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

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And the South Koreans believe the same thing about the North. The devil of it is that even without the USSR they're both right: the single peninsula's been occupied for the last 50 years by two alien regimes in one of the worst single legacies of WWII left. The thing is that South Korea has moved on from the days of Syngman Rhee to become *more* and not less free. North Korea got even worse after Kim Il Sung kicked the bucket.