Nuclear Proliferation

[manxchatterbox]

but since the last war in Korea haven't the North Koreans been digging tunnels all over the place as well as a tunnel under the Pacific.... so they could deliver a bomb by train to the West Coast of America...seem to think I saw this speculated in a film once...

[Mr. Sausages]

I saw a film once in which an entire planet got blown up by a laser.

[jagman]

but since the last war in Korea haven't the North Koreans been digging tunnels all over the place as well as a tunnel under the Pacific.... so they could deliver a bomb by train to the West Coast of America...seem to think I saw this speculated in a film once...

 

 

Yeah, I think I saw that film too. Didn't they have to fight dinosaurs and things?

[Albert Tatlock]

but since the last war in Korea haven't the North Koreans been digging tunnels all over the place as well as a tunnel under the Pacific.... so they could deliver a bomb by train to the West Coast of America...seem to think I saw this speculated in a film once...

 

 

Yeah, I think I saw that film too. Didn't they have to fight dinosaurs and things?

I think you mean 'Battle Beneath the Earth" - and they were Chinese communists.

[manxchatterbox]

as it says in this article:-

 

http://www.teleport-city.com/movies/reviews/r-s/soldier.html

 

aren't North Korans ethnically Chinese??

 

isn't North Korea a Communist state??

[jagman]

I just didn't realise it was a documentary. Tunnels under the Pacific? Now, I'm scared.

[manxchatterbox]

Plot Summary for: - Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

 

1) A Chinese general goes berserk and has a system of tunnels made all the way from China to USA, under the Pacific Ocean! Wherever there is an important military base, he places atomic bombs...

 

2) Beneath the USA a system of tunnels is being developed by men from across the Pacific. With machines undetectable by American technology, they place bombs under strategic sites across the continent.

 

 

whereas..

the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is a reclusive Stalinist leader who is known for his "cruelty and unpredictability"

 

and the existence of shorter tunnels is already known....

 

Tunneling Toward Disaster By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, NY Times, January 21, 2003

ALONG THE DEMILITARIZED ZONE, South Korea

 

 

With the North Korean crisis likely to become much more dangerous than the American public appreciates, I came here to a hillside on the Demilitarized Zone to peer into a tunnel six feet wide and six feet high, 220 feet below the surface, leading north.

 

 

This is one of four North Korean infiltration tunnels discovered over the years. Each is capable of transporting 10,000 soldiers per hour behind South Korean defensive lines, and the biggest can accommodate jeeps and artillery. Based on defector interviews, the spooks believe that there are at least 15 more tunnels that haven't been found yet, and that some reach nearly to Seoul.

 

 

Unless President Bush more clearly changes course to negotiate with North Korea, there's a growing risk that these tunnels could be used. Distrust the hopeful noises peeping periodically from diplomats in the region — it'll be very difficult to reach a deal in which North Korea gives up its nuclear projects. We may have to brace ourselves for Kim Jong Il's turning out nukes like hotcakes, for growing tension in the region, and for a greatly heightened risk of another Korean War. The North's nuclear program could produce 200 warheads by 2010, and 58 more annually after that.

 

To be sure, Mr. Kim is not the crazy playboy he was said to be in the 1980's and 90's, when intelligence reports on him were full of lurid stories of Swedish blondes and S-and-M videos. As better defector evidence emerges, it turns out that the Great Leader is actually a smart and self-confident sophisticate who surfs the Internet and watches CNN; any day now we may find that he's a fan of Wall Street Journal editorials.

 

One of the assessments of Mr. Kim that rings most true to me comes from Cho Myung Chul, a defector who has known Mr. Kim since childhood. Mr. Cho describes the Great Leader as a fine pianist and Ping-Pong player, smart and outgoing but, alas, also an aggressive risk-taker.

