Cyber v. Missile Attacks

The Guardian reported today that both South Korea and the US have been plagued by cyber-attacks originating out of North Korea starting on Saturday.

'North Korean hackers are suspected of launching a cyber-attack on some of the most important government offices in the US and South Korea in recent days, including the White House, the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and the presidential Blue House in Seoul. The attack took out some of South Korea's most important websites, including those of the Blue House, the defence ministry, the national assembly, Shinhan bank, Korea Exchange bank and the top internet portal Naver. ... John Bumgarner, director of research at the US Cyber Consequences Unit, said: "There's been a lot chatter recently about cyber-war. The North Koreans may have felt they were not getting enough attention launching missiles so they moved into another potential warfare – cyber. It's a form of sabre rattling. But the big question is, did the North Koreans launch it themselves or did someone do it for them?"'

Also on Saturday, North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles (two medium-range and five short-range) capable of striking all of South Korea and much of Japan, over the objection of the UN Security Council. Their apparent moves to test-launch another long-range missile appear to have been smoke, at least for the moment.

'"The members of the Security Council condemned and expressed grave concern at the launches, which constitute a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and pose a threat to regional and international security," council president Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda of Uganda said. North Korea, which was banned from ballistic missile launches in a Security Council resolution passed last month, "must comply fully with its obligations," Rugunda said in an oral statement read to journalists.'

I wonder what part of 'they really don't give a s**t' the Security Council doesn't get. They seem to believe that stating objections will do something to deter North Korea from acting like a spoiled brat. Right now, our direct interests are not much affected by North Korea's missile program. We do have shipping and security interests that could be impacted, but our greater concern is the continued participation in illegal arms sales. So far, we've done nothing but issue empty threats on that front as well. We should be (but maybe aren't) concerned about the risk to sworn allies, but that may or may not fully materialize. Certainly Japan and South Korea are themselves concerned.

For now, the cyber-attacks may be the worst threat North Korea can offer as an immediate response. The arms trading and missile development, however, can not be dismissed.

The UN Security Council Speaks - Big Whoop-Dee-Dee

The UN Security Council has decided that in lieu of actually taking real action against North Korea, it will tell UN members to 'tighten sanctions.' What makes them think the UN members will do anything about this when so many have refused to enact the sanctions already in place? According to a BBC article:

"The Security Council condemns the 5 April 2009 launch by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which is in contravention of Security Council resolution 1718 of 2006," said Claude Heller, the Mexican president of the Security Council.

The statement also ordered the UN Sanctions Committee to begin enforcing both financial sanctions and an existing arms embargo against North Korea.

UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon has welcomed the council's move, saying it sent "a unified message".

But the BBC's Matthew Price at the UN says it remains to be seen how far member states will go to enforce the sanctions.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Washington Will Do Something (or other)!

Update 1: How much do you want to bet that North Korea actually means its threat to take 'strong action' should the UN dare to sanction it.

As predicted here and elsewhere, when N. Korea fired off an ICBM test disguised as a satellite launch over the weekend, we and Japan demanded that the UN security conference do something. Just as predictably, China and Russia flipped us the bird. It really doesn't even matter if this launch was an actual failure, if there really was a satellite in the nose cone, or if Kim Jong Il had succeeded in playing revolutionary songs from space. The UN will do nothing, and the words of these agreements mean nothing without action to back them up. President Obama can give 'strong' speeches all he wants - it changes nothing. If our only response to proliferation is to say that we need to cut our weapons (a laudable goal to be sure, but irrelevant to N. Korea), and that we won't really do anything, than N. Korea has no incentives to change its behavior.

UPDATED: They're Shaking in their Boots!

UPDATE 1: Yup - the UN Security Council will do nada, because two permanent members want it to do nada. Why should we even bother with them?

From Reuters:

'The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in London, said Washington would react if North Korea launched a missile."There are U.N. Security Council resolutions so I would expect we would be talking to the U.N. Security Council about how to respond," the official told reporters.'

I guess that will show the mean old bad man! Because he really pays attention to anything else the UN says, right? I'm not saying we shoot arbitrarily shoot the launch down, but I seriously doubt a verbal spanking from the UN Security Council will cause Kim Jong Il to do anything except laugh. And giving him a 'stern' talking to, isn't likely to change things. Fueling the rocket seems like a pretty good sign of their determination to launch a missile that is no different than an ICBM. S. Korea wants us to shoot it down, but that's also not likely. With a successful missile test, N. Korea will have a valuable item to sell to other countries - say enemies of Israel.