Politics & Policy

Pyongyang Takes Lesson From Libya

This is frightening: 

 

SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean statement that Libya’s dismantling of its nuclear weapons program had made it vulnerable to military intervention by the West is being seen by analysts as an ominous reinforcement of the North’s refusal to end its own nuclear program.

North Korea’s official news agency carried comments this week from a Foreign Ministry official decrying the air assault on Libyan government forces and suggesting that Libya had been duped in 2003 when it abandoned its nuclear program in exchange for promises of aid and improved relations with the West.

Calling the West’s bargain with Libya “an invasion tactic to disarm the country,” the official said it amounted to a bait and switch. “The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson,” the official was quoted as saying on Tuesday, proclaiming that North Korea’s “songun” ideology of a powerful military was “proper in a thousand ways” and the only guarantor of peace on the Korean Peninsula.

As they have watched the attacks in Libya this week senior North Korean leaders “must feel alarmed, but also deeply satisfied with themselves,” said Ruediger Frank, an adjunct professor at Korea University and the University of North Korean Studies, writing on the Web site 38 North. North Korea is believed to have 8 to 12 nuclear weapons and last year disclosed a new uranium-enrichment facility.

Matthew Shaffer — Mr. Shaffer is a former William F. Buckley Fellow of the National Review Institute.
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