What's New at Kimsoft? March 2003 |
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03/30 kww: China blocks US bid to condemn N Korea at UN (CNN) -- China has blocked a U.S. proposal that the U.N. Security Council issue a statement this week condemning North Korea over the suspected revival of its nuclear arms program, according to diplomats.
03/28 kww: Controlling the news -- It has long been the strong belief of many Americans that their print and television media is subject to certain government oversight and, finally, control. Recently, a mid-level executive of one of the three major American television networks sent on over 1500 pages of memos from the corporate offices of his network in New York to the head of their television news division. These memos contain a multitude of instructions concerning the presentation of national and international news for the network’s viewers.
03/27 kww: US sets sights on Iran and North Korea (WorldTribune) -- "In the aftermath of Iraq, dealing with the Iranian nuclear weapons program will be of equal importance as dealing with the North Korean nuclear weapons program," Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton said. "This is going to be a substantial challenge."
03/26 kww: Is North Korea Next? (IRC) - A serial invader is always looking over the horizon for the next target. The new U.S. rationale for invasion--the doctrine of "preventive war" that flies in the face of international law--justifies invasion anywhere, anytime. With the war launched in Iraq, the Bush administration appears to be laying the groundwork for its next move: an attack on North Korea. The lesson for Pyongyang: only the possession of nuclear weapons seems to deter the United States. So expect Pyongyang to continue doing precisely what the United States wants to forestall.
03/24 kww: What we really want George W. to say (Dusty Henson, KWW) -- "Effective immediately, I have ordered all American armed forces out of South Korea and will cease all aid to South Korea. The South Koreans have made it clear that they know better about their own security and will therefore be given the opportunity to take on that responsibility themselves. "
03/23 kww: A Slip of Whose Tongue, Roh Moo Hyun or
his Spokeswoman? (KWW)-- An alleged "slip of tongue" of the
presidential spokeswoman has added fuel to the already tense North-South
relations. Because of her alleged misstatement, North Korea has cancelled
the economic coordination meeting scheduled for next week and has heightened its
war-talks.
03/23 kww: Analysis- After Iraq, what's next (Washington Times) -- The inner circle of extremely influential people within the upper echelons of the Bush administration known as "the Neocons" are by now back-slapping one another and congratulating themselves that the war on Iraq has finally become a reality.
03/23 kww: A large warplane violates Iranian airspace again (IRNA) -- A large-sized British or US warplane violated Iranian airspace in this border region across from Iraq's Al-Faw Peninsula on Saturday, as the number of such violations since Friday rose. Is war on Iraq spilling over to Iran?
03/22 kww: Could the US be at War for Years - Iraq Is Just the Beginning (CounterPunch) -- The war in Iraq is just the beginning, Problems of the first magnitude can be expected thereafter, as well: Iran, North Korea, and Libya. The problem is, can you simply abandon the world to dictators, to weapons of mass destruction?
03/22 kww: Apache will guard against Pyongyang (Stars & Stripes) -- If the Koreas came to blows, a key to victory would be stopping thousands of highly trained North Korean special operations forces from slipping in unnoticed and wreaking havoc in the South.
03/21 kww: Dealing with the DPRK: Time to Face the Problem by Ralph A. Cossa (CSIS) -- Washington needs to stop pretending that there is no "crisis" or that there is no difference between one to two suspected nuclear devices and a full-blown nuclear weapons program involving the extraction of enough plutonium to make (or sell) numerous bombs. This is both a Peninsula security and a nonproliferation crisis, and must be dealt with as such.
03/21 kww: Why North Korea Loves the Bomb (CSIS) -- The acquisition of a sizeable nuclear arsenal is a perfectly rational objective from Kim Jong Il's point of view.
03/20 kww: What would Gandhi do? Collin Baber (KWW) -- Regardless of your views of who is to blame, is war not a form of terror by another name? The rules are defined, but death is being delivered by more advanced and efficient machines. Saddam could not gas and kill his people at the scale the U.S. and the "Coalition" are doing so today. "Shock and Awe" - a pre-meditated 9-11? Only the historians will define it.
