URR here.
The North Korean People's Army this past Friday fired a number of rockets from Wonsan onto an uninhabited island in the East Sea. None other than Kim Jong-un was in attendance. The rockets are long-range weapons, and appear to be copies of the Chinese SY-300. The rockets successfully impacted targets some 150km distant.
The launcher truck is almost certainly the same vehicle from the PLA PR-50 Sandstorm 122mm MRL. This is not the first instance of China openly flouting UNSCR 1718, which forbids the sale of heavy weapons to the DPRK. In 2012, Chinese-manufacture TELs were spotted hauling Kn-08 MRBMs, though the PRC claimed the vehicles had been sold for commercial use. In this case, however, the missile itself is all but identical to the SY-300 rocket, a weapon built by China for export.
What is the portent for NKPA capability? The new system, which the North Koreans call Rodong Sinum, is a GPS/INS guided, long range, nuclear-capable weapon. What does that mean for Seoul? Pohang? Widespread fielding of this capability would represent a daunting challenge, even with the introduction of THAAD.
What does this portend for The People's Republic of China? Nothing new. I have said for many years that the DPRK is what it is, and does what it does, because the PRC allows and encourages it. Rhetoric that somehow China is angry at DPRK, or that the PRC has "turned a corner" regarding sanctions of the Hermit Kingdom, is so much theater for the consumption of the inept and gullible US Foreign Policy cabal, who eats such nonsense up with a spoon. The PRC understands well that this Administration is afraid of almost all confrontation, lacking the will and soon, the means to do so, and will employ fancifully wishful thinking in place of competent national strategy and effective diplomacy. It isn't difficult to fool those who all but beg to be hoodwinked. China also realizes that the badly-stretched US Navy would be all but powerless to halt Chinese maritime aggression if it were embroiled in a crisis on the Korean peninsula.
While the policy wonks who frequent the ranks of China analysis continue to parrot the message that the PRC can be a US ally in containing North Korea, it would be advisable to remember incidents like Friday's launch, and the reception SECSTATE got from China when showing evidence of DPRK culpability in the sinking of Cheonan, and the abject refusal to enforce UNSCR 1718 or 1874 or any that come after, and all the other transgressions by DPRK that went unchecked, irrespective of China's public statements of reassurance or votes in the UN.
Acta, non verba.
Maybe ROk takes another look at Iron Dome?
Posted by: Bill | 03/08/2016 at 03:04 PM