Can a vegetative gov`t take on N.Korea`s nuke threat?

North Korea’s nuclear blackmail is growing more blatant, but this has been expected since Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test and launch of a long-range missile. On Tuesday, the Rodong Shinmun, the official daily of the North`s ruling Workers’ Party, said, "If the U.S. wields nuclear weapons, we will turn not only Seoul but also Washington into a sea of fire by using our accurate nuclear attack methods in various forms. This is a completely different strategy from our previous methods.”

Kim Yong Chol, director of the communist state`s Reconnaissance General Bureau, said Tuesday, “If (a nuclear weapon) is pressed, it will be launched. If we fire a lot of them, (the target) will become enveloped in flames.” The culprit of the 2010 sinking of the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan and shelling of Yeonpyeong Island is now threatening to create a “sea of nuclear fire,” a substantial escalation from its March 1994 threat of turning Seoul into "a sea of fire."

The North`s latest threat came as a backlash over the completion of a draft United Nations resolution to expand sanctions on the Stalinist country. Pyongyang criticized an annual Seoul-Washington joint military drill focused on defense operations as “the most outright military provocation to crash into North Korea.” The communist country also threatened to nullify the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953 and take "powerful and practical" countermeasures. These words should not be taken lightly since the North Korean military moves according to its leader Kim Jong Un’s command in an orderly but swift manner.

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday drafted new sanctions on North Korea more powerful than those implemented after Pyongyang’s nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. The measures included preventing money from going into North Korea by closely monitoring illegal activities by its diplomats, searching ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction, and prohibiting the launch, landing or passing through airspace of airplanes suspected of carrying illegal cargo. The sanctions must be effective this time to finally end the North`s nuclear ambition. If Pyongyang fails to realize that the price tag on making nuclear weapons and violating the world order is too high to bear, adding new sanctions will have little impact.

China agreed to the adoption of the U.N. resolution draft before a meeting on the direction of its foreign policy. With this agreement, Beijing showed that it agrees with the world on the need to punish Pyongyang. North Korean leaders should be fully aware that in China, protests against the North’s nuclear test are intensifying and a magazine published by the highest educational facility of the Chinese Communist Party insists that China should “abandon North Korea.”

In South Korea, the military pledged to "sternly punish the origin, support forces and command forces of the provocation.” The surveillance net of South Korean-U.S. joint forces should be fully utilized so that no signs of a North Korean provocation should be missed even for a moment. No missile with a nuclear warhead will hit South Korea soon, but a dirty bomb, a conventional weapon containing radioactive material, can devastate South Korea.

Despite this serious threat to the South, the national security office of the presidential office is not functioning normally and the Cabinet`s diplomatic and national security operations remain incomplete due to political tension between the presidential office and politicians. Bipartisan confrontation in normal times is OK, but when the country is threatened by an external force, both the ruling and opposition parties should unite the power of the nation. Rep. Lee Jung-hee of the minor opposition Unified Progressive Party has urged the immediate lifting of the sanctions on the North and an end to the joint military drill. Given the national security situation, this remarks apparently constitute an act benefiting the enemy.