A cry for attention or a deliberate provocation?
North Korea has three or four more missiles on launch pads, and the South Korean defense minister warned that further tests were possible, South Korean media reported Thursday.
“There is a possibility that North Korea will fire additional missiles,� Yonhap news agency quoted Yoon Kwang-ung as telling lawmakers.
The missiles are either short- or medium-range, reported Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea’s largest newspapers. It cited an unidentified senior South Korean official. Another major newspaper, JoongAng Ilbo, carried a similar report.
The North has also barred people from sailing into some areas off the coast until July 11 in a possible sign of preparations for additional launches, Chosun Ilbo said.
North Korea test-fired seven missiles on Wednesday, triggering international condemnation. The missiles apparently fell into the sea without causing damage or injuries.
This is turning out to be not just a test for the Bush administration but for the entire international community. The Washington Post, in an editorial, calls North Korea’s action calls it a provocation:
The good news is that most of the world appears outraged rather than impressed by the latest North Korean stunt. The U.N. Security Council met yesterday to consider a tough condemnatory resolution, including sanctions proposed by Japan, which has already announced its own punitive measures. Russia, South Korea and China, the other three participants in the stalled “six-party” talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, all reacted critically. The long-range missile itself appeared to be a dud, which may ease concerns that Mr. Kim is close to acquiring the capacity to target the United States.
In fact, the missile firings offer the Bush administration an opportunity: not to bargain with Mr. Kim but to insist that China and South Korea stop tolerating his refusal to begin the disarmament he promised last year. Proponents of U.S.-North Korean negotiations overlook the reality that direct contacts between the Bush administration and Pyongyang began a year ago and led last September to a nominally far-reaching deal. North Korea promised to give up its nuclear arms and rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan promised aid, normalization of relations and support for a nuclear plant to generate electricity….
….If China and South Korea are serious about stopping North Korea’s development of weapons of mass destruction, now is the time to demonstrate it. If they are unwilling to act, the Bush administration should consider other means of preventing further North Korean missile launches. A proposal by former defense secretary William J. Perry and former assistant defense secretary Ashton B. Carter that the U.S. military destroy the long-range missile before it was launched, published on the opposite page last month, struck us as premature. But if diplomacy continues to fail, it must be an option for the future.
Meanwhile, the Boston Globe’s editorial blasts the Bush administration. Here’s how it ends:
A resort to new sanctions cannot solve the problem posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. The Bush policy of refusing to explore a deal with the North and pursuing sanctions instead might be defensible if there were any realistic chance of achieving regime change in Pyongyang at a tolerable price any time soon. But while administration hard-liners entertain that fantasy, the North’s store of fissile material for nuclear weapons continues to grow. So the Bush policy is not only incoherent; it fails utterly to cope with the threat of a nuclear arms race in Asia and a potential source for a terrorist nuclear weapon.
The immediate questions thus become (a) how the Bush administration intends to respond, (b) how the international community will respond, (c) whether this morphs into yet another U.S. campaign issue and, if so, in what way will it materialize on the political scene.
Interesting questions…but the answers will be even more interesting. And some of them may be forthcoming soon…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.