bivers13's Weblog

let’s just drift for hours

hunchie13 — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:55:17 +0000

Excel File 3

Comment #3

hunchie13 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:36:41 +0000

I found one of my comment’s:

http://allemill.wordpress.com/homepage/

Comment #2

hunchie13 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:34:27 +0000

As i have not been able to encounter my other posts, here is another I just made:

http://whitetigress.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/all-things-must-end/#comment-10

Comment #1

hunchie13 — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:27:15 +0000

Comment on imakeyearbooks’ blog

http://imakeyearbooks.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/reaction-iii/

Closing Comments

hunchie13 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:19:10 +0000

Writing this blog for Q-class really expanded my knowledge. In order to write my blog I used primarily archives about when North Korea first started its nuclear program in order to get a sense of why it was started, and current articles from The New York Times because they seemed to stay current with the affairs in North Korea. After awhile I felt that I was turning into Helene Cooper who writes for The New York Times because she is the one that writes an article about North Korea just about every single time that something happens over there.

I realize now that there are more ways than one in which we can handle the problem in North Korea. Although not many people are allowed into the nation, the United States can still use diplomacy to get what it (and the other nations who have interests in North Korea) wants. As the Q-class blogging comes to an end, I think that it would be fun to continue updating this from time to time. I will definitely stay current by reading the newspaper, however, the goal of every paper that I read will no longer be to find the words “north” and “korea” in the same sentence. My vote, which will be cast next week, may reflect who I think will do a better job with handling the problems in North Korea. All things considered this was a great project in which I learned a lot more than I would have had I just written a paper about North Korea’s nuclear program.

Lack of News

hunchie13 — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:11:31 +0000

You know what they say: “No news is good news”. Nothing has been written about North Korea over the past week or two, which gives me a little hope that North Korea is going to comply with the agreements that were outlined by the United States upon having taken them off of the terror list. If North Korea does fully disarm its nuclear facilities, then I think that there will be much more peace in Southeast Asia and the entire world. With one less nation to be worrying about whether or not it is going to hit the red “Fire” button, the world can breathe a little more easily. I also feel that North Korea will not spread its nuclear intelligence to other nations unless it wants to be punished through heavier sanctions. Hopefully, we will not be hearing anything out of North Korea for awhile.

Food Shortage Takes Origin in Nuclear Program

hunchie13 — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:47:02 +0000

In North Korea it appears that the nation’s large nuclear program may have finally brought problems to its citizens. It is not something science fiction, like nuclear mutations, but instead it is a food shortage. Now, you have to be thinking: what does food have to do with North Korea’s nuclear program? Well, since North Korea has been putting a large amount of its gross domestic product back into its nuclear and military program, it has neglected the most essential need of its people: food. This is one of the problems that seem to continually affect developing countries and countries at war. When a developing country is allocating money, they generally initially put it into their military to protect the country. However, this spending habit will keep the nation’s families without food. In the situation of a country at war, like Russia during the Cold War, the nation continually places large percentages of its GDP into the military. Infrastructure slowly deteriorates because they are not “spending for the future”. Soon enough people are without food.

In North Korea this is exactly what happened. Compounding this with “the devastating floods in 2006 and 2007” has created “a very chronic food shortage” in which “two-thirds of the country’s 23 million people have a poor diet” (MacFarquhar A10). This was said in a report found in the New York Times on October 24, 2008. MacFarquhar also reported that “the military and elite are not suffering from cutbacks”. This exemplifies the fact that North Korea is putting too much money into the military and nuclear programs. This small, closed country must be asking itself if it should start placing more money into human rights and needs instead of into the military and nuclear programs.

Works Cited

Macfarquhar, Neil. “North Korea Faces Worst Food Crisis in Decade, U.N. Says.” New York Times 24 Oct. 2008: A10.

