(Reuters) – North Korea likely is closer to mounting nuclear warheads on its ballistic missiles than generally reported, possibly only one or two years away, the U.S. Congress’s former top expert on the issue has concluded.

Larry Niksch, who tracked North Korea for the nonpartisan U.S. Congressional Research Service for 43 years, concludes in a new paper that the North probably would need as little as one to two years to miniaturize and mount a nuclear warhead atop its medium-range Nodong missile once it has produced enough highly enriched uranium as the warhead’s core fuel.

A North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped missiles would rattle East Asia and present new policy and military challenges to the United States and its allies.

Trying to determine when Pyongyang will reach that threshold has long been a challenge for the U.S. intelligence community. Niksch’s timeline, if correct, puts out a new marker for strategists.

To read the article at Reuters

The shadow of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death hangs over Northeast Asia as leaders work to reassure each other of cooperation to ensure stability in the uncertain transition ahead. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak spoke by telephone with Japan’s Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, whom just a day or two earlier he had been berating for failure to act on the “comfort women” issue. Lee also spoke with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, whose failure to criticize the North’s 2010 sinking of the Cheonan had left a bad aftertaste in South Korea. But these efforts at developing a coherent strategy were taking place against the backdrop of a China and United States that are still developing their own responses – responses that could lead to further polarization in the region.

And it’s this last reality that could cause increasing frustration among other states that also consider themselves great powers – Japan and Russia. Polarization has advanced relentlessly since the end of the Cold War, and in place of Japan’s cherished dream of “returning to Asia” as its leader, Tokyo now looks in the 2010s to have little choice but to become more deeply enmeshed in the U.S. alliance system.  Russia’s dashed expectations are even more strongly felt; Boris Yeltsin’s Atlanticism and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s newly declared “Eurasian Community” have proven to have little substance in the face of increasingly one-sided Russian dependence on China’s divisiveness.

To read the whole article the Diplomat

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea test-fired a short-range missile off its east coast on Dec. 19, the same day it announced the death of leader Kim Jong-Il, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.

The agency quoted an unnamed government official as saying the missile launch was unrelated to the announcement that Kim had died Dec. 17 of a heart attack. “North Korea test-fired a short-range missile this morning … it has been [closely] monitored by our military authorities,” said the official, as quoted by Yonhap.

Seoul’s defense ministry declined to confirm the report. The missile is believed to have a range of about 72 miles (120 kilometers), he said, adding the North was apparently trying to improve the weapon. North Korea has been testing its new KN-06 missile, a modified version of the KN-01 and KN-02 ground-to-ground missiles, Yonhap said.

To read the whole article at Defense News

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) — Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed Monday to keep in close contact with each other as well as with South Korea on how to deal with North Korea following the death of its leader Kim Jong Il over the weekend.

Stressing the need to work closely with other members of six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, Clinton said she plans to reach out to her counterparts in China and Russia to exchange information and discuss how to respond to the situation in North Korea.

Gemba, who is on a three-day visit to the United States through Tuesday at the invitation of Clinton, said they shared the view that Japan, the United States and South Korea should continue closely coordinating efforts to dissuade Pyongyang from pursuing its nuclear ambitions and ensure that North Korea takes concrete denuclearization actions.

To read the whole article at the  Mainishi Daily News

SEOUL — In the wake of leader Kim Jong Il’s death, North Korea is likely to shift for the first time to a collective leadership model, with a small circle of older caretakers advising — and sharing power with — untested heir apparent Kim Jong Eun, Seoul’s intelligence agency said this week.

The move, widely expected by analysts, provides a clue about how North Korea will adjust to perhaps its biggest test in six decades — the absence of an unquestioned authoritarian figure. A power-sharing model would allow Kim Jong Eun, who is in his late 20s, to grow into the job, provided none of the caretakers try to claim the job themselves.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Agency made its forecast Tuesday to parliament, and lawmakers later discussed the briefing with reporters, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said Wednesday. Reuters, citing an unnamed source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing, reported Wednesday that Kim Jong Eun’s support team would include his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, and military leaders.

