Yes, let's stabilise East Asia by giving the dragon penis envy.

Seriously though, I have to agree with the title of this thread. North Korea is BEGGING for attention, and obviously, they are going to get it after doing this nuclear test. Although, I am disappointed... by now you would have thought the nuclear age is over.... What about Neuron bombs....? I mean Nuclear is sooooo 1945....

Neutron bombs are nuclear weapons, you know.

We don't exactly need to make it so; Japan is quite capable of becoming a nuclear weapons state by itself.

There was this hilarious "analyst" interview I saw bits and pieces of on ABC Australia. "There is now a strong danger of other countries on the Korean Peninsula responding by becoming nuclear". As if she forgot the name of South Korea or something.

Hmmm... I must have been thinking of Star Wars New Rebellion (Novel), where they used a Neuron bomb. Kills all the people by destroying their heads but leaves the buildings and infrastructure undamaged. I hear the Americans are researching a bomb such as that....

Yeah. LOL! Isn't South Korean the only other country on the pennisula. I think the analyst made a mistake one what was trying to really be said.

Or she was being a politically correct little bitch and didn't want to explictly name the Republic of Korea.

Maybe I'm just naive but I genuinely don't think North Korea is even a real threat. If they were a rogue nation led by a maniac, they wouldn't have just tested the bomb or the cruise missiles earlier this year. They would've actually tried something real. If they really wanted to re ignite the conflict with the South or bomb the US, they would've tried by now.

North Korea just wants to be taken seriously. It is small man syndrome on a national scale. For the past five years or so they've been waving their arms around, jumping up and down "hey hey over here, look what we're making! A bomb!" "Hey hey look nuclear weapons! Six nation party at my place now! I wanna see Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and the US there or I'm doing my block!"

I honestly think, that all Kim Jong-il wants. Is breakfast and maybe lunch with George Bush.
I mean look how happy he looks here.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_Albright.jpg 2000

Kim has a ridiculously huge melon. I mean, seriously.

And that woman has no chin. Why did we send madeline? Can't we send not-fat Americans to represent America?

Yeah, those are nuclear bombs. You're using nuclear disintegration to generate a large number of lethal particles/radiation (most notably neutrons) in order to kill people while having a minimum effect on infrastructure. The "nuclear" in "nuclear bomb" doesn't refer to the mushroom cloud and stuff exploding, it refers to the energy souce of the bomb.

As for actual neutron bombs, there have been research projects in the past for creating such a weapon in all sizes from something capable of cleansing an entire city to something small enough to be deployed as a tactical weapon. But most if not all of them have been cancelled due to technical difficulties and the fact that they'd likely be more or less useful as tactical weapons in today's wars, and because thermonuclear weapons pretty much do the jobs the larger versions would do. You rarely want to kill everyone in a city while leaving the infrastructure.

All that aside, I haven't seen any definitive confirmation yet that the explosion in North Korea was nuclear, and that the bomb did not fizzle. The actual yield has varied widely in term of estimates, and even the highest estimates make the bomb seem really small for a first attempt. Since North Korea only has relatively basic nuclear technology, it's safe to assume that their bomb used a "simple" spherical core and implosion design, which limits how low the yield can actually be made. At this point it's possible that their bomb fizzled out, or perhaps even that they've faked the whole thing with a shitload of conventional explosives. Coming from North Korea, I wouldn't be surprised.

North Korea decided to do this right as China-Japan and Korea-Japan relations may be finally taking a turn for the better - with the first official visit from Japan in 5 years.

I think the DPRK is the one to profit the most from the regional conflicts as it gives them cover and draws attention away from their own activities (ie the belligerence between China, Korea and Japan also helped in their boycott of the 6-party talks that aimed to put an end to North Korea nuclear plans).

And in July China was suddenly behind Japan in condemning its missile tests... so Kim Jong II seems intent on breaking off unity in the region by suddenly threatening nuclear weapon tests - which if they actually pull through would alarm Japan enough to want to push for stronger military strength in their own country, something that'd upset both China and Korea.

