Cheat Seeking Missiles: Japan, USSR Part Of NoKo's 50-Year Nuke Search

During the Korean War, NoKo leaders, afraid the US would use nukes on them, asked the Russians for nuclear-tipped missiles. The Russians deferred, starting the NoKo nuke quest.

In the 50 years that followed, there was little to nothing indigenous about NoKo's nuclear effort despite propaganda that declared the bomb to be 100% homegrown. Propaganda ... interesting, then, that a very clear window into the NoKoNuke has been offered by a former chief of that country's nuclear propaganda forces, Kim Dae Ho, right.

Kimo's story, told in today's International Herald Tribune, reveals:

The two fathers of NoKo's bomb were both educated in Japan.
One of the two, Lee Sung Ki, was kidnapped by NoKo soldiers at the outbreak of the Korean War.
About 100 NoKo scientists were trained at the USSR's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna. "I would not single one out as an outstanding scientist," the director of the Institute said to the IHT.

As the photo shows, Kim has a book out on the subject, with the typically Asian title, "Azaleas Do Not Bloom in the Mountains of Yongbyon."

Kim was a reluctant refugee. Sent to Beijing on business in 1994, he wrote his wife that he was troubled by the greater freedoms the Chinese had (!). NoKo intelligence intercepted the letter, Kim was tipped off, and that was that. He sought asylum in the SoKo embassy, leaving a wife and two daughters behind.

A small tragedy, perhaps, but the sort that is all too common with North Korea. The country might not have enough brainpower to assemble much of a nuclear team, but it has been entirely content to let its people starve so that it might pursue Socialist perfection and nuclear armaments.

Before fleeing, Kim had a position that gave him an insider's view of the NoKo nuke program:

Kim's work in the nuclear program over a period of 10 years - first as a propagandist, then as vice president of a plant that refined minerals from uranium ore - offered him a valuable insight into the scientists and administrators who made the regime's dream of nuclear weapons a reality.