A very good article giving a detailed background of the N. Korean nuclear bomb.
Thanks to Steven Rix for posting it first.
By Bertil Lintner
Asia Times
"North Korea's "Great Leader", Kim Il-sung, was obsessed with nuclear weapons even before the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed on September 9, 1948. At the end of World War II, thousands of Korean workers were repatriated from Japan, and ended up in the northern, then Soviet-occupied, part of the Korean peninsula. Many of them had been working in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and had been there when American nuclear bombs fell on those cities in August 1945. They brought with them stories of the ultimate "doomsday" weapon, which the Americans possessed, and had used with such devastating outcomes.
The fear of nuclear weapons grew even stronger during the Korean War, when the United States contemplated launching nuclear strikes against the North. On December 9, 1950, the commander of the US forces, General Douglas MacArthur, even submitted a list of targets for twenty-six atomic bombs to halt the advance of the North Korean army and its Chinese allies.
In more recent years, there is also another, more acute reason why North Korea believes it must be armed with nuclear weapons: the fear of becoming the next Iraq. In the October 3 statement announcing the plan to test a nuclear bomb, the North Korean foreign ministry declared: "A people without a reliable war deterrent are bound to meet a tragic death and the sovereignty of their country is bound to be wantonly infringed upon. This is a bitter lesson taught by the bloodshed resulting from the law of the jungle in different parts of the world." On January 29, 2002, US President George W Bush lumped Iraq, Iran and North Korea in an "axis of evil" and a threat to American security. Shortly afterwards, preparations for the invasion of Iraq began as part of Bush's ongoing "war on terror"."
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