03/19 kww: Roh Moo-hyun's Mistake (KWW) -- When Roh Moo-hyun was elected president, I had great hopes for South Korea's ability to chart an independent course in foreign policy. Roh had signaled that he would continue a policy of engagement with North Korea despite the Bush administration's refusal to negotiate directly with Pyongyang. And Roh indicated that he would lobby for a more independent military relationship with the United States.
03/19 kww: US, South Korea in massive landing drill against North Korea -- Thousands of American and South Korean troops backed by warships and planes have launched a massive amphibious landing drill aimed at invading North Korea.
03/18 kww: Why the US won't attack North Korea (Asia Times) - The US wants out of Korea - Bush wants to dislodge itself from being the major player in the whole North Korea problem without creating a precedent of looking as though it is running from an aggressive power.
03/18 kww: Miscalculation the greatest Korea war risk (Asia Times) - Numerous, perhaps most, wars in history have started as the result of misestimation of enemy intentions and strength, uncontrolled and reckless escalation of tension, or sheer accident. Should war break out again on the Korean Peninsula, it will be no different. With the rapid deployment of US military assets in Korea, the chance of misestimation and accidental war has reached the flash point. Kim Joing Il may "see" the handwritings on the wall and strike out.
03/17 kww: NORTH KOREA WONDERING WHAT IT HAS TO DO TO ATTRACT US MILITARY ATTENTION - "Everyone in my country refers to me as 'Dear Leader.' Is that not disturbingly cultish?" Kim continued. "I do not understand why President Bush is so much more interested in Saddam than me. I'm a strange, despotic, unpredictable madman, too, you know."
03/17 kww: Colorado group hopes to persuade North Korea to return USS Pueblo -- Last year, former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Donald P. Gregg delivered to North Korean officials a letter from The Pueblo Chieftain Publisher Robert Rawlings and other group supporters asking for the ship's return. He said a deal to return the Pueblo was hinted at in an Oct. 3 letter in which Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan invited him to visit Pyongyang. When he met with Kim, Gregg said he was told that the climate had changed and it was no longer an option.
03/16 kww: US Spy Ship Pueblo May Be Coming Home (KWW) -- Kim Jong Il had planned to return the spy ship captured in 1968 to Bush - but not any longer. Bush's personal animosity toward him changes Kim's mind.
03/15 kww: N. Korea Angered by Military Exercises -- South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told his military to prepare for the possibility that North Korea might attempt minor provocations during U.S.-South Korean military exercises that will involve the USS Carl Vinson.
03/14 kww: End of the postwar alliance pact (Daily Yomiuri) -- The first shot of the second Gulf War has yet to be fired, but already the conflict is producing unanticipated consequences that will have a lasting impact long after the war is over. The most important result so far is the unraveling of the U.S. alliance structure, and the weakening of a series of key institutions, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and the United Nations.
03/13 kww: What drives the warmongers (Japan Times) -- The US military/intelligence complexes have been creating various conflicts. Armed with enormous budgets and freed from normal controls, they have become a world unto themselves. Their sole raison d'etre is finding and obliterating enemies. If enemies do not exist, they will create them. Economic motives for conquest came well down in their list of priorities. Inventing enemies is a much easier way for them to get funds and power. Viet Nam, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and other "rogue" nations keep the military/intelligence warmongers in power and business.
03/12 kww: Israel makes dangerous possibilities (Jason Grimm) -- Israel has a stockpile of at least one hundred, and perhaps two hundred nuclear bombs. If Iraq attacks Israel with WMD, Israel will retaliate with nukes, in which case, the small amount of world sympathy left for the war effort would be ruined. Anti-Americanism would ravage the streets of the world.
03/12 kww: "How about bombing North Korea's nuclear facilities?" Bush officials feel out Roh Moo Hyun (KWW) -- A Bush government official queried a Roh government cabinet minister about bombing North Korea's nuclear facilities. A Roh government spokesman vehemently denies any such feeler, but OhMyNews maintains that its report is correct and accurate. In light of the war-like anti-North Korea rhetoric of Bush and his officials, coupled with the recent repositioning of US stealth bombers in South Korea, B-1/B52 bombers on Guam, and the USS Carl Vinson carrier task force in the East Sea, the OhMyNews report is highly credible.
