In the last 24 hours alone, we have witnessed:
- Indictments of Manafort and Gates,
- admission of guilt by Papadopoulus,
- news that Manafort had at least 3 US passports, millions of dollars and burner phones and could be a flight risk,
- the Trump White House in turmoil with Donnie starting to fume over Jared and his “bad advice,”
- the terrorist truck devastation in NY City,
- Senate hearings on Russian influence over Google, Facebook and Twitter ads and targeting,
- a further delay in consideration of a massive GOP Tax bill that hardly any party members have actually seen.
With all of this, amazing as it may seem, the world’s media seems to have given very scant mention to what might be a massive crippling of North Korea’s drive to develop nuclear weapons and an intercontinental ballistic missile system:
NORTH Korea has been hit by tragedy after 200 nuclear workers died in an accident at despot Kim Jong-un's main testing facility
North Korea’s Punggye-ri facility has suffered a devastating collapse, leaving around 200 people dead.
Around 100 people were killed when when an unfinished tunnel collapsed at Kim Jong-un's main nuclear testing site.
Another 100 people subsequently died while attempting to rescue the first group of entombed workers.
Foreign experts had warned a collapse was likely, highlighting the danger of a cloud of radioactive fallout escaping from the site and spreading across "an entire hemisphere".
(snip)
Punggye-ri was the site of North Korea’s sixth-ever nuclear test on September 3. They tested a huge 100-kiloton explosive which was around seven times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WW2.
This test is blieved to have badly destabalised the mountainside-based facility.
Speculation is now growing the tragedy could bring a halt to Kim Jong-un's nuclear ambitions, which he hoped would see the hermit nation rival the capabilities of America.
As noted, there has been a startling lack of coverage and focus on this incident in the world’s media given its clear importance. Trump is headed to Asia shortly and will be meeting with leaders of numerous democratic countries as well as with China. Just what this will mean to Donnie’s clear efforts to goad the North Koreans into some sort of military action that might justify retaliation is not clear. Will this undercut his efforts to paint NK as a massive threat?
As noted in the article it seems possible this could cripple or halt North Korea’s drive for nuclear parity and an ability to threaten other nations as a means of preserving itself.
This is a HUGE development, not just because of the potential delays, but also because of what seems to be a very real threat that the mountain itself could collapse, and in so doing, release clouds of highly radioactive material into the atmosphere, creating a threat to itself and its neighbors including China, South Korea, parts of Eastern Russia and Japan. The political and economic fallout alone could be massive.
I defer to experts on this matter, but it is my sense that King Jong-Un had put most of his eggs into this one facility to test nuclear weapons. He doesn’t have backups. But it is not clear if his efforts are far enough along as of now that he doesn’t need the mountain facility as he has until now.
I have seen some analysis that there are limited geological structures that can be used for such testing and in a relatively small country like North Korea this may be the one optimum site. It also seems likely that the tunnel collapse and damage to the entire mountain facility would be a huge setback to testing overall and possibly to North Korea’s ability to produce nuclear weapons.
But the bottom line here is the amazing reality that an event of this importance and magnitude occurs and the world is so tangled up in politics, terrorism.