‘North Korea is a time bomb’: government advisers urge China to prepare for war, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2124613/north-korea-time-bomb-government-advisers-urge-chinaThe risk of conflict on the Korean peninsula is the highest its been in decades and Beijing must mobilise resources for fallout, observers say, SCMP, Wendy Wu, China must be ready for a war on the Korean peninsula, with the risk of conflict higher than ever before, Chinese government advisers and a retired senior military officer warned on Saturday.
Beijing, once seen as Pyongyang’s key ally with sway over its neighbour, was losing control of the situation, they warned.
“Conditions on the peninsula now make for the biggest risk of a war in decades,” said Renmin University international relations professor Shi Yinhong, who also advises the State Council, China’s cabinet.
Shi said US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un were locked in a vicious cycle of threats and it was already too late for China to avert it. At best, Beijing could stall a full-blown conflict.
“North Korea is a time bomb. We can only delay the explosion, hoping that by delaying it, a time will come to remove the detonator,” Shi said on the sidelines of a Beijing conference on the crisis.
Addressing the conference, Wang Hongguang, former deputy commander of the Nanjing Military Region, warned that war could break out on the Korean peninsula at any time from now on until March when South Korea and the United States held annual military drills.
“It is a highly dangerous period,” Wang said. “Northeast China should mobilise defences for war.”
Yang Xiyu, a senior fellow at the China Institute of International Studies affiliated with China’s foreign ministry, said conditions on the peninsula were at their most perilous in half a century.
“No matter whether there is war or peace, regretfully, China has no control, dominance or even a voice on the issue,” he said.
China might already be preparing for the worst.
Last week, Jilin Daily, the official newspaper of the province bordering North Korea, published a full page of advice for residents on how to respond to a nuclear attack.
A document purportedly from telecom operator China Mobile about plans to set up five refugee camps in Jilin’s Changbai county also surfaced online last week.
Wang said the Jilin Daily article was a “signal to the country to be prepared for a coming war”.
He said China was also worried about the threat North Korea’s frequent nuclear tests were posing to unstable geological structures in the region.
Nanjing University professor Zhu Feng said that no matter how minor the possibility, China should be prepared psychologically and practically for “a catastrophic nuclear conflict, nuclear fallout or a nuclear explosion”.
“Why do we always act like ostriches? Why do we always believe a war won’t occur?” Zhu said.
“What China needs is a sense of urgency about its declining influence in strategy related to the peninsula and the way it brings down China’s status and role in East Asian security issues.”
He also said Kim’s failure to meet Chinese envoy Song Tao during his trip to Pyongyang last month was a “humiliation” for China.
Meanwhile at the United Nations in New York, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on China and Russia to increase their efforts to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.
Tillerson also backtracked on his previous unconditional offer for talks by saying that Washington would not negotiate with Pyongyang until it stopped “threatening behaviours”.
North Korean ambassador to the UN Ja Song-nam accused the United States, Japan and the United Nations Security Council of waging a hostile campaign to stop Pyongyang from gaining nuclear weapons that it saw as necessary to defend itself.
Renmin University professor Shi said hopes for peace could not rest on Kim and Trump, and China and Russia should work together to argue against war.
In a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping said war on the peninsula was not acceptable.
DONALD Trump has vowed to take “all necessary steps” to stop North Korea’s nuclear arms race as tyrant Kim Jong-un bids for recognition as a nuclear power. Express UK, By REBECCA PINNINGTON, 20 Dec 17 Vowing America would stand up for itself like never before, the US president vowed to tackle Kim’s hurried arms testing “head on”.
Mr Trump said the US had made an “unprecedented effort” to isolate dictator Kim’s regime in a bid to put a stop to the frenzied nuclear developments.
However, he said: “There is much more work to do. America and its allies will take all necessary steps to ensure denuclearisation and ensure that this regime cannot threaten the world.”
Mr Trump said: “This situation should have been taken care of long before I got into office, when it was much easier to handle. But it will be taken care of. We have no choice.”…….“In addition, many actors have become skilled at operating below the threshold of military conflict—challenging the United States, our allies, and our partners with hostile actions cloaked in deniability.”
