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US-North Korea Tensions & Conflict Thread
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Topic Started: Apr 13 2017, 11:44 PM (25 Views)
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Webster
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Apr 13 2017, 11:44 PM
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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Sky News: North Korea Defiant Over Nuclear Test Plan Despite U.S. Pressure
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North Korea's vice foreign minister has said Pyongyang will conduct its next nuclear test whenever supreme headquarters sees fit.
The minister told the Associated Press, Pyongyang won't 'keep its arms crossed' amid reports of of a pre-emptive strike from the US.
He added that Donald Trump was "making trouble" with "aggressive" tweets.
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Webster
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Apr 14 2017, 01:50 AM
Post #2
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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USA Today: is Trump Planning A Decapitation Strike Against Pyongyang?

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Imagine a world without communist North Korea. For the Trump administration, it’s easy if you try.
President Trump tweeted that Pyongyang is “looking for trouble” and that he would “solve the problem” with or without North Korea’s neighbor and patron China. This was the latest in an escalating exchange of threats in which the Kim Jong Un regime threatened nuclear retaliation if “even a single bullet” was fired at the Hermit Kingdom. Meanwhile, the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group is headed towards the peninsula, and China has deployed 150,000 troops to the Korean border, possibly to mitigate the flood of refugees that would follow military action.
The crisis is long in coming. Successive generations of policymakers have kicked the North Korea can down the road since the 1953 armistice. The Kim dynasty was allowed to maintain its totalitarian dystopia because the threat was mostly contained, and there was no solution that did not involve a general war that would devastate our prosperous democratic ally in South Korea. Instead, the world awaited the expected collapse of the nightmarish North Korean dictatorship. The collapse has yet to come.
Now the calculus has changed. North Korea has an active nuclear weapons program and is rapidly developing the capability to deliver these weapons to the United States mainland. Kim Jong Un, the communist state’s third dynastic ruler, is determined to have a seat at the strategic nuclear table. If the United States waits, one of the most bellicose, seemingly least rational regimes in modern history will have the capability to kill millions of Americans at a stroke.
The Trump administration has reportedly been drawing up contingency plans for solving the problem before millions of American lives are at stake. National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster said Sunday that deploying forces in the region was prudent and that President Trump has asked for “a full range of options to remove that threat to the American people and to our allies and partners in the region.” The Trump administration isn't the first to consider preemptive military action against North Korea. Defense secretaries from the Obama and Clinton administrations made the case in 2006. But active counterproliferation against North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs — which is to say, destroying them — has always been risky because of the threat of millions of North Korea troops swarming south.
However, there may be a solution that at least lowers the risk. During last month’s combined exercises in South Korea, U.S. forces participated in a simulated decapitation strike to take out North Korea’s leadership. The decapitation option is attractive because all power in the totalitarian state is focused in Kim Jong Un. If he vanished, the state apparatus could well be paralyzed. North Korean generals would hesitate to take action because initiative has been bred out of the power structure; anyone with ideas and ambition has probably already been fed to the dogs.
Kim could well have sought to deter such a strike by issuing standing orders to initiate a spasmodic military strike in case of his death. But his underlings may not execute it. The model would be Adolf Hitler’s last-ditch “Nero Decree” to reduce Germany to scorched earth, which his staff chose to ignore. Senior North Korean leaders may recognize how much better life would be with the Kim regime gone; no more living under threat of being executed by anti-aircraft weapon for accidentally nodding off at a meeting, for example.
The problem, of course, is how to get Kim. The dictator is highly paranoid, and for good reason, since many people are out to get him. He can employ elaborate means of avoiding detection, and went underground for more than a month in 2014. Pyongyang is honeycombed with tunnels and underground bunkers, no doubt able to sustain Kim and his core group of aides and commanders for an extended period. But the solution may come from the inside. How can Kim fully trust those around him, those most likely to be on the receiving end of his irrational impulses, made worse by being holed up? Putting his personal protective system under constant pressure — such as through threats of imminent U.S. military action, and spreading information about suspected disloyal elements in the North Korean hierarchy — could lead to an internal breakdown, or flush the quarry.
Kim may also be shamed into showing himself above ground. The dictator is overly sensitive; North Korean state media responded scathingly to John McCain’s offhand comment about Kim being a “crazy fat kid.” Kim fancies himself an evil genius, but he has only mastered the first half of that equation. The burrowing gopher may have to show himself just to prove he is the godlike hero his regime has portrayed him as. Maybe he could be goaded into making another visit to People’s Army Goat Breeding Station 621. Hopefully, when the resulting strike rains down the livestock will be spared.
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Webster
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Apr 15 2017, 01:59 AM
Post #3
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One America News: North Korea Displays Apparently New Missiles As U.S. Carrier Group Approaches

