North Korea Threatens to Incinerate South Korea
By Andrew L. Jaffee, netwmd.com
North Korea is controlled by a very dangerous regime: It threatened yesterday to “reduce everything… [in South Korea] to debris.” North and South Koreans are the same people, with many family and friends separated by a line in the sand, and yet the North Korean leadership would destroy its own kindred, all because of a very minor, perceived “offense” committed by a Southern group opposed to the North’s Fearless Leader, Kim Jong-Il. From AFP:
North Korea, angry at a leaflet campaign by Seoul groups urging the overthrow of its leader, accused South Korea on Tuesday of planning a pre-emptive strike and threatened to reduce it to “debris” in retaliation.
The North’s military said it would use a “more powerful and advanced” strike of its own if South Korea launched a pre-emptive strike.
“The puppet authorities (Seoul) had better bear in mind that the advanced pre-emptive strike of our own style will reduce everything… to debris, not just setting them on fire,” it said in a statement carried by the state news agency, KCNA.
“It will turn out to be a just war… to build an independent reunified state on it.”
The North’s military described its pre-emptive capability as “beyond imagination, relying on striking means more powerful than a nuclear weapon”.
The 1.1 million-strong military has for years deployed hundreds of conventional missiles targeting the South. …
South Korea is a beacon of democracy and free market success story, it being the world’s 11th largest economy, and certainly has no intention of losing everything by causing trouble with North Korea’s insane leadership.
North Korea is such a dismal failure that nighttime satellite images show it completely dark while the South glows with activity and energy — you can actually see the 38th Parallel from outer space. The North is just another “socialist” disaster, albeit armed to the teeth, very bellicose, and completely heartless, bereft of compassion.
According to CNN:
Two million North Koreans — nearly 10 percent of the population — may have died during three years of famine in North Korea, U.S. congressional aides said Wednesday. …
North Korea’s food shortages were precipitated by two years of flooding followed by a drought last year that pushed the reclusive Communist nation’s inefficient collective farming system to the brink of collapse. …
According to GlobalSecurity:
… Negative economic growth, chronic shortages of raw materials (especially oil), ineffective centralized economic planning, and an emphasis on military power contributed to the economic failure of North Korea. The requirement by Russia and the PRC that materials exported to the DPRK be paid for with cash further degraded North Korea’s economic viability. The DPRK can no longer generate sufficient electrical power to meet industrial needs, social services have been severely degraded, and segments of society have been reduced to one meal a day. There are chronic shortages of many of the basic commodities required for subsistence and industrial production. Critical resources continue to be dedicated to the military with increasing detriment to the economy.
There will be no relief from the severe shortages, which could foster growing dissatisfaction among the intelligentsia, workers, students, and bureaucrats. The DPRK’s management of its economy provides no freedom of action for producers, real incentives for individuals to excel, or a government responsive to scientific and technological progress. If the DPRK keeps its emphasis on its military and does not reform its eco-nomic system, the country could eventually be in grave danger of imploding. The DPRK is, and will likely remain, one of the most dangerous countries in the world. …
The North’s ruling elite are only interested in keeping themselves in power, and to heck with the “proletariat.” Despite what the North’s apologists would have you believe, guess which nation is trying to keep North Koreans from starving to death? From the Voice of America:
… The U.S. government is one of the biggest donors and has pledged 400,000 tons of food to help with the crisis. …
To add insult to injury:
… South Korea provide[s] huge food shipments to North Korea …
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Cross-posted at netwmd.com
While it is reprehensible the way the North threatens its neighbors and the US when it needs something, it is nothing new, and to be honest, it is not taken “seriously” at this point. When the North’s economy and standard of living were equal to the South’s back in the 60s, threats by the North were seen as legitimate moves to press influence. But nowadays, the only tool the North has to get anything at the bargaining table is to remind the world that it has nukes.
These recent comments were hardly even covered in South Korean media. That’s isn’t to say the North still isn’t a threat worth concentrating on; I surely believe that Kim’s regime should not be let off the hook for these kinds of comments and dealings. But it’s predictable how these threats come about right at the moment the North needs aid from the South the most.