My salary will be reduced 10% on April 1. Are students bitching about my lousy teaching? Have I been less productive on the research front? Less willing to shoulder my share of administrative burdens? All this could be true - or not - but has nothing to do with my pay cut. From slacker to Nobel Prize winner, every one of my colleagues at the University of Tsukuba is seeing his or her salary fall. As are all professors at all of Japan's national universities. And, indeed, everyone in Japan who is paid, directly or indirectly, by the Japanese tax payer - or, more precisely, paid by all the borrowing the Japanese government has been doing since taxes now cover less than half the Japanese government's expenses.

On 16 March 2012, North Korea announced that it would launch an earth observation satellite named Kwangmyongsong (Lodestar) 3, aboard an Unha carrier rocket sometime between the hours of 7 am and noon on a day between 12 and 16 April, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of its state founder, Kim Il Sung, and the attainment of “strong and prosperous” status by the country. The launch from a base in the north of the country close to the border with China would be pointed south, dropping off its first phase rocket into the Yellow Sea about 160 kms to the southwest of South Korea's Byeonsan peninsula and the second into the ocean about 140 kilometres east of Luzon in the Philippines. Due notice of the impending launch was issued to the appropriate international maritime, aviation and telecommunication bodies (IMO, ICAO and ITU) and, to mark the occasion, North Korea announced that it would welcome scientific observers and journalists. The 15 April date, in the 100th year according to the calendar of North Korea, has long been declared a landmark in the history of the state, and the launch seems designed to be its climactic event.

The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 did more than just devastate Japan and unleash a local nuclear disaster. They exposed a host of design flaws in current nuclear technology whose solutions are linked to dramatically unsettling security issues.

Director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability and an Asia-Pacific Journal Associate. Recent publications include Extended Nuclear Deterrence, Global Abolition, and Korea and The Path Not Taken, The Way Still Open: Denuclearizing The Korean Peninsula And Northeast Asia (with Michael Hamel-Green)

Recommended Citation: Peter Hayes, “Global Perspectives on Nuclear Safety and Security After 3-11,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 14, No 3, April 2, 2012.