North Korea's gambit: Destabilizing the Asia-Pacific region

The United Nations' powerful 15-member Security Council, after a closed-door meeting last Wednesday, condemned unanimously in the harshest terms, the highly destabilizing, belligerent provocative unilateral act of North Korea, in unleashing, what Pyongyang claimed, as its highly successful Hydrogen Bomb Test. Not every expert on nuclear weapons agrees that it was really an authentic hydrogen bomb. Some pundits claim that it was just a psy-war propaganda of a pariah in geopolitics. But whether it was nothing but a reckless act of outlandish braggadocio, or a serious political statement being issued with mindless arrogance by a defiant despot, such act should cause grave concerns among the nations in the Asia-Pacific basin.

Through its state-controlled news agency, the KCNA, North Korea's defiant leader, Kim Jong Un, claimed, without batting an eyelash, that what Pyongyang has achieved "would make the whole world look up to our strong nuclear country." The young and aggressive NoKor leader, in a press statement, declared that "The army and the people of North Korea will steadily escalate its nuclear build-up, both in quality and in quantity, in order to serve as a deterrence of justice to reliably guarantee the future of the revolutionary cause." Big words from a poor country. Even as we take this kind of loose talk with much grain of salt, we should recall that North Korea is noted for a historic pattern of belligerent acts.

History tells us that major nuclear detonations were made by this defiant state in 2006, 2009, and 2013 respectively. In 2013, it was a very provocative and aggressive plutonium test that defied global public opinion. This highly-militarized state of about 25 million North Koreans has no less than 1.2 million active heavily armed warriors and no less than 7.7 million reserved forces. The aggressive and highly provocative nuclear testings being done by Pyongyang has never been deterred by all kinds of international sanctions, including travel ban, trade and goods embargoes, and freezing of foreign assets. And so, we do not think that NoKor will listen to the Security Council.

Even North Korea's only ally, the Peoples' Republic of China, has joined Russia, the United States, and all NATO-aligned countries in a unanimous condemnation of North Korea's nuclear adventurism. Thus, we opine that even if ASEAN and APEC are neither political organizations nor military alliances, we believe that it has become imperative for all peace-loving countries in our region to make a strong and categorical statement against such a unilateral act of provocation and destabilization. It is our firm view that Pyongyang's adventurism constitutes a serious threat to the balance of powers in Asia-pacific, and poses a grave and imminent danger to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

Pyongyang's arrogant posturing adds another trouble and pervasive discord in contemporary geopolitics. The world today is being threatened by collateral damages arising from the civil war in Syria, which, together with troubles in Ukraine, causes exodus of migrants to Europe. The conflicts between Shite-led Iran (which is aligned with Russia) and the Sunni-led Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (which is highly affiliated with the USA), plus the never-ending conflicts between Israel and Palestine, all these are too much for the whole world to contain all at the same time.

Whenever there are such troubles in the world, especially with the current endemic magnitude and far-reaching scope, it is always the poor, the powerless, and the most vulnerable sectors who shall stand to suffer. Migrant workers will stand to be dislocated and may be caught in crossfires, thereby endangering millions of lives and livelihoods. The children and the students, pupils and even the out-of-school youths shall be farther marginalized. Family members stand to be separated from each other, communities shall be dispersed, thereby destroying the basic foundation of human societies. Thus, we strongly submit that the whole global community should stop North Korea from further destabilizing the region and the world. Peace is what matters most this time, and all the time.

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