Did Korean War II start last night?

There are two potential regional nuclear wars brewing in the world - North Korea vs South Korea, and India vs Pakistan. We had hoped the unthinkable horror of a true nuclear war would act as deterrents to actual war. It appears we may have been wrong. Now the question hangs in the air - will America abandon her ally at this moment of crisis? Or will we all be spared by a sudden outbreak of sanity in North Korea?

North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells onto a South Korean island on Tuesday, killing one person, setting homes ablaze and triggering an exchange of fire as the South's military went on top alert...The shooting started bushfires at several places in the hills, he told AFP by phone after fleeing the island by ferry for the mainland port of Incheon.
"Frightened villagers rushed to nearby shelters while others were busy running away and crowded the port to escape," Woo said, adding about 1,500-1,700 civilians live on the island.
"When I walked out, the whole village was on fire," another villager was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying. "I'm at the evacuation site with other villagers and I am scared to death."

Security thru Obscurity doesn't work for Nukes either

In the computer world, many companies used to rely on their closed code and poorly-documented functionality to keep pirates and hackers from gaining unauthorized access to their systems. This was termed "security thru obcurity" and it worked pretty well until the Internet Era. Then the sharing of information allowed hackers to pool their knowledge and skills to defeat even the most obscure code. Nowadays, vendors have to resort to encrypted code or "signed apps" in order to secure their systems (one of the reasons for the Apple App Store).

But nuclear policymakers are still relying on "security thru obscurity" as a way to stop proliferation of nuclear weapons. They figure if they carefully control the spread of nuclear knowledge, and track materials, then no one can secretly develop their own nukes. Unfortunately, recent news that the tiny nation of Myanmar (formerly Burma) is developing nukes with North Korean help puts the lie to this theory. So long as nations can benefit from nuclear weapons - and can afford the raw materials - they will try to build them as protection against other nuclear powers.

One policymaker was rumored to say during the Manhattan Project, "Why did we build these devices if not to use them?" We then nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How long until a North Korean or Myranmar politician decides the same thing? Welcome to Cold War II.

Do we really understand North Korea?

The last decade has seen a parade of American presidents attempting to make friends with North Korea in hopes of defusing their nuclear threat and saving their people from an increasingly abusive government. We've tried the carrot, we've tried the stick. Nothing seems to work. One reporter who has been there asks "Do we really understand who we're dealing with?" Our experience with other countries calling themselves "Communist" may be blinding us to some bitter realities.

Consider: Even in the days of communism, there were reports from Eastern Bloc and Cuban diplomats about the paranoid character of the system (which had no concept of deterrence and told its own people that it had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in bad faith) and also about its intense hatred of foreigners. A black Cuban diplomat was almost lynched when he tried to show his family the sights of Pyongyang. North Korean women who return pregnant from China—the regime's main ally and protector—are forced to submit to abortions. Wall posters and banners depicting all Japanese as barbarians are only equaled by the ways in which Americans are caricatured as hook-nosed monsters. (The illustrations in this book are an education in themselves.) The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea's food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgment of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader.

Perhaps a new approach is needed, before our attempts to neutralize North Korea take a sinister turn.

Sigh - All Too True

From here.

Nuclear Tantrums are a Bad Thing

Reality Check (political cartoon)

From here.

North Korea tests "Hiroshima bomb"

In what is clearly intended to be an insult to America on a day we remember our dead, North Korea tested a nuclear bomb on par with the one that hit Hiroshima at the end of World War II. It is being claimed that Kim Jon Il gave the USA less than hour's notice of the test.

Russian defence experts estimated the explosion's yield at between 10 and 20 kilotons, many times more than the 1 kiloton measured in its first nuclear test in 2006 and about as powerful as the bombs the US used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war. One kiloton is equal to the force produced by 1,000 tons of TNT.

The force of the blast made the ground tremble in the Chinese border city of Yanji, 130 miles away...Today's test will add to fears that the North is moving closer to possessing the ability to mount a nuclear warhead on long-range missiles that are capable, in theory, of reaching Hawaii and Alaska.

"This test, if confirmed, could indicate North Korea's decision to work at securing actual nuclear capabilities," Koh Yu-hwan, a professor at Dongkuk University in Seoul, told Reuters.

Two questions hang in the air at this point. (1) What can we do to limit North Korea and thus protect the region - Japan is clearly convinced they could be a target of a NK nuke? (2) What are North Korea's actual intentions for these weapons - defense or conquest? Either way, Kim Jong Il seems to be set on convincing the world that he is a clear and present danger to international peace.