It is difficult to know what a countries real intentions are when they become a high risk of potential danger to others. Others around them or that could be affected by the dangerous country have to pay attention. North Korea is one of those potential dangerous countries. It is in question what North Korea’s military intentions as it relates to nuclear bombs.
In 2006 North Korea became another player in the game of having nuclear weapons (New York Times). Soon after they had been the next country to have nuclear weapons, North Korea half attempted to conduct their first launch of a nuclear device. However, in February 2007, North Korea had said they would in time stop their nuclear program (New York Times). This agreement that North Korea would shut down their nuclear program in the area of Pyongyang. They put their nuclear devices under an inspection by the Atomic Energy Agency within 60 days (Snyder, Washington Quarterly). By doing this North Korea received 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil (Snyder, Washington Quarterly).
After this agreement, in June 2008, the Bush administration had removed North Korea from their list of potential terrorist countries (New York Times). It has seemed that progress was being made with North Korea. However, in December of 2008 the nuclear base in Pyongyang disagreed to accept terms by the U.S. about Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
As the progress had seemed to fail with North Korea it got a little worse when in April 2009 they did a test with a ballistic missile (New York Times). Then on May 25th 2009 North Korea did their second nuclear test, which was successful. Even though they had been warned by other countries to not go forth with their nuclear testing’s (New York Times). The United Nations Security Council reacted to this second test by setting up a more strict way of monitoring this issue on June 12th 2009 (New York Times). With this they told United Nations members to check out North Korea cargo vessels and airplanes that could be holding weapons. The U.S., Japan, and South Korea have now frozen Pyongyang’s overseas bank accounts. They had done this in the past and it had seemed to work because it had hurt the regime in the past (New York Times).
North Korea has seemed to be playing this “catch me if you can” game by starting out with nuclear testing then stopping and then starting again. An author of an article in the Aviation Week & Space Technology has suggested a similar method. David Fulghum whom wrote the article Testing Testing in AW&SP said that North Korea is afraid that because they are turning into third-world country they would have no influence over anything (Fulghum, Aviation Week & Space Technology). In this same article Fulghum reported a statement by a senior Pacific based Air Force official saying that North Korea does not want to be ignored. This official also said that North Korea has seen that the U.S. reacts to them, so they keep acting out.
Now leading up to where things are at, president Obama is faced with this challenge of North Korea. During the second nuclear test that North Korea did, president Obama declared that the U.S. and its allies will stand up to them. There is now a ship that has taken off from North Korea that the U.S. is concerned about. They are not sure what is on it and Obama has requested the U.S. Navy to inspect the ship but will not step aboard it. North Korea has said if the U.S. does then it will make it known of war. This is currently where the issue is at with North Korea and there is still the concern about North Korea’s nuclear activity.
There's the danger from a possible North korean attack, either on its neighbors, or potentially on the U.S., and then the danger of NK passing along nuclear technology to third parties (possible terrorist groups). You could maybe focus on one of those dimensions to the threat.
ReplyDeleteNK is also a REALLY poor country, with a large military (for a country of its size) but also a very poorly equipped military. It is a little hard to fathom exactly how a country that has so few resources could really pose much of a threat to the world's only remaining superpower (the U.S.)