• North Korea crisis: China speaks softly to avoid alienating nuclear-armed neighbor

    Early readings of North Korea's nuclear test Monday show it was three to six times more powerful than any tests from that country before. President Obama is calling it "a highly provocative act." NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.

    By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News

    News analysis

    SEOUL, South Korea — As North Korea's biggest political ally and benefactor, China would appear to hold all the cards when it comes to reining in Kim Jong Un's regime.

    However, its response to Pyongyang's latest nuclear test was rather muted Tuesday.

    Beijing's foreign minister summoned North Korea's ambassador for a dressing down and sternly expressed "strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition" to the test.

    As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Beijing will also join in a meeting set for later this week to discuss how best to respond to the nuclear test. But it remains unclear if Beijing will support tougher new sanctions, or that any new round of UN sanctions or resolutions will have much impact on the reclusive nation's actions.

    Since the 1950-1953 Korean War, North Korea has been subjected to an array of multinational and unilateral sanctions by the international community. The country's leaders have responded to the isolation by focusing even more intently on developing sophisticated weapons and rocket programs that have simultaneously infuriated regional neighbors and drawn them to the negotiating table.

    White House: North Korea nuclear test 'highly provocative'

    Many regional observers have suggested that international sanctions are doomed to failure as long as Beijing continues to prop up and sustain its neighbor through aid and investment.

    Chinatopix via AP

    North Korean soldiers stand guard on the river bank of the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong on Tuesday.

    Indeed, over the years China has staunchly supported North Korea on the international field, arguing that individual countries have the right to develop rocket programs that were scientific in nature and helping to derail stiffer sanctions against North Korea by the UN.

    Last month's surprise announcement that China had joined in with the rest of the UN Security Council in condemning North Korea's latest rocket test seemed to represent a shift in its way of engaging with its neighbor, and long-time Communist comrade. However, it later emerged that China had worked hard to block any new sanctions.

    The Associated Press noted:

    Despite being the North's biggest source of aid and diplomatic support, Beijing has been reluctant to back more severe measures that could destabilize the North's hardline regime, which serves as a buffer between China and democratic South Korea backed by U.S. forces. 

    In the weeks leading up to Tuesday's nuclear test, it has been widely reported that China had been working behind the scenes with North Korea to halt the test and suspend their nuclear program.

    Officially, China's Foreign Ministry has maintained steady support for North Korea by lamely calling for peace on the Korean peninsula and greater engagement by all parties.

    Ambassador Susan Rice tells reporters at the United Nations that North Korea's latest, "highly-provocative" and "regrettable" act of testing a nuclear weapon "directly violates" security council resolution and threatens international peace, "vowing a swift, credible and strong response."

    But in China's state-run media, the frustration towards North Korea has become obvious.

    A strongly worded opinion piece last week in the typically nationalistic Chinese newspaper, Global Times, called on China's ruling Communist Party to take a tougher stance on North Korea provocations.

    "If North Korea insists on a third nuclear test despite attempts to dissuade it, it must pay a heavy price," the paper said, effectively calling for an end to Chinese economic aid to the struggling country as punishment.

    The Global Times certainly does not reflect official Chinese policy; state censors tend to give greater latitude to papers like the Global Times, using such media as a spigot from which to turn nationalist sentiment on and off while also gauging popular opinion. But it could indicate the direction China may be prepared to go to ensure stability on its borders.

    Although tougher economic sanctions backed by China might cause Kim and his generals to reconsider their drive for more sophisticated nuclear devices, the move could also alienate Pyongyang and create a nuclear-armed rival on its doorstep.

    Ed Jones / AFP-Getty Images

    A North Korean flag flies above the North Korean Embassy in Beijing on Tuesday.

    It is for this reason — and the fact that China's leadership transition is not yet complete, with Xi Jinping still not formally president until June —that Beijing's reaction to North Korea transgressions will likely remain subdued.

    It appears likely that China will join the Security Council this week in condemning the North Koreans for this nuclear test, but it remains unclear which way Beijing will fall on stronger sanctions.

    Their decision could finally shed some light on the opaque political calculus that Beijing uses in dealing with its wayward old ally North Korea.

