South Korean and Japanese perspectives on North Korean missile launch
February 14, 2017 11:30 AM   Subscribe

On Feb 8th, Hwang Kyo-ahn, the acting president of South Korea, warned that the possibility of strategic provocation by North Korea in the month of February was "very high," because (among other things) Kim Jong-il's 75th birthday would have been on Feb 16th. North Korea launched a missile on Feb 13th. According to the Japanese newspaper, the Asahai Shinbun, some experts believe North Korea will launch another missile around April 15th, which would have been Kim Il Sung's 105th birthday.

Here's a South Korean article about Pyongyang's final goal in missile defense, and another one about the missile launch and South Korea's defensive preparations.

And here is the official North Korean article about the missile launch (goes to an archive.is link rather than the original source).
posted by colfax (12 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think the general Japanese attitude is "gee, we would sure like to not get nuked." After that: "we need more Aegis destroyers" and "we need yet more Patriot anti-missile batteries."

Japan spends a lot on military hardware, but it just recently stopped flying its variant of the F-4 Phantom, and still relies on the F-15 as the backbone of its fighter capability.

So look to see Japan spend even more on defense in the coming decade. I haven't read anything that says Japan will develop a nuclear weapons capability, though, and *that* seems hard to imagine.
posted by My Dad at 12:10 PM on February 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


The half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was assassinated at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, telling medical workers before he died that he had been attacked with a chemical spray, a Malaysian official said Tuesday.
There's a bit in one of Richard Kuklinski's (the hitman/serial killer) biographies where he claims to have killed a jogger on a lark by spraying them in the face like this. One puff is enough and the victim will probably think you're just joking around. I always figured it was probably BS but maybe not.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 12:28 PM on February 14, 2017


At the moment, Reuters seems to be the only English-language source for the "half-brother" assassination story. It doesn't mean it's inaccurate, but it's just one source that has been amplified globally. I saw something else that it wasn't a spray, but "needles."
posted by My Dad at 12:32 PM on February 14, 2017


In terms of informed English-language sources on Korea (and there are not many), Steve Herman at VOA is a good source.
posted by My Dad at 12:36 PM on February 14, 2017


The BBC is reporting that "a woman covered his face with a cloth which burnt his eyes" rather than earlier reports of a spray or needle. While there had been a previous attempt on his life in 2011, the timing for the death of a critic and rival of Kim Jong-un seems more than coincidental when North Korea is putting on a show of strength.
posted by Doktor Zed at 12:42 PM on February 14, 2017


Except he's neither a critic nor rival. He's been out of the picture for years and years and was of basically no relevance in DPKR. This isn't strength, it's paranoid fratricide.
posted by 1adam12 at 1:35 PM on February 14, 2017 [7 favorites]


So look to see Japan spend even more on defense in the coming decade. I haven't read anything that says Japan will develop a nuclear weapons capability, though, and *that* seems hard to imagine.

Oh, I don't know, Japan has a pretty active small rockets program "for science" that could be repurposed into a delivery vehicle. Then there's the matter of developing a miniaturized warhead; that would likely require nuclear weapons tests and would be basically impossible to hide, but it's within their capabilities as an advanced industrial nation with a well developed nuclear power sector. There's no reason the general public would hear about what nuclear weapons program, if any, Japan is currently running, as that is the sort of thing that would be kept a closely held secret.
posted by indubitable at 2:10 PM on February 14, 2017


It's not a question of capability, but of politics. The public would be insanely unhappy with a nuclear weapons program. It would be suicide for the politicians involved, without some huge event causing a massive change of heart (like maybe an actual nuclear attack somewhere threatening).

The only reason they would even consider it would be if they thought (a) there was a real chance of nuclear attack on Japan, and (b) that the US would not follow through on defense commitments. Trump is actually trying to keep them happy on (b), as has basically every US President in the modern era, so the anxiety level in Tokyo has probably gone down a bit (like most of us, I'm sure they were a little worried what Trump would do especially given some of his talk pre-election, but he has basically dumped any of the anti-Japan stuff he was saying before).
posted by thefoxgod at 2:19 PM on February 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Also JAXA is a fairly serious space exploration program by all accounts, so I'm not sure why the scare quotes around science.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:19 PM on February 14, 2017 [5 favorites]


Mattis was just in Japan, and unequivocally reaffirmed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which protects Japan under the American "nuclear umbrella."

Japan could develop its own "deterrent" but there is no good reason at the moment to do so. Japan is also a signatory of the NPT.

Everybody loves to point at the plutonium stockpile in Japan (which Japan once upon a time intended to use in a "plutonium economy"), but the fact of the matter is that Japan would love to somehow get rid of the plutonium. It used to ship it to Sellafield to be reprocessed into MOX fuel, but once the reactors shut down in 2011 it became extremely expensive to store all that plutonium overseas.

It's a major problem.
posted by My Dad at 3:36 PM on February 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's not a question of capability, but of politics. The public would be insanely unhappy with a nuclear weapons program. It would be suicide for the politicians involved, without some huge event causing a massive change of heart (like maybe an actual nuclear attack somewhere threatening).

I agree it's unlikely that Japan will try for a nuclear weapons program, but it's worth noting Israel developed one without telling anyone - not their own populace, not the international community. (Maybe France.) Point is - it's not political suicide if it's a state secret.

Japan would love to somehow get rid of the plutonium

Hey! Send it to Australia! We have plenty of space and can probably solve the domestic political issues related to nuclear storage. Our economy could use the cash.
posted by iffthen at 5:19 AM on February 15, 2017


Further evidence that we're living in a novel:

This article contains a photo of one of the suspects being held in regards to Kim Jong Nam's assassination
posted by I-baLL at 8:08 AM on February 15, 2017


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