Once again, North Koreans led by Kim Jong-il have defied the international community and, as they have for much of the last 40 years, will evidently get away with it as the US, Japan, and South Korea have done little but talk and shake their fingers at the “Dear Leader.”
Last weekend, North Korea fired a rocket over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. For a North Korea that cannot feed itself, whose archaic industry is limping, whose trade is anemic except for imports from China, whose people suffer from endemic diseases and which goes dark for lack of electricity when the sun goes down, this was a spectacular achievement.
Kim went to the launch site on the east coast to watch the liftoff, then had himself reelected by acclamation. Midweek, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, 100,000 people jammed a plaza in Pyongyang to celebrate.
“The DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] succeeded in launching the satellite despite the enemies’ unprecedented political and military pressure,” KCNA said.
Before the missile launch, US President Barack Obama and leaders of other powerful countries warned North Korea not to proceed with the launch. Afterward, Obama said that North Korea “must be punished,” a position that was echoed in Tokyo, Seoul, Western Europe and at the UN.
By the weekend, however, little but nattering was seeping out of the UN, the White House and foreign ministries around the globe.
Moreover, the Obama administration imposed through the Pentagon a news blackout despite having erected an elaborate system of missile tracking radars, computers and communications in Japan, the Aleutians, Alaska, Hawaii, and California, US and Japanese warships at sea, and satellites above the Pacific Ocean. That cost the taxpayers? US$56 billion over the past seven years.
Colorado-based Northern Command, which is responsible for the defense of the US homeland, published a terse press release with few details, concluding: “This is all of the information that will be provided … pertaining to the launch.”
In contrast, after a missile defense test in December, the Pentagon produced Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, Director of the Missile Defense Agency, to open a press briefing.
“What I would like to do is go over exactly what happened this afternoon,” he had said back then. The Army general proceeded to do just that.
In North Korea’s case, rather than inform the public the Pentagon is paid to defend, it withheld information and ostensibly did so for one or both of the following reasons:
First, the Obama administration, having decided there would be no response or retaliation for the defiant missile test, calculated that it would be best to divert public attention by ignoring it.
Second, something went wrong in tracking the North Korean missile in this first realistic test of missile defense; other tests have been staged. Rather than admit failure, the Pentagon deployed a smokescreen.
The North Korean missile test was but the latest act of a rogue state. In 1968, North Korea seized the US intelligence ship Pueblo in international waters; 36 hours later, North Korean commandos attempted to kill South Korean President Park Chung-hee. The following year, North Korea shot down a US EC-121 electronic surveillance plane, killing 31 Americans.
Since then, the North Koreans have mounted assassinations, abductions, bombings and illicit drug operations, all without drawing an effective response from the US, Japan, or South Korea. In the 1980s, Pyongyang began developing nuclear arms, which led to the Six-Party talks in 2003. The US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia have sought, unsuccessfully, to dissuade Kim from pursuing his nuclear ambitions. In 2006, North Korea detonated a nuclear device. The-Six Party Talks are stalled and the launch suggests they will recede further into the horizon.
Richard Halloran is a freelance writer based in Hawaii.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of