U.S. Enabling North Korea, So South Korea Wants Nuclear Weapons - Gatestone Institute - 19.01.23
- Michael Julien
- Jan 19, 2023
- 4 min read
by Gordon G. Chang.
We do not have to wonder if Beijing in fact supports North Korea's weapons programs. China for decades has allowed the North to use Chinese banks to handle proceeds from criminal activities and activities in violation of U.N. sanctions.
Such designations enforcing U.S. money-laundering laws would put these state banks out of business everywhere outside China.
If these banks were to fail, so would China's state-dominated banking system. The failure of the banking system would undoubtedly mean the end of the Chinese economy and financial system. The end of the Communist Party's political system could not be far behind.
Whatever the effects of designations, the United States needs to enforce its laws. America did not allow Pablo Escobar to run criminal cash through New York, so why does America allow China to do that for North Korea?
"The money Kim Jong Un obtains by fraud, computer hacking, and ransomware and which he uses to build bombs to threaten us is being laundered through our banks. We're giving Xi Jinping and Kim de facto immunity to keep right on doing it." — Joshua Stanton, expert on North Korean sanctions, to Gatestone.
No wonder South Korea's Yoon is not particularly impressed with America.
South Korea is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. If Seoul were to develop nuclear weapons, it would have to withdraw.
Perhaps South Korea should withdraw. China, also a signatory, has been freely proliferating nuclear weapons technology to dangerous states, such as Pakistan and Iran, in addition to North Korea, and the United States has done little, sometimes nothing. At the same time, Washington repeatedly stopped South Korea and Taiwan from building nukes.
Yoon did the world a favor by exposing the folly of America's non-proliferation policy. Washington needs to stop being afraid of Beijing and start defending allies such as South Korea -- and itself.
South Korea's president has just told the world that he no longer has confidence in the United States.
"It's possible that the problem gets worse and our country will introduce tactical nuclear weapons or build them on our own," said President Yoon Suk Yeol on January 11, at a joint briefing by his country's defense and foreign ministries. "If that's the case, we can have our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly, given our scientific and technological capabilities."
America has a treaty obligation to defend the Republic of Korea, as South Korea is formally known, and Washington has extended its "nuclear umbrella" to protect it. In other words, the U.S. has pledged it will, if necessary, launch its most destructive weapons at those attacking South Korea. For Yoon to announce that his government might have to arm itself with nukes, therefore, is to in effect announce that he does not trust Washington to honor its word.
Not trust America? That is something America's friends may say in private — NATO allies all the time muttered that in private during the Cold War, for instance — but it is not something America's friends officially say in public, which is what the pro-American Yoon just did.
And Yoon has reason to be distrustful. As David Maxwell of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone, "Today, even a blind man can read the tea leaves and know that [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong Un will not denuclearize despite the fact that his policies have been an abject failure."
One of the most destitute states in the world has consistently gotten the better of the most powerful nation in history. American presidents from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden have completely failed to stop the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) from building nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The failure to stop North Korea has consequences. The North Koreans, for instance, at any time they want, can turn South Korea into a radioactive slab. Furthermore, the North's Hwasong-17 can reach any part of the United States, and the missile will be able to land a nuclear warhead soon, if it cannot do so already.
There are many reasons for this American failure, but the most important is that Washington had for decades placed more importance in integrating China's Communist Party into the international system than in disarming North Korea. President George W. Bush, for example, put Beijing at the center of the world's efforts to defang Pyongyang by allowing it to run the ill-fated Six-Party Talks, from 2003 to 2009.
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Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.
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South Korea's president has just told the world that he no longer has confidence in the United States. "It's possible that the problem gets worse and our country will introduce tactical nuclear weapons or build them on our own," said President Yoon Suk Yeol (pictured) on January 11. (Photo by Jeon Heon-Kyun - Pool/Getty Images)
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