North Korea


Now North Korea is admitting it has nuclear weapons. Hate to say it, I'm not all that surprised. For all of those who want to make a minor investment in a great book, pick up The Two Koreas by Don Oberdorfer. This is a fantastic study of the "modern history" of the Korean Penninsula. Took me a month and some to finish, because it is so loaded with information, but it is well worth the read.

While they don't mention where they got the fissile material for their bomb, Oberdorfer relates how, before they let in the inspectors originally, they defueled the Yongbyon reactor and moved around enough material to make it impossible to determine if reprocessing and extraction of plutonium had occured. There was a guess, if I recall, that they could have extracted enough plutonium to make between 2 and 4 bombs. I think we know what they did with that material.

I'll even go out on a limb here, and say they probably have two bombs. If they had three, I think they would have tested one. If they only had one, I don't think they would have said anything because it probably wouldn't be reliable enough. Two bombs, on two missiles, would give them enough margin of error. Three, and I think we would have seen a test explosion instead of a test missile firing last month.

As readers may note, I am fond of the Korean Penninsula and would like to visit again someday.

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