North Korea: War isn’t rogue state’s first option
WE’RE all terrified that Kim Jong-un will start a nuclear war, but there’s another reason why he is building up his arsenal of missiles.
NORTH Korea wants to be regarded as a nuclear power and won’t give up its arsenal until it achieves its aim.
The secretive nation has been building its missile and nuclear arsenal at a staggering pace, alarming experts who have been blindsided by the country’s progress.
However most agree North Korea won’t launch an attack first and there are other reasons why the country is determined to reach its nuclear goal.
According to Australian National University researcher and North Korean expert Leonid Petrov the one thing Kim Jong-un really wants is international recognition.
Dr Petrov, a leading expert on the secretive country, said Pyongyang wanted the world to treat it as a nuclear power.
“Like Iran and Pakistan, Pyongyang wants to be treated just as equally as they are,” De Petrov said.
“Kim Jong-un also learned the lessons of Saddam and Gaddafi.”
Dr Petrov said both dead leaders didn’t have the weapons behind them that Kim does and he was determined to hang on to his arsenal.
Speaking at an address in June, the Lowy Institute’s international security program director Dr Euan Graham said he didn’t believe war was North Korea’s ultimate goal.
Dr Graham said Kim would not stop his weapons program until he achieved his nuclear ambitions because he viewed it as a bargaining chip.
“There’s a survival element to this because Kim doesn’t want to end up like Saddam or Gaddafi,” he said.
“Kim thinks if he’s got this nuclear arsenal he won’t end up six feet under.”
Quartz writer Steven Mollman also writes that North Korea isn’t building up its nuclear weapons to take aim at America.
Mollman said North Korea’s obsession isn’t with even with Washington but instead rested with Seoul, South Korea.
Pointing out that the North doesn’t only want to be accepted as a nuclear power and to end sanctions, Mollman reveals its true aim is “to rule the Korean Peninsula, and rid it of foreign forces”.
He also predicts while US Presidents will come and go, Kim will be in power “for life”.
‘PAIN AND SUFFERING’
Pyongyang has remained defiant following a series of intercontinental ballistic missile tests and what it claimed was a successful test of a hydrogen bomb.
It also warned it would inflict “the greatest pain and suffering” on the US if Washington persists in pushing for harsher UN sanctions following Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test last week.
The September 3 detonation was the country’s largest and sparked massive global outrage, with the UN Security Council set to discuss a new draft resolution presented by Washington that would be the toughest-ever imposed against the isolated regimen.
In a statement published by the secretive country’s official KCNA news agency, North Korea’s foreign ministry warned Washington that if it did “rig up the illegal and unlawful ‘resolution’ on harsher sanctions.
“The forthcoming measures to be taken by the DPRK will cause the US the greatest pain and suffering it had ever gone through in its entire history,” the ministry said.
“The world will witness how the DPRK tames the US gangsters by taking (a) series of action tougher than they have ever envisaged.”
It isn’t the first comment made against the US in recent days.
It also attacked US ambassador Nikki Haley and accused her of playing “the flagship role” in the Trump administration’s “hideous sanctions and pressure racket against the DPRK.”
It also called Ms Haley “a political prostitute” and dismissed her comments that North Korea “was begging for a war” while accusing the US of being the “chieftain of aggression and war and wrecker of peace.”
FAILURE TO LAUNCH
South Korea widely predicted its northern rival would test another missile to mark its national holiday on September 9.
Instead North Korea used the day which marks the country’s 69th anniversary to call for a nuclear arms build-up, in defiance of mounting international sanctions.
“The defence sector, in step with the party’s Byungjin policy (of developing the economy and nuclear weapons at the same time) must make cutting-edge Juche weapons in greater quantities,” the Rodong Sinmun said in an editorial, referring to the national philosophy of “Juche” or self-reliance.
It also called “miracle-like events” such as the two ICBM tests to deter the United States which it said was bent on “decapitating” the nation’s leader Kim Jong-un.
“No matter how the US and its puppets kick up a ruckus, our republic, which has a strong military and the most powerful Juche bombs and weapons, and whose territory has all turned into fortresses, and all its people armed to the teeth, will remain an eternal iron-clad citadel,” it said.
Follow the latest updates on the North Korea crisis
— with AFP/AP
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