 

Mr. Cho remembers attending a briefing after the gulf war, in which the North Korean army brass explained why Iraq had lost. "They said Iraq lost because it had been too defensive. `You've got to take the offensive,' they said. `Iraq didn't use all its weapons [presumably biological and chemical weapons]. If we're in a war, we'll use everything. And if there's a war, we should attack first, to take the initiative.' "

 

Mr. Cho estimates that there is an 80 percent chance that Mr. Kim would respond to a U.S. military strike on the Yongbyon nuclear facilities by launching a new Korean War.

 

So what do we do? Negotiation is the only solution, but as time passes and Washington postpones negotiation, a deal in which North Korea gives up its nukes is becoming steadily more difficult to achieve. Already it may be too late.

 

"North Korea started recruiting for its nuclear program in the 1950's, and began building reactors in the 1960's," noted a Western military analyst. "Kim Jong Il isn't just building nukes to trade them away."

 

Unfortunately, by preparing to invade Iraq while playing down the North Korean crisis, the Bush administration is making nuclear weapons seem more valuable than ever: They're obviously a great deterrent against us. Kim Jong Il could conclude that he will never be caught in Saddam's position — on the axis of evil but without a nuke to stand on.

 

Even if a deal is still possible, it will be achievable only with a strong combination of carrots and sticks. Unfortunately, President Bush has taken the stick of a military strike off the table for now (even wimps like myself believe in waving sticks from time to time). As for carrots, Mr. Bush is ambling in the right direction, but he's still reluctant to negotiate seriously for fear of rewarding bad behavior. It's a legitimate concern, but the president has painted himself into a corner.

 

One ray of hope is a very sensible letter released a few days ago by leading American conservative thinkers, urging the White House to negotiate with the Great Leader about nukes but also to put human rights on the agenda. Such a creative approach from the right could give Mr. Bush political cover to extricate himself from his corner and seek a package deal with North Korea.

 

Otherwise we'd better prepare for North Korea to rev up its nuclear assembly line and for war to become more likely. We'd better search even harder for those undiscovered tunnels.

[Lonan3]

Plot Summary for: - Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

 

1) A Chinese general goes berserk and has a system of tunnels made all the way from China to USA, under the Pacific Ocean! Wherever there is an important military base, he places atomic bombs...

 

2) Beneath the USA a system of tunnels is being developed by men from across the Pacific. With machines undetectable by American technology, they place bombs under strategic sites across the continent.

 

 

whereas..

the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is a reclusive Stalinist leader who is known for his "cruelty and unpredictability"

What do you think you're doing in here with the grown ups? Get back to Local News at once and talk about dog sh1t!

[b4mbi]

I saw a film once in which an entire planet got blown up by a laser.

 

I saw that. And I saw a film once about a little horse.

[manxchatterbox]

when the North detonates a nuclear bomb under Seoul....

 

Divining North Korea's Intent

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

 

SUWON, South Korea -- Holding a pair of short steel rods before him, Choi

Min Young paced around a hole he had bored deep into the earth. Some 60

miles north looms the armed border that divides South Korea from the

Communist North.

 

Suddenly, the rods twitched in his grip. "Right now there are 30 North

Koreans right beneath us," Mr. Choi said in a hushed voice. Northern

"soldiers are patrolling over to the right."

 

Mr. Choi uses a scientifically unproven technique called dowsing, or

divining, to seek underground objects. The usual dowser searches for water.

In South Korea, Mr. Choi is part of a small band that chases spies. The

six-man group calls itself the Invasion-Tunnel Hunters. They have been

digging for 10 years in search of passageways they believe North Korea has

burrowed into the South, as invasion routes or to infiltrate spies.

 

The North has been caught tunneling before but not since 1990. Financing

expensive digs out of their own pockets, some of the unofficial snoops, who

include former members of the South's defense establishment, have flirted

with bankruptcy and have become estranged from their families. They have

alienated South Korean and U.S. authorities with their funky detection

methods -- and with claims that the allies ignore evidence of spy tunnels.

