North Korea a Threat or Not?

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 25^th 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 12^th 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.

Is North Korea a Major Concern for the U.S.?

I will have to admit that I do not know very much about what is going on with world political issues. I have paid attention to the news and kept up with some of the stories that have been going on. One of the issues that I have learned a little bit about and am interested in is about North Korea. I am concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

The initial reason why I chose this issue is because of my fear of it. There have been other political issues that have also made me worried. For example, I was worried about the attack of September 11^th and the start of the Iraq war. At first the U.S. was told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Soon after we entered Iraq we found out that they did not have weapons of mass destruction. I was confused as to whom to believe. This confusion on the war with Iraq has made me question if I should play into the fear of what is going on in the world or learn about it. I chose to learn. With learning about what is going on with these serious issues in the world I will know better which issues I should be concerned about.

This led me to my fear of North Korea and wanting to know more about it. I am looking more into this issue regarding North Korea’s having nuclear weapons. Could they be a threat to the U.S?

One the major concerns is if North Korea attacks South Korea. How could this threaten the U.S? If North Korea did this, then the U.S. would have to come to South Korea’s defense. We signed an agreement with South Korea and Japan promising if they get attacked we would defend them militarily. If North Korea attacks either of them then U.S. soldiers would have to go over there to fight. This would stretch our military as our soldiers are already fully employed over in Iraq and elsewhere.

Another reason why I am interested in this issue is because as North Korea does have nuclear weapons and if they use them could this is a trigger of something bigger? It could be a trigger into other countries who have nuclear weapons to pull them out and we could have an outbreak of a global nuclear war. This is an obvious serious issue that the U.S. needs to pay attention to and take action on.

I will continue to learn about the issue I chose about North Korea and find out how big of a concern it is to the U.S. I will study what the U.S. should be doing and has been doing on handling this issue. I will be searching for information that will help me better deal with fear and draw a bigger conclusion on what the U.S. should do next with North Korea.