It was just one day after the first test of an intercontinental rocket by North Korea, that the US demonstrated military strength and threatened further sanctions against the isolated state. We have to understand that we are dealing with a pampered Kim Jong Un who will never yield to sanctions and countermeasures of rocket tests.
Donald Trump has classified North Korea as the major threat to the USA – not Russia. The US requested an urgent session of the UN Security Council in New York last week. The leadership in Pyongyang threatened the USA with further weapon tests and boasted that North Korea would never abandon nuclear weapons.
The division of Korea between North and South Korea was the result of the allied victory in World War II in 1945, ending the Empire of Japan’s 35-year rule of Korea. The United States and the Soviet Union occupied the country, with the boundary between their zones of control along the 38th parallel. The United States supported the South, and the Soviet Union supported the North, and each government claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula. American troops occupy southern Korea, while the Soviet Union occupies the north, with the dividing line being the 38th parallel of latitude, which was established on September 8th, 1945 (1945,68). This arrangement proves to be the indirect beginning of a divided Korea which will lead to the Korean War in 1950.
The Korean War (1950–1953) left the two Koreas separated by the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in the later part of the Cold War and beyond. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 deprived North Korea of its main source of economic aid. Without Soviet aid, North Korea’s economy went into an economic free-fall in 1992 pretty much in line with the Economic Confidence Model calculated from the birth of the 38th Parallel.
By this time in the early 1990s, Kim Jong-il was already conducting most of the day-to-day activities of running of the state. Meanwhile, international tensions were rising over North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons. Former US president Jimmy Carter made a visit to Pyongyang in June 1994 in which he met with Kim and returned proclaiming that he had resolved the crisis. However, Kim Il-sung died from a sudden heart attack on July 8, 1994, three weeks after the Carter visit. His son, Kim Jong-il, had already assumed key positions in the government, succeeded as General-Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party.
The US government confirmed for the first time that North Korea on July 4th actually tested an intercontinental rocket (ICBM). The test represents “a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region and the world,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He announced “tougher measures” against Pyongyang. Meanwhile, Kim said this was a “gift package” for the US on its Independence Day.
From a timing perspective, 72 years from the birth of the 38th Parallel brings us right here to 2017. The War Cycle brings us to the last date being 2020.92.