03/11 kww: War in Korea May Be Inevitable (Barry Briggs) -- North Korea today possesses crude nuclear weapons, and within a decade will have intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering those weapons to the American heartland. No other state poses such a clear and present danger to the United States: unchecked, North Korea could vaporize Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles as soon as 2010.
03/11 kww: A Letter from America to South Koreans -- "I am a Korean-American writing to you from across the Pacific. I immigrated to the USA when I was eight years old. I love both Korea and America. Needlessly to say, I am in a difficult position regarding North Korea, and have the deepest concerns regarding our own collective Korean fate,"
03/11 kww: N. Korea keeps U.S. intelligence guessing (USA Today) -- "A North Korean invasion is ''unlikely'' unless the communist army improves significantly to match South Korean forces." The date of the report: Jan. 13, 1950. Six months later, North Korean forces surged toward Seoul, overwhelming the South Korean military. Months later, the CIA failed to predict Chinese intervention. How better informed is the CIA of North Korea today?
03/10 kww: North Korea Claims Korea's Opposition Party Offered Tens of Billions -- North Korea's Asia-Pacific Peace Association disclosed yesterday that, during the presidential election of 2002, South Korea's main opposition Party - the Grand National Party (han-na-rah) - sent a secret envoy to North Korea with a promise of economic aids of tens of billions of US dollars. The envoy asked North Korea's help in getting Lee Hoe Chang elected to the Blue House.
03/10 kww: China brinksmanship behind North Korea? (G2 Bulletin) -- "North Korea is a small neighbor to China," says the report. "It could not be threatening the U.S. with nuclear missiles, as it is, without at least China's tacit support. Clearly, North Korea and China are allies. The Chinese want Taiwan. The North Koreans want South Korea. The only nation preventing both goals is the U.S."
03/09 kww: Unofficial N. Korea spokesman outlines Kim's view (Stars & Stripes) -- The United States is in danger of being shot down if it “continues spy flights over North Korea,” said a man considered to be North Korea’s unofficial spokesman. Kim Myong Chol, speaking at Tokyo’s Foreign Correspondents Club Friday, said North Korea intends to reunify with South Korea. But, Kim said, the North believes U.S. Forces Korea — and the United Nations Command — stand in the way.
03/08 kww: "Republic of Korea Army" - Whose Army Is It? -- "Dear General MacArthur: I am happy to assign to you command authority over all land, sea, and air forces of the Republic of Korea . . . such command to be exercised either by you personally or by such military commander or commanders to whom you may delegate the exercise of this authority within Korea or in adjacent seas," Syngman Rhee. This is how the army of South Korea (ROKA) has become an auxiliary unit of the US military.
03/08 kww: Tensions Simmer in Heavily Guarded DMZ (WP) -- "First, they'd gas everyone on the DMZ. Their special operations forces would attack control facilities behind the lines, while their artillery is pounding Seoul and a million people die. Then they roll across the DMZ with soldiers in chemical gear. They have huge numbers of soldiers and tanks, but with their aging vehicles, the best they could hope to do is capture Seoul and sue for peace."
03/08 kww: North Korea Has More Than 100 Nuclear Bombs and Will Make More: North Korea's unofficial spokesman, Kim Myong Chul, disclosed at a professional luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan yesterday that North Korea has more than one hundred nuclear bombs and will likely declare its nuclear- power status sometime this year unless the Bush Administration agrees to hold bilateral talks with North Korea.
03/08 kww: Measured Reciprocal Policies to Resolve DPR Korea’s Nuclear Crisis: Reviving the 4-Party Peace Talks -- The withdrawal of DPR Korea (DPRK) from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has opened the dangerous new world for East Asia and Pacific nations. As of March 2003, DPRK is not retreating any further in its strategy for national survival based on nuclear development. What are the Bush Administration’s foreign policy options for DPRK as Washington prepares for war with Baghdad including the use of strategic weapons?
03/07 kww: Can catastrophic Korean war be avoided? (Asia Times) -- The standoff between a US policy of pushing North Korean nuclear disarmament and a Kim policy of developing nuclear weapons for self-preservation is fast approaching the breaking point. Can or will Kim give up on his goal? That's not a whole lot more likely than Mao giving up on nuclear development in the 1960s. Will the US give up its demand for dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons program? That's equally unlikely. Then what's next?
