The North Korean government has announced that it will “conduct a nuclear test.”
Full statement
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon is expected to become the next Secretary General of the United Nations.
BRUCE CUMINGS
A specialist in Korea, Cumings is a professor at the University of Chicago. His latest book is North Korea: Another Country.” Cumings said today: “The North Korean announcement needs to be read carefully; the ‘nuclear test’ may be a bomb or it might be a detonation device. It’s odd to announce such things ahead of time because they might fail.
“In any case, this is a very dangerous thing and may lead to further proliferation in the region. But it is a clear response to the U.S. preemption policy announced in 2002, which was particularly dangerous for the volatile Korean DMZ. The lessons that the North Koreans took from the Iraq invasion were: The UN agencies went into Iraq and disarmed it and then the U.S. invaded. Their logical conclusion is not to disarm, but to go nuclear.”
More Information
JONATHAN GRANOFF
Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute, states: “North Korea’s announcement that it plans to test a nuclear weapon is the logical extension of the failure of the international community to obtain a universal ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, known as a comprehensive test ban treaty. The U.S. government has tested these weapons more than 1,000 times and has a conventional arsenal unrivaled in human history. Should not the U.S. take the lead in prohibiting any more tests, by anyone, anywhere? This crisis should be a wakeup call for a universal ban on the testing of nuclear weapons.”
More Information
MEREDITH JUNG-EN WOO
Professor of political science at the University of Michigan, Woo is author of several books including Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization. She is able to comment on South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon’s anticipated designation as Secretary General of the United Nations.
More Information
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
