Word: korean
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...North Korean incident impetus to what appears to be a determined push by Iran to acquire the capability to produce its own nuclear bomb. Tehran insists it is interested only in a civilian nuclear program for energy purposes. The main outside players--the U.S., the European Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)--are increasingly skeptical about those claims but thus far have been powerless to do much about it. Western intelligence agencies assume Iran could become the next nuclear power if it proceeds undeterred with its clandestine program. Like North Korea, Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation...
...already has short-range missiles capable of reaching Tokyo--the strategic game changes. If North Korea could nuke Japan, or blackmail it, while credibly threatening to strike the U.S. with a nuclear warhead, would Japanese officials truly believe the U.S. would retaliate against Pyongyang--and risk a North Korean nuke landing in Honolulu? The day may come when Tokyo will have to make that precise calculation...
...Jong Il were to sell a weapon to bin Laden and that weapon were used against the U.S. or one of its allies, then the principle would require the U.S. to "treat this precisely like a nuclear-tipped-missile attack" and retaliate against Pyongyang. "That danger [of North Korean proliferation] has always been there," says Michael Green, until last year a senior staff member on the National Security Council. "But North Korea has a mailing address, and they know it. If there was a nuclear explosion somewhere, it would probably be traced back to them, and their country would...
What, then, can be done to rein in countries like North Korea? Pyongyang is especially prickly and dangerous, and already holds 10 million residents in the South Korean capital as virtual hostages. Seoul is only 30 miles from the border and has always lived under the threat of immediate destruction from North Korean firepower. Says a senior U.S. military officer: "[It is] within easy and rapid range of perhaps 10,000 artillery tubes with a 57-second flight time. That can cause World War II--size casualties." And that's without nuclear weapons. Now, unless the U.S. goes back...
...world. And now China, which has sold conventional missiles to Iran in the past, is stepping up efforts to deter Pyongyang from moving missile and missile-related technology to Iran. A high-ranking diplomat in East Asia tells TIME that China has denied overflight rights to North Korean aircraft bound for Tehran...