Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

shermann7, Trump, Kim and the North Korean nuclear missile melodrama

"I am seeing things going on in the U.S. I never thought I would see ...
[...]
Foreign Wars ...
1. The North Korea deal of which there has been ongoing negotiations is a Great Thing. Both my Dad and Grandpa fought in the Korean war and neither could figure out why we were there. I just wish they were still alive to see this."

Excerpt

This was widely accepted as the paradigm undergirding North Korea’s approach to nuclear development, dating back to the first nuclear crisis of 1993–94. That crisis was eventually resolved when the 1994 Agreed Framework was adopted, shuttering the North’s plutonium-fuelled reactor at Yongbyon and freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear activities under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, in return for supplies of heavy fuel oil and promises to build proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors.[45] The significance of the Agreed Framework as a diplomatic breakthrough in US–North Korea relations, culminating in the October 2000 visit to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is largely forgotten in the United States. The agreement fell apart following US revelations in 2002 that North Korea was operating a secret uranium-enrichment program.[46] While some have disputed whether North Korea technically infringed the Agreed Framework,[47] that the regime invested in a clandestine uranium enrichment program suggests it was never committed to the goal of denuclearisation. As a result, cheating is widely assumed to be a given of entering into non-proliferation agreements with Pyongyang.[48] Proponents maintain that in exchange for the right mix of material inducements, North Korea’s weapons development would have been substantially slowed, if never completely halted, considerably delaying the day when its nuclear aims would move out into the open.

Kim Jong-un began to ramp up the missile and nuclear development programs he inherited from his father shortly after taking the reins in December 2011. The inflection point came in 2012, with the decision to constitutionally enshrine North Korea’s status as a “nuclear state and an unchallengeable military power”.[49] By committing his prestige at such an early stage, Kim Jong-un was effectively hitching his leadership to the overt acquisition of nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them. With the weight of the Kim dynasty legacy officially behind it, North Korea’s nuclear deterrent was henceforth irreversible, in North Korean terms. At a December 2017 ceremony, bestowing awards on the scientists behind North Korea’s apparently successful ICBM design, the Hwasong-15, Kim Jong-un committed to further “bolster up the nuclear force in quality and quantity”.[50] Subsequent North Korean statements have repeated claims to be a nuclear weapon state.

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=141107196

Suggest you spend a little time on the article, and marry the bold bit just above with

North Korea Begins Dismantling Key Facilities at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station
"North Korea satellite images show missile plant construction, analysts say
By: 38 North
July 23, 2018Satellite Imagery, WMD

[...]

The satellite images, taken by San Francisco-based Planet Labs Inc. and analyzed by researchers at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies (MIIS) in Monterrey, show Pyongyang finishing construction at the Chemical Material Institute, which researchers say is based in the North Korean city of Hamhung.

[...]

Infrastructure Improvements at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Research Facility

By: 38 North
June 26, 2018Satellite Imagery

A 38 North exclusive with analysis by Frank V. Pabian, Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. and Jack Liu.

Commercial satellite imagery from June 21 indicates that improvements to the infrastructure at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center are continuing at a rapid pace. Modifications to the 5 MWe plutonium production reactor’s cooling system appear complete, but a less-than-normal cooling water discharge from the outfall pipe makes a determination of the reactor’s operational status difficult. The status of the Radiochemical Laboratory—used to separate plutonium from spent fuel rods—remains uncertain, although the associated Thermal Plant has likely continued operations, and a small non-industrial building of an unknown purpose has been newly erected near the cooling tower. Construction continues on support facilities throughout other operational areas of Yongbyon, especially at the Experimental Light Water Reactor (ELWR), where the new engineering office building appears externally complete and a small building similar to the one observed at the Radiochemical Laboratory has been erected.

More - https://www.38north.org/2018/06/yongbyon062618/
.. posted here .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=142406489

Rightly or wrongly, based just on those two, it appears the North Korean facility at Yongbyon
may have moved from shuttered around 1994 to up and going again in 2018, or some earlier.

My now feeling is that the sooner world leaders accept a nuclear North Korea, with appropriate security guarantees, as they
have accepted a nuclear Israel, with appropriate security guarantees, the better off the rest of us little gremlins will all be.