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PYONGYANG/SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea displayed what appeared to be new long-range and submarine-based missiles on the 105th birth anniversary of its founding father, Kim Il Sung, on Saturday, as a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier group steamed towards the region.
A U.S. Navy attack on a Syrian airfield this month raised questions about U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for reclusive North Korea, which has conducted several missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. and unilateral sanctions, regularly threatening to destroy the United States.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Kim Il Sung’s grandson, looking relaxed in a dark suit and laughing with aides, oversaw the huge parade on the “Day of the Sun” at Pyongyang’s main Kim Il Sung Square. Goose-stepping soldiers and marching bands filled the square, next to the Taedonggang River that flows through Pyongyang, in the hazy spring sunshine, followed by tanks, multiple launch rocket systems and other weapons.
Single-engine propeller-powered planes flew in a 105 formation overhead.
Unlike at some previous parades attended by Kim, there did not appear to be any a senior Chinese official in attendance. China is North Korea’s lone major ally but has spoken out against North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests and supported U.N. sanctions.
The North has said it has developed and would launch a missile that can strike the mainland United States but officials and experts believe it is some time away from mastering all the necessary technology. Weapons analysts said they believed some of the missiles on display were new types of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
North Korea showed two new kinds of ICBM enclosed in canister launchers mounted on the back of trucks, suggesting Pyongyang was working towards a “new concept” of ICBM, said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the U.S.-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. “However, North Korea has a habit of showing off new concepts in parades before they ever test or launch them,” Hanham said. “It is still early days for these missile designs”.
North Korea, still technically at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce but not a treaty, has on occasion conducted missile or nuclear tests to coincide with big political events and often threatens the United States, South Korea and Japan.
It warned the United States that any provocation would be met with retaliation. “All the brigandish provocative moves of the U.S. in the political, economic and military fields pursuant to its hostile policy toward the DPRK will thoroughly be foiled through the toughest counteraction of the army and people of the DPRK,” the North’s KCNA state news agency said, citing a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army.
DPRK stands for the official name of North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“Our toughest counteraction against the U.S. and its vassal forces will be taken in such a merciless manner as not to allow the aggressors to survive.” -Read more: http://www.oann.com/rain-in-pyongyang-as-north-koreans-prepare-for-day-of-the-sun/
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Webster
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Apr 15 2017, 07:28 PM
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--Attempted projectile launch by North Korea fails, South Korean officials report. (CNN Breaking Bews - 15 April 2017)
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Webster
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Apr 15 2017, 07:29 PM
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....from CBS News: Attempted North Korean missile launch failure, says U.S. official
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Webster
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Apr 15 2017, 07:42 PM
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The Guardian: North Korea launches unsuccessful missile attempt, says South Korea

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North Korea has attempted to launch a missile from an eastern coastal city, but the launch appeared to end in failure, according to South Korea.
The statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday said it wasn’t clear what kind of missile was involved.
The US military said it detected and tracked a missile launched at 5.51am local time near Sinpo. Pacific Command said it blew up almost immediately. The type of missile used is still being assessed.
North Korea launched a long-range rocket and conducted two nuclear tests last year, including its most powerful to date, and there have been a slew of shorter range missile firings.
North Korea’s goal is a long-range nuclear missile that can strike the continental United States.
Sunday’s launch comes a day after a huge military parade was held to mark the 105th birthday of late North Korea founder Kim Il Sung.
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Webster
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Apr 15 2017, 07:46 PM
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 --North Korea (failed) missile launch explodes immediately upon takeoff (Dan Scavino, Jr., White House Director of Social Media - 15 Arpil 2017)
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