To read the whole article at  the Washington Post

BEIJING – Chinese and US defense officials opened military talks in Beijing on Dec. 7 after ties were strained by American arms sales to Taiwan and a planned U.S. troop deployment in Australia.

The talks, led by Michele Flournoy, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, and her Chinese counterpart Ma Xiaotian, come a day after China’s President Hu Jintao urged the navy to prepare for military combat.

They are the first ministry-level talks between the two nations since September, when Washington announced a $5.85 billion upgrade to Taiwan’s fleet of F-16 fighter jets, angering Beijing, which considers the island a breakaway province.

China’s official Xinhua news agency said military relations between the two powers, the situations in the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea and the sale of U.S. arms to Taiwan would be on the agenda.

Several Asian nations have competing claims over parts of the South China Sea, a strategically vital area believed to encompass huge oil and gas reserves, while China claims it all.

One-third of global seaborne trade passes through the maritime area and Vietnam and the Philippines have accused Chinese forces of increasing aggression there, ratcheting up tensions in the region.

To read the whole article at  Defense News

SEOUL, Dec. 6 (Yonhap) — South Korea and the United States resumed talks Tuesday on revising a bilateral pact that defines the boundaries of the Asian country’s use of nuclear energy, with Seoul aiming to gain concessions in the area, officials said.

The discussions in Seoul were led by Park Ro-byug, South Korea’s envoy for the talks and a former ambassador to Ukraine, and Robert Einhorn, the U.S. State Department’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control.

The two sides were holding their fourth round of talks on revising the pact, which was signed in 1974 and due to expire in 2014.

The current pact is largely aimed at making sure that South Korea’s use of nuclear power poses no proliferation risks. It bans the country from reprocessing spent fuel because it could yield plutonium, a key ingredient in building atomic bombs.

South Korea wants the U.S. to allow it to use a reprocessing technology known as pyroprocessing, which is considered less conducive to proliferation as it leaves separated plutonium mixed with other elements.

To read the news clip at  Yonhap News 

North Korea said yesterday that uranium enrichment and construction of a nuclear power-plant was “progressing apace”, increasing concerns that the country is working to build an atomic weapon.

North Korea has supplied Syria and Iran with a special kind of steel used to upgrading missiles and building centrifuges for Uranium enrichment, the German newspaper Die Welt reported over the weekend.

The material, called maraging steel, appears on the monitoring list of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime, and its export is prohibited to countries under sanctions such as Iran.

According to the report, the delivery of the steel is part of a wider North Korean expertise package to Syria, which is building a new missile factory near Homs. According to other reports, the factory is partly funded by Iran, and is expected to become operational within 18 months.

Maraging steel would significantly upgrade Syria’s Scud missile capabilities and the amount of damage their warheads could inflict.
The German newspaper, citing unnamed “Western security sources,” also reported that Syria is trying is trying to supply Hezbollah with M-600 missiles, that have a range of up to 300 kilometers. These would be equipped with warheads that were upgraded using maraging steel.

To read the whole news clip at the  Haareta.com

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea — South Korean attack helicopters screamed through the skies above the Koreas’ disputed Yellow Sea waters Wednesday in a display of power exactly a year after North Korea launched a deadly artillery attack on a front-line island.

Residents of Yeonpyeong Island laid flowers at statues to commemorate the four South Koreans killed in the barrage and sent aloft a balloon carrying a banner with their portraits. On the mainland, Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik joined families of the victims at the National Cemetery south of the capital for a solemn tribute on a cold, windy day.

Wednesday’s drills involving aircraft, rocket launchers and artillery guns took place off Baengnyeong Island, another front-line territory near the disputed maritime border, and were meant to send a strong message to North Korean rivals stationed within sight just miles (kilometers) away.

The exercises represent far greater firepower than the South Korean military mounted last year in response to the artillery shells showered on military garrisons and fishing villages on nearby Yeonpyeong, Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Lee Bung-woo said.

To read the whole article at  The Washington Post