[Dilmah G]

And apparently hasn't grown out of his willy-swinging.

North Korea has presented the world with a serious strategic dilemma that is quickly becoming a first-class crisis. With the unprovoked torpedoing of a South Korean navy corvette, the Cheonan, and the deaths of 46 crew, the North has committed an act of war.

Pyongyang denies responsibility, as it has denied every one of its many acts of terrorism and sabotage of the past half-century. But the international investigation, by 25 South Koreans and an international team of 24 Australian, British, American and Swedish naval experts, found remains of a North Korean torpedo at the site and last week delivered a finding of ''guilty''.

It is the deadliest attack by North Korea since two of its spies put a bomb on board KAL 858 in 1987, killing the 115 civilians aboard.

The international community is now moving to respond. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for ''consequences'' for the North. This week she is in China pressing its leadership to support action by the UN Security Council. The acquiescence of Beijing is central - not only is it North Korea's chief ally and protector, it's also one of the five veto-wielding members of the Security Council.

But what to do? North Korea is threatening war: ''We will take strong measures including full-scale war if sanctions against North Korea are imposed,'' it declared last week.

To judge a response, we need to know North Korea's motive. To a rational outsider, any one of North Korea's outrages seems senseless. But its ''puzzling behaviour'' can be rationally explained: ''In each case, Pyongyang sought to disrupt a status quo deemed highly unfavourable with the purpose of renegotiating a new status quo to its advantage,'' a US expert, Victor Cha, wrote in Nuclear North Korea.

And guess what? Kim Jong-il's regime said last week it was trying to implement what it calls the "grand bargain" - a mooted deal in which the international community gives North Korea some $US40 billion in aid on the condition it dismantles its nuclear weapons.

We know from Kim's own mouth that this is the way he sees his regime's military capability. In 2000 a visiting South Korean newspaper publisher, Choe Hak-rae, asked Kim why his government was spending its scarce resources on ballistic missiles instead of education or other social programs for its citizens.

''The missiles cannot reach the US,'' Choe later recounted Kim replying. ''And if I launch them, the US would fire back thousands of missiles and we would not survive . . . But I have to let them know I have missiles. I am making them because only then will the United States talk to me.''

So Kim thinks of his military capability as an attention-getting device and he has a history of using provocation as a tool of negotiation.

But some senior Western officials believe there is another layer. They suspect this might be a rerun of a made-in-Pyongyang movie we saw once before, the attack on KAL 858.

Then, Kim Jong-il was positioning to take the leadership from his father, Kim Il-sung. The succession, the first dynastic transfer of power in any communist regime, was not assured and he had competitors.

When the two North Korean agents who planted the bomb were later arrested in Bahrain, both tried to take cyanide pills. One succeeded and the other was kept alive. She later recounted the order to bomb the civilian flight was personally signed by Kim Jong-il.

There appear to be two motives for that decision. First, it was designed to detract from an approaching moment of South Korean glory, the Seoul Olympics, an honour an envious and spiteful North Korean communist regime can never aspire to.

Second, Kim Jong-il used the bombing to demonstrate his toughness and ability to lead. It was his job application for the presidency, it seems.

Today Kim, who last year suffered some serious illness, appears to be grooming one of his sons, his youngest, Kim Jong-un, 28, to succeed him as leader. As with most North Korean affairs, we can't be certain, but South Korean outlets reported his birthday this year was celebrated as an informal national holiday, a tell-tale sign he is the anointed. There is once again a succession under way, apparently.

And, once again, there is an approaching moment of South Korean glory, when Seoul hosts a summit of the Group of 20 in November, another international honour Pyongyang's regime can never hope to equal.

This thesis may be wrong, but the parallels do seem to be more than coincidence. In which case, North Korea is not serious with its threat of war. But there is a big difference: North Korea now has a nuclear bomb. It may think itself untouchable, and may be more inclined to bellicosity.