So the question remains whether the DPRK actually DID test a nuclear bomb or whether they simply planted some normal explosives to induce the quake. Seeing the suddenness of this threat, and the convenient time it has come in, I think there is a high probability that it was a fake (though they may conduct several more "tests" JUST to prove that they are not faking)....

Depending on whether you ask the South Koreans or the Russians, it's anywhere between the Diebner Atomic Bomb and Little Boy.

This is a nuclear program decades, if not centuries away from being any kind of real threat, given the resources at North Korea's disposal. If push comes to shove, the United States can play Nuclear Hardball and the North Koreans will have to back down, unless Kim Jong really is that crazy.

North Korea can't realistically retaliate in any way without being crushed by South Korea, and we can initiate hostilities whenever we want so long as the Bush Administration is in office (is Kim hoping for a Democratic Congress?). We should be flexing our muscles at this point, and all we're doing is making a lot of ifs and "We don't know what's happened." I mean, Christ, we already have a bloated American presence in South Korea, does it really need to just sit there pissing them off?

Apart from the argument that North Korea has no capabilities to deliver a nuclear weapon to the U.S.; I think the real threat to the United States come from the possibility that North Korea can put their nuclear weapons on the black market. The combination of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction in our cities would reverberate unimaginable consequences. Bin Laden has made statements claiming that it is his duty as a Muslim to acquire WMD's, and by the laws of supply and demand, nations like North Korea could easily decide to cater to this market. Thoughts on this?

A very real possibility since North Korea's government has and is liekly still invovled with international drug trafficking

That, as well as counterfeiting of US currency, among others. And they're essentially the main exporter of crappy ballistic missiles for third world countries. Whether or not they decide to start selling bombs likely depends on the rate at which they can produce them, which in turn likely depends on the rate at which they can extract plutonium and, to a lesser degree, build the explosive lenses assembly.

I wonder what their policy for returns/refunds is if their bombs fizzle?

Not to make light of the situation or anything, but this suddenly came into my mind when you said that :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7yK6IQYrUs

That said, North Korea is now saying that US pressure will be considered an act of war, and will handle it accordingly (which sounds like they want to restart the Korean war, which will no doubt mean they're toast this time).

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapc...est/index.html

Who's to say they aren't using the gun method? The projected yield so far seems to indicate it.

I don't think North Korea selling bombs on the black market is particularly realistic. The reason they made the bombs in the first place was in some ill-fated effort to try and check Western aggression. If North Korea sells their bombs, they're essentially wasting tons of resources, and besides, what kind of bomb could North Korea sell that would actually be marketable?

This is only partially true. However, one must keep in mind what one of the reasons Il has for obtaining these weapons. One of the most obvious ones is merely having control of such destructive power.

Being the power-hungry madman that he is, I don't think that he will just go ahead and sell "membership" to the nuclear club, especially to such unpredictable groups as terrorists. What assurance could he have that the nuclear weaponry he sold will be used for the purpose that the terrorists tell him it will be used for? Little to none. Would it be possible that they may, at some point in time turn them against him? Yes.
It seems pretty basic that if you don't share the ideological and religious goals that these groups do, you can't really trust that they won't turn on you.
I guarantee you, Kim Jong Il would not be very happy if terrorism started appearing in his country.

In addition, because he is the new guy on the block, all other nations in the world will be watching him very closely to make sure that he doesn't misstep with the capabilities that he has. Should there suddenly be a terrorist nuclear attack, guess who is going to get the blame for supply such a radical and unpredictable group with the bomb? North Korea. And this in itself could give a compelling reason for nations in the region to mobilize their militaries against him.
This would seem to be extremely contrary to his apparent goals of being considered and treated as a top world power, and I think (and hope) that he thinks this too.

A closed state like North Korea has little to fear from external terrorism. What he would have to fear is that his partners would have a hard time keeping the deal on the low.

I seriously feel that N. Korea is going to try something. Just to test how rough the waters are. If the sanctions go through, N. Korea will have no choice but to do something. They have a hard enough time already trying to maintain the country. I don't think they are going to back down now and say "sorry".

Something might be going down in the next couple weeks. At the same time, I feel N. Korea is not going to survive much longer. I think its about time this stand off between North and South ends.

