North Korea says/does surprising and alarming thing - Page…

On September 04 2017 21:13 Sbrubbles wrote:
I only hope that whatever happens at the end of the day happens with the consent of the South Korean people. They are by far the ones who stand to suffer the most in case of conflict.

On September 05 2017 09:03 mahrgell wrote:
South Korea has announced to cancel a bilateral deal about a payload restriction on their rockets as a reaction. They will now up their rocket payload to 1t instead of 0.5t as previously agreed. For the moment they will still honor the 800km range restriction though.

Also the SKs defense ministry has demanded stationing US nuclear weaponry in SK again.

Also some not further specified multi billion dollar weapon purchases from the US have been announced by SK and the US.

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All those steps will certainly alarm China. I'm quite sure that this is the main point here. "Look, if you can't control your dog, we will have to take those extensive precautions even if those greatly disturb and threaten you." Because I seriously doubt NK really cares. This doesn't change anything for them. But China will certainly not like it.

The single mountain under which North Korea most likely conducted its five most recent nuclear bomb tests, including the latest and most powerful on Sunday, could be at risk of collapsing, a Chinese scientist said.

By measuring and analysing the shock waves caused by the blasts, and picked up by quake stations in China and neighbouring countries, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, said they were confident that they were all carried out from under the same mountain at the Punggye-ri test site.

The team from the seismic and deep earth physics laboratory made the claim in a statement posted on their website on Monday. Its leader, geophysicist Wen Lianxing, said that based on data collected by more than 100 earthquake monitoring centres in China, the margin of error was no more than 100 metres.

Wang Naiyan, the former chairman of the China Nuclear Society and senior researcher on China’s nuclear weapons programme, said that if Wen’s findings were reliable, there was a risk of a major environmental disaster.

Another test might cause the whole mountain to cave in on itself, leaving only a hole from which radiation could escape and drift across the region, including China, he said.

“We call it ‘taking the roof off’. If the mountain collapses and the hole is exposed, it will let out many bad things.”
Sunday’s blast was followed by an earthquake eight minutes later, which China’s seismic authorities interpreted as a cave-in triggered by the explosion.

Not every mountain was suitable for nuclear bomb testing. Wang said, adding that the peak had to be high, but the slopes relatively flat.

Based on the fact that North Korea has a limited land area and bearing in mind the sensitivity of its nuclear programme, it most likely does not have too many suitable peaks to choose from.

How long the mountain would continue to stand would also depend on where the North Koreans placed the bombs, Wang said.

“If the bombs were planted at the bottom of vertically drilled tunnels, the explosion would do less damage,” he said.

But vertical tunnels were difficult and expensive to build, and it was not easy to lay cables and sensors to collect data from the explosion, he said. Much easier was to bore a horizontal tunnel into the heart of the mountain, but this increased the risk of blowing off the top, he said.

The increasing size of North Korea’s nuclear bombs was also making “topping” more likely, Wang said.

“A 100 kiloton bomb is a relatively large bomb. The North Korean government should stop the tests as they pose a huge threat not only to North Korea but to other countries, especially China,” he said.

Wang added a caveat, however, saying that the calculations made by Wen and his team could be wrong. Quake waves travel at different speeds through different rocks, so it was not easy to make precise predictions based on seismic data, he said.

In the meantime, Chinese authorities, including the National Nuclear Safety Administration, would continue to closely monitor every nuclear test conducted by North Korea, Wang said.

Radiation readings taken by the government on Monday showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Wen’s team estimated that the energy released in the latest test was about 108.3 kilotons of TNT, or 7.8 times the amount released by the atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese city Hiroshima in 1945. It also dwarfed all previous bombs tested by the North Korean military.

A team of scientists in Norway estimated the amount of energy released by the blast at Punggye-ri on Sunday at 10 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.

Wen, who is also a professor of geosciences at Stony Brook University in New York state, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On September 05 2017 18:20 ImFromPortugal wrote:



Interesting how all this altercations with North Korea can end up making the american hand stronger in this asian geopolitical Theater, possibility of hurting China economically and arming your South Korean proxy with your own weapons, selling them new missile systems and even making the Japanese upgrade their army and change their constitution to be ready when the americans need them in the future.

On September 05 2017 22:21 KwarK wrote:

NK getting nukes hasn't made America stronger. America is an economic superpower, stability and trade are American advantages, instability and rivalry damage American interests.

On September 06 2017 01:12 ImFromPortugal wrote:



Unless they can be contained with some Chinese concessions and having the allies buy some american toys and bluster their respective armies.

On September 06 2017 01:17 KwarK wrote:

Think about your argument for a second. You're suggesting that the gain from selling weapons to SK/Japan outweighs the cost of the America presence in the theater (and that's before we look at the cost of a potential war). It's simply not plausible. If NK stopped doing all their bullshit then sure, the US couldn't sell as many missile defence systems to Japan, but the US also wouldn't need to keep an army in SK and a carrier fleet in the Sea of Japan.

On September 06 2017 02:22 LegalLord wrote:
The US doesn't need an excuse to try to shore up its Asia-Pacific alliance structure. There are plenty of parties there that seek a balancing influence against the rise of China and as the world's premiere naval power, the US is a great option. Unfortunately they have done a pretty bad job of making that strategy work, hence the general failure of the US to expand and sustain its position in the area.

On September 06 2017 02:36 LegalLord wrote:
So what do you propose? Sell more hardware, deploy more troops, and escalate the stand-off with China on the back of North Korea developing rocket missiles? That's not really going to make America great again at all.

On September 06 2017 02:39 ImFromPortugal wrote:




Well its a dire situation i was just commenting things as i see it, from analyzing the american behavior since the end of the cold war and how they manipulate situations to gain an advantage. My humble opinion is that North Korea will not be attacked and that they will continue to develop their systems eventually selling some to Iran and thus another red line will be crossed and another crisis will start.