North Korea - US Tension: News & Discussions

[F-22Raptor]

North Korea did not shrug off the recent overflight of a 55-year-old B-52H bomber near Seoul that was escorted by US and South Korean combat jets, according to vice chairmen of the US joint chiefs of staff Gen Paul Selva.

The long-range strategic Stratofortress, built by Boeing from 1961-62, flew from Guam to Oswan Air Base in response to the reclusive republic’s fourth nuclear test. The US government had pledged a strong response, but was the West’s old bomber shtick stern enough?

“The intelligence reports that I get on the North Korean reaction to the B-52 flying a low approach at Seoul say no, they do not shrug – they actually pay attention,” Selva says at a Brookings Institution forum this week. “We have maintained a bomber presence in the Pacific since the early part of the last decade, and we will continue to do so.

“The North Koreans are very aware of the aircraft and the capabilities they represent.”

The overflight came as the US air force received upgraded rotary launchers from Boeing that allow the B-52 to carry precision-guided cruise missiles and bombs internally. It also comes as the Pentagon embarks on a major recapitalisation of its nuclear arsenal, including a new strategic bomber, cruise missile and guided gravity bomb.

Despite considerable objection from arms control advocates, Selva contends those improved weapons are necessary as Russia and China construct “incredibly elegant and integrated surface-to-air missile defence systems” to keep America at arm’s length.

“They’re going to have to be capable of going into some of the most complex surface-to-air missile defence systems that humans have built. That’s the requirement,” he says of the bomber and its “long-range system of systems” – a new cruise missile and other more secretive armaments.

Selva says potential adversaries “have gone to school on the way we use air power” and are building air defenses to exactly counter it.

“Part of the process of undoing that advantage is to actually build a platform that has the range, the payload and the stealthiness to actually get inside of that network and accomplish the operational and strategic objectives that we need to accomplish,” he says. “That’s why the requirements are written the way they are.”

US Strategic Command chief Adm Cecil Haney seconded Selva's sentiment at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event on 22 January, saying that it would be destabilising to allow American capabilities to atrophy.

Some have labelled the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile "destabilising and unnecessary" given the next-generation bomber’s requirement for radar-evading direct attack, but Haney disagrees.

“This whole art of [nuclear] deterrence is really about perceptions,” he argues. “You can’t be a one-trick pony. To not have that would be destabilising.”

US general says B-52 overflight caught North Korea’s attention

 

[third eye]

US student Otto Warmbier given hard labour in North Korea - BBC News

US student Otto Warmbier has been given 15 years hard labour in North Korea for crimes against the state.

Warmbier, 21, was arrested for trying to steal a propaganda sign from a hotel while visiting North Korea in January.

He later appeared on state TV apparently confessing and saying a church group had asked him to bring back a "trophy" from his trip.

North Korea sometimes uses the detention of foreigners as a means of exerting pressure on its adversaries.

The BBC's Stephen Evans in South Korea says the 15-year sentence is high compared to those given to foreigners in the past.

This could be due to the particularly high tensions at the moment between North Korea and the US, he says.

'Worst mistake'
North Korean state news agency KCNA said Warmbier was convicted under an article of the criminal code relating to subversion. The verdict was handed down by the Supreme Court.

Image copyrightAFP
Image captionOtto Warmbier said in February that he had made "the worst mistake of my life"
Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was arrested on 2 January as he was trying to leave North Korea. He was accused of committing "hostile acts".

KCNA said at the time he had gone to North Korea "to destroy the country's unity" and that he had been "manipulated" by the US government.

At the end of February, at a tearful press conference in Pyongyang, he said he had "committed the crime of taking down a political slogan from the staff holding area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel".

"The aim of my task was to harm the motivation and work ethic of the Korean people. This was a very foolish aim," he was quoted as saying.

He said it was the "worst mistake" of his life.

Image copyrightAP
Image captionSouth Korea and US troops are currently engaged in their biggest ever military drills, a routine source of tension
The sentencing comes a day after veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson met North Korean officials at the UN in New York to try to push for Warmbier's release.

Mr Richardson has previously been involved in negotiations to secure the release of Americans from North Korea detention.

North Korea has ramped up its hostile rhetoric in recent weeks, after the UN imposed some of its toughest ever sanctions.

The sanctions were a response to the North conducting its fourth nuclear test and launching a satellite into space, which was seen as a covert test of banned missile technology.

Pyongyang has also been angered by the US and South Korea carrying out their annual military drills, which this year involve some 315,000 personnel.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un has threatened "indiscriminate" nuclear attacks against the US and the South, and has said his country will soon test a nuclear warhead.

However analysts still doubt whether the North has the capacity to carry out a nuclear attack.

 

[boomslang]

Hard to feel sorry for any @ss-wipe that goes over there and gets into trouble.

 

[seven7seven]

He's an American in North Korea. Did he really expect not to be watched every second he was there?

Sentence is long and harsh by any standards but hard to feel sorry for him, when he should have known the likely consequences of his actions.

 

[Desertfalcon]

He is a typical young fool thinking there would be no consequences and obviously, 15 years of hard labour is ridiculous for stealing a banner, but then again, North Korea treats her own people, far, far, worse.

 

[barbarosa]

What was he doing there in the age of tension.

 

[greenwood]

At due time Korea do a meaningless thing. Is a student any threat to the country? I guess Korea warn the South and America cancel the meaningless drill.
Meaningless action counter another meaningless action.

 

[Kiss_of_the_Dragon]

He's an American in North Korea. Did he really expect not to be watched every second he was there?

Sentence is long and harsh by any standards but hard to feel sorry for him, when he should have known the likely consequences of his actions.

