NORTH KOREA ADMITS MISSILE LAUNCHES WERE TEST OF POSSIBLE STRIKE AGAINST U.S. BASES IN JAPAN~UN AMBASSADOR HALEY MAKES STATEMENT

 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

Communist North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
reported on March 7 that the nation’s launch of four missiles the
previous day was part of practice tests to hone its ability to strike
U.S. military bases in Japan.

The four missiles were fired from a launch site on North Korea’s west
coast and traveled more than 600 miles across the country before
crashing into the Sea of Japan between Japan and the Korean Peninsula,
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a text message to local
reporters.

During a White House press conference on March 6, a reporter asked
Press Secretary Sean Spicer for the White House’s reaction to North
Korea’s firing of the four ballistic missiles.

Spicer replied: 

The Japanese government said that three of the missiles splashed down
within Japan’s exclusive economic zone and within about 200 miles of
the coastline of Japan’s Akita prefecture. “These missile launches
clearly show that North Korea has developed a new threat,” Japan’s 
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters. “We will collect information
and strongly protest to North Korea.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised the launch of the four
missiles while “feasting his eyes on the trails of ballistic rockets,”
the KCNA reported in a statement that analysts quoted by the Washington Post called a “brazen declaration” of the country’s intent to strike enemies with a nuclear weapon if it came under attack.

“If the United States or South Korea fires even a single flame inside
North Korean territory, we will demolish the origin of the invasion and
provocation with a nuclear tipped missile,” said the KCNA statement.
The missiles fired on March 6 were “tasked to strike the bases of the
U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan,” the statement continued.

The Post report cited Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East
Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of
International Studies in California, who said that North Korea had
previously tested the types of missiles launched on March 6, so the
apparent objective of the latest launches was not to see if they would
fly, but to test how quickly they could be set and deployed — which is
classic training for a wartime situation.

“They want to know if they can get these missiles out into the field
rapidly and deploy them all at once,” Lewis said. “They are practicing
launching a nuclear-armed missile and hitting targets in Japan as if
this was a real war.”

CNN reported on March 7 that there are currently about 54,000 U.S.
troops stationed in at least seven bases scattered across Japan, from
Misawa Air Base in the far north to Okinawa in the far south.

The report noted that these military bases in Japan cost the U.S. government about $5.5 billion in 2016.

Some reports have indicated that North Korea may have conducted its
missile launch in reaction to joint U.S.-South Korean military drills,
as well as the U.S. deployment of a THAAD battery to South Korea.

THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) is a U.S. Army
anti-ballistic missile system designed to shoot down short, medium, and
intermediate range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase using a
hit-to-kill approach. THAAD was developed to counter Iraq’s Scud missile
attacks during the Gulf War in 1991. The missile carries no warhead,
but relies on the kinetic energy of impact to destroy the incoming
missile.

U.S. officials said that the missiles launched by North Korea were
extended range SCUD missiles — the type that THAAD is designed to
intercept. However, THAAD would have difficulty intercepting four
missiles launched at the same time, unnamed analysts cited by the Post said.

The first parts of the THAAD system arrived the same day as the North
Korean missile launch at Osan Air Base south of Seoul, South Korea’s
Defense Ministry said.

The Post observed that North Korea’s launches coincided with
joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises on the southern half of the
Korean Peninsula that take place every year. North Korea has said in the
past that it views these exercises as preparation for an invasion of
the North.

Joshua Pollack, editor of the Nonproliferation Review, said in a statement cited by the Post
that these latest launches appeared designed to send a message to both
Trump and the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who was visiting the
U.S. president when North Korea fired a medium- to long-range ballistic
missile into the Sea of Japan on February 12.

As we noted in an article following that missile launch,
Abe said that he expected the Trump administration to adopt a harder
line on North Korea. Speaking during a joint appearance with Trump in
Florida on the evening of February 11, Abe said: “North Korea’s most
recent missile launch is absolutely intolerable.”

Trump also made a brief statement after the missile launch: “I just
want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of
America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent.”

After these latest missile tests by North Korea, Trump spoke by phone
with Abe and South Korea’s acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, on March 7.

“Both Japan and the U.S. confirmed that this North Korean missile
launch was a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and
was an obvious challenge to the region and the international community,”
Abe told reporters in Tokyo, repeating his assertion that the North
Korean threat had “reached a new stage.”

These latest sabre-rattling actions taken by communist North Korea
underline the perilous position the United States has taken since the
end of World War II that continues to put U.S. military personnel in
harm’s way. As noted by CNN, there are currently about 54,000 U.S.
troops in Japan. The reason we have those troops stationed there is that
following World War II, which was more than 70 years ago, the United
States forced Japan to adopt a new constitution that keeps it
permanently weak militarily. Article 9 of that constitution,
particularly, prevents Japan from building a potent offensive military
force.

As a result, the United States has maintained a large military force
in Japan since the war, ostensibly to defend Japan against an invasion
from Communist China.

Additionally, the United States keeps 25,000 troops in South Korea,
presumably to deter North Korea from invading the South. This is a
consequence of our government’s failure to achieve victory during the
Korean War (which we should not have entered, but having entered it, we
should have sought victory instead of a truce). The U.S. commander
during the early years of the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur, is
noted for having said: “War’s very object is victory, not prolonged
indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.”

However, when President Harry Truman relieved Macarthur of his
command on April 11, 1951 after MacArthur made public statements that
contradicted the administration’s policies, the one military leader who
could lead our forces to victory was removed from the action.

The war dragged on until fighting was ended by a truce on July 27,
1953 that resulted in a military stalemate. However, no peace treaty has
been signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war. The worst
consequence of abandoning the victory that MacArthur sought, and likely
could have achieved, was that the northern half of the peninsula was
left under communist control.

Today’s crises, which intrinsically involve the United States, are
the result of abandoning victory and leaving the communists in power in
North Korea. If the United States had maintained a non-interventionist
foreign policy since World War II, there would be no reason to maintain
any U.S. troops overseas. We not only have almost 80,000 troops in
harm’s way in Japan and South Korea, but the expense of maintaining
those troops is several billion dollars. That money could be better
spent on repairing America’s decaying infrastructure.

Related articles:

North Korea Missile Test Draws Reactions From Trump, Abe, and UN

North Korea Claims to Test H-Bomb

North Korea Postures With Nuclear Warning, Movement of Missiles

Crisis in Korea Continues

North Korea Attacks South Korea

The Aftermath of the Sinking of the South Korean Ship Cheonan

North Korea Prepares to Launch Missile

North Korea Issues Threats During U.S.-S. Korean Joint Exercise

North Korea Sentences U.S. Student to 15 Years of Hard Labor

Lawmakers Blast UN for Handing U.S. Technology to North Korea, Iran
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