The Great Hunger

Humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate in North Korea, and deplorable and preventable that may be, that's not the most important issue brought out in this news item. The fact that North Korea continues to produce and probably export Plutonium to Iran is something that must be stopped by the international community.

If all the plutonium produced by North Korea (about 68 pounds) were sent to Iran, Iran could already have quite a number of nuclear bombs. Iran already has a nuclear-capable missile capability to reach most of the middle East and southern Europe.

FROM STRATEGYPAGE.COM:

The Great Hunger
November 9, 2008: South Korean intelligence officials are uncertain who is in charge up north. There is general agreement that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is, or was, quite ill earlier this year. He appears to have had a stroke, but recovered. Maybe. There is some belief that Chang Sung Taek, the head of the secret police and Kim Jong Ils brother-in-law, is actually running things. But then, that has long appeared to be the case. The problem has always been that there was no one in charge up north, or at least that was the impression diplomats and negotiators got. For decades, there has been a small group of paranoid communist bureaucrats and military officers, trying to survive amid self-inflicted economic decline. Decisions appear to be made at random. This is, has and continues to be a major problem.

[…]

North Korea is not giving up its nuclear weapons, and has demonstrated that it will not allow the kind of inspections needed to insure that the weapons are gone, and their development is halted. But by delaying negotiations in order to get that concession, the new famine has had more time to spread. Hunger has now spread to the cities and military units, and there are a growing number of starvation deaths in the countryside.
North Korea is still making mysterious shipments, often by air, to Iran. Is this nuclear technology, or ballistic missile assistance? The U.S. is so anxious about this cooperation, that it convinced India to refuse over-flight permission to a North Korean cargo airliner last Summer. The North Korean aircraft had landed in Myanmar, and asked permission to fly over India to Iran. At the urging of the United States, India refused, and the North Korean cargo had to find another way to get to Iran.

October 24, 2008: North Korea admitted to China, last June, that it had produced 68 pounds of plutonium, and used 4.5 pounds of that for the bomb it tested two years ago. (emphasis mine, ed.) Given the primitive state of North Korean bomb design, they could produce about eight nuclear weapons with what plutonium they have.
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