    Related:

    North Korea propaganda video shows US city in flames

    China state media: N. Korea would pay 'heavy price' for nuclear test

    Show of force: US, South Korea hold naval drills

  • White House: North Korea nuclear test 'highly provocative'

    After Tuesday's nuclear test, questions arose as to whether or not North Korea has advanced to the point where they could reach the continental U.S. with a missile.

    By Kari Huus, Staff writer, NBC News

    An unapologetic North Korea declared Tuesday that it had conducted a test of a nuclear bomb after the detonation was detected by the U.S. Geological Survey.

    "On February 12th... we successfully conducted a third underground nuclear test in the northern underground nuclear test site," the Daily NK reported, in a translation of Pyongyang's announcement on the state-run news agency, KCNA.

    By conducting the test, the isolated authoritarian regime made good on a Jan. 24 pledge by North Korea's top military organ, the National Defense Commission, in further defiance of admonitions from the international community to cease and desist in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

    The test was met with condemnation from around the globe. The White House called it a "highly provocative act" that warrants "further swift and credible action from the international community." Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said Beijing was "strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed" to the move by its neighbor and long-time Communist ally.

     

    South Korea and Japan convened emergency meetings of their top national security officials, while the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting Tuesday, after which it promised to "begin work immediately" to draft a new resolution against the North.


    The explosion was registered as a 5.1-magnitude seismic event by the USGS at 9:57 p.m. ET Monday. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence quickly judged that North Korea had "probably conducted an underground nuclear explosion" with a yield of "several kilotons."

    In a statement, President Barack Obama said the test "undermines regional stability, violates North Korea's obligations under numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions, contravenes its [international] commitments … and increases the risk of proliferation" in the wake of what he described as a "ballistic missile launch" by North Korea on Dec. 12.

    "North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs constitute a threat to U.S. national security and to international peace and security," Obama said. 

    U.S. officials have previously told NBC News that North Korea has up to a "few dozen" nuclear weapons that could be fitted on ballistic missiles, far more than had previously been believed.

    Obama on Tuesday said that "the danger posed by North Korea's threatening activities warrants further swift and credible action by the international community," adding that the U.S. would work with the international community to "pursue firm action."

    'Vile hostile acts'
    In a tit-for-tat that has characterized a diplomatic stalemate for decades, North Korea blamed the United States for forcing its hand.

    "This nuclear test was conducted as part of measures to safeguard the country’s security and independence in order to deal with the vile hostile acts of the United States, which violated our Republic’s legitimate right to peaceful satellite launches,” according to the KCNA report.

    The comment refers UN Security Council Resolution 2087, passed after to Pyongyang's Dec. 12 rocket launch, heaping sanctions on previous sanctions against North Korea, further deepening the regime's isolation.

    North Korean soldiers stand guard on the river bank of the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong on Tuesday.

    The resolution called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and any weapons and allow verification; to conduct no more launches using ballistic missile technology; and to conduct no more nuclear tests.

    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the latest test was a "clear and grave violation."

    Later, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported that North Korea threatened, citing an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman, to conduct more nuclear tests if the U.S. moves to penalize it for Tuesday's test.

    At a disarmament forum in Geneva on Tuesday, a North Korean official said that his country would not change course in the current climate, Reuters reported.

    "The U.S. and their followers are sadly mistaken if they miscalculate the DPRK would respect the entirely unreasonable resolutions against it. The DPRK will never bow to any resolutions," Jon Yong Ryong, first secretary of North Korea's mission in Geneva, told the Conference on Disarmament, referring to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

    South Korea's government said in a statement that Tuesday's nuclear test, "poses a direct challenge to the whole international community as well as an unacceptable threat to the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia."

    It said the government would stand firm in that it "will not tolerate a nuclear North Korea" and added that it will "also accelerate expanding its military capability, including deploying at an early stage its extended-range missiles, currently being developed, which cover all of North Korea."

    Major hostilities in the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with armistice, not a peace treaty. Today, North Korean forces and South Korean forces bolstered by about 28,000 U.S. troops remain faced off at the 38th parallel, where the Korean Peninsula was divided.

    Between 2003 and 2007, North Korean took party in several rounds of the so-called "Six Party Talks" with South Korea, China, the United States, Russia and Japan, in an attempt to reverse Pyongyang's nuclear weapons development in return for fuel and progress towards normalization of relations. The talks went on hold and then fell apart for good in April 2009 and Pyongyang expelled UN inspectors from the country.

