I like this comment:
This isn't about N.Korea. It's about a threat to the world banksters frightened by the emergence of a Chinese, Indian, Russian and maybe Iran alternative system.
- The Saracens Head , England, United Kingdom, 04/4/2013 01:27
North Korea says it has approval to use its 'cutting edge' nuclear weapons against the United States in a 'merciless' attack just hours after Chuck Hagel calls them a 'clear and present danger'The North Korean Army said today it had received final approval to launch 'merciless' nuclear strikes against the United States.
The General Staff of the Korean People's Army said it was formally notifying Washington that U.S. threats would be 'smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means,' according to a statement published by the official KCNA news agency.
Threat: Kim Jong Un, pictured centre at a meeting of North Korea's parliament yesterday, has vowed to re-open the country's nuclear facilities
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'The merciless operation of (our) revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified.
'The moment of explosion is approaching fast,' the statement read, adding that it could occur 'today or tomorrow.'
The pronouncement came just hours after U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said North Korea presented a 'clear and present danger' to the U.S. and its allies after days of escalating rhetoric.
Hawaii and Guam would also be outside the range of its medium-range missiles, but U.S. bases in South Korea and Japan may be vulnerable.
Hagel issued a statement after U.S. stealth bombers were seen patrolling the border between North and South Korea as part of military exercises which have inflamed tensions in the region.
Despite a successful long-range rocket launch in December, it is believed North Korea is years from developing an inter-continental ballistic missile that could strike the mainland United States, AFP reported.
Chinese troops have been placed on a heightened state of alert along the country's frontier with North Korea after a series of warlike statements and actions from the pariah state.
The North today blocked South Korean workers from entering a jointly run factory zone which is one of the few signs of positive relations between the neighboring countries.
The move to bar South Koreans from going to work at the Kaesong industrial complex comes a day after North Korea announced that it would re-open a nuclear facility which has been closed for six years.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday spoke out against North Korea's latest aggressive moves, calling them 'provocative, dangerous and reckless', while Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the country was a 'growing threat' to the world's security.
South Korean officials said that workers were being allowed to return home from Kaesong, which is on the north side of the border.
But around 480 people who had planned to travel to the park today were denied entry, with North Korea blaming the decision on recent political developments.
The Kaesong industrial park started producing goods in 2004 and has been an unusual point of co-operation in an otherwise hostile relationship between the Koreas.
North Korea's latest war of words with Seoul and Washington ratcheted up when the United Nations imposed fresh sanctions on the country for its February 12 nuclear test.
At the same time, South Korea and the United States have been staging annual war games, which Pyongyang claims are a prelude to an invasion.
Those exercises run throughout April.
Despite the rhetoric and the cutting of telephone hot lines to the South, Pyongyang has not taken any military action and shows no sign of preparing its 1.2 million strong armed forces for war, Washington says.
That would indicate much of the vitriol is intended for domestic consumption to bolster young leader Kim Jong-un ahead of celebrations marking the anniversary of the birthday of Kim Il-sung, the state's founder and the younger Kim's grandfather, on April 15.
Kim has also used the rising tensions to cement his grip on power by appointing a key ally of his uncle and aunt as the country's prime minister.
'At least until the end of April, when drills end, the North is likely to keep up the tensions as it had done in previous years,' said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute think tank in Seoul.
The 30-year old Kim was showing the North could stand up to the United States and to South Korea's new President Park Geun-hye, who took office just a week after the nuclear test, the country's third, said the defector Ahn.
'North Korea doesn't have the economic power that South Korea has but it's stressing its nuclear abilities to show that it can pull equal weight,' he said.
North Korean officials said that at the Yongbyon facility a graphite-moderated five-megawatt reactor, which generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium, would be restarted soon.
The reactor is capable of churning out one atomic bomb worth of plutonium - the most common fuel in nuclear weapons - each year.The UN chief says he fears North Korea is on a collision course with other nations that could lead to war.