Because he was brainwashed by American military propaganda that NK is hopeless, American and SK ally can bomb KIM to stone age and Nord Korean wouldn't dare to touch Americans because they're exceptionalism, if American commit a crime else where, these people believe that their government will come to rescue them. It's really pathetic to fly thousand mile just to steal a propaganda sign from NK...LMAO

 

[C130]

Hard to feel sorry for any @ss-wipe that goes over there and gets into trouble.

we all do stupid shit once or twice in our life. i am sure he is regretting his decision to tour NK and steal a propaganda poster.


but does the sentence fit the crime?

 

[boomslang]

...but does the sentence fit the crime?

Not at all but that's what goes on over there. He should have gone to Cancun and drank beer on the beach.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Hard to feel sorry for any @ss-wipe that goes over there and gets into trouble.

Yeah and now his just-as-stupid-as-he-is parents are going to beg the government to trade him for somebody dangerous.

I say we tell them he is going to serve out his term for being a moron. In fact we should ask the North Koreans to double his sentence.

Zero f'n sympathy from me.

 

[cirr]

only 15 years in labour camp？

should have been machine-gunned into pieces judging by the mass media brainwashing carried out against North Korea in the West。

 

[third eye]

but does the sentence fit the crime?

When its NK , its more to do with symbolism than anything else .

 

[C130]

When its NK , its more to do with symbolism than anything else .

I know it's just the typical North Korean thing .

they are mad about the sanctions and wanna take it out on thrill seeker.

good news though in 15 years he'll be speaking Hangul and praising Kim Jong Un like a pro.

 

[boomslang]

North Korea
North Korea says US has crossed 'red line,' warns of showdown over upcoming war games
Published July 28, 2016
Associated Press

In this May 10, 2016, photo, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un watches a parade from a balcony at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. (AP)

PYONGYANG, North Korea – North Korea's top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press Thursday that Washington "crossed the red line" and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.

Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North's Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing.

The United States and South Korea regularly conduct joint military exercises south of the Demilitarized Zone, and Pyongyang typically responds to them with tough talk and threats of retaliation.

Han said North Korea believes the nature of the maneuvers has become openly aggressive because they reportedly now include training designed to prepare troops for the invasion of the North's capital and "decapitation strikes" aimed at killing its top leadership.

Han says designating Kim himself for sanctions was the final straw.

"The Obama administration went so far to have the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the DPRK," Han said, using the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"The United States has crossed the red line in our showdown," he said. "We regard this thrice-cursed crime as a declaration of war."

Although North Korea had already been heavily sanctioned internationally for its nuclear weapons and long-range missile development programs, Washington's announcement on July 6 was the first time Kim Jong Un has been personally sanctioned.

Less than a week later, Pyongyang cut off its final official means of communications with Washington — known as the New York channel. Han said Pyongyang has made it clear that everything between the two must now be dealt with under "war law."

Kim and 10 others were put on the list of sanctioned individuals in connection with alleged human rights abuses, documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, that include a network of political prisons and harsh treatment of any kind of political dissent in the authoritarian state. U.S. State Department officials said the sanctions were intended in part to highlight those responsible for the abuses and to pressure lower-ranking officials to think twice before carrying them out.

Pyongyang denies abuse claims and says the U.N. report was based on fabrications gleaned from disgruntled defectors. Pointing to such things as police shootings of black Americans and poverty in even the richest democracies, it says the West has no moral high ground from which to criticize the North's domestic political situation. It also says U.S. allies with questionable human-rights records receive less criticism.

Han took strong issue with the claim that it not the U.S. but Pyongyang's continued development of nuclear weapons and missiles that is provoking tensions.

"Day by day, the U.S. military blackmail against the DPRK and the isolation and pressure is becoming more open," Han said. "It is not us, it is the United States that first developed nuclear weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind. And on the issue of missiles and rockets, which are to deliver nuclear warheads and conventional weapons warheads, it is none other than the United States who first developed it and who first used it."

He noted that U.S.-South Korea military exercises conducted this spring were unprecedented in scale, and that the U.S. has deployed the USS Mississippi and USS Ohio nuclear-powered submarines to South Korean ports, deployed the B-52 strategic bomber around South Korea and is planning to set up the world's most advanced missile defense system, known by its acronym THAAD, in the South, a move that has also angered China.

Echoing earlier state-media reports, Han ridiculed Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, for a flight on a U.S. Air Force F-16 based in South Korea that he said was an action "unfit for a diplomat."

"We regard that as the act of a villain, who is a crazy person," Han said of the July 12 flight. "All these facts show that the United States is intentionally aggravating the tensions in the Korean Peninsula."

Han warned that Pyongyang is viewing next month's planned U.S.-South Korea exercises in this new context and will respond if they are carried out as planned.

"Nobody can predict what kind of influence this kind of vicious confrontation between the DPRK and the United States will have upon the situation on the Korean Peninsula," he said. "By doing these kinds of vicious and hostile acts toward the DPRK, the U.S. has already declared war against the DPRK. So it is our self-defensive right and justifiable action to respond in a very hard way.

"We are all prepared for war, and we are all prepared for peace," he said. "If the United States forces those kinds of large-scale exercises in August, then the situation caused by that will be the responsibility of the United States."

Last year's Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises involved 30,000 American and 50,000 South Korean troops and followed a period of heightened animosity between the rival Koreas sparked by land mine explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers. In the end, the exercises escalated tensions and rhetoric, but concluded with no major incidents.

Han dismissed calls for Pyongyang to defuse tensions by agreeing to abandon its nuclear program.

"In the view of cause and effect, it is the U.S. that provided the cause of our possession of nuclear forces," he said. "We never hide the fact, and we are very proud of the fact, that we have very strong nuclear deterrent forces not only to cope with the United States' nuclear blackmail but also to neutralize the nuclear blackmail of the United States."


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