 

Lt. Col. Mike Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in South Korea, denies

those claims and notes that the U.S. uses modern seismic and sonar detectors

to seek infiltrators. The tunnel hunters' information, he adds, "has not led

to any additional tunnel discoveries."

 

The sleuths may be overzealous, but the North is certainly capable of weird

and chilling acts. It recently confessed to the abduction of at least 13

Japanese citizens and told Washington it was enriching uranium for nuclear

weapons, in violation of a 1994 pledge not to. Four Northern tunnels into

the South have been found, the first in 1974. The U.S., which has 37,000

American troops stationed in the South, estimates there may be as many as 22

undiscovered tunnels.

 

The tunnel hunters illustrate the fine line between vigilance and paranoia

in this dangerous part of the world. Repeated provocations by Pyongyang have

derailed South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" of engaging

the North. "They can come up from these tunnels and capture us all any

minute," thunders Yoon Yo Kil, a former top South Korean missile scientist

and a leader of the group. "North Korea will never change."

[manxchatterbox]

15 votes - unanimous Security Council vote at the UN for sanctions against N Korea. ...uncle Kim said sactions would be a declaration of war..so I guess that means its now war against N Korea and gives uncle Kim a 'legitimate' reason to explode a nuke under Soeul..

[Chinahand]

Wow ... so they did it ... China and Russia agreeing to a tough line!

 

And now it gets interesting.

 

Will the US attempt to stop any North Korean ships.

 

How will the North Koreans respond.

 

The only word for it is nuclear brinkmanship.

 

Who's going to blink first? If neither side does it could be very very nasty.

 

UN News

 

Following intensive negotiations triggered earlier this month when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) claimed to have conducted a nuclear test, the United Nations Security Council today imposed sanctions against the country as well as individuals supporting its military programme and demanded that Pyongyang cease its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

 

By a unanimously adopted resolution invoking Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows for enforcement measures

 

It demanded that Pyongyang immediately retract its announced withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), return to that pact, and accept safeguards through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

 

According to the binding resolution, “DPRK shall suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme and in this context re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching.” The country also must “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.”

 

Pyongyang must further abide by the NPT and IAEA Safeguards Agreements and provide the Agency “transparency measures extending beyond these requirements, including such access to individuals, documentation, equipments and facilities.”

 

DPRK must “abandon all other existing weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programme in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.”

 

By the resolution, the Council decided that all Member States shall prevent the import from or export to the DPRK of “any battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems” as well as “related materiel including spare parts” and other items determined by the sanctions committee.

 

Other items to be set out in separate lists were also banned, including those “which could contribute to DPRK's nuclear-related, ballistic missile-related or other weapons of mass destruction-related programmes.”

 

Also prohibited from export to the DPRK are luxury goods.

 

In addition, the resolution banned the import from or export to the country of technical training, advice, services or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the banned military items.

 

By other provisions of the text, the Council decided that all States must freeze immediately the funds, other financial assets and economic resources which are on their territories that are owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the persons or entities designated by the committee or by the Security Council as being engaged in or providing support for DPRK's nuclear-related, other weapons of mass destruction-related and ballistic missile-related programmes or by persons or entities acting on their behalf or at their direction.

[Chinahand]

Great ... Just noticed this from the same UN article:

 

A representative of Pyongyang addressing the Council today said his country “totally rejects” the resolution. “It is gangster-like of the Security Council to have adopted today a coercive resolution while neglecting the nuclear threat and moves for sanctions and pressure of the United States against the DPRK,” he said. “This clearly testifies that the Security Council has completely lost its impartiality and still persists in applying double standards in its work.”

[Mission]

Not looking too good really is it?

[localyokel]

I don't know.

 

Its hard being held hostage by a cheap Elvis impersonator with a nuclear arsenal.

 

I just can't take a guy with a quiff like that seriously. Bombs or not.