Mr Trump also labelled China and Russia “rival powers” in the landmark speech, outlining his administration’s national security strategy……
A former North Korean soldier told the Japanese daily there have been unconfirmed reports that a director of Bureau 131 was recently removed from his position then executed for allegedly disclosing military secrets.
Bureau 131, or the General Bureau of Atomic Energy, is a subsidiary of the ruling Worker’s party, responsible for construction works on the North’s major nuclear and missile facilities, including the main nuclear test site of Punggye-ri and the Tongchang-ri missile launch pad.
The director is believed to have worked as a specialist at the bureau since its establishment. The Asahi report suggests his sentence may have been delivered due to the delayed timing of the regime’s sixth nuclear test, and the collapse of tunnels following the massive underground blast.
A source told the paper, “It seems he took the blame as the prolonged mining of the nuclear facility pushed back the test date to September when it was initially set for spring.”
North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test at the Pyunggye-ri nuclear facility on September 3, claiming to have tested a powerful hydrogen bomb.
The artificial explosion reportedly caused buildings and grounds in the vicinity to collapse, and has since triggered a series of landslides and aftershocks.
The other North Korea nuclear threat we should be worried about CNBC, 20 Dec17
North Korea’s questionable nuclear safety standards and its isolation from the global scientific community increase the risk of a nuclear accident, according to 38North
The country’s leader Kim Jong Un was caught on tape smoking a cigarette next to an intercontinental ballistic missile earlier this year
If a nuclear disaster does occur, it would likely cause regional panic
Nyshka Chandran | @nyshkacThe risk of a North Korean nuclear meltdown can’t be ignored, according to a recent note published on 38North, a project of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Longstanding doubts over the hermit kingdom’s nuclear safety resurfaced in July, when a video emerged of leader Kim Jong Unsmoking a cigarette next to a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile.
“Kim’s recklessness is certainly notable, and it hints at an under-emphasized and potentially devastating possibility: the threat of a nuclear accident in North Korea,” said the 38North note, released late last week.
Adding to the concern, Chinese researchers said in September that North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site was at risk of imploding. That was followed by TV Asahi’s October report of a tunnel collapse at the same nuclear site, an incident believed to have killed more than 200 people. Pyongyang, in response, called the report false and dismissed it as misinformation.
North Korea is in ‘final stages of nuclear weaponisation’, says South Korea, The Independent16 Dec 2017, South Korea’s vice foreign minister issued an urgent plea about the threat from Pyongyang, warning the United Nations Security Council that North Korea was “in the final stages of nuclear weaponization”.
“It will fundamentally alter the security landscape in the region and beyond” if the North is able to equip a missile with a nuclear warhead, Cho Hyun warned.
In the past few months, North Korea has rattled the world with a series of weapons tests. It detonated a hydrogen bomb and has launched multiple ballistic missiles, saying after the latest firing that it now has the capability to attack the US mainland and had devised a missile capable of carrying “super-large heavy nuclear warhead”.
The late-November launch soared higher than any previous test, US Secretary of Defence James Mattis said, and illustrated North Korea’s determination to build missiles that can “threaten everywhere in the world”.
Continuing to defy international warnings, a top North Korean official said escalating pressure from the global community shows America is “terrified” by North Korea‘s nuclear capabilities.
The nation’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ja Song Nam, called a meeting of the UN Security Council a “desperate measure plotted by the US” in response to North Korea’s displays of military might.
North Korea May Soon Test Another Nuclear Weapon (The Only Question Is Where), National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/north-korea-may-soon-test-another-nuclear-weapon-the-only-23694Dave Majumdar, 17 Dec 17,North Korea continues to work on tunnels it used for nuclear test, despite recent tremors according to imagery analysis by the 38 North project at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. That might mean that North Korea might test and another nuclear weapon at some point in the not so distant future.
“Recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that despite the continuation of small tremors near Mt. Mantap since North Korea’s last nuclear test, tunnel work at the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site is still underway,” reads new analysis by 38 North’s Frank V. Pabian, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. and Jack Liu. “These efforts continue to be concentrated at the West Portal, leaving the North Portal—where the last five tests were conducted—mostly dormant and likely abandoned, at least for the time being.”