Have We Changed

hunchie13 — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:54:42 +0000

For the past decade and a half the world has been struggling with North Korea, desperately trying to figure out what is going on with this closed off nation’s nuclear program. Evidence has been hidden, and inspectors have been banned, such that over fifteen years of investigations have left the world about where it started, ignorant of what North Korea is actually doing. On a few occasions, such as the nuclear test that was detected by some seismographers, or the missiles that have flown over Japan, the world had received a glimpse as to what is happening in there. The United States with all its military and political leverage has been unable to force North Korea to give it some access into the nation or information about its program. This could simply be due to the fact that the United States has used bad politics. In 1994 there were two views of North Korea, the liberal view and the conservative view. The liberal view saw the solution to the problem in the United Nations, whereas the conservative view saw the solution in isolating North Korea and cutting off relations to it. Just as the United States is doing today, it did in the past. It established the following policy towards North Korea: “Obsessive insistence that Pyongyang come clean on whatever reprocessing it might have done; no tangible benefits until this was done; and a tight hold on intelligence information, so that the technical nature of the problem could not be readily analyzed by the rest of us” (Cummings). This policy has caused North Korea to always resist our requests. It has also allowed North Korea to have some leverage in the political arena. North Korea does this by first asking for something, such as an economic stimulator, and then it will comply with the demands of the United States, United Nations, or whatever other entity with which it is arguing. Therefore, the pattern has continued the past fifteen years: North Korea starts nuclear program, some overseeing entity demands it stops, North Korea asks for something in return, the overseer generally complies, and North Korea stops operations with a high likelihood of starting again. We need to break this pattern.

Works Cited

Cummings, Bruce. “A monstrous idea.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Sept.-Oct. 1994. Sept.-Oct. 1994. 12 Oct. 2008 .

The Situation in North Korea: December 1991

hunchie13 — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:30:16 +0000

In December of 1991 the United Nations, the United States, and South Korea were already starting to become suspicious of a nuclear proliferation plan in North Korea. In North Korea there were a few plants that were making tons of nuclear waste a year. This would be perfectly fine had the North Koreans not constructed “a ‘Purex’ (plutonium-uranium extraction) facility [which a] U.S. official said that the suspected facility would be large enough to handle several hundred tons of spent fuel annually” (Albright and Hibbs). The United States had discovered this facility in 1989 through satellite photographs, but it was not worried about them until thermal tests showed “that North Korea is now operating its small, unsafeguarded reactor nearly at full power—at about 20 or 30 megawatts”. This reactor could have potentially produced enough weapons grade plutonium for one weapon per year. Another reactor was also being built at this time that could produce about three to ten times that much. Furthering the worry and suspicion of the nuclear weapon capabilities of North Korea was the fact that they banned International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials from inspecting the facilities in Yongbyon. Lack of knowledge fed the worries of these entities of 1991 just as the same countries and groups are worried about the lack of knowledge that North Korea is allowing them to have today.

South Korea Ignores Ultimatum

hunchie13 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:16:13 +0000

As North Korea has begun to restart its nuclear program in the north of the peninsula, its neighbor to the South does not appear to be too concerned. In a recent Reuters report, South Korea was portrayed as being very complacent on the matter. Most nations upon learning that their neighbors whose borders are the same as theirs will become upset when something like this begins to develop. So why is it that South Korea is not too worried about a supposed “ultimatum” that was issued by North Korea? Is it that the South Koreans have had to deal with this threat so many times in the past that now, they simply disregard it as something of a leverage gainer for North Korea; are they worried that North Korea might actually attack them, so they are unwilling to say anything against them; or are they only concerned about maintaining the economic stability that currently exists between the two nations, and they do not want to do anything that might hinder that? All of these are possibilities to the reason why South Korea appears unconcerned about the threat of its only contiguous neighbors, while the rest of the world is doing what it can to stop North Korea.

South Korea is still one of the members in all of the talks that occur with North Korea discussing further disarmament. Therefore, the nation is influencing what actions are being taken against North Korea, such as sanctions. I think that South Korea does not want to hinder any of the economic ties that it currently has with North Korea. Also, I think that South Korea is frankly a little nervous about what is going on with their neighbors to the north, and it does not was to hinder the fragile relationship with them. All in all South Korea is not ignoring this ultimatum because it does not think it is true, but because it is worried about what could happen if it does start acting too much on the ultimatum.