Simple Question of International Import

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

What are the odds that this gets a LOT worse by the traditional spring time offensive season when a young general's fancy turns to invasion?

Brief timeline:

North Korea is accused of torpedoing a South Korean warship.

South Korea fires at North Korean fishing boats crossing the maritime border North Korea refuses to recognize.

North Korea is revealed to have highly modern facilities for nuclear material enrichment.

Not to mention, North Korea is facing the challenge of passing along the regime to a third generation of the Kim family.

North Korea is known for rattling its sabre and demanding to have attention paid to it when it is being ignored, but this is looking like a very different than recent years -- South Korea really has to retaliate...and half of South Korea's population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area within artillery range of the DMZ.

So a question -- is North Korea suicidal or are they betting that this behavior can get them some more winter grain shipments?

Comments

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Would this not suggest that China has approved, or at the very least, acquiesced, to the current situation? This latest incident comes at a time when the United States and China are butting heads over currency policies and after the Democrats have suffered election reversals. This issue will distract and embarrass the United States and its allies in the region, possibly resulting in a new, humiliating round of appeasement toward North Korea. As long as the situation doesn't get out of hand, China stands to gain from it.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

China's involvement with N Korea is vague and China appears - outwardly - to have little control over the regime. But I think a lot of these political maneuvers are done in collaboration with China, if not to cause them, to schedule them around appropriate time-lines in the furtherance of providing value for both regimes.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I don't suggest anything. I assert it as an obvious fact. North Korea's existence is wholly predicated on PRC's complicity and whatever North Korea does is with the tacit approval of Beijing. As long as the situation doesn't get out of hand is, of course, the sticky question.