Mick Hartley

The war of words in Korea escalates:

The commander of US forces in South Korea has said he has not ruled out a military response if North Korea test-fires a long-range missile.

US General Walter Sharp urged North Korea to cease what he referred to as provocations, and behave like a responsible country.

North Korea is reported to be preparing to test-fire a long-range missile.

South Korea's President, Lee Myung-Bak, has also said he will stand firm in the face of threats from the North.

Tension in the Korean peninsula has risen in recent weeks – with the North warning that it considers itself on the brink of war with the South.

According to the South Korean media, recent satellite spy photos show a large cylindrical object being moved towards North Korea's long-range missile site.

So what's going on? From the Washington Post:

Last year, the new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, ended his predecessors' "sunshine policy" toward the isolated North. For nearly a decade, that policy had soothed nerves on the Korean Peninsula by giving the truculent but poor government of Kim Jong Il large amounts of food, fertilizer and trade concessions, all without conditions and without asking questions about nuclear weapons, missile proliferation or human rights abuses.

Chronically hungry North Korea has received virtually no food or fertilizer from Lee's government — and nerves seem to be rubbed raw, at least within the North Korean leadership.

It has called Lee a "traitor," a "sycophant of the United States" and the leader of a "fascist" state. It declared last week that it was junking all military and political agreements with the South. It warned Sunday, in the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper, that tension may lead to an "unavoidable military conflict and a war."

North Korea has a history of diplomacy by means of noisy, over-the-top brinkmanship. It exploded a small nuclear device in the fall of 2006 and the next year began to disable its main nuclear plant in return for food, fuel and a reduction in diplomatic sanctions.

The current round of foot-stomping in Pyongyang may be a similar kind of performance art, analysts here say.

And the LA Times:

Reporting from Seoul — The South Korean intelligence reports are ominous: North Korea appears to be preparing to test-launch a ballistic missile with sufficient range to strike Alaska and possibly the West Coast.

A train transporting a large cylindrical object was recently spotted by a U.S. surveillance satellite chugging toward a new launchpad site west of Pyongyang, the capital, a South Korean government source recently told news outlets here.

Allegedly on board was North Korea's most advanced missile, a Taepodong 2, being readied for a potential liftoff within two months.

The test launch would reportedly be aimed in the direction of Japan, but some analysts say the menacing gesture is also directed at one American in particular.

"The missile is pointing at Obama," said Baek Seung-joo, a director at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul. "North Korea thinks that with such gestures they can control U.S. foreign policy." 

So, in this time of tension, what's the lead story at the official Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK?

General Secretary Kim Jong Il provided field guidance to the Rakwon Machine Complex.

Going round production processes including the oxygen plant-building factory, he acquainted himself with technological updating and production there.

He expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the workers of the above-said factory are accelerating the production with ardent patriotic enthusiasm and in sky-high spirit in order to contribute to the building of a great prosperous powerful nation and conducting brisk preparations for completing in a brief span of time the manufacture of a huge oxygen plant needed for the ammonia production process by coal gasification to be newly built at the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex, in particular.  […]

He expressed expectation and conviction that the workers of Rakwon would make a great leap forward in the machine production with the same spirit and stamina as they displayed in taking the lead in defending the party and the leader in every period of the revolution from the days of the Fatherland Liberation War up to this date and thus continue to give full play to the heroic mettle of the Korean working class.

A great leap forward? Rings a bell…