QUICK RELEASE

Thursday, January 14, 2016
PACIFIC
BY PAUL ALEXANDER
AND YOO-KYONG CHANG
Stars and Stripes
SEOUL, South Korea — President Park
Geun-hye on Wednesday called North Korea’s
latest nuclear test “a serious threat to
our people’s survival and future” as experts
questioned Pyongyang’s claim to have successfully
launched a ballistic missile from a
submarine.
Park vowed Wednesday to continue
loudspeaker broadcasts across the Demilitarized
Zone that have angered the North,
apparently rejecting Britain’s call to halt
the barrage of propaganda and pop music
to avoid further escalating the latest crisis
on the peninsula.
“This is the surest and most effective
mean of psychological warfare against
North Korea” now, Park said in a nationally
televised address. “North Korea’s nuclear
test this time is the gravest provocation
against our security .”
The North is basting back its own propaganda,
and South Korea’s Newsis website
reported the reclusive country also released
10 large balloons into South Korea
on Wednesday that carried leaflets saying,
“Let’s knock down the gang of Park Geunhye
… as if we beat a mad dog!” and urging
the U.S. to “Give up your anachronistic hostile
policies against Chosun (North Korea)
right now!”
Park vowed all-out diplomatic efforts
to support a strong U.N. Security Council
resolution, including new sanctions, “which
could get changes in North Korea’s attitude.
During this process, China’s role is
important.”
The Security Council imposed sanctions
for earlier developments in the North’s
nuclear and ballistic missile programs,
but they have largely been ineffective, in
part because of China’s reluctance to crack
down on its neighbor and ally. But there
have been signs that Beijing is getting increasingly
frustrated at the North’s repeated
provocations.
Park’s speech came a week after the North
carried out its fourth underground nuclear
test, claiming it had successfully detonated
a hydrogen bomb for the first time. If true, it
would mark a major development in Pyongyang’s
nuclear program because such fusion
weapons are potentially more powerful
than the plutonium or enriched uranium
fission weapons it has developed before.
Experts are questioning the North’s
boast, saying early evidence suggests the
blast, which caused a magnitude-5.1 earthquake,
similar to its last test three years ago,
wasn’t caused by a hydrogen bomb. They
also are saying video footage purportedly
•STARS AND STRIPES• F3HIJKLM PAGE 3
Park urges new sanctions against N. Korea
showing a ballistic missile being launched
from a submarine last month does not appear
to be authentic.
There has been widespread speculation
that the North’s current provocations are
aimed at bolstering leader Kim Young Un’s
efforts to consolidate power four years after
he took over following the death of his father
and to rally public support for him in
the impoverished country.
It wouldn’t be the first time the North’s
claims have turned out to be fakes. Analysis
of a missile shown in a military parade
a few years ago indicated it likely was made
of wood or cardboard, and the North’s first
claim of success in launching a missile from
a submarine last May has been dismissed
by U.S. military officials, who said it appeared
to have been sent up from an underwater
barge.
Experts also have cast doubts on Pyongyang’s
claim to have developed a nuclear
weapon small enough to fit into a missile
warhead, though the head of U.S. Forces
Korea has said he has to prepare as though
it has.
38 North, a website run by Johns Hopkins
University’s School of Advanced International
Studies that monitors North Korean
activities, said analysis of video of the launch
and satellite imagery of the submarine and
support vessels in port two days later “suggests
that this test was probably conducted
from a submerged barge” and appeared to
have failed.
“The failed launch combined with testing
from a barge shows that North Korea still
has a long way to go to develop this system,”
said the analysis by John Schilling, an aerospace
engineer who is a specialist in satellite
and launch vehicle propulsion systems.
“An initial operational capability of a North
Korean ballistic-missile submarine is not
expected before 2020.
“The North Koreans will presumably get
it right eventually,” Schilling wrote. “They
know how to build missiles that work, they
know how to build submarines that work,
and Kim Jong Un seems particularly enthusiastic
about both. We anticipate they
will keep trying.”
