North Korea confirms nuclear test

[palefrost]

SEOUL, South Korea (AP)-- North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Monday the country has performed a successful nuclear test.
South Korean government officials also said North Korea performed its first nuclear test, the South's Yonhap news agency reported
According to KCNA, there was no radioactive leakage from the site.
South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the Yonhap report.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun convened an urgent meeting of security advisers over the issue, Yonhap reported.
The North said last week it would conduct a nuclear test as part of its deterrent against a possible U.S. invasion.
The report of the test came as Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Seoul for meetings with President Roh Moo-hyun to address the nuclear issue as well as address strains in relations between the two countries over territorial and historical disputes.

So what happens now? Do you think China will stop all trading with North Korea or will we have more of the same talkie talkie five dollah speak we have been having?

 

[vicki2]

Don't know, but I just heard Hillary Clinton blaming the Bush Administration for the nuclear test today. I think that's really a stretch!

 

[dong]

Opinion? Prima facie, this really looks like a childish squabble. Except with nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

 

[framed]

I dont think meaningful sanctions make any kind of sense. North Korea is already a fairly unstable state, now theyre unstable with nuclear weapons. It won't help anyone in range to further destabilize the country.

The fact is nuclear proliferation is here. The technology is out there now and its not as hard as it used to be to figure it out now that the major powers have done all the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, you don't have to be a major power to put a nuke on the table any more.

It makes sense to talk a good game and threaten all sorts of damnation to discourage countries from doing the research and building the bombs, but it's really just to delay the inevitable (a worthy goal in the case of nuclear proliferation. )

Not that the US has done a good job persuading countries that they dont need nuclear weapons lately. The US position has been something like this since Bush has been in office: "we have the bomb, we think youre a threat, so we dont want you to have it too...by the way we think youre evil and are considering invading your country, we'd like to show you some 'shock and awe'"

As crazy as [SIZE=-1]Kim Jong-il is, it was probably the sanest move he could have made to detonate a weapon. If I was running a country that was put on the "axis of evil" by the #1 superpower in the world, then I saw that superpower start picking off countries on that list, I'd probably do it. Its a pretty strong invasion deterrent.

So what happens now? I would guess more countries, particularly ones that have issues with either the US or Russia, will go after the bomb. There will be blustering, but they'll eventually get a weapon. As more inherently unstable countries get the weapon, the chance for a pretty horrible accident goes up. (Here are the top 20 near-world-ending mistakes between the US and the USSR. If we have this many how many do you think NK, India, Pakistan, Israel, and Iran will have? Yuck) It makes the strategic case for getting back more strongly into missile defense, especially since none of these countries would be launching a fleet of missiles.. a capability to shoot down a handful of incoming ICBMs is likely to pay off for us in the next 50 years. More complete radiation detection at our borders would probably be a good thing too.
[/SIZE]

 

[vicki2]

Politically, I find it a very interesting time to see how China and Japan will handle Kim Jong ...the ball game is in their area of the world, so I'd like to see them come to the plate.

 

[palefrost]

Politically, I find it a very interesting time to see how China and Japan will handle Kim Jong ...the ball game is in their area of the world, so I'd like to see them come to the plate.

I have to agree. No matter what though it seems like Little Kim wants the USA as his target. Every single statement involves us and not anyone else. Its personal lol.

 

[Furious George]

I love how the Media is portraying this as a devastating failure. It's just like Framed said; Bush is targeting anyone on the axis of evil, and it just so happens that N. Korea is on the list. It's politics. Bush is going to use his facade of steadfastly defending the country for his advantage. There's nothing to defend against. Having a nuclear weapon almost assures that your country is safe from enemy invasion.

Who can also forget M.A.D.? This theory alone proves that a large scale nuclear war will never happen.

 

[vicki2]

So are you saying that Kim Jong's testing should just be ignored and we should pretend it didn't happen?

 

[framed]

I don't think it should be ignored, but it shouldn't be treated as an act of war. (Unless you want to treat the way india, pakistan, france, israel, england, china and russia did that way too) What's done is done, they're now a nuclear power just like us. We arent going to take the nukes away from them, and destabilizing and alienating a nuclear power is a terrible idea.

We need to work harder to bring them into the fold, and tie their economic interests with ours so that its harder for them to even concieve of a situation where going to war makes sense. We could do that by attempting to be their friends, we could stop calling them evil, we could provide them the humanatarian supplies they need, and we could start expanding trade with them.

All these things are far from ignoring what they did, though they probably arent the "punishing" response people want. Really though, lets face it they didn't do anything wrong. As much as we'd like to say nuke's are "wrong", we have the largest stockpile of them and thus have hardly a leg to stand on. So lets get over it and get on with preventing fights instead of picking them.

 

[sarah]

I don’t think there is any real way to get through to Kim Jong… the idea that they have nuclear weapons is absolutely crazy, and I doubt there will be any successful ‘talks’ with the North Korean government. They seem to think that they have the right to do whatever the hell they want to do and damn the rest of the world. People who think like that are dangerous and should not be trusted. (Kind of reminds me of another famous world leader… but I can’t remember his name, Bush was it.)

 

[wondering]

I don't think it's an act of war. I mean, them testing them is just showing everyone they have them which we all kinda figured anyway, right?

 

[dong]

It might be old news but I am wondering what people think of the massive backpedalling that happened shortly after. I cannot help but think that it could have been somewhat premeditated.