There are about 23 million North Korean who have gone through years of famine and oppresive government and most of them would not survive a nuke falling on their head. The neighboring countries of South Korea (an ally) and China (a major trading partner) would probably object to the nuclear fallout. North Korea is very homogenous, if you could institute non-violent regime change in North Korea, you wouldn’t have the sort of factionalism you have in Iraq, however if you tried to assassinate the son of their god (Kim Il Sung), they would never forgive you. You have got to figure out a way to bring North Korea into the 21st century and reunite the Koreas (of course, that means that South Korea would have the nuclear bomb but they are our ally aren’t they?).
Are you still talking about North Korea or have we started the Bush bashing?
From post 12 above - 800 tons of TNT is 439 cubic meters, which is a cube 7.6 meters on a side. You could dig a hole that big with a medium sized excavator in a couple of days, under a tent or even inside a building to defeat satellite observation.
I’m not claiming that it was a fake, just that faking that small a nuke doesn’t present difficult problems.
Then France got the bomb, but don’t you grieve; 'Cause they’re on our side (I believe). – T. Lehrer
Little men with tiny dicks will
Swagger about waving sticks.
Little men without a core do
Flail about and push.
Of course I am talking about
Kim Jong Il
And Anheuser-busch.
That is so goy.
The next question I would ask would be do they even have that much TNT?
Heheh Oh yes. The North Korean stockpile of good old fashioned munitions is absolutely staggering. Somebody else said it would be impossible for them to move that much explosive without us noticing, you know… the more and more I think about it the more and more I think we DID notice only didn’t put it together at the time. Remember this?
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/04/26/nkorea.train/index.html
Answers about what happened and why there was such a LARGE explosion were typically vague from North Korea. Digging a canal my ass. You know what we haven’t seen or heard yet? There has been NO detection of radionucleotides, and the Constant Phoenix has been on station looking. I am 99% sure this was a huge dud or a conventional blast fake and I’m leaning to the latter. Imagine this scenario… Kim Jong Ill threatens a test, he expects some few parties to cave and negotiate and instead his biggest Ally ends up being far more displeased than anticipated. His people expect a blast, the rank and file in his military need a test at this point for reasons of morale. He knows if he Does go nuclear he has no real bargaining chips left other than complete disarmament which will mean the end of his regime, so he sets off a fake blast largely for internal consumption, back channel negotiations through China quietly make it known that it might not have been an actual nuclear test, maybe a pre-test and there could be some room still for negotiation. Even if it gets out to the rest of the world that the test was fake, within the tightly controlled borders of North Korea the ‘great leader’ could say that any talk of a fake test was just capitalist running dog propaganda spread in desperation. Or it was a real test and I’m just running with a wild theory. 
How could one not expect a harsh reaction from China? You lost me exactly here. SoI wentbackand read therest of it again.
Robitussin?
Wouldn’t be the first time we failed to put two and two together, but that blast was two and a half years ago. Seems like kind of a stretch to connect them now.
Oh I think he thought China wouldn’t be happy, but I think he also thought that when the chips were down China would still side against the US and Japan. That is turning out to be wrong.
Is it just me, or does Kim Jong-Il look kinda like Yoko Ono?
No. You’re just disoriented.
I think it’s the huge glasses.
Freak, yeah, pacifist…not really. And as flattering as the notion may be, its pretty much gotta be Chuck Norris, don’t you think? Chuck vs. Lil’ Kim, Steel Cage Death Match, HBO Special. Can’t miss.
Thank you. I am glad to know I was not the only person thinking of that song.
It’s amazing how well a lot of his stuff has held up over all these years, isn’t it?
http://www.frivolity.com/teatime/Songs_and_Poems/merry_minuet.html
I was thinking more Kingston Trio…
According to one of the experts in a USA Today piece I read, if it had been a fake, the seismic wave would have had a slower build up than what it did. Nukes have a sharp spike right at the moment of detonation, with very little build up.
Well lookie here, it seems Mr. Kim not only got your letter, he actually sent a response:
Now, my Korean is a little rusty, but I think it translates roughly to: