It’s the stuff of nightmares: a nuclear-armed rogue regime with nothing to lose.
That’s a pretty accurate description of North Korea, which is run by a strange man-child who has a penchant for slaughtering his enemies in gruesome ways: like executing prisoners with anti-aircraft guns or using female assassins to poison the state’s enemies with VX.
The “hermit kingdom” has been pushing for nuclear weapons for ages, and succeeded in getting a working bomb in 2006. Since then, they’ve been belligerently threatening everyone around them, and even threatening the United States.
And while most people tend to think that there’s no way they could be so stupid as to use them – surely they understand the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction – one defector says not so fast.
North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the UK, Thae Yong Ho, defected to South Korea, and last night on NBC, revealed that dictator Kim Jong Un is, in fact, stupid enough to use them. Or that’s the thinking. This is terrifying:
Via NBC:
According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM.” He was using an acronym for intercontinental ballistic missiles — a long range rocket that in theory would be capable of hitting the U.S.
“Once he sees that there is any kind of sign of a tank or an imminent threat from America, then he would use his nuclear weapons with ICBM,” he added in an exclusive interview on Sunday.
…
Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told NBC News that American officials were particularly troubled by this latest threat.
“They have the nuclear capability — they’ve demonstrated that,” he said. “And then, where they’re going with the miniaturization of that, whether they can actually weaponize a missile, that’s what’s driving the current concern.”
Thae’s interview with NBC News comes against a backdrop of rising tensions surrounding North Korea, which has significantly increased its missile and nuclear tests under Kim’s rule.
While it’s true that the US could flatten North Korea 100 times over, their shared border with China and South Korea make the situation very tense. North Korea has been threatening the south and launching rockets in the vicinity of Japan, whom the US is obliged to protect since our treaty at the end of WWII.
The DMZ that separates North Korea and South Korea is the most heavily armed border in the world, with both sides combining to have thousands of military pieces aimed at one another.
On the campaign trail, then-candidate Trump signaled a major reversal in U.S. policy, saying that America wouldn’t risk our soldiers to fight another country’s wars. But now, President Trump says he’s prepared to go it alone to stop North Korea.
What do you think? Would North Korea risk nuclear war? Share your thoughts in the comments below!