"To err is human, to
forgive divine." - Alexander
Pope
Despite the United
States-initiated chorus of protests, the North
Korean administration led by heaven-sent statesman
and supreme leader Kim Jong-eun will celebrate the
centenary of the birth of its god-like founding
father Kim Il-sung by shooting off a
spectacular firework: a
polar-orbiting observation satellite launched into
space between April 12 and 16.
The Kim
Jong-eun administration does not share the view
that the planned satellite launch imperils the
February 29 North Korea-US nuclear agreement. The
North Koreans are of the firm view that a Cold
Warrior mindset has misled the Americans to
mistake the launch of an observation satellite
that of a ballistic missile test.
The Kim
Jong-eun administration has four reasons to
disregard the US charges as unfounded and go ahead
with the launch.
Firstly, the satellite
launch has long been planned as part of nationwide
celebrations for Kim Il-sung's centenary. No one
can stand in its way. Secondly, firing a
satellite into orbit is pursuant to the will of
the late, great fatherly leader Kim Jong-il. For
the Korean people, there is no disobeying
it. Thirdly, the Kim Jong-eun administration is
only exercising its inalienable right of
sovereignty. For Pyongyang to yield to outside
pressure and demur on the planned satellite would
suggest that North Koreans are not as proud a
people as they are. Fourthly, the payload
mounted on the Unha (Milky Way) rocket is a
polar-orbiting observation satellite. It is
designed to transmit important prospecting data on
the underground resources of the Korean Peninsula,
as well as weather and mapping data.
When
a carrier rocket leaves the launch pad, an
international bevy of experts on space technology
and journalists will have little difficulty is
discerning whether this is a scientific satellite
launch or an intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) test. This will prove most embarrassing to
the Barack Obama administration, the South Korean
administration of President Lee Myung-bak and the
Japanese government.
US's overreaction
betrays fear A North Korean Foreign
Ministry spokesman in a March 31 statement accused
the Obama administration of being afraid of
objective verification of the peaceful nature of
the satellite launch.
Fear accounts for
the Americans' deliberate over-reaction to the
North Korean satellite launch, the spokesman said.
He cited two compelling facts, one being the order
issued to the US's National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) not to send observers to
North Korea and the other undue pressure brought
upon other countries to follow suit.
He
went on to describe the American portrayal of the
peaceful satellite launch as a handy pretext to
press for establishing a missile defense system in
East Asia with a view to restarting the Cold War,
in a bid to rescue a Pax Americana on the brink of
collapse.
Full public knowledge that the
payload of the North Korean Unha rocket is not a
warhead but a pure observation satellite would
pull the rug from the US case for a missile
defense system.
There is an important
historical context found in "North Korean Missile
Test Surprised US", an Associated Press (AP)
report from September, 1998.
It notes that
"US intelligence officials told lawmakers
Wednesday they were caught unawares by North
Korea's test-firing of a third-stage rocket".
However, this "surprise" failed to prompt the
second-term Bill Clinton administration to abandon
the October 21, 1994, Agreed Framework, which was
later unilaterally terminated by the George W Bush
administration.
After the 1998 launch, the
US continued work on the construction in North
Korea of two 1,000 megawatt (MW) light water
reactors (LWR) power plants and supply Pyongyang
with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil per year.
As a matter of course, the second-term
Clinton administration initially condemned the
August 31, 1998, satellite launch as a ballistic
missile test in disguise. However, it went out of
its way two weeks later to retract its initial
assessment, calling it "a satellite".
On
September 4, an anonymous US intelligence officer
told Reuters, "We have seen that report and we are
still evaluating the data connected with the
launch and we cannot at this point rule out that
an object was placed in orbit." The Reuters news
story was headlined, "US Can't Rule Out N Korea
Launched Satellite."
Ten days later,
September 14, the State Department courageously
backed away from its initial assessments and
acknowledged that the object launched by North
Korea in the western Pacific two weeks earlier was
a satellite and not a missile.
State
Department spokesman James P Rubin told AP, "The
object launched by North Korea in the western
Pacific two weeks ago was a satellite and not a
missile."
The response of the second-term
Clinton administration shows that the Americans
were honest enough to admit their error and
correct it in public, a characteristic American
moral quality lacking in the Barack Obama
administration.
Scott A Snyder, senior
fellow for Korea studies and director of the
program on US-Korea policy at the Council on
Foreign Relations, recommended a pre-emptive
strike on the North Korean carrier rocket perched
on the launch pad in a March 22 article, "How to
Stop North Korea's Satellite Test."
Bush
also proposed the a pre-emptive strike but refused
to use it against an North Korea armed to the
teeth.
Snyder's crazy recommendations are
based on a June 22, 2006, Washington Post op-ed
piece of two Clinton-era top defense officials,
former secretary of defense William J Perry and
former assistant secretary of defense Ashton B
Carter, headlined, "If Necessary, Strike and
Destroy."
The irony is that the
self-styled three hawks-come-lately are totally
unaware that they sound like puppies unafraid of a
tiger.
