North Korea Threats

[Christina]

NORTH KOREA FILLS THE AIR WITH THREATSMarch 6, 2009The Asia Times Online reports: “North Korea may be off the United States State Department's list of nations sponsoring terrorism, but its warning to South Korea about the safety of flights through its air space has escalated fears of a surprise North Korean strike to new levels.Inconceivable though it may sound for North Korea to fire on a flight carrying passengers to South Korea, the North's threat is drawing demands for the State Department to put North Korea's name back on the list from which former president George W Bush ordered its removal last June.Officials at the State Department, National Security Council and Pentagon seem to agree, however, that such a strong response to North Korean rhetoric would be premature. The State Department in particular is falling back on a word that's come up a number of times lately to describe North Koreas's conduct - ‘unhelpful’.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during her swing through Northeast Asia last month, described North Korean rhetoric as ‘unhelpful’, to which a State Department spokesman added ‘distinctly’ as a sign of increasing worries that North Korea may try to pull off a violent surprise in the near future.Critics of reconciliation diplomacy complain that the use of the term ‘distinctly unhelpful’ will do nothing to dissuade North Korea to retreat from the increasingly tough line it's adopted of late; Pyongyang seems intent on a policy of ‘all-out confrontation’ with South Korea.Conservatives inside the Pentagon and the armed forces elsewhere say placing North Korea back on the list of nations sponsoring terrorism may serve as a warning against an act of violence that some observers describe as ‘an incident waiting to happen’.Analysts cite one precedent for North Korea firing on an unarmed civilian passenger plane: the bombing over the Andaman Sea on November 29, 1987, of a Korean Air plane with 115 people aboard. It was that incident, perpetrated by two North Koreans, that led the State Department to include North Korea on its list of state sponsors of terrorism…”--------------------------------------------------------------------------------