This is a cross-post from A Rabbit’s Eye View of the Hyperborean North.
When writing about the Korean peninsula, I prefer to avoid referring to the lacunae of interest in it from the screaming-at-mice brigade who spend every waking moment working themselves into states of near-sexual fury at one side in a regional conflict at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. After, however, watching the continued slanging-match on a Facebook fanpage for Pete Seeger – in which, amongst others, he has been called senile for agreeing to playing in an online concert by The Friends of Arava Institute – I will make an exception, and express a wish that they all be pelted to death with marshmallows (oh, please do not tell Yasmin Alibhai-Brown).
Over to Korea.
Seigfried Hecker, an engineering Professor at Stanford University who inspected DPRK sites on behalf of UN inspectorates this week confirmed he had seen thousands of nuclear centrifuges as well as gleaned techniques which Pyongyang uses to circumvent sanctions in order to make pin money in exports to any fascist murder gang or brutal State which wants to buy.
Yet, as the Youtube footage below shows, nukes are not exactly needed wreak to havoc across the 38th.
The screams of terror of islanders on Yeon Pyeong-do can be heard as they today endured a prolonged artillery barrage from the Korean People’s Army, and KPA big cheeses have boasted of having thousands of missiles pointed at Seoul: nukes are more likely to be reserved to irradiating Pusan to forestall American landings from Japan.
A number of civilians have been killed, as well as Korean Marines. Today’s events definitely are exponentially worse than the Take Your Son to Work exercise which was the sinking of RoKS Cheonan in May of this year, in which 46 sailors died.
Worse even than the 1996 Gangneung Submarine Infiltration, in which 12 RoK military personnel and four civilians died.
This is perhaps the most serious incident since the 1953 ceasefire.
Update – when I wrote this piece, I was working off incomplete news reports which suggested civilians had been killed. This had not then been confirmed. With the discovery of at least two bodies in the rubble of residential areas which had been pelted with landmines, it appears I was correct. Go me.