Whether they acknowledge it or not,
North Korea is the fourth-most powerful nuclear
weapons state, just after the US, Russia and
China. North Korea is the sole state ready to
engage the sole superpower in nuclear war with the
US mainland transformed into the first theater of
thermonuclear conflagration.
A pre-emptive
strike on the North Korean Unha rocket would
prompt Supreme Commander Kim Jong-eun to order the
Korean People's Army global strike force to
retaliate in a way unimaginable to the American
policy-planners, bombing the Metropolitan US back
to the Stone Age and completing the job by
vaporizing it until there was no trace.
The contemporary Kwanggaeto (the 19th
monarch of Goguryeo, the northernmost of the Three
Kingdoms of Korea) - the Great Kim Jong-eun - is
one click away from ordering the KPA:
To launch an immediate all-out cyber-attack to
play havoc with all the computer systems
throughout the US to reduce its government,
military, economy and culture dysfunctional.
To mount an electromagnetic pulse assault on
the US mainland with hydrogen bombs detonated far
above on its heart.
To deliver thermonuclear warheads onto key
cities such as New York, Washington, Boston,
Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, Los
Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Austin, New Orleans,
and Jacksonville.
To vaporize them without any trace left on the
ground.
That is why the Bush
administration opted not to strike North Korea but
to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
In his
op-ed in the March 12, 2003 edition of the Los
Angeles Times, former assistant secretary of
defense and currently Dean of Harvard University's
John F Kennedy School of Government, Dr Joseph Nye
wrote:
The decision to focus on Iraq rather
than North Korea shows that deterrence works,
but in this case what it shows is North Korea's
ability to deter the United States. With more
than 11,000 artillery tubes hidden in caves in
the demilitarized zone, North Korea can
devastate Seoul even without weapons of mass
destruction. This reality prevented the Clinton
administration from executing a preemptive
strike against North Korea's nuclear facilities
at Yongbyon in 1994.
In his 2006 book,
State of Denial, Bob Woodward quoted Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to
the United States and a close friend of the first
president Bush as saying:
The 38,000 American troops right on
the border [with North Korea] ... If nothing
else counts, this counts. One shot across the
border and you lose half these people
immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a
chemical or biological or even regular attack.
The United States of America is at war
instantly.
In his 2006 book,
Perspectives on US Policy Toward North Korea:
Stalemate or Checkmate, Professor Sharon
Richardson of the United States Air Force Academy
writes:
A military operation to overthrow
the regime such as that occurred in Iraq would
have serious repercussions. The main difference
between the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic
of Korea] and Iraq is that three of the world's
12 largest economies as well as 37,000 US troops
are within striking distance of the DPRK. If the
DPRK felt threatened, retaliation would produce
numerous casualties and regional economic
devastation; experts speculate that war against
the DPRK could cause 500,000 casualties,
according to an estimate attributed to former
commander of US Forces Korea General Gary Luck,
would cause one million casualties and cost $1
trillion in economic damage.
Limited
military engagement to topple Kim [Jong-il] and
his regime, or to strike at suspected nuclear
sites, could precipitate a full-scale war or
lead to similar, but smaller-scale damage from
DPRK retaliation. The resulting casualties would
be an unacceptable risk. The regime could also
detonate one of its suspected nuclear weapons
against the US forces and civilian populations.
Thus, even a limited military strike is
unthinkable.
Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman John Kerry told the New York
Times on March 6, 2004:
But there's a reason the Bush
administration walked that backwards and chose
Iraq. And the reason is in the first eight hours
of a conflict with North Korea, you'd have over
a million casualties, and they knew that in Iraq
you wouldn't. So part of their choice of Iraq
was, very simple phrase: it could be done. It
was there for the doing. North Korea is less
there for the doing. So they have a different
approach. As we did with Russia for 50 years,
with China.
The doyen of hardliners
then, vice president Dick Cheney rejected calls
for a pre-emptive military strike to destroy a
potential North Korean missile launch site made by
the two Clinton-era top defense officials. He said
in a CNN interview June 23, 2006:
Cheney, however, told CNN that,
while "I appreciate Bill's advice," such an
action could worsen the situation.
"I
think, at this stage, we are addressing the
issue in the proper fashion ... obviously, if
you are going to launch strikes at another
nation, you better be prepared to not fire just
one shot. The fact of the matter is, I think,
the issue is being addressed appropriately."
Obama blinked, visibly
trembling All indications are that Obama
has blinked in the face of the resolute,
principled stand of the DPRK.
The North
Korean Peaceful Reunification Committee on March
23 threatened to take "powerful counter-measures
of the sort unimaginable to anybody else if the
nuclear security summit should dare come up with a
conspiratorial scheme to provoke the DPRK, taking
issue with its nuclear deterrence and peaceful
satellite launch".
Two episodes show
beyond doubt that despite his tough language, the
American president is trembling in his shoes.
One is Obama's visit to the demilitarized
zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas and the other is
the March 26-27 Seoul nuclear security summit,
which was overshadowed by the satellite issue.
