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"North Korea can have a future or it can have such (nuclear) weapons. But it cannot have both." (Chr. Hill, CNN Int'l, 10.7)

Int'l news agencies/-papers are expecting for the coming days - many are saying TOMORROW - a test of a nuclear bomb by/in the D.P.R.K.

(Of course especially) the S.K. "left" is downplaying this threat. For example the "left-liberal" newspaper Hankyoreh wrote before y'day: "Despite the North’s recent announcement that it would go ahead with a nuclear test, there are no signs that North Korea is preparing for one. Indeed, experts believe a test is not imminent..." although even Chinese government related officials said that "The dicision for the test is alraedy made"(Li Dunqiu, Research Center of the State Council, 10.4).

I'm really worrying that, even after NK accomplished the test, nobody in SK will really care about it..

Tomorrow I'll write more about my opinion about this issue(aeh~ I mean if it's necessary - if you're still alive..).

U.S. readies options on North Korea  (IHT/NYT, 10.6)

Amid signs Friday that North Korea was gearing up for a nuclear test, the Bush administration was developing an extensive list of possible new sanctions against Pyongyang, senior officials said.

The measures under consideration include renewing efforts that have been unsuccessful in the past - persuading South Korea and China to cut off energy supplies and trade - and potentially confrontational steps that include intercepting and inspecting sea shipments into and out of the country.

Many of the sanctions have been considered before, as part of a long- running argument within the Bush administration over the best way to deal with North Korea. After a series of emergency meetings, including one on Tuesday at the White House, officials on each side of that debate said a nuclear test would end the argument about whether the United States should emphasize rewards or penalties.

"If the test happens, all the arguments are over," said one senior official in the midst of the debate. "We'll end up going to full-scale sanctions; the only debate is what 'full-scale' means."

On Wednesday night, Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and a leading proponent of new creative diplomatic offers to North Korea, announced that "we are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea."

Bush administration officials concede that the United States has been living with a nuclear North Korea for years. But the fact that North Korea has not yet tested its weapons has created enough diplomatic ambiguity so that President George W. Bush has not had to confront how he would enforce his own declaration in 2003 that he would never tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea.

U.S. intelligence agencies have long declared that North Korea has produced the fuel for nuclear weapons, but in recent days, their briefings have also included an assessment based on the expectation that North Korea is likely to make good on its threat to conduct an underground test.

The briefings include the important caveat that such assessments are based more on an evaluation of the political environment and North Korean strategy than on physical evidence that a test is imminent. The briefings were described by several government officials, who said they did not forecast a specific timetable for a test.

The question of sanctions is an enormously sensitive one, administration officials said, and they would not describe the options publicly because no decisions had been made. The officials who did discuss them, however, came from both camps in the administration, and they appeared unified in their effort to send a warning to North Korea that a test would galvanize Washington into actions that some administration hawks have been proposing for years.

Bush, several officials said, planned to call President Hu Jintao of China in coming days to urge him to send an emissary to North Korea to deliver a sharp warning about the consequences of a test.

Frederick Jones, a National Security Council spokesman, would say only: "Our objective is to try to use our influence, and the influence of others, to convince the North Koreans that they should not test a nuclear device."

But U.S. officials are clearly concerned that the appeal to Beijing will not prove sufficient.

"The last time the Chinese did this, after the missile tests" that North Korea conducted in early July, "their delegation was left cooling their heels for days," one senior official said. Others cautioned that China had always shied away from the ultimate sanction, cutting off oil to North Korea, for fear that it could trigger an economic or political collapse that would result in chaos along the long Chinese-North Korean border.

The threatened test comes as the administration is already trying to persuade the UN Security Council to make good on its threat to impose sanctions against Iran for defying a call for it to suspend uranium enrichment.

Some U.S. officials are concerned that adding North Korea to the list of countries the United States wants punished could complicate those efforts and fracture a fragile coalition.

The potential sanctions against North Korea are described in a series of classified options papers that have been circulating among senior administration officials.

The proposed sanctions, which are graduated, begin with a significant tightening on economic transactions - a process that began last year with action against a small bank in Macao that is believed to have handled transactions for Kim Jong Il and other North Korean leaders, and that U.S. investigators say was involved in money laundering.

A more escalated measure would involve inspection of all shipping, using a provision of a council resolution passed after the missile tests in July that allows nations to block missile or missile-related transactions.

Such interceptions have been practiced under the administration's Proliferation Security Initiative, a program begun to persuade scores of nations to cooperate in stopping illicit weapons shipments.

But the reality is that North Korea receives most of its goods over the Chinese and Russian borders. Kurt Campbell, a former Defense Department official who specializes in Asia, said, "Without leveraging the Chinese to put firm pressure on, very little can be accomplished by the U.S. through sanctions."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/06/news/nuke.php