    China 'humiliated'
    A key unanswered question is what Beijing will do after North Korea's latest move. The long-time Communist ally and neighbor, which has strategic reasons to continue supporting the regime in Pyongyang, nonetheless expressed its strong opposition to the test.

    "China has been humiliated," according to Andrei Lankov, a veteran analyst of North Korea based in Seoul's Kookmin Unversity. That could prompt a change in Beijing's approach, he said.

    /

    A North Korean flag flies above the North Korean embassy in Beijing on Feb. 12.

    "This time, China explicitly warned North Korea against conducting the test, but they were ignored," Landov added. "A Chinese government newspaper said two weeks ago that in the case of a nuclear test, China might significantly reduce its aid to North Korea."

    China is a major source of aid to North Korea and key to keeping its decrepit economy afloat. China is also one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council with the power to veto sanctions.

    The United States and other countries have urged China to put pressure on Pyongyang, but it remained to be seen how far Beijing would go to confront its old comrade.

    "They are not happy about nuclear adventurism. At the same time though, a collapsing non-nuclear North Korea is far worse than a nuclear but stable North Korea," Lankov said.

    North wants U.S. recognition
    Professor Yan Xuetong, a top international security analyst at China's Tsinghua University, said "the key to the North Korean nuclear challenge is in the hands of the United States, not China."

    "China is certainly opposed to North Korea's latest nuclear test and opposed to North Korea becoming a nuclear power, but the test was aimed at the Unite States with the aim of forcing the U.S. to normalize relations with North Korea, but if the U.S. doesn't want to play the  game of trade-off, then there is not much that China can do," he said.

    Yan, who closely follows government policy thinking on the issue, argued that "the role of economic sanctions is limited," suggesting China will not stop economic assistance to North Korea because of the latest test.

    "What China should do is to act as bridge between North Korea and the United States so that they will agree to a trade-off, with the U.S. granting recognition to the North Korean government in exchange for it giving up its nuclear program," he said.

    "If the U.S. views North Korea's nuclear threat with the same seriousness as it views Iran's nuclear threat, then there will be hope for solving the North Korea's nuclear problem," he said.

    NBC News staff writers Ian Johnston, Eric Baculinao, John Newland and Arata Yamamoto contributed to this report.

    Related:

    Analysis: China fears alienating nuclear-armed Kim

    N. Korea propaganda video shows US city in flames 

    Show of force: US, South Korea hold naval drills

    This story was originally published on Tue Feb 12, 2013 12:11 PM EST

  • China cracks down, South Korea speeds up

    By Adrienne Mong

    SEOUL, South Korea – It’s a strange thing to be reading about China’s continued crackdown on the Internet from our temporary perch in Seoul.

    The last time I was here was in 1989.  The Pre-Internet Age.

    This time, on my first visit in more than 20 years, South Korea owns the mantle of the world’s fastest Internet connection, according to a quarterly survey known as the State of the Internet by Akamai.  It's on average four times as fast as that of the U.S. 

    But that just isn’t fast enough.

    By the end of next year, the South Korean government plans to have every home in the nation hooked up to the Internet at a speed of one gigabit per second. Imagine being able to download the entire Godfather trilogy in 20 seconds.

    /

    A woman walks past the logo of Google in front of its headquarters in Beijing in this January 2011 file photo.

    Gmail service, interrupted
    In the meantime, over in China, land of the Great Firewall, reports are emerging that the download speed of Gmail has plunged.  We won’t get into the technicalities of kbps, but let’s just say Gmail is now operating 45 times slower than the most popular free Chinese instant messaging service known as QQ. 

    The disruptions to Gmail don’t end there.  For weeks now, ordinary Gmail users have complained about interrupted service.  Writer Wang Lixiong tweeted that he received this message from Gmail when he tried to log in: “Your account is locked, because abnormal activities are detected.  You may have to wait 24 hours before you can log in again.”

    Another user told my colleague Bo Gu that China Unicom appears to be blocking Gmail entirely from mobile devices.

    And in the wake of calls for Jasmine rallies foreign journalists in China have been vigilant about attempts to hack into their email accounts. 

    The disrupted service coincides with a surge in reported failures of several VPNs (virtual private networks), designed to circumvent China’s Internet firewall.

