Jessica Meszaros/Contributing Writer
While students and faculty went about their everyday tasks on Thursday, South Korea’s defense minister announced that North Korea has moved a missile in range to its east coast.
According to The Associated Press, North Korea has been railing against U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which began in March and are scheduled to continue until the end of April. The North calls these exercises “rehearsals for an invasion” and said it needs to defend itself with nuclear weapons.
Astrid Arraras, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, has been with the University for 13 years. She said that North Korea is doing this in a very public way on purpose.
“They want to intimidate, or create some fear in order for them to achieve whatever goals they want to achieve,” said Arraras.
Arraras said that she saw pictures of Kim Jong-Un, leader of North Korea, with a map in the background that supposedly illustrated desired targets for the missile.
The Pentagon announced that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack, according to AP.
“The U.S. is concerned that the production of all these weapons can escalate, and this can turn into our conflict,” said Arraras. “So it’s part of U.S. policy to reduce the production of these weapons.”
Arraras said that for the moment, North Korea and the United States are just showing force on both of their parts. She said that North Korea is indicating that it is a threat, and the U.S. is demonstrating that it is prepared to protect itself.
“Honestly, I don’t think there is anyone that hasn’t heard about it,” said journalism freshman Jose Dominguez. “I’m kind of annoyed that everyone is taking it as a joke.”
Dominguez said that there are many memes circulating around the Internet having to do with North Korea. Memes are photographs that usually have comical captions within them. He finds them funny because he feels the North Korean leader doesn’t know what he is doing, but still believes him to be a serious threat to the nation.
Ghazal Soleimani is a doctoral candidate for the Department of Epidemiology. She said that sanctions in North Korea, or in general, aren’t always the best idea because they don’t always consider the people that suffer as a result.
“A lot of times they do these types of things as a plea for attention, and it’s the corrupt leaders in those countries that are to blame, and I think it’s really unfortunate,” said Soleimani.
“We’ll see what will be the response from the other countries, and we’ll see if he goes through,” said Arraras. “But it will be suicidal.”
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