03/07 kww: AXIS OF EVIL’ STATES SEEK SUPPORT FROM DEVELOPING WORLD -- Bush's “axis of evil” rogue nations, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, sought allies at a summit of 116 developing countries last week, joining a chorus of protests charging that the United States desires world domination. The 'axis of evil' nations presented themselves as simply victims of Washington’s global bullying alongside the mostly militarily weak and economically poor nations of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
03/06 kww: N Korea wanted to take US spy plane crew hostage- report (ABC) - Four North Korean fighter jets that intercepted an unarmed American spy plane in international airspace last weekend were trying to force the aircraft to land in North Korea and seize its crew.
03/05 kww: Apocalypse Now (New Republic) -- "If our policy is to strike when we may and must, silence makes a good deal of sense." The United States is much closer to the brink than most Americans realize.
03/05 kww: Faulty Intelligence or 'See No Danger' Syndrome? (KWW) -- A former Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama claims that he has seen a secret US report on a 'warhead' that landed in Alaska. The 'warhead' came from a North Korean Taepodong missile test-fired on on August 31, 1998. The US intelligence sources, which had tracked the missile, have reported that the missile had only two stages and that it splashed down several hundred miles from the nearest US landmass.
03/05 kww: Foes Giving In To N. Korea's Nuclear Aims (WP) -- The United States and Asian countries have begun to accept the idea of a nuclear-armed North Korea. The Bush administration is turning its attention to preventing the Communist government in Pyongyang from selling nuclear material to the highest bidder.
03/05 kww: Claim- N. Korean Missile Warhead 'Found in Alaska' (Korea Times). -- The warhead of a long-range missile test-fired by North Korea in 1998 was found in the U.S. state of Alaska. If true, this shows that North Korea's missiles, updated since the test, can hit targets in the US homeland.
03/05 kww: N. Korea Reaction to US Spy Plane Purposely Forceful, Analysts .(WP) -- North Korea applied surprising force, sending out four aircraft, two of them modern versions of the MiG. Some experts here said the distances that the United States cited raised questions as to whether the spy plane was really well outside North Korean air space.
03/04 kww: China-US Secret Agreement on Iraq and North Korea (KWW) -- China told Colin Powell that it would not use its veto power to block US war on Iraq at the UN Security Council, in return Powell agreed not to attack North Korea's nuclear facilities. This secret deal was struck during Powell's visit to Beijing on the 24th of last month. A Chinese foreign service officer leaked this agreement to Western news reporters today.
03/03 kww: N. Korean MiGs Intercepted US Jet -- Two MiG 29s and two other fighters believed to be MIG-23s intercepted the U.S. jet about 150 miles off the North Korean coast. One of the fighters "locked on" to the U.S. plane.
03/02 kww: Secret, Scary Plans (New York Times) -- Some of the most secret and scariest work under way in the Pentagon these days is the planning for a possible military strike against nuclear sites in North Korea. The 'contingency' plans cover a range of military options from surgical cruise missile strikes to sledgehammer bombing, and there is even talk of using tactical nuclear weapons to neutralize hardened artillery positions aimed at Seoul, the South Korean capital.
03/01 kww: American Nukes in South Korea -- US military planners have kept up nuclear attack plans even after the 1992 and 1994 denuclearization agreements and Jinhae may be the main US nuclear weapons depot. The US has placed subs and warships near North Korea for possible nuclear attacks on North Korea in this summer.
03/01 kww: North Korean Spies Steal Japanese Money, Nuclear Weapon and Missile Technology --A large quantity of high-quality and expensive melons packed in wooden boxes are frequently shipped from Japan to North Korea. When workers are loading these melons onto ships, their supervisor warns them saying, "Be careful handling these melons." Why?
03/01 kww: Bush's Next War - North Korea: A War Scenario -- It is likely that Kim Jong Il and most of his troops would die in a new war but there would be enough hardcore troops left alive to carry on the fight. Millions will die in Korea. Kim will see to it that many more millions will die in Japan and in the United States. Bush's generals apparently believe that beating Kim will be a cake-walk. Bush may not have to wait long to learn the truth.