Arriving in Seoul on March 25, Obama
proceeded directly to the DMZ to look strong, but
he could only stay at the windswept observation
point a short 10 minutes, shielded by a wall of
two-inch-thick bullet-proof glass. He shied away
from popping into the armistice conference room at
Panmunjom.
Televised images of Obama
cutting short his trip to the DMZ could spoil his
commander-in-chief credentials in an election
year.
Reuters reported March 26:
"Analysis: North Korea Odd Man Out Yet
Everywhere." "The White House called North Korea
the odd man out. President Barack Obama counted it
back in."
Reuters quoted Sharon Squassoni,
director of the proliferation prevention program
at the Center for International and Strategic
Studies as commenting:
It's hard enough to keep attention
on nuclear security, because there is
disagreement on the threat and what to do about
it. A summit is a completely inappropriate venue
for dealing with the North Korean threat.
A summit of 54 leaders is not a
negotiating forum.
Obama tried to
look strong by issuing a blunt warning to North
Korea but he saw to it that the Seoul communique
issued at the end of the summit made no mention of
North Korea's nuclear deterrence and satellite
launch plan.
It is safe to guess that
almost all the summit leaders must have left Seoul
with a lasting impression that Obama is no match
to the young but canny fox Kim Jong-eun of the
nuclear-armed North Korea. Kim jong-eun is another
Kim Il-sung in image and action. The acorns don't
fall far from the tree.
Jaw-dropping
satellite launch technology An invited
bevy of overseas experienced experts on space
technology and journalists will most likely find
their jaws dropping when they are taken to a tour
of the ultra-modem Sohae Satellite Launch Station,
the general control and command center and allowed
to observe the liftoff of a heavy-lift Unha rocket
carrying an observation satellite.
They
will doubt their eyes at the sight of a highly
sophisticated, shiny heavy-lift satellite launch
vehicle lifting off, all its component parts and
electronic gear, indigenously designed and
produced.
Overseas space experts and media
people will gain indisputable evidence that the
North Korean rocket does not carry a warhead but a
peaceful satellite as its payload. All the world
will see that there is no factual basis in the
allegations heaped on Pyongyang by Obama and
company, which are similar to the pre-war hype by
Bush and company presented to justify their
invasion of Iraq.
The Americans, the South
Koreans, the Japanese and UN secretary general Ban
Ki-moon will look fools, totally discredited in
the eyes of the world audience. Meanwhile, a
successful launch of an observation satellite into
polar orbit will provide the North Koreans with
publicity for low-cost satellite launch services
available to any interested party around the
globe.
The US has two options left to
weigh as the North puts the final touches to
preparations for the April 15 ceremony.
Firstly, Washington could display the
moral strength to belatedly backtrack on its
threats to cancel the promised food aid, instead
exploiting the satellite blastoff as the
once-in-lifetime opportunity to show goodwill to
North Korea. Secondly, it could act blindly, brand
this launch as a cover for a missile test and
welch on the accord.
The first option
calls for the Americans to take steps to recapture
high moral ground and reaffirm to North Korea that
"it no longer has hostile intent toward the DPRK".
The Obama administration could accept the
invitation to send experts to watch the event and
announce plans to congratulate the Kim Jong-eun
administration on the 100th birthday anniversary
of Kim Il-sung.
United States Vice
President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Senate Foreign Relations Committee
chairman John Kerry are possible candidates to be
a presidential envoy to Pyongyang. The Americans
could go further by considering arranging a
satellite rendezvous with the North Korean in
outer space.
This stance would go a long
way towards the denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula. A US show of goodwill will spur a
virtuous chain of events, paving the way for a
major diplomatic breakthrough that will leave the
North Koreans too satisfied to feel it necessary
to beef up their nuclear arsenal.
A
continuing moratorium will be placed on nuclear
and long-range missile tests and uranium
enrichment operations and the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) granted access to the uranium
facility. A net outcome will be a relaxation of
tensions on the Korean Peninsula, improved
relations and a peace treaty between the
nuclear-armed long-term adversaries featuring a
mutual detargeting agreement
Terminating
yet another nuclear deal, however, will lead to
additional nuclear tests and long-range missile
tests with enriched uranium enrichment churned out
on an expanded basis and IAEA inspectors kicked
out of the country for the third time. North Korea
will be allowed to emerge as a potential nuclear
Wal-Mart. Countries on the threshold of nuclear
weapons technology will be encouraged to follow
suit.
The US can continue its
all-too-familiar, counterproductive pattern of
action of threats to cancel the promised supply of
240,000 tons of food nutrients, and move to
railroad another resolution through the UN
Security Council in a senseless bid to put the
screws on North Korea. This will automatically be
construed as a virtual declaration of war by the
North Koreans. The Americans will face the
worst-case scenario of risking nuclear
annihilation in an election year.
Kim Myong Chol is author of a
number of books and papers in Korean, Japanese and
English on North Korea, including Kim
Jong-il's Strategy for Reunification. He has a
PhD from the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea's Academy of Social Sciences and is often
called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il
and North Korea.
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