Missiles for sale
Two excellent articles in Asia Times provide much-needed background and analysis regarding the North Korean missile business.
Hisane Masaki: N Korea's missiles met by Japanese sanctions
In 2004, Japan revised the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law to allow the government to halt trade and block cash remittances to North Korea - or to any other country, without a UN resolution. Japan also enacted a law that year that authorizes the government to ban the docking of North Korean ships, or ships that have visited North Korea, at Japanese ports. The Mangyongbyon-92 ferry had been widely considered to be among the most likely targets.
Pyongyang has often warned that economic sanctions would be tantamount to a "declaration of war". To be sure, North Korea would suffer if Japan went that far. But the impact of the Japanese punishment would be limited unless other nations, especially China and South Korea, join in the sanctions.
Bertil Lintner: The long reach of North Korea's missiles
According to US-based North Korea expert Joseph Bermudez, countries that have bought missile parts and technology from North Korea include Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. In recent years, however, North Korea has lost two important customers: Pakistan, which has become a US ally, and Libya, whose Muammar Gaddafi has pledged to give up his country's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.
Assisted by Soviet experts and technicians, North Korea began producing surface-to-air missiles more than 40 years ago. But the first ones were quite rudimentary, and it was not until North Korea signed a military agreement with China in 1971 that the industry took off. Gradually, however, the North Koreans themselves became capable of developing and fine-tuning their growing arsenal of missiles - together with some rather unexpected, non-communist partners.
The first was Egypt. North Korea helped that country in the war with Israel in October 1973 by providing some pilots. In return for that assistance, Egypt transferred a small number of its Soviet-supplied FROG-7B and rockets and launchers to North Korea, which had already started a ballistic-missile program.
A must read in order to understand how serious this crisis really is. As North Korea has virtually no other products that anyone outside of the country may want to purchase, its missiles-for-sale program is not just about defense. Scary.
Hisane Masaki: N Korea's missiles met by Japanese sanctions
In 2004, Japan revised the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law to allow the government to halt trade and block cash remittances to North Korea - or to any other country, without a UN resolution. Japan also enacted a law that year that authorizes the government to ban the docking of North Korean ships, or ships that have visited North Korea, at Japanese ports. The Mangyongbyon-92 ferry had been widely considered to be among the most likely targets.
Pyongyang has often warned that economic sanctions would be tantamount to a "declaration of war". To be sure, North Korea would suffer if Japan went that far. But the impact of the Japanese punishment would be limited unless other nations, especially China and South Korea, join in the sanctions.
Bertil Lintner: The long reach of North Korea's missiles
According to US-based North Korea expert Joseph Bermudez, countries that have bought missile parts and technology from North Korea include Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. In recent years, however, North Korea has lost two important customers: Pakistan, which has become a US ally, and Libya, whose Muammar Gaddafi has pledged to give up his country's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.
Assisted by Soviet experts and technicians, North Korea began producing surface-to-air missiles more than 40 years ago. But the first ones were quite rudimentary, and it was not until North Korea signed a military agreement with China in 1971 that the industry took off. Gradually, however, the North Koreans themselves became capable of developing and fine-tuning their growing arsenal of missiles - together with some rather unexpected, non-communist partners.
The first was Egypt. North Korea helped that country in the war with Israel in October 1973 by providing some pilots. In return for that assistance, Egypt transferred a small number of its Soviet-supplied FROG-7B and rockets and launchers to North Korea, which had already started a ballistic-missile program.
A must read in order to understand how serious this crisis really is. As North Korea has virtually no other products that anyone outside of the country may want to purchase, its missiles-for-sale program is not just about defense. Scary.
Comments