AP, News Corp Australia Network AMERICA’S top diplomat stepped back from his offer of unconditional talks with North Korea, telling world powers the nuclear-armed nation must earn the right to negotiate with the United States.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s declaration before the UN Security Council marked a stunning reversal after he proposed discussions with Pyongyang without preconditions earlier this week. That overture was almost immediately rebutted by White House officials.
Still, Mr Tillerson had planned to reiterate his call at a special UN ministerial meeting on North Korea at the council.
His prepared remarks suggested only that North Korea would have to undertake a sustained halt in its threatening behaviour before talks could begin. But Mr Tillerson changed the script. “North Korea must earn its way back to the table,” Mr Tillerson told the foreign ministers.
“The pressure campaign must and will continue until denuclearisation is achieved. We will in the meantime keep our channels of communication open.”
The debate over offering North Korea unconditional talks reflects the differences within the Trump administration as it runs out of time to prevent North Korea from perfecting a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike the US mainland. President Donald Trump has vowed to prevent such capability, with military action if necessary.
So far, US-led sanctions on North Korea and diplomatic isolation haven’t compelled Kim Jong Un’s government to stop its nuclear and missile tests, or to seek negotiations.
Asked overnight if he supported unconditional talks, Mr Trump did not answer directly. “Well, we’re going to see what happens with North Korea. We have a lot of support. There are a lot of nations that agree with us — almost everybody,” Mr Trump told reporters. He credited China — which accounts for about 90 per cent of North Korea’s external trade — with helping on pressuring North Korea, while Russia was not.
“We’d like to have Russia’s help — very important,” said Mr Trump. He raised it in a Thursday phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At the UN Mr Tillerson called on China and Russia to go beyond UN-mandated economic sanctions. He said North Korean labourers were toiling in “slave-like conditions” in Russia for wages used to fund nuclear weapons, while China was still allowing crude oil to flow into North Korean refineries.
North Korea has conducted more than 20 ballistic missile tests during 2017 and its most powerful nuclear explosion to date. Its more recent missile test in late November fired a projectile that experts say could carry a nuclear warhead to the US Eastern Seaboard.
North Korean Nuclear Reactor Safety: The Threat No One is Talking About, 38 North, BY: MATT KORDA, DECEMBER 14, 2017 The ability of North Korea to safely operate its nuclear reactors, according to many experts, is increasingly being called into question given the North’s isolation and lack of safety culture. Pyongyang’s ability to respond to a nuclear accident in a timely fashion will make the difference between a small-scale event and a catastrophic disaster. And while the actual contamination would be localized, the lack of transparency from North Korea in dealing with the situation is likely to cause political panic in the region in excess of the actual radiological exposure and environmental impact. The opening of nuclear safety talks with the North to help prevent such an accident from occurring would provide a rare opportunity for regional dialogue and could pry open the door for realistic and productive discussions of North Korea’s nuclear program.
A Disaster Waiting to Happen?
A video of Kim Jong Un smoking next to an untested liquid-fueled missile tells you everything you need to know about North Korea’s nuclear safety culture. The remarkable 14-second clip shows the Supreme Leader taking a puff while a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile is erected on the launch pad mere feet away—prompting a torrent of snarky Twitter commentary expressing regret that Kim’s lit cigarette had not “solved the problem for us.” Kim’s recklessness is certainly notable, and it hints at an underemphasized and potentially devastating possibility: the threat of a nuclear accident in North Korea.
At the March 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, then-South Korean President Park Geun-hye claimed that Yongbyon, North Korea’s primary nuclear research center, “is home to such a dense concentration of nuclear facilities that a fire in a single building could lead to a disaster potentially worse than Chernobyl.” While her damage assessment is likely an exaggeration—researchers from 38 North assess Chernobyl’s power output to have been 3,000 percent greater than Yongbyon—the potential for a nuclear accident is not.
