I’m writing this at a time where North Korea have warned foreigners to leave South Korea at the threat of “thermonuclear war”, all be it, from North Korea could be a very real threat. Although I posted an article stating that I didn’t think tensions would rise any further than beyond rhetoric; it’s quite possible that North Korea could be launching ballistic missiles, causing heightened tensions and possibly a war with the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Musudan Missile range
While scenarios of any sort are possible and are at the hand of North Korea’s inability to step down its rhetoric, it seems that its rhetoric could very well turn into a serious crisis.
What’s more concerning is that North Korea had stopped North Korean workers from entering the Kaesong Industrial zone to work on the 8th April, just 2 days ago.
This, possibly, shows that they are serious about launching their 4,000km range Musudan (BM-25) ballistic missiles.
With the Japanese having prepared medium range Patriot defense systems on-land and their Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Systems deployed on their Kong? class guided missile destroyers – The ships have been ordered to shoot down any missiles that come towards the Japanese islands.
I guess we’ll see what occurs and what comes out of all this. Perhaps, it’s the latest line of their recent rhetoric that they have been spewing out recently; however, we simply don’t know.
To conclude, the Asia-pacific region is not in a good state at the moment – and – if we look at how things are in Japan and especially Seoul, well, things are calm and people are not worried. Perhaps, it’s an overreaction that may cause war and peddling the war button might be a bad idea; after-all, war should always be avoided.
As for China, North Korea’s only ally in the region, we’ll have to wait and see. However, a recent article by the BBC named “Is China ready to abandon North korea?” has quoted China’s President Xi Jinping remarking, “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains,”. – In a somewhat, suspected, indirect remark towards North Korea. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) also quoted a Chinese professor (Professor Su Hao of China’s Foreign Affairs University.) saying, “Since North Korea’s nuclear test in February, there has been no high-level official contact and the relationship on both sides is relatively cold,”. It would seem that China is giving North Korea the cold shoulder, and that relations between the two allies could possibly be in disarray.
