North Korea’s Alarmed Neighbors Consider Deploying Deadlier Weapons<br />"It is possible that North Korea has already achieved the miniaturization of nuclear weapons and has acquired nuclear warheads."<br />That bleak assessment is likely to feed a growing debate in Japan about whether the country should acquire the means to launch pre-emptive military strikes — attacks that could destroy North Korean missiles on the ground before they are fired at Japan or other targets.<br />Hideshi Takesada, a specialist on defense issues at the Institute of World Studies at Takushoku University in Tokyo, said<br />that if South Korea acquired nuclear weapons, Japan might rethink its longstanding aversion to them — despite its traumatic experiences at the end of World War II, when American atomic bombs devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<br />8, 2017<br />TOKYO — North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear program has prompted politicians in Japan<br />and South Korea to push for the deployment of more powerful weapons, in what could lead to a regional arms race.<br />Tokyo said that North Korea’s development of ballistic missiles<br />and its nuclear program are becoming increasingly real and imminent problems for the Asia-Pacific region including Japan, as well as the rest of the world,<br />Takesada said that If South Korea went nuclear, that debate would happen in Japan, too,<br />Even more than Japan, South Korea is working to build its monitoring<br />and striking abilities, including with radars and remote-controlled reconnaissance planes to track and neutralize North Korean missiles in pre-emptive attacks.<br />On Monday, South Korea’s conservative opposition group, the Liberty Korea Party, issued a statement favoring<br />the deployment of American tactical nuclear weapons in the country, the Yonhap news agency reported.
