Amid floods and bombs, N Korea feels apocalyptic

Kim Jong-un is pushing the Korean Peninsula – and the world’s patience – to the precipice. North Korea conducted its fifth test of a nuclear weapon this month despite a barrage of warnings from the international community. The United Nations Security Council had already condemned Pyongyang for its intransigence in pursuing atomic weapons. Now the council, with China firmly on side, is contemplating further and more deeply cutting sanctions to try and force North Korea to comply with UN resolutions.

As the world wrangles with this latest nuclear crisis, a flood that devastated the northwest of North Korea has been shown to have caused greater loss of lives and more damage than anticipated. The international community thus faces the added challenge of providing immediate humanitarian assistance to the flood victims, who could number as many as 300,000. It has been mooted that the aid should be delayed to punish the government for the nuclear test, but of course that would greatly worsen the suffering of its civilians.

There are political pundits who believe the North Korean government should be left to its own devices in assisting the flood victims. They perhaps don’t understand that Kim’s regime has little capacity to do so, having devoted all of its resources to developing a nuclear arsenal, or perhaps the outsiders don’t care that those people would suffer far more if they have to wait for their own government to act. The international community really has no option other than speedily deploying assistance.

By its continued testing, North Korea is demonstrating its intent to become a nuclear power, presumably so that it hold the peninsula and the world hostage to its demands. Pyongyang must not be allowed to do so, and it can only be blocked in this objective through the steady and preferably mounting cooperation of Security Council members. To ensure that unity, all of the council members – especially the United States, China and Russia – must see eye to eye on a single aligned position regarding the isolated Asian nation.

Global leaders attending this month’s East Asia Meeting in Vientiane issued a joint statement urging Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes in a manner that can be readily verified and never reversed. They expressed grave concern over the ongoing nuclear and ballistic tests and called for the full implementation of all relevant Security Council resolutions. They further sought the resumption as soon as possible of “meaningful” Six Party Talks (SPT) to press for the Korean Peninsula’s “denuclearisation”. Those six parties all happen to be members of the Asean Regional Forum, a security-oriented coalition that Pyongyang could find helpful in international deliberations, but which it has never even bothered to acknowledge.

The nuclear threat posed by North Korea is gravely serious, hardly the sputtering experiments of a megalomaniac, as some observers would have us believe. If allowed to continue, the atomic-weapons programme would dramatically destabilise global security, already in precarious condition. Yet Kim has already indicated that another test is planned, aimed at improving his chances of reaching overseas targets with nuclear warheads. His overarching ambition is to bring the US to heel and force it to lift sanctions and meet North Korea’s needs with no strings attached.

But, with America about to elect a new president and the transition period lasting two full months, nothing is to be gained for now. Outgoing President Barack Obama has attempting during his two terms in office to accommodate North Korea as much as possible in the interests of peace, but without success. It thus falls to the United Nations to present a unified face to Kim’s arrogance and assert its will.