South Korea

Saudi Aramco-Hyundai in $5.2 billion shipyard deal

Saudi Aramco is to build the region's biggest shipyard in a $5.2 billion joint venture with South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries and others, the partners said on Wednesday.

The yard, to be constructed on the kingdom's Gulf coast, will have the capacity to produce four offshore rigs and 40 vessels, inclunding three supertankers, a year, the national-owned oil giant said in a statement.

Lamprell, a United Arab Emirates-based provider of services to the energy industry, and Bahri, the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia, have as well signed on to the venture.

Saving face on the Korean Peninsula

Kim Jong-un sees nuclear capability as almost his sole source of regime security and he is not going to give it up, no matter how strong the pressure. He is not stupid. All he has to do is to look at the history of Iraq and Libya, where neither dictator had nuclear weapons. So if the United States insists on de-nuclearisation of the peninsula, presumably that would require regime change, and regime change is unlikely without the use of force. War in the area would be hugely destabilising and potentially disastrous. No one in their right mind should want that.

China is right to urge negotiations, but what is to be negotiated? Kim is not going to negotiate away his own security by giving up his nuclear capability. But if China exerts sufficient pressure, he may acknowledge to stop testing.