Stephan Haggard Quoted on North Korea and its Rocket Launch Plans
North Korea rocket launch plans: Little to gain, nothing to lose
12/04/2012
Carol J. Williams,
LA Times
Since North Korea announced plans to launch a rocket this month, the threats of retaliation have been swift and global.
South Korea has called the mission, ostensibly to put a satellite into orbit, “a full-frontal challenge” to regional peace and stability. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the United States is “deeply concerned” and urged NATO allies to press the government in Pyongyang to abandon its provocative plans. Japan has threatened to shoot down any North Korean projectiles over its air space and ordered the deployment of Patriot anti-missile defenses to Okinawa.
Even allies China and Russia have made their opposition clear, with Beijing appealing for its neighbor to “exercise calmness” and Moscow “emphatically” asking the North Korean government to reconsider.
The international community has been on the same page in warning of what’s at stake if new leader Kim Jong Un goes through with the controversial launch and its presumed aim of demonstrating that North Korea may now be able to reach the U.S. mainland with a nuclear warhead.
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Stephan Haggard is the director of the Korea-Pacific Program at IR/PS, where he specializes in the Korean economy. In 2011 Haggard published Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea with co-author Marcus Noland, with whom he had previously authored Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. Dr. Haggard writes the "North Korea: Witness to Transformation" blog at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
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