North Korea Warns Diplomats It Can’t Guarantee Their Safety in War, Missiles Moved East, Missile Defenses to Guam, People of Seoul Still Largely Unconcerned

North Korea has told the foreign ministries of
both Russia and the United Kingdom that it can
no longer guarantee the safety of diplomats stationed in
Pyongyang, part of a battery of war rhetoric coming from the
totalitarian country in the last several weeks.
Nevertheless, neither Russia nor the UK have any immediate plans to
evacuate their embassies, although David Cameron, the British prime
minister, said yesterday he was
“very concerned” by North Korean missiles, which he suggested
could make it to the United States or Europe, based apparently on
what the North Korean government says.  

South Korea says the North is moving medium-range missiles

to the Pacific shore of the country, and the United States

announced plans to send a missile defense system to Guam. The
White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said today it would

not be a surprise if North Korea were to conduct new missile
tests. The Obama Administration may even be
looking at a strengthening of U.S.-China relations because of
the mutual hassle North Korea presents. The BBC, meanwhile,

reports that in Seoul, the South Korean capital, residents
remain unimpressed by the North Korean threat, citing “security
fatigue” and a prevailing opinion that North Korean saber rattling
is intended to shore up bargaining chips in future negotiations for
food or fuel.

While the West’s response has so far been cautiously muted, the
non-state actor Anonymous says
it’s been hacking the North Korean government’s social networks
(it has several), and in fact
posted the picture to the right to the government’s official
flickr account. No response as yet from the regime to those
actions.

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North Korea Missile Plan Targets Washington, Los Angeles, Austin and Hawaii

The United States sent two
nuclear-capable B-2 bombers to the Korean Peninsula
yesterday in response to North Korea shutting down the military
hotline with South Korea on
Wednesday. Today, North Korea responded
by announcing it was preparing a missile strike plan against the
United States. A photo (at right)
released by the North Korean newspaper Rodang
 appears to identify Washington, DC, California, Austin, Texas
and Hawaii as targets. Leon Panetta, then the U.S. Secretary of
Defense, said
last April that America was “within an inch of war” with North
Korea and had to be careful about what it says and does that might
escalate the situation. Tensions have been rising since North
Korea’s latest round of missile tests began
last December. Earlier this month the totalitarian regime
declared the Korean War armistice signed nearly sixty years ago

null and void, something it had most recently done in 2009, and
six times since 1994.

The White House, for its part, responded today by saying the
U.S.
would not be intimidated and can defend itself and its allies.
However, as Ron Paul noted
earlier this week, some U.S. actions, like the public military
exercises and the push at the UN for new sanctions are helping
exacerbate the situation. North Korea has just one real ally on the
planet, China, and even that is barely so. Its reactions to tension
over the last few months have been to tell North Korea, or North
Korea and South Korea, as the case may be, to
simmer down. Russia’s foreign minister, meanwhile, warned today
of a “vicious circle” that could
spiral out of control. That’s highly unlikely. Instead, North
Korea’s saber-rattling, and the Western response to it, fulfills
the need Kim Jong Un has for attention and for an external enemy to
use as a scapegoat for the self-inflicted decades-long tragedy that
is North Korean society.

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Chinese National Given 5 Years In Jail For Stealing Secret Missile Guidance Data

A federal court has sentenced a Chinese citizen to more than five years in prison for taking thousands of files about a secret military project to China, Peter Finn of The Washington Post reports. The project involves an advanced version of a tiny device that is "designed to allow drones, missiles and rockets to hit targets without satellite guidance." The device, called a disk resonator gyroscope, was being secretly developed for the U.S. military by a small company and L-3 Communications. It "can navigate, control and position missiles, aircraft, drones, bombs, lasers and targets very accurately,” David Smukowski, president of Sensors in Motion, the small company in Bellvue, Wash., told the Post. On Monday a court sentenced Sixing Liu, who worked at L-3’s space and navigation division, to five years and 10 months for exporting defense data without permission plus separate counts of possessing stolen trade secrets and lying to authorities. Prosecutors said Liu, 50, twice told his supervisor he was going on vacation to Chicago when he actually went to China to speak at a technology conference organized by the Chinese government and Chinese universities. “We believe Sixing Liu was a serial thief,” Assistant U.S. Attorney L. Judson Welle said, noting that Liu also took information on other defense systems. Finn notes that military data theft by China is a huge problem as unsealed court documents indicate that "nearly 100 individual or corporate defendants have been charged by the Justice Department with stealing trade secrets or classified information for Chinese entities or exporting military or dual-use technology to China" in the past four years. “These schemes represent a threat to our national security," John Carlin, acting assistant attorney general for national security, told the Post. "The intelligence community has assessed China to be among the most aggressive collectors of sensitive U.S. information and technologies and our criminal prosecutions across the country reflect that assessment.” Last week a U.S. defense contractor in Hawaii was charged with passing classified information about nuclear weapons and ballistic missile systems to his Chinese girlfriend.SEE ALSO:&US Contractor Charged With Passing Nuclear Secrets To A Chinese Woman SEE ALSO:&The Military & Defense Facebook page Please follow Military & Defense on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

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