By Kevin Kabarsky
North Korea has gained a reputation around the world as an unpredictable and volatile nation. Dictator Kim Jung-un handed down death sentences to 33 of his own people early last month for treason. They were working with South Korean Baptist missionaries.
“I was thinking of turning North Korea into a religious country, and destroying its present government and political system,” South Korean missionary Kim Jung-wook told Fox News.
The death sentences come just weeks after Kim Jung-un sentenced his uncle, and his late father’s long term advisor Jang Song-thaek to death for hatching a conspiracy to oust him from his position of power. Song-thaek’s execution is a clear statement to anybody looking to challenge the rule of Kim Jung-un: traitors beware.
The young dictator continued boasting his nation’s military mite in early March, test firing an intercontinental ballistic missile, nearly striking a Chinese passenger jet carrying 220 people.
“North Korea had not given any warning. It was an unexpected and immoral act that goes against international norms,” South Korean Defense Ministry Spokesman Kim Min-seok said.
This comes along side recent news of an increase in seizures of banned cargo headed for North Korea. Materials including ballistic missile tubing and disassembled MIG fighter jet parts signal an increasing threat looming in the Far East.
Talks of deescalating tensions and limiting the North’s nuclear capabilities recently occurred, but were met with aggressive rebuttal from the North Korean National Defense Commission, saying it in fact wishes to “bolster up its nuclear deterrence for self-defense.”
In later talks The National Defense Commission also threated the United States and South Korea by stating: “The US had better roll back its worn-out hostile policy towards the DPRK (North Korea) as soon as possible and shape a new realistic policy before it is too late.”
With tensions rising there is no foreseeable end to the hostilities on the Korean peninsula, only an ever-present threat to the national security of U.S. allies in South Korea.
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