Defying international pressure to give up its nuclear ambitions, North Korea accused the US yesterday of beefing up its military around the Korean Peninsula in an attempt "to crush us to death."
The North's communist regime was reacting after US officials in Washington said Monday that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is considering options including sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off the Korean Peninsula and adding bombers in Guam.
The move is intended as a signal to Pyongyang that the US remains capable of blunting an attack in Korea despite its focus on possible war in Iraq, the officials said.
The US has 37,000 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
"In an attempt to crush us to death, the US military is scheming to beef up forces in Japan and South Korea," said North Korea's Central Radio, monitored by South Korea Yonhap news agency.
In a report by its state-run KCNA news agency, North Korea also said its people are ready to sacrifice for their leader and socialism "no matter how the world may change."
North Korea's media routinely churn out anti-US invective but it has become more frequent and intense since the nuclear dispute erupted in October when Pyongyang admitted having a nuclear weapons program.
"The Korean people have a particular attachment to the socialist system chosen and built by themselves in their own way," KCNA said in a report, also monitored by Yonhap.
"This unity means the unity of the people in the faith that they are ready to share the destiny with leader Kim Jong-il in difficulties and ordeals and their unity in the will to always remain true to their pledge made to him no matter how the world may change," it said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said US President George W. Bush still believes the North Korean standoff can be resolved peacefully.
Rumsfeld met Monday at the Pentagon with Chyung Dai-chul, a special envoy for South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, who takes office on Feb. 25.
Rumsfeld and Chyung discussed the future of the US-South Korean military alliance and the need for updating and modernizing it, according to a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lieutenant Commander Jeff Davis.
At the UN, Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday appealed for urgent funds to avert "a major humanitarian crisis" in North Korea and create better conditions to peacefully resolve the nuclear standoff.
The impoverished North has been dependent on outside aid since 1995 to help feed its 22 million people. More than 2 million North Koreans are believed to have died of hunger or hunger-related diseases in the late 1990s.
While trying to resolve the North's nuclear dispute through diplomacy, the US wants to bring the issue before the UN Security Council, which could eventually consider sanctions against Pyongyang.
In Vienna, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that its 35-nation board of governors will meet Feb. 12 to discuss the North's nuclear standoff. The meeting could refer the dispute to the UN Security Council.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS