North Korean leader vows strong action
This picture taken by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on December 12, 2012 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un giving the final order for the launch of the Unha-3 rocket. / KNS/AFP/Getty Images
SEOUL, South Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong Un convened top security and foreign affairs officials and ordered them to take "substantial and high-profile important state measures," state media said Sunday, indicating that he plans to push forward with a threat to explode a nuclear device in defiance of the United Nations.
The meeting of top officials led by Kim makes clear that he backs Pyongyang's defiant stance in protest of U.N. Security Council punishment for a December rocket launch. The dispatch in the official Korean Central News Agency did not say when the meeting took place.
Last week, the Security Council condemned North Korea's Dec. 12 launch of a long-range rocket as a violation of a ban against nuclear and missile activity. The council, including North Korea ally China, punished Pyongyang with more sanctions and ordered the regime to refrain from a nuclear test — or face "significant action."
North Korea responded by rejecting the resolution and maintaining its right to launch a satellite into orbit as part of a peaceful civilian space program.
- North Korea almost ready for nuclear test, satellite photos suggest
- North Korea threatens "war" if South Korea takes part in new U.N. sanctions
It also warned that it would keep developing rockets and testing nuclear devices to counter what it sees as U.S. hostility. A rare statement was issued Thursday by the powerful National Defense Commission, the top governing body led by Kim.
North Korea cites a U.S. military threat in the region as a key reason behind its drive to build nuclear weapons. The two countries fought on opposite sides of the Korean War, which ended after three years in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The U.S.-led U.N. Command mans the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, and Washington stations more than 28,000 troops in South Korea to protect its ally.
North Korea is estimated to have enough weaponized plutonium for four to eight bombs, according to American nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, who visited the country's nuclear complex northwest of Pyongyang in November 2010.
However, it is not known whether North Korean scientists have found a way to build nuclear warheads small enough to mount on a long-range missile.
Experts say regular tests are needed to perfect the technique, and another atomic test could take the country closer to its goal of building a warhead that can be mounted on a missile designed to strike the United States. North Korea has carried out two nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009.
South Korean defense officials say North Korea is technically ready to conduct a nuclear test in a matter of days.
Satellite photos taken Wednesday show that over the past month, roads have been kept clear of snow and that North Koreans may have been sealing the tunnel into a mountainside where a nuclear device would be detonated.
Analysis of the images of the Punggye-ri site was provided Friday to The Associated Press by 38 North, the website of the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
The U.S., South Korea and other countries have warned North Korea not to go ahead with a nuclear test, saying that would only deepen the country's international isolation.
After meeting with Chinese officials Friday, U.S. envoy for North Korea Glyn Davies said a nuclear test would set back efforts to restart regional talks on the North's nuclear disarmament.
Popular on CBSNews.com
-
One year after Afghan massacre, villagers work with U.S. troops One year after U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians, the villagers in the town where the atrocity took place have joined the U.S. special forces stationed there to assist in the fight against the Taliban.
- 50th Paris Air Show 13 Photos
- Basement living in China 6 Photos
- Italy top court cites "erotic game" hypothesis in Knox case
- Widespread protests in Brazil 22 Photos
- Torrential rain devastates Northern India 15 Photos
- 100,000 line streets of Brazil to protest corruption
- Hungary indicts 98-year-old for Nazi war crimes
- Egypt and Ethiopia try to roll back threats of war
I remain unconvinced Kim leads anything. The real power over there lies in the hands of an ossified military elite and a few highly trusted civilian groupies who have an ideology and worldview just as pernicious in its way as some of our own public numbskulls have in ours.
These generals - many of whom even older than I - may be ideologically bound and may be partially or completely ignorant of the outside world but they DO understand fear and can use it to their advantage. Retaining or increasing their "power over" others (in this case primarily but not exclusively the North Korean populace) is critical, not only to their personal prosperity but to their very survival.
In addition to spreading FLUD (fear, loathing, uncertainty and doubt)they also feel it. And what they fear most is the NK citizenry finally realizing how badly skeeerewed over they have been by their leadership all these years. If, or more likely, when that happens there will be a bloodbath over there that will make the Rwandan crisis & genocide in 1994 look like a cakewalk.
The generals' answer to that unacceptable eventuality is to rattle sabers; to spread FLUD throughout the region; to keep their own people and their neighbors off balance; to find a "devil" - any devil and point to him as the cause of all their misery and to make as much noise as possible to warn the world "not to f--k wit us"......Would any of 'em drop "the bomb", though? Would any of them take such a frightful risk?
I think one or two of them would, unaware or uncaring of the consequences. If these lamebrains truly believe their power-hold is inextricably contingent in going nuclear, they would in a heart beat. What would they have to lose? If that "power over" is lost or even if they that's possible it's game over - they may as well launch. And remember, it's the generals, not Kim, who are running the show.
As with others far closer to home than Pyongyang I could name, "Power Over" others is EVERYTHING to the military elite. It takes on an importance to them that is impossible for me and many of you to understand. They will do anything to retain it and their sad/frightening/infuriating chest-pounding posturing is their vehicle for doing so.
Kim's the public figurehead and though he may be completely aligned with the military high command's policies and values, he himself, has had little or no hand in drafting them. He is merely ordering them to do what they had every intention of doing anyway......
How do you say 'Nuclear Armageddon, in Korean?
Compare to San Francisco. No automotive traffic. Very interesting.
Get him a Farrari or five and bring him to Vagas.