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posted by takyon on Sunday May 10 2015, @01:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the kim-jong-underwater dept.

USA Today reports that under the watchful eyes of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea says it has conducted an underwater test-firing of a submarine ballistic missile. Kim called the missile a "world-level strategic weapon" and an "eye-opening success." Although American officials had suspected North Korea was developing such a missile system, the country had not previously claimed to have conducted a test launching. The test, if confirmed, would pose a new challenge to the United States and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, which have been trying to build missile defense capabilities to guard against potential North Korean missile attacks.

The news of a successful test-fire was most likely a surprise to South Korean military officials, who have privately told reporters that they believed it would take years for the North to develop such a submarine-launched ballistic missile. "North Korea's development of a submarine-launched missile capability would eventually expand Pyongyang's threat to South Korea, Japan and U.S. bases in East Asia" says Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. "Submarines carrying land-attack missiles would be challenging to locate and track, would be mobile assets able to attack from any direction, and could operate at significant distances from the Korean peninsula."

See also: BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, Washington Post.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Aighearach on Sunday May 10 2015, @05:58AM

    by Aighearach (2621) on Sunday May 10 2015, @05:58AM (#181005)

    If you go and read the UN Charter, you'll find that out that there is not some sort of UN bureaucracy that enforces the Security Council decisions, but actually instead the member states are supposed to implement the Council decisions themselves.

    So yes, in fact, when there is a UN Security Council action creating sanctions against a country, that means that the US is indeed authorized to enforce those sanctions. That authorization is what the Security Council decision actually is!

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday May 10 2015, @06:11AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday May 10 2015, @06:11AM (#181008) Journal

    Yes, I already know all that. The point is that when the Security Council votes 15-0 [wikipedia.org] (yes, China included) to apply sanctions to North Korea, it is not an act of American imperialism.

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