Is War With North Korea Inevitable?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you,” said Calvin Coolidge, who ever counseled patience over the rash response.

Unfortunately, the troubles presented by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un seem unlikely to run into a ditch before they reach us.

For Kim has crawled out on a limb. He has threatened to attack U.S. forces in Korea and bases in Asia, even U.S. cities. He has declared the truce that ended the Korean War dead and that “a state of war” exists with the South. All ties to the South have been cut. 

Why Are We Still on the DMZ?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

North Korea has just pulled off an impressive dual feat — the successful test both of an intercontinental ballistic missile and an atom bomb in the 6-kiloton range.

Pyongyang’s ruler, 30-year-old Kim Jong Un, said the tests are aimed at the United States. So it would seem. One does not build an ICBM to hit Seoul, 30 miles away.

Experts believe North Korea is still far from having the capability to marry a nuclear warhead to a missile that could hit the West Coast. But this seems to be Kim’s goal.

Why is he obsessed with a nation half a world away? 
 

North Korea 'Preparing to Unveil Missile Capable of Striking Continental US'

North Korea is preparing to unveil a new long-range missile that is capable of striking targets in the continental US.

South Korean activists hang an effigy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on a mock North Korean missile during a rally denouncing the North's announcement of a planned satellite launch, in Seoul  Photo: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images

Reconnaissance satellites have identified the huge missile at a government research and development facility in Pyongyang, South Korean government sources told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

Analysts estimate the weapon to be around 130 feet long and, equipped with a more powerful booster unit, capable of delivering a warhead more than 6,200 miles. 

Read the rest of this entry at The Telegraph >>

North Korea's 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il Dies Aged 69

North Korea’s “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il, has died following what is believed to be a stoke or heart attack, the communist country’s state media announced early Monday morning.

 

The mercurial and enigmatic longtime leader who ran his nation with an iron rod was 69.

The state-TV announcer, wearing black and fighting back tears, made the emotional announcement on state-run television.

She said Kim died “of fatigue” while on a train.

His youngest son, Kim Jong-un, is likely to be appointed leader to continue the family dynasty that has administrated a tyrannical government since the end of the Korean War. 

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Are Churches 'Willfully Blind' to North Korea's Repression

"For many Western church elites, there will always be harsh criticism of America, and endless excuses for tyrannies like North Korea."

Mark Tooley, IRD President

Despite a high level of engagement with North Korea, including the 2009 visit of an official delegation to the isolated country, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) has said little about North Korea following the release of a report implicating the Communist nation in the sinking of a South Korean ship.

While the WCC has previously admonished South Korea for policies "hindering the efforts for peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula," the WCC has not and will not criticize North Korea's tyranny, one of the world's most oppressive. In a 2008 letter to the South Korean President, the WCC urged him "to take all possible measures to avoid any deterioration of inter-Korean relations." The WCC has 349 member denominations in 120 countries, and its next General Assembly will be in South Korea, in 2013.

Unfortunately, many other Western church groups share the WCC's moral blindness towards North Korea. A recent Presbyterian Church (USA) delegation to North Korea found no human rights problems. The National Council of Churches similarly has dispatched envoys to North Korea with nary a word of criticism, preferring to aim its fire at preferred targets like the United States or Israel.

Institute on Religion and Democracy President Mark Tooley commented:

"Seemingly, Western church groups, especially, the WCC, always view South Korea or the U.S. as responsible for 'provoking' North Korean aggression.

"These church groups not only have been silent about North Korea's various aggressions, including the recent torpedo attack. Even more egregiously, they are silent or even make absurd excuses for North Korea's inhuman persecution of Christians. Western church groups often naively visit North Korea's handful of government-run show churches in Pyongyang.

"During the Cold War, international ecumenical elites heaped scorn upon the West while carefully avoiding critique of the totalitarian Soviet Bloc, betraying Christians and other victims of communism. Few lessons were learned, and those same church groups, despite their supposed 'prophetic witness,' withhold any criticism of repressive communist and Islamist regimes.

"Church members in the U.S. and around the world should demand more integrity from their church officials."

BREAKING: South Korean Navy Ship Sinking, North Suspected

A South Korean naval ship was sinking on Friday after possibly being hit by a North Korean torpedo and several sailors were killed, South Korean media reported.

A South Korean warship later fired at an unidentified vessel toward the north, indicating a possible attack, and the South's presidential Blue House was holding an emergency security meeting, the Yonhap news agency said.

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North Korean Woman Publicly Executed for Distributing Bible

From Taragana
By Kwang-tae Kim

A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said Friday.

The 33-year-old mother of three, Ri Hyon Ok, also was accused of spying for South Korea and the United States, and of organizing dissidents, a rights group said in Seoul, citing documents obtained from the North.

The Investigative Commission on Crime Against Humanity report included a copy of Ri’s government-issued photo ID and said her husband, children and parents were sent to a political prison the day after her June 16 execution.

The claim could not be independently verified Friday, and there has been no mention by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency of her case.

But it would mark a harsh turn in the crackdown on religion in North Korea, a country where Christianity once flourished and where the capital, Pyongyang, was known as the “Jerusalem of the East” for the predominance of the Christian faith.

According to its constitution, North Korea guarantees freedom of religion. But in reality, the regime severely restricts religious observance, with the cult of personality created by national founder Kim Il Sung and enjoyed by his son, current leader Kim Jong Il, serving as a virtual state religion. Those who violate religious restrictions are often accused of crimes such as spying or anti-government activities.

The government has authorized four state churches: one Catholic, two Protestant and one Russian Orthodox. However, they cater to foreigners only, and ordinary North Koreans cannot attend the services.

Still, more than 30,000 North Koreans are believed to practice Christianity in hiding — at great personal risk, defectors and activists say.

The U.S. State Department said in a report last year that “genuine religious freedom does not exist” in North Korea.

“What religious practice or venues exist … (are) tightly controlled and used to advance the government’s political or diplomatic agenda,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a May report. “Other public and private religious activity is prohibited and anyone discovered engaging in clandestine religious practice faces official discrimination, arrest, imprisonment, and possibly execution.”

The report cited indications that the North Korean government had taken “new steps” to stop the clandestine spread of Christianity, particularly in areas near the border with China, including infiltrating underground churches and setting up fake prayer meetings as a trap for Christian converts.

Ri, the North Korean Christian, reportedly was executed in the northwestern city of Ryongchon — near the border with China.

“North Korea appears to have judged that Christian forces could pose a threat to its regime,” Do Hee-youn, a leading activist, told reporters Friday in Seoul.

The South Korean rights report also said North Korean security agents arrested and tortured another Christian, Seo Kum Ok, 30, near Ryongchon. She was accused of trying to spy on a nuclear site and hand the information over to South Korea and the United States.

It was unclear whether she survived, the report said. Her husband also was arrested and their two children have since disappeared, it said.

The U.S. government commission report cited defectors as saying an estimated 6,000 Christians are jailed in “Prison No. 15″ in the north of the country, with religious prisoners facing worse treatment than other inmates.

In Seoul, the rights group said it would try to take North Korean leader Kim to the International Criminal Court over alleged crimes against humanity.

Activists say such alleged crimes — murder, kidnap, rape, extermination of individuals in prison camps — can’t take place in North Korea without Kim’s knowledge or direction since he wields absolute power over the population of 24 million.