Niko Milonopoulos and Edward D. Blandford noted previously that a sudden fault in North Korea’s outdated power grid could prevent the Yongbyon reactors from being adequately cooled and could potentially trigger a meltdown. Such an event could also be prompted by a natural disaster or abnormal weather patterns. Complementary analysis by Nick Hansen indicates that North Korea’s 5 MWe plutonium production reactor had to be briefly shut down following a flood in July 2013 which destroyed parts of the cooling systems. He noted with concern that “if a major flood cuts off the cooling water supply to the reactors before they can be shut down, a major safety problem could occur.” This is exactly what prompted the series of nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima……….http://www.38north.org/2017/12/mkorda121417/
China building network of refugee camps along border with North Korea https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/12/china-refugee-camps-border-north-korea Document suggests at least five camps are being set up as Beijing prepares for possible influx of refugees should Kim Jong-un’s regime collapse, Guardian, Tom Phillips , 12 Dec 17, China is quietly building a network of refugee camps along its 880-mile (1,416km) border with North Korea as it braces for the human exodus that a conflict or the potentially messy collapse of Kim Jong-un’s regime might unleash.
The existence of plans for the camps, first reported in English by the Financial Times last week, emerged in an apparently leaked internal document from a state-run telecoms giant that appears to have been tasked with providing them with internet services.
The China Mobile document, which has circulated on social media and overseas Chinese websites since last week, reveals plans for at least five refugee camps in Jilin province.
The document, which the Guardian could not independently verify, says: “Due to cross-border tensions … the [Communist] party committee and government of Changbai county has proposed setting up five refugee camps in the county.”
It gives the names and locations of three such facilities: Changbai riverside, Changbai Shibalidaogou and Changbai Jiguanlizi. The New York Times reportedthat centres for refugees were also planned in the cities of Tumen and Hunchun.
A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry declined to confirm the camps’ existence at a regular press briefing on Monday but did not deny they were being built. “I haven’t seen such reports,” Lu Kang told reporters.
North Korea fortifies part of border where defector escaped
The leaked document contains the name and telephone number of a China Mobile employee who drafted it but calls to that number went unanswered on Tuesday. The construction of the camps appears to reflect growing concern in Beijing about the potential for political instability – or even regime collapse – in North Korea.
Cheng Xiaohe, a North Korea specialist from Renmin University in Beijing, said while he could not confirm whether the document was genuine, it would be irresponsible for China not to make such preparations.
“Tensions are high on the Korean peninsula … it is on the brink of war. As a major power and a neighbouring country, China should make plans for all eventualities.”
Jiro Ishimaru, a Japanese documentary maker who runs a network of citizen journalists inside North Korea and on the Chinese side of the border, said a contact in Changbai county had recently told him that while they had not seen signs of camps being built there, they “had heard there are plans to build a facility”.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have soared this year as the US president, Donald Trump, has stepped up pressure on his North Korean counterpart and Pyongyang has accelerated its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Trump has baited Kim with the nickname “Little Rocket Man” and threats of military action, while Kim has responded with insults of his own, and a succession of nuclear and missile tests that have brought two new rounds of UN sanctions.
Following its latest intercontinental ballistic missile test on 29 November, Pyongyang claimed the ability to strike anywhere on US soil.
‘Quite backwards’: Chinese tourists gawk at impoverished North Koreans
In an interview with the Guardian in Beijing on Monday, Dennis Rodman, the NBA star turned would-be peacemaker, played down fearsof a catastrophic nuclear conflict and denied Kim, whom he calls his friend, was “going to try and bomb or kill anyone in America”.
“We ain’t gonna die, man, come on, no … It’s not like that,” Rodman insisted, urging Trump to use him as an intermediary to engage with Kim. He described the verbal war between Trump and Kim as “a chess game” that should not be taken too seriously.
Beijing seems less certain. Last week one official newspaper in Jilin, the Chinese province closest to North Korea’s nuclear test site, hinted at that nervousness with a full-page article offering tips on how to react to a nuclear incident.
Iodine tablets, masks and soap were useful allies in the event of such a catastrophe, readers of the Jilin Daily learned.
Additional reporting by Wang Zhen and Justin McCurry in Tokyo.
Why North Korea’s nuclear test is still producing aftershocks, BBC, 11 December 2017 “…….
Why are aftershocks still happening?
According to the USGS, last weekend’s tremors were “relaxation events”. They measured a magnitude of 2.9 and 2.4.