That's a possibility, which I have to say I had not considered. I do have doubts, however, on whether or not such a things is possible, and if so, whether or not the resulting weapon would be any more useful, read powerful, than a bundle of WW2 potato mashers held together with duct tape.

Ok, so first, you cannot hope to make a gun-type device with plutonium that will be able to qualify as a real nuke. Without going into too much details, this is because when Pu-239 is created in nuclear reactors, you also create a whole lot of other stuff in smaller quantities. One of these is another isotope of plutonium, which I can never seem to remember, either Pu-235 or Pu-240 (most likely the latter, the former seems awfully low in neutrons for its size). Anyhow, this isotope decays somewhat rapidly, emitting lots of neutrons, which happen to be what is used to fissionate nuclear fuels.

A gun-type device creates a super-critical mass just like an implosion device, but it does so under much less pressure. This means that the masses of fissile material will have a much easier time to separate before a substantial quantity of the mass is transformed into energy. With plutonium, the contaminant that creates neutrons insures that your mass will become slightly super-critical before the masses really touch. By the time the mass of fissile material has a criticality constant which is relatively high above 1, there's been enough energy created to repel the mass but not to create a substantial explosion.

The question is, just how much energy can you get out of such an awful and useless design. Frankly, I don't know. I could probably make some really rough estimations, but I'd rather study for my midterm tomorrow than make calculations all evening. But a "normal" design might not even have the energy that test had. Packing a shitload of explosives in order to give more energy to your plutonium "bullet" won't allow you to scale up your bomb much as you're more likely to destroy you bullet than anything else. If you were to build a really large device and used timed charges along the "barrel" to accelerate your projectile further, you might be able to get something slightly better, but certainly not worth the additional complexity.

But this is North Korea we're talking about, so they might have designed a normal gun-type bomb with plutonium, knowing it'll fizzle. I'm not sure why, though. If it's the case, when other countries figure out, and they will, they won't care about Kim anymore, and Kim will likely have lost foreign aid, with various sanctions added. Since kim doesn't seem like a class A imbecile, I'd say he knows that, and that makes it unlikely.

Some are more worried than others because, historically, North Korea has not developed a weapons system that it has not made available on the world market.

Who knows what will happen. American intelligence is unable to locate all bunkers and military installations in North Korea. Kim Jong-Il is, nonetheless, very paranoid about the capabilities of the CIA. It is reported that he went into hiding during the military buildup in 2003 before the Iraq invasion for fear that the U.S. Military might make a parallel strike on North Korea.

Then wouldn't having a nuke help him sleep at night? Nuclear weapons aren't like shitty submarines, especially not these party poppers that the North Koreans supposedly have.

Looks like the South Koreans are also gearing up for war now, if the US isn't showing its teeth, the South certainly is.

Taken off CNN International.

Certainly isn't a great scenario, I really think Il just overplayed his hand. Also, nobody seems to be discussing probably the most likely turn of events, a Chinese orchestrated coup against him. Remember, the thing that angers the Chinese has never been the DPRK, its been the US sitting all over its doorstep able to act with relative impunity and keep a hold on Taiwan. I think the Chinese would rather get someone else there than risk enduring much more crazy behavior from Kim. Then again, we'll see.

I seriously doubt the Chinese will help in toppling Kim Jong-Il's regime. They're already backing off and saying "punishment is not the answer!".

Why would China help anybody in taking down North Korea? They're N.Korea's closest ally, for fuck's sake. There's too much Chinese investment in N. Korea to risk helping it crumble. Nevermind the dummy nation's serving as a bulwark against S.Korea's democracy as well as constantly hogging Japan's search light.

Kim Jong-il won't use his nukes on anybody. It's all very simple when you break it down. Kim doesn't want to lose power. If he attacks anybody, he dies. If he sells a nuke and someone finds out, he dies.

Problem is, an arms race in Asia might be in the works. That would be seriously uncool.

These are all good points as to why China would want North Korea to continue to exist. At the same time, however, keeping North Korea around doesn't require keeping Kim Jong Il around, as well. If he continues to cause problems, China could very well decide that Kim had outlived his usefulness and replace him and his government with one of their choosing.

Such a new government would, of course, listen very closely to what Beijing has to say to them.