by Mindy Belz
Post Date:
September 8, 2017

Soldiering on with uncertainty over North Korea

Name: WORLD
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The rogue nation could launch another ICBM on Saturday

South Korean conservative activists and North Korean defectors attend a rally against North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un, in Seoul Friday. Associated Press/Photo by Lee Jin-man

Soldiering on with uncertainty over North Korea

NORTH KOREA may launch another intercontinental ballistic missile test on Saturday, the anniversary of its founding. A U.S. response is “certainly an option,” said President Donald Trump yesterday, but not “inevitable.”

Here’s a thorough look at the success of ballistic missile launches by Pyongyang this year—a decidedly mixed record. What U.S. war plans for conflict with North Korea suggest: “There’s almost no doubt that the North would lose—but in going down Pyongyang could take much of the Korean Peninsula with it.” On Thursday I spoke with aid group leader Heidi Linton, possibly the last American aid worker to depart North Korea a week ago. She said aid workers understand U.S. caution behind a new travel ban, but it’s made important and ongoing work with tuberculosis and hepatitis patients that much harder. Linton’s Christian Friends of Korea has about a dozen workers who have applied for humanitarian exemptions to travel back to North Korea next month, but there’s no guarantee the U.S. government will grant those waivers.

CARIBBEAN: Photos show the complete devastation left by Hurricane Irma in St. Martin.

BURMA: An “alarming number” of Rohingya Muslims have fled Burma, also known as Myanmar, for Bangladesh this week, up to 270,000. The new arrivals say government security forces, which have also blocked UN aid, attacked them.

SYRIA: Early Thursday, Israeli forces appear to have destroyed a chemical weapons facility, and also hit a Hezbollah weapons convoy.

GERMANY: Amid record refugee converts, Lutheran churches are facing tough choices on sheltering rejected asylum seekers.

SOUTH AFRICA: President Jacob Zuma, awaiting possible impeachment, vowed, “Even if you poison me, I will not go anywhere.”

UN: Despite objections, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro is slated to address Monday’s opening day session of the UN Human Rights Council. The UN General Assembly gets underway in New York on Sept. 19, with U.S. President Donald Trump addressing the gathering for the first time that day.

To have Globe Trot delivered to your email inbox, email Mindy at mbelz@wng.org.

Mindy Belz

Mindy is a former senior editor for WORLD Magazine and wrote the publication’s first cover story in 1986. She has covered wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, and the Balkans, and she recounts some of her experiences in They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run From ISIS With Persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Mindy resides with her husband, Nat, in Asheville, N.C.

@MindyBelz

Soldiering on with uncertainty over North Korea

The rogue nation could launch another ICBM on Saturday

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