Free Republic

Kim’s overconfidence undermined by miscalculation By TAKUJI KAWATA IN AUGUST 2000, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il said he wanted to use the country's missile development programme as a diplomatic bargaining chip. “I made it a (diplomatic) issue. The smaller a country is, the more proud it should be and the more strongly it should stand up against big countries,” he reportedly told an assemblage of South Korean media organisation presidents during a lunch meeting in Pyongyang. At the time, US President Bill Clinton's administration was drawing to a close. North Korea had dragged the United States into bilateral talks by...

/begin my translationN. Korea: Nuclear Test Possible If UN Sanction Is Imposed 2006.07.13 If UN passes sanction against N. Korea, N. Korea may resort to nuclear test, according to some expert. Peter Hayes, a professor at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia argued during an interview with RFA that Kim Jong-il may carry it out to show that he does not succumb to U.S. pressure.Professor Hayes is an expert on energy and security issues. He has been running a project to build small power plants in N. Korea to solve its energy problem. He has visited N. Korea seven...

North Korea: Salami or Hedgehog? North Korea has announced it removed 8,000 spent fuel rods from its reactor in Yongbyon, presumably to reprocess them into weapons-grade plutonium. Ten years ago, that would have caused a major commotion with talk that a red line has been crossed, No longer. All nations involved in six-party nuclear disarmament talks are playing it cool, with South Korea, the U.S., China and even Japan reacting as if it is no big deal. Whatever they do, it's a "negotiation ploy " The Korean government expressed "serious concern " while at the same time saying it believed...

North Korea´s nuclear taunts Don´t be panicked Jan 22nd 2004 From The Economist print edition Unchecked, North Korea will harm anti-proliferation efforts everywhere MOST regimes in the illicit mass-destruction business try to hide their diabolical dabblings. Not North Korea. Its answer to American doubts about its nuclear boasts was to invite a private group of Americans earlier this month to view what it said was a lump of plutonium that will soon be turned into weapons unless America meets its demands. So where does that leave George Bush´s determination, as he put it again this week, to keep “the world´s...