become so accustomed to hearing they're on the brink of war, they're hardly fazed any longer. In this Friday, Aug. 21, 2015 photo, a woman walks past a propaganda movie shown on a large screen in Pyongyang, North Korea. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

The Colossus Stretches Its Sea Legs

"[China has created] over four square kilometres of artificial land mass; a great wall of sand."
U.S. Admiral Harry Harris Jr., commander, U.S. Pacific fleet

A March 16 satellite image from the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative shows one of China's artificial islands in the South China Sea.    CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/DigitalGlobe

Admiral Harris intimates that Beijing's intentions in the area are unknown but certainly suspected and there may be serious consequences; certainly serious questions exist to which serious answers have not been identified. Speculation, however, is rife, and the threats emanating from China's actions are making its neighbours extremely alert to the very real potential of their own territorial integrity under threat.

As it is China has laid claims to some 85 percent of the South China Sea. And since it has recognized, unilaterally, that those areas as China's alone to do with as it will, Beijing is in the process of building artificial islands based on stony outcroppings, atolls and reefs in the Spratly Archipelago. Seaborne dredges of immensely monstrous size are scooping sand and coral from the ocean floor, bulldozing it to surface lumps of geology.

Six of these outposts, part of a chain of over 700 islets rising four metres above sea level, have so far surfaced. Those promontories are closer geographically to the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei than they are to China, but for the disadvantaged neighbours of China's bellicose claims to ownership of areas traditionally linked to them, what they are viewing is a loss whose cause and outcome they may be helpless to respond to.
The submersible Jiaolong

Admiral Harris's comments represent intolerably obnoxious meddling, according to Beijing, comfortable in its neighbourhood, resentful of a foreign presence interfering with the giant country's rights, with no obligations on their part to consult with neighbours. As for those areas that appear to be contested; wrong, China has always conceived of them as belonging to its sovereign territory, close proximity to the shoreline of Philippines regardless.

And it has the proof, in ancient Chinese maps and scrolls artfully showing where Chinese vessels have sailed and landed historically, long before the uninvited European powers "discovered" the region so far from their own geographical locations. That its neighbours claim their own ancestors long used these same islets and waters is irrelevant. They are mites to China's might.

Areas clearly within the 200-mile exclusive zone of the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam, clearly must surrender to the ages-old truism that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law'. Which law that represents is also crystal clear. Maritime law itself is unclear about when or if a bit of rock rising above the ocean's surface can be viewed legitimately as part of a country's sovereign territory by artificial expansion.

What else? Beijing has plans to build the world's largest amphibious aircraft, no fewer than sixty of them. The Jiaolong has a range of 5,500 km, enabling its operation above and in the South China Sea and certainly much beyond. So why such a push for territorial expansion; who, after all will live on these new Chinese possessions? Who could live on such isolated islets?

As it happens, the Spratly Archipelago, the Paracel Islands and Scarborough Shoal represent a colossal pool of oil and gas, ripe for exploitation, surrounded by teeming fishing waters right on the world's busiest shipping lanes. What potential...! In 2013, the Philippines' President Benigno Aquino, sent a warship to defend the Henderson Shoal whose nearby hydrocarbon resources were viewed as critical for the country's expanding economy.

A two-month standoff ensued when that lone warship was surrounded by Chinese patrol vessels. So that's the South China Sea. And then there's the East China Sea, parts of which are claimed by Japan and South Korea. Where Chinese warplanes ply reconnaissance, and where China had declared in 2013 its "air defence identification (no-go) zone". Further attracting the intense admiration of its neighbours. Those oceanic plenitudes are named, after all, "China".

Chinese scientists onboard the Xuelong takes samples of the Antarctic atmosphere. Zhang Jiansong / Xinhua

China's Xue Long (Snow Dragon) icebreaker showed up off Tuktoyaktuk in Canada's Arctic. Hello there, could you give us prior notice next time around? The very same ship appeared in Antarctic waters where China has established four research facilities. Australia also wonders why its coast is so attractive to China. But China's "sphere of influence" has expanded from Hawaii to the Gulf of Aden and the Mediterranean Sea.