The past week started out hot about North Korea. On Monday April 17, while in Seoul, US Vice President Mike Pence said that "the era of strategic patience" of Washington with regard to North Korea is over.
On Tuesday in a BBC interview, Vice Foreign Minister of North Korea Han Song Ryol stated, Earlier, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un circulated a video showing his nuclear attack capabilities on an American city by the Taepodong missile. The frightening footage was backed up with patriotic songs performed by an army choir.
On Wednesday the Kremlin called on all parties to restrain themselves, and Maria Zakharova, on behalf of our Foreign Ministry, urged the Americans to study the issue before opening fire. Our American colleagues have a bad trait — they first do something, and then they start to study the issue. This happened with Ukraine, with Syria, and with many other examples, even in the last decade. It would be very desirable in the current plot, mentioned by you, that the situation unfolded according to a fundamentally different scenario: first examination of the issue, then selection of the best strategy, and after that making statements and actions, because we know how the situations and events unfolded before this.
On Thursday, UN Security Council held a closed meeting and on its results issued a press statement demanding of North Korea not to conduct any further nuclear tests. At the same time, the Security Council stressed the need for dialogue on the road to peace.
On Saturday, US Vice President Mike Pence now from Australia, said that the nuclear free Korean peninsula can be achieved peacefully and with China’s help. We have Sunday, Monday and Tuesday left, these days, can confidently be considered critical for the situation in North Korea.
Most experts agree that by Tuesday, April 25, in honor of the anniversary of the North Korean Army the next, sixth, nuclear test on the territory of North Korea will be carried out. And no one knows if Kim Jong-un will listen to the warnings of the UN Security Council and to direct threats from the US. Amazing coincidence: exactly by April 25, three strike carrier groups will be in the Sea of Japan: Carl Vinson, Ronald Reagan, and Nimitz. In total, 270 combat aircraft and helicopters, plus a total of hundreds of Tomahawk missiles on American escort ships, and this is the Lake Champlain missile cruiser, and destroyers Michael Murphy and Wayne E. Meyer.
By the way, they are equipped with the Aegis anti-missile system Three carrier groups with such an arsenal — in a relatively small Sea of Japan off the coast of North Korea. I do not recall the last time such a thing happened. Very dangerous, because all this is right next door to our Vladivostok. By the way, Russia is bordered by North Korea along the waterway of the Tumen River. The length of this cordon is the smallest of all borders with our neighbors, less than 20 kilometers. Across the river there is only crossing, by railway, called "Bridge of Friendship".
On our side, the coast is low and sloping, but on the Korean side it is steep. On Friday, April 28, a special meeting of the UN Security Council is scheduled regarding North Korea. But we still need to survive until then. Daria Kozlova reports on how it all came to this. Only 200 km. from Pyongyang to Seoul and 70 years from one country and one nation to today's day. With the birth of Kim Il Sung, our people started their history. He is the sun, and from here the Korean sun rose.
Mankeidai is the exact place where the North Korean sun rose. The native village of Kim Il Sung. Here the spinning wheel that the leader's family used is kept, and even the vat that the grandmother of the future leader bought a long time ago. Here is the well, which was used by the family of Kim Il Sung. The water here is called "revolutionary" and "holy". It is believed that if you drink it, you will always be young. This could be called a pilgrimage, only not religious, but ideological. A deification of the leader took place, even more, the theory of the leader assumes that the people live for a leader, and without a leader the people die.
In the last decades the house of Kim Il Sung always has visitors: North Koreans, Americans, Chinese, Russians. Only there are no Koreans from the south, either in Mankeidai, nor anywhere else in North Korea. The South does not let out, the North does not let in. The iron curtain works in both directions, and the prison term that a North Korean can get for watching South Korean TV shows is roughly the same as a South Korean resident can get by downloading North Korean propaganda materials from the Internet. Information is the most effective and deadly weapon on the Korean peninsula.
Along the demilitarized zone on the south side there are loudspeakers. Seoul broadcasts pop music, releases of its news, and broadcasts criticizing the North’s regime. North Korea responds with volleys of artillery. It is forbidden to import any literature about South Korea into North Korea. In the South, good news about the North are not allowed to be broadcast. But the sensational news about Kim Jong-un’s uncle being fed to the dogs, and the tank executions of officials appear with enviable regularity. Often, brutally killed close associates of Kim Jong-un come to the party meeting again in six months.
But, of course, their resurrections are not as loud and sensational as their deaths. There is a law of national security, according to which nothing good can be said about North Korea. So any fantasies, any fake news, like that someone from political opposition was fed to the dogs — are published. North Korea exists not only in its closed space, but even in its own time.
Now is the 106th year of the Juche calendar. Its starting point is the birth year of Kim Il Sung. The official ideology of North Korea is not Marxism- Leninism, nor Chinese Maoism, but the doctrine created by the Korean leader. The great leader, comrade Kim Il Sung, created his doctrine at the start of the revolutionary struggle. He was then 14 years old.
The monument to the ideas of Kim Il Sung is in the very center of Pyongyang. 170 meters of granite. Monument of the Juche idea. It was erected in just two years. And it is meant to show the strength and abilities of a man who always relies only on his own strength. But in the 21st century, self-reliance for North Korea is a necessary measure.
On the other side of the 38th parallel in the south are US military bases, aircraft carriers, and American bombers. At the end of April, the deployment of the US missile defense system should be completed only 300 kilometers from the North Korean border. And in the event of a war, the South Korean military will only have to accurately follow orders. The command will be completely transferred to Pentagon. They are not accidentally armed to the teeth. There are American bases in South Korea, and there were American nuclear weapons, which were later withdrawn. If we compare military spending, then of course, South Korea is ahead of North Korea.
North Korea has the numbers advantage, more than a million people can mobilize in the event of a war. And, of course, the nuclear and missile strength is not enough to win, but enough to make neither Seoul nor Washington want to go to war. The Obama administration has removed us from the list of countries against which no nuclear weapons are to be used. Openly talks about a preemptive strike. And the lessons of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, the latest attack on Syria prove that only a powerful deterrent force will help us maintain our sovereignty. Statements of readiness for war are made every month. Constant incidents at the border occur. November 2010 — shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Fatalities were in the South, and, according to unconfirmed reports, in the North.
March 2010. Near the border of North Korea, South Korean warship Cheonan sinks. 46 dead. In 1994, the North Korean MANPADS shot down an American helicopter. But every time all parties act within the established limits. Ultimatums, threats and skirmishes — yes, but nothing that could really provoke a war. I think that the northerners, in spite of the belligerent rhetoric of the authorities, understand that the consequences of a war in such a closed-in, small territory as the Korean peninsula will be tragic, simply indescribable. Koreans in both the North and South after 70 years still draw maps on which the Korean peninsula is one single state. They even appoint governors every time in the provinces of a neighboring country, in case of an unforeseen and rapid unification.
In the Constitution of the Republic of Korea, it is clearly written that the territory of South Korea includes the entire Korean peninsula. And the law on state security which is still active in South Korea calls North Korea an anti-government organization, contacts with which are illegal. But right now on the Korean peninsula people remember the three-year civil war, three years of American carpet bombing Pyongyang, US troops machine-gunning columns of refugees, show executions in the South, and mass graves near Daejeon of 5,000-7,000 people.
The Korean War was the bloodiest conflict after the WWII. The dead are still being counted. The unofficial figure is around three million people. After such a war, the status quo and the four-kilometer neutral zone between the North and the South, is what the Koreans have left to cherish.