“When you have a large nuclear test, it moves the earth’s crust around the area, and it takes a while for it to fully subside. We’ve had a few of them since the sixth nuclear test,” an official told Reuters.
The “movement of the earth’s crust” is akin to the very definition of an earthquake and scientists say it is only to be expected in the weeks and months after an explosion of that magnitude.
“These aftershocks for a 6.3 magnitude nuclear test are not very surprising,” Dr Jascha Polet, seismologist and professor of geophysics at California State Polytechnic University, told the BBC.
After any tremor of that size, aftershocks with declining magnitude are common, as the rock moves around and releases stress.
The area around the quake site “experiences deformation, and this creates areas of increased and decreased stress, which affects the distribution of aftershocks,” Ms Polet said.
“The fact that the source of the earthquake is an explosion doesn’t change how we expect the energy to redistribute,” geophysicist and disaster researcher Mika McKinnon, told the BBC.
But research on explosions of a similar magnitude as the North Korea nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site in the US where over decades nuclear tests were carried out, has found that the aftershocks of these events were fewer in number and lower in magnitude.
So each location is unique.
Can tremors destroy the test site?
One of the speculations after the September test was that it would damage the tunnel system North Korea has dug into the mountains at its test site.
“The more energy you put into an area, the more unstable it’s going to get,” Mika McKinnon explained.
“The more tests are happening, the more energy there is, the more redistribution of stress and the more rocks will be breaking.”
There have been some indications of individual tunnel collapses, she explained. “Seismic signals that look more like rock fall than anything else. That will happen more and more.”
But, she adds, there is no way of really knowing whether the entire tunnel system will collapse as this is an engineering problem far more than a scientific one.
It is unclear whether this process already has rendered the current test site unusable but North Korea has hinted its next nuclear test could be above ground…….http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42305161
‘It takes a while for the crust movement to fully subside’, says USGS Jon Sharman 10 Dec 17Geologists have detected two tectonic tremors that they say are probably aftershocks from North Korean nuclear tests conducted over three months ago.
The artificial explosion created near a known nuclear testing site in North Korea had “moved the Earth’s crust” and subsequent seismic activity showed the region’s underlying geology settling back down, experts said.
The aftershocks, of magnitude 2.9 and 2.4, were detected at 6.13am and 6.40am GMT on Saturday respectively, said the US Geological Survey (USGS).
Lassina Zerbo, executive secreta
ry of the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation, said analysts had confirmed that the activity was “tectonic” in origin.
A USGS official said the tremors had occurred near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where North Korea conducted its sixth and largest underground nuclear test on 3 September.
“They’re probably relaxation events from the sixth nuclear test,” the official said. “When you have a large nuclear test, it moves the earth’s crust around the area, and it takes a while for it to fully subside. We’ve had a few of them since the sixth nuclear test.”
Pyongyang claimed the September test was of a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, and experts have estimated it was 10 times more powerful than the US atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
A series of quakes since then has prompted experts and observers to suspect the test might have damaged the mountainous location of its site in the northwest tip of North Korea, where all of the country’s nuclear tests have been conducted.
South Korea’s spy agency told the country’s lawmakers in October that North Korea might be readying two more tunnels at the site.
North Korea hinted its next nuclear test could be above ground after US President Donald Trump warned in September that the United States would “totally destroy” North Korea if it threatened America.
Another possible obstacle to North Korea’s use of Punggye-ri for tests is the nearby active volcano of Mount Paektu, which North Koreans consider a sacred site. Its last eruption was in 1903, and experts have debated whether nuclear testing could trigger another.
North Korea’s official media reported on Saturday that national leader Kim Jong-un had scaled Mount Paektu with senior military officials to “emphasise his military vision” after completion of the country’s nuclear force.
But pictures released by the official KCNA news agency showed him wearing smart black leather shoes and carrying no specialised equipment.
Mr Kim declared the nuclear force complete after the test of North Korea’s largest ever intercontinental ballistic missile last month, which experts said puts all of America within range.
South Korea said Pyongyang still needed to prove it has mastered critical missile technology, such as re-entry, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation, however.