    On Monday, Google accused the Chinese government of obstructing access to its Gmail service, saying the company had checked everything on its own end and concluded that the problems are the result of a “blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.” 

    The Chinese Foreign Ministry has denied the accusation.

    Speedy Internet = Open Internet
    South Korea’s drive to lead the way globally in broadband access originated in the mid-1990s, but its efforts stepped up immediately after its economy was crippled by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.  And technology became a cornerstone of the government’s strategy to reboot and refashion its economy.

    Seoul's approach to the Internet is instructive.  Although there are many reasons it has managed to power ahead of the pack, there is one that stands out in sharp relief against what’s happening in China: the open (and highly competitive) nature of its telecoms market.

    “The idea behind an “open” system is essentially that, for a fee, broadband providers must share the cables that carry Internet signals into people’s homes,” says one report.  “Companies that build those lines typically oppose this sharing.  A number of governments, including South Korea and Japan and several European countries, have experimented with or embraced infrastructure-sharing as a way to get new companies to compete in the broadband market.”

    China doesn’t allow that kind of openness—either in its infrastructure or in its content.

  • The ‘Most Hideous Conspiratorial Farce’ in South Korea’s history’?

    BEIJING - For seven months North Korea has furiously denied responsibility for the sinking of a South Korean naval ship off the Korean Peninsula and mocked a joint multinational report that blamed them for the attack.

    But during a rare press conference at the sprawling North Korean Embassy in Beijing on Friday, North Korea finally offered its official rebuttal.

    The “Cheonan,” a 1,200 ton South Korean ship carrying 104 people, was allegedly torpedoed by a North Korean submarine on March 27 and sank killing 46 sailors.

    The title of North Korea’s 22-page report on the incident is a blunt sum-up on their take on the torpedo allegation: “Cheonan Incident Fabricated by the U.S. and Lee Myung Bak Group of Traitors Was Most Hideous Conspiratorial Farce in the Nation’s History.”

    North Korea’s Senior Counselor Jong Hyun-U gave a 13-point argument he hoped would “scientifically and in more detail” challenge the facts released by a joint investigative team composed of naval officers from Canada, Britain, Sweden Australia, South Korea and the United States.

    However, the press conference verged on the surreal as the report got bogged down with pervasive insults towards both South Korea and the United States.

    Jong breathlessly, but methodically, ran down the list of alleged errors in the joint U.S. - South Korea report. References to “U.S. imperialists,” South Korean “stooges” and the “tricksters” and “traitors” in South Korea President Lee Myung-bak’s government were often made with clear disdain.

    Physical evidence disputed
    In North Korea’s effort to take a “scientific” approach to their investigation, physical evidence was the central focus of the report. Chief among their complaints were aluminum alloy fragments recovered from the scene that the joint investigative team declared were material evidence proving the torpedo was of North Korean origin.

    But the North Korea report responded by noting that North Korean torpedoes, known as Juche-based torpedoes, are made of a steel alloy rather than aluminum. The North also claimed that they offered samples of their steel alloys to the investigation team, but were turned down

    Alleged discrepancies in the detection of gunpowder and other explosive residues on the hull of the Cheonan were also central to the North Korean case. The North Korean report also claimed that the propelling body of the torpedo – found by a civilian fishing boat nearly 50 days after the incident – had a streamlined shape which did not match the rectangular design of the Juche-based torpedo.

    The report also called into question several eyewitness accounts by people who allegedly waffled on their initial claims that they saw a column of water suggesting a torpedo struck the Cheonan.

    Just stranded
    In dismissing the physical, chemical evidence and eyewitness accounts provided in the joint report, North Korea ultimately determined that the Cheonan got stranded in the rocky waters between Paengnyong Islet and Taechong Islet.

    Ironically, “The Hermit Kingdom” at times found itself reaching out to foreign nations to corroborate its findings. The report cited the results of the Russian investigation group, which stated that “it could find no ground to judge that it [the Cheonan sinking] was caused by the torpedo attack by the North,” and the Swedish contingent which officially withheld its name from the U.S. - South Korea report.

    How the United States will respond to the report remains to be seen, but it is clear that the combination of the joint report and war games earlier this year off the Korean peninsula have brought reengagement through the so-called Six Party Talks to a standstill.

    Responding to a question on whether North Korea would reenter talks, Jong bluntly responded, "the DPRK's participation will depend on a new attitude from the United States."