His analysis is echoed by the James Martin
Center for Nonproliferation Studies ,
which cited two frames of video from North
Korea’s state media where flames engulf
the missile and small parts of its body break
away.
“The rocket ejected, began to light, and
then failed catastrophically,” Melissa Hanham,
a senior research associate at the
Middlebury Institute’s CNS, told Reuters
by email. “North Korea used heavy video
editing to cover over this fact.”
alexander.paul@stripes.com
KIM HONG-JI, POOL/AP
South Korean President Park Geun-hye speaks at a news conference in Seoul, South
Korea, on Wednesday, when she urged China to help punish North Korea’s recent
nuclear test with the strongest possible international sanctions.
Drone at border
draws 1st shots
BY HYUNG-JIN KIM
Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea on
Wednesday fired 20 machine-gun warning
shots after a North Korean drone briefly
crossed the rivals’ border, officials said,
the first shots fired in a Cold War-style
standoff between the Koreas in the wake of
the North’s nuclear test last week.
The North Korean drone was flying dozens
of yards south of the border and turned
back to the North after the South fired
shots, South Korean defense and military
officials said, requesting anonymity because
of office rules. The shots did not hit
the drone.
North Korean drone flights across the
world’s most heavily armed border are
rare, but have happened before.
North Korea has in recent years touted
its drone program, a relatively new addition
to its arsenal. In 2013, state media said
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had
watched a drone attack drill on a simulated
South Korean target.
In 2014, Seoul officials discovered what
they called several North Korean drones
that had flown across the border. Those
drones were crude and decidedly low-tech,
but were still considered a potential new
security threat.
Animosity has been high since the
North’s claim on Jan. 6 that it had tested a
hydrogen bomb.
North Korea’s propaganda machine is
using the nuclear test to glorify Kim’s leadership
and describing it as a necessary
step to fight against what it calls a U.S.-led
attempt to overthrow the North’s system.
A drone is paraded in Pyongyang, North
Korea, on Oct. 10. South Korea on
Wednesday fired warning shots after a
purported drone from North Korea was
seen flying close to the rivals’ border .
Japan might send its navy to patrol disputed island chain
AP
Courtesy of the Japanese Coast Guard
An armed Chinese coast guard vessel like the one shown here
infringed on Japan’s territorial waters on Jan. 8 and Dec. 26 ,
prompting Japan’s defense minister to threaten navy patrols in the
area.
BY MATTHEW M. BURKE
AND CHIYOMI SUMIDA
Stars and Stripes
time an armed Chinese vessel
entered Japanese waters, said
a spokesman at Japanese Coast
Guard headquarters in Tokyo.
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — China followed up by entering
Japan’s navy may be called upon
to patrol the country’s disputed
Japanese waters again Friday.
“It is a decision made by the
southern island chain if China Cabinet,” Nakatani said. “I will
continues to enter its territorial not elaborate on a hypothetical
waters.
situation. However, generally
The announcement at a news speaking, when an event occurs
conference Tuesday by Defense
Minister Gen Nakatani follows a
Dec. 26 incident in which three
that is difficult for the police
agency or the coast guard to respond,
an order will be issued in
Chinese vessels — one of them principle for [the Self-Defense
armed — entered Japanese waters
off the disputed Senkaku Islands,
Force] to take a seaborne patrolling
action.”
called the Diaoyu by China. Nakatani declined to say
The incident marked the first whether Japan’s intentions had
been conveyed to China.
A spokesman for the staff office
of the Maritime Self-Defense
Force would not elaborate on the
potential patrols.
The Japanese navy was called
upon in response to North Korean
incursions in 1999. Such an order
has never been issued regarding
China.
Since Japan purchased three
islands from a private owner in
September 2012, there have been
68 cases of Chinese incursions toward
the end of 2012, 188 in 2013,
88 in 2014 and 95 last year.
burke.matt@stripes.com
sumida.chiyomi@stripes.com