Korea: April 12, 2005

Archives

North Korea now boasts that it has "many" nuclear warheads for its missiles, but this is highly unlikely. North Korean military technology has been available for examination over the years, and many North Koreans who have worked on those programs, have escaped the country, and talked. The North Korean technology is ambitious, but crude. They have to import key mechanical and electronic components for their weapons, and North Korean politicians have long proclaimed that their weapons were much more capable than was actually the case. If North Korea has a nuclear weapon or two, it is untested, and much too large and delicate to equip a missile warhead. What North Korea does have is a brutal police state that has already killed about ten percent of the population, and continues to murder and torture at a prodigious rate. The North Korean leadership is caught between a population that is getting increasingly out-of-control and unruly, and neighbors who are exasperated at the extortion threats and heartless tyranny.