Pyongyang ‘wants above all to talk to the US about guarantees for its security’ Lavrov says he informed Rex Tillerson in Vienna on Thursday, Guardian, Julian Borger in Washington, 8 Dec 17, North Korea is open to direct talks with the US over their nuclear standoff, according to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who said he passed that message to his counterpart, Rex Tillerson, when the two diplomats met in Vienna on Thursday.
There was no immediate response from Tillerson but the official position of the state department is that North Korea would have to show itself to be serious about giving up its nuclear arsenal as part of a comprehensive agreement before a dialogue could begin.
“We know that North Korea wants above all to talk to the United States about guarantees for its security. We are ready to support that, we are ready to take part in facilitating such negotiations,” Lavrov said at an international conference in Vienna, according to the Interfax news agency. “Our American colleagues, [including] Rex Tillerson, have heard this.”
The diplomatic moves come amid an increased sense of urgency to find a way of defusing the tensions over North Korea’s increasingly ambitious nuclear and missile tests. The standoff reached a new peak on 29 November, when North Korea tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Hwasong-15, capable of reaching Washington, New York and the rest of the continental United States. The missile launch followed the test of what was apparently a hydrogen bomb in September.
Pyongyang has said that current joint exercises by the US and South Korea involving hundreds of warplanes, along with “bellicose remarks” by US officials have “made an outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula an established fact”.
“The remaining question now is: when will the war break out,” a foreign ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.
North Korean officials have said in recent informal meetings that they are particularly concerned by the threat of a surprise “decapitation” strike, aimed at killing the country’s leaders and paralysing military command and control systems before Pyongyang could launch its missiles.
The heightened tensions and threatening language have increased fears around the world that the two sides could blunder into war through miscalculation, mistaking war games for a real attack or misreading blurred red lines.
US and North Korean positions are currently far apart, with Pyongyang rejecting any suggestion that its nuclear disarmament would be on the table at any future negotiation. The regime wants the US to recognise it as a nuclear weapons power and cease its “hostile policies” to North Korea, including sanctions and military manoeuvres off the Korean peninsula.
For its part, the US has rejected a “freeze-for-freeze” proposal advanced by Russiaand China, by which North Korea would suspend nuclear and missile tests while the US would curtail its military exercises.
State department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Thursday that direct talks with North Korea were “not on the table until they are willing to denuclearize.”
However, the two sides have had informal contacts this year, involving Joseph Yun, the US special representative for North Korea policy. Those contacts, known as the “New York channel” were cut by the North Koreans after threatening remarks by Donald Trump during the UN general assembly in September. But there have been some recent signs that Pyongyang might be interested in restoring the channel.
At a meeting in Stockholm that brought together western experts and officials from Pyongyang in late November, a North Korean representative appeared to raise, for the first time, the possibility of a channel for military-to-military communication with the US.
“In an informal discussion that we had in Stockholm, an official made an observation that there isn’t at present a way for the US and North Korea to work together to prevent an accident. I thought that was an interesting observation that I had not heard them say before,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America thinktank who has played a leading role in back-channel contacts with Iran and North Korea, and who attended the Stockholm meeting.
“I think the US would be best served by putting aside the focus on denuclearisation and instead look at ways to prevent accidents, reduce risks and de-escalate. Those to me seem like achievable goals.”
Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who was director for Korea, Japan and Oceanic affairs at the national security council in the Bush and Obama administrations, said Washington might be amenable to such a military hotline being established.
“I think even this administration recognises that some sort of an open channel is needed for that, not to negotiate but to have a little more transparency,” she said. “I think everyone recognises that is needed.”
Terry, who was deputy national intelligence officer for east Asia at the national intelligence council from 2009 to 2010, said that it was also possible that Yun could re-establish the New York channel with Pyongyang. But she added there was little sign such contacts would lead to substantive negotiations in the current climate.
“This latest test put a big hole in the possibility of negotiation at this moment, she said. “Ambassador Yun might do that but it’s different with the White House. I’m not sure he has strong White House support.”
Japan Times, 7 Dec 17 KYODO, WASHINGTON– A former U.S. envoy has urged the Washington to hold talks with Pyongyang without preconditions to break the impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile threats.