News of the Kaesong closure initially hurt South Korean financial markets. The won currency was trading at a six and a half-month low in early trade but later recovered.
Mr Kerry warned North Korea to stop provoking the South and the U.S. after weeks of threats from the secretive state and its leader Kim Jong Un.
'The bottom line, very simply, is that what Kim Jong Un has been choosing to do is provocative, it is dangerous, reckless, and the United States will not accept the DPRK as a nuclear state,' he said.
He said that any move to re-start operations at the Yongbyon nuclear plant would be 'a direct violation' of North Korea's international commitments and a 'very serious step.'
'It would be a provocative act and completely contrary to the road we have travelled for all these years,' he said.
Mr Hagel said that North Korea's nuclear threats were a 'growing threat' in a telephone call to his Chinese counterpart.
China has warned troops stationed in its north-east that they should be ready for mobilisation in case conflict breaks out between the Koreas, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Unusual numbers of soldiers and armoured vehicles have been reported in the region, and commanders have apparently been ordered to be on the highest degree of readiness.
The top American commander in South Korea has described the situation as 'volatile' and 'dangerous', saying he fears a 'miscalculation' could lead to full-blown military conflict.
General James Thurman told ABC News that Kim was trying to 'intimidate the South Koreans and intimidate the region', but said the Americans were 'calm' and 'confident' at the possibility of confrontation.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the isolated Asian nation appears to be 'on a collision course with the international community' amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, said today in Andorra 'the current crisis has already gone too far' because of escalating tensions raised by North Korea's threats of war almost daily against the United States and South Korea.
He said international negotiations are urgently needed but he is 'convinced that no one intends to attack' North Korea.
Pyongyang has sought disarmament-for-aid talks with Washington and more domestic loyalty by portraying North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a powerful commander.
Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February, prompting UN sanctions that have infuriated its leaders and led to the current tensions.
The government has since declared that making nuclear arms and strengthening the economy are the nation's top priorities.
According to estimates from the Institute for Science and International Security from late 2012, North could have enough weapons grade uranium for 21-32 nuclear weapons by 2016 if it used one centrifuge at its Yongbyon nuclear plant to enrich uranium to weapons-grade.
'The General Department of Atomic Energy... decided to adjust and alter the uses of the existing nuclear facilities, to begin with,' KCNA reported.
It said the nuclear facilities would be used for both electricity and military uses.
It was not clear how long it would take to restart the reactor, whose cooling tower was blown up in a made-for-TV event in 2008 under an agreement to suspend the atomic complex.
There have been reports of construction work near where the tower once stood but it was not clear whether the North was rebuilding it.
North Korea added the five-megawatt, graphite-moderated reactor to its nuclear complex in 1986 after seven years of construction.
The country began building a 50-megawatt and a 200-megawatt reactor in 1984, but their construction was suspended under a 1994 nuclear deal with Washington.
North Korea has long said that the reactor operation is aimed at generating electricity. It takes about 8,000 fuel rods to run the reactor.
Reprocessing the spent fuel rods after a year of reactor operation could yield about 7kg of plutonium - enough to make at least one nuclear bomb.
'If there is any provocation against South Korea and its people, there should be a strong response in initial combat without any political considerations,' Park Geun-hye told the defence minister and senior officials.
The South has changed its rules of engagement to allow local units to respond immediately to attacks, rather than waiting for permission from Seoul.
Stung by criticism that its response to the shelling of a South Korean island in 2010 was weak, Seoul has also threatened to target North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and to destroy statues of the ruling Kim dynasty in the event of any new attack, a plan that has outraged Pyongyang.
Park's intervention came on the heels of a meeting of the North's ruling Workers Party Central Committee where Kim rejected the notion that Pyongyang was going to use its nuclear arms development as a bargaining chip.
'The nuclear weapons of Songun Korea are not goods for getting U.S. dollars,' KCNA news agency quoted him as saying.
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cud do wid ah holiday
