North Korea is a serious threat

North Korea will invade South Korea within the next two years. It needs the wealth and has… North Korea will invade South Korea within the next two years. It needs the wealth and has nothing to lose.

North Korea will wait until the U.S. military is occupied in Iraq and then invade. It knows we don’t have the military strength to fight on both fronts.

According to the Associated Press (www.wire.ap.org), North Korea has an army more than twice the size of South Korea’s, a powerful navy, ballistic missile arsenals, the ability to strike anywhere in Japan and a need to rescue the nation from poverty. This, together with the threat of nuclear action against any nation that comes to South Korea’s aid, proves to be a scary scenario.

As a nation North Korea is in dire straits, with no good way to escape. It is the last remnant of an archaic and Stalinist era. It has no real energy network, no dependable food supply and an economy crippled by Communist policy and recent natural disasters. In short, it needs help.

As of last month, such help looked probable. In recent years, North Korea has begun to open up to the rest of the world and lean away from its reclusive tendencies. It began experimenting with a market economy. The United States provided the country with thousands of tons of fuel each year. North Koreans received millions of dollars in humanitarian aide from the rest of the world. And work on a rail system to connect the Koreas, which are currently divided by the most heavily guarded border in the world, was scheduled to begin soon as part of North Korea’s “normalization” process. This is a long-term plan initiated by South Korea to help modernize its northern neighbor.

All of that is over now.

In light of new evidence brought forth by a U.S. delegation in North Korea, the North Korean government admitted reluctantly to having a nuclear weapons program. That doesn’t look good, especially since President Bush labeled them as part of the “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq.

The nuclear weapons program is a clear violation of a 1994 agreement between the United States and North Korea. The agreement called on North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons program – yes, it had one back then too – and in return, the United States would build North Korea two nuclear power plants.

North Korea claims the agreement was nullified since the power plants were behind schedule. The project was originally scheduled to be completed by 2003, but the United States recently announced a delay of several years because of funding and other problems. There is evidence North Korea never halted its program and traded missile technology with Pakistan for nuclear technology, but that doesn’t really matter.

North Korea slipped and now the world knows it has nuclear capability.

Bush says the power plants will never be built and South Korea has halted the “normalization” process. North Korean progress has been frozen.

The stage is set for a road to war.

The Bush administration prefers a hard-line approach to foreign policy. It wishes to solve the nuclear threat through diplomatic means, but Bush diplomacy will not be appreciated by North Korea.

Bush doesn’t trust dictatorships and it is unlikely he will make an exception for Kim Jong II’s regime. The White House will treat North Korea the same way as its “axis of evil” colleague Iraq. “Do this, this and this. And we will give you – uh. Just do it and you won’t be evil anymore.”

But North Korea has nuclear weapons, the fourth largest army in the world, nothing to lose and everything to gain. It will not back down. It needs money and resources. North Korea will seek the resources it so desperately needs and the only way open to get them is war.

Such a war will be bloody. Many Americans will remember that this war has already been fought and with American intervention South Korea won. However, the United States of today is far different than that of the Korean War. Modern Americans will not tolerate the massive casualty count necessary to defeat North Korea. If America gets involved the fight will resemble the Vietnam War more than the Korean War of the early ’50s.

Put simply: North Korea will invade South Korea and North Korea will win.

Questions? Comments? wminton@pittnews.com