“I am of the view that the two sides should agree to have ‘talks about talks’ without any preconditions,” Robert Gallucci, chief negotiator for the now-defunct 1994 nuclear freeze struck with North Korea, said in an interview.
Gallucci’s view is at odds with U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy of imposing “maximum pressure” on North Korea in concert with the international community to compel the hermit country halt its provocative acts and engage in credible talks for denuclearization.
Gallucci also questioned Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s emphasis on pressuring North Korea, pointing out Abe’s insistence that now is not the time to talk to the country, given that it hasn’t changed its provocative behavior.
“I can’t believe refusing to talk with North Korea is in the best interests of Japan,” he said, referring to Abe’s resolve to address Pyongyang’s abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s. “I think an effort at lowering tensions would be. That he does not see it that way, I regret.”………
In a separate interview, Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, said he does not believe pressure and sanctions alone will achieve the Trump administration’s goal of denuclearizing North Korea.
Pollack described the relationship as a seemingly endless cycle of provocations and pressure.
The foreign ministry said the military exercises involving hundreds of South Korean and U.S warplanes made the outbreak of war an “established fact.” It also blamed high-ranking U.S. officials, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, for “bellicose remarks.”
Pompeo said Saturday that U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doesn’t have a good idea about how tenuous his situation is domestically and internationally as he pushes ahead with North Kore’s nuclear weapons program.
We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it, and should the U.S. miscalculate our patience and light the fuse for a nuclear war, we will surely make the U.S. dearly pay the consequences with our mighty nuclear force which we have consistently strengthened,” North Korea, which regularly threatens the U.S. and its allies, said.
The comments were consistent with the tone of Pyongyang’s previous confrontational remarks and statements condemning Washington and Seoul.
The U.S. Air Force arrived in South Korea Saturday and plans to participate in a joint aerial drill this week in South Korea. The drill is known as “Vigilant Ace” and it comes just a week after North Korea launched its most destructive ballistic missile. For more on the story here is Zachary Devita. Buzz60
South Korea’s military said the drills — a Guam-based bomber simulated land strikes at a field near South Korea’s eastern coast — “displayed the allies’ strong intent and ability to punish North Korea when threatened by nuclear weapons and missiles.”
Flyovers have become an increasingly familiar show of force to North Korea, which after three intercontinental ballistic missile tests and six nuclear tests has moved closer toward building a nuclear arsenal that could viably target the U.S. mainland.
Although Kim Jong Un has yet to impact the United States’ physical environment, his nuclear tests have already caused extensive damage on his own soil. Testing at the country’s Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility has caused a majority of the trees—about 80 percent—in the area to die, according to defectors from the region. The defectors, who were interviewed by The Research Association of Vision of North Korea, also noted that the underground wells no longer had water, according to a report published in Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper.
Another notable concern is the bomb’s potential to contaminate the area with radioactive material. Although North Korean government radiation levels came back normal in September, there’s the still risk of future leaks, especially if more tests are conducted, Chinese scientists told the South China Morning Post.
The scientists warned that another nuclear test under Mount Mantap could cause it to collapse and suffer a radiation leak.
“We call it ‘taking the roof off’: If the mountain collapses and the hole is exposed, it will let out many bad things,” Wang Naiyan, former chairman of the China Nuclear Society and senior researcher on China’s nuclear weapons program, told the South China Morning Post.
Radiation also would impact other forms of life.
“In areas where humans are killed or injured by radiation, the same lethality for animals would be expected. If large herds of farm animals were affected, poor sanitation could become a significant problem,” authors of the bookEffects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons wrote.
The authors noted that plants would get hit hard too, especially pine and spruce, which are among the species that are the most sensitive to radiation.
“It is conceivable that forests could be killed, which in turn could result in forest fires. The demise of the pine forest near the Chernobyl plant was one notable example of this effect,” the authors, who are part of the National Academies of Sciences, wrote.
Earth’s ozone layer would also take a large hit from nuclear blasts, according to a 2006 study. Climate scientists who conducted the research found that the extent of damage capable of nuclear weapons could impact the Earth for decades.
“Nuclear weapons are the greatest environmental danger to the planet from humans—not global warming or ozone depletion,” Alan Robock, a coauthor of the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, told The Guardian.
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