Yet the international community's reaction is likely to be exactly as it was in 1987 - the US designated North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, only revoked by the Bush administration in 2008 to keep nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang alive.

This allows the international banking flows of foreign exchange, that keep Kim and his entourage in comfort, to be cut. But the uncertainties mean the world's response will be very cautious. North Korea will retain the ability to attack at will. And a member of the Kim dynasty will likely remain on North Korea's throne.

[Kosh]

North Korea has presented the world with a serious strategic dilemma that is quickly becoming a first-class crisis. With the unprovoked torpedoing of a South Korean navy corvette, the Cheonan, and the deaths of 46 crew, the North has committed an act of war.

I'd like to point out that it would be an act of war, except that north and south korea already are at war.

[Dilmah G]

And don't they love showing it?

[Liberator]

Why are we ****ing with this turd of a human?  Everyone is in agreement(even most of his people) that the world would be better off without him in it.  So blow up every building in N. Korea that he might be hiding in and be done with it.  Hell, at this point I don't think even the Chinese would be against turning him into paste at the bottom of a 25ft diameter crater.

[Dilmah G]

Well that's if South Korea doesn't do it first. I wouldn't be surprised at them getting very angry if Kim tries anything else in the next 3 months.

[karajorma]

Why are we ****ing with this turd of a human?  Everyone is in agreement(even most of his people) that the world would be better off without him in it.  So blow up every building in N. Korea that he might be hiding in and be done with it.  Hell, at this point I don't think even the Chinese would be against turning him into paste at the bottom of a 25ft diameter crater.

Cause every single gun in his country is pointed at South Korea and they would flatten a significant portion of it before the war was over.

[Kosh]

Exactly. Even though they have pretty much no staying power, they can still do a great deal of damage in the initial barrage.

[Rodo]

Give them a break, all nations need some war from time to time... I don't get why the world needs to butt in on every one of those (and they do NOTHING btw).
The ones worried about the millions of innocents there should either donate 100$ to MSF or make a trip to the country and start making something there, this is just pure politic campaign for all those involved.

[The E]

Give them a break, all nations need some war from time to time... I don't get why the world needs to butt in on every one of those (and they do NOTHING btw).
The ones worried about the millions of innocents there should either donate 100$ to MSF or make a trip to the country and start making something there, this is just pure politic campaign for all those involved.

 
Are you just trolling? Or do you honestly believe that that would be a better idea?

[Titan]

So he's trying to get our attention... so that we stop thinking of North Korea as this little commie hell hole and start thinking of them as a world power... so he can talk to us so we can help them?

Dang, that almost makes sense.

[Bobboau]

I sure am glad we've kept this douchebag and his personal hell on life support for the last 20 years and allowed him to fester into a quasi-nuclear power.

so this is what crazy supervillain holding the world for ransom with nukes looks like.

[iamzack]

Too bad there's no oil in North Korea. Otherwise we'd be liberating the **** out of them.

[Nuclear1]

North Korea's just trying to get attention...they don't like being the middle child of the Axis of Evil.

[Bobboau]

I say we give them more attention than they bargained for.

[StarSlayer]

Doesn't this jack ass know we're in a recession?  We don't have money for a DPRK bailout.

It's truly a shame though; those poor people under his regime have basically been living decades under a indoctrinated state, there was a documentary a while back where the DPRK was importing the diary of Ann Frank and using it as a way to promote fear of foreigners and a combative attitude of all things.  If it ever does come to war (and lets hope to hell it doesn't) it's going to be brutal.  Even though we will end up having to kill them in droves they will be fighting for a complete line of BS they've been spoon fed since birth. 

[Mika]

I'm not sure how well that BS is penetrating. In USSR they had several black news agencies (Samizdat?) that told the people what was going on elsewhere in the world, or inside USSR. Oppressed people still knew something was wrong with the official line if they kept on being hungry. Asian mentality might change it, I don't have experience dealing with Koreans. I don't know the situation inside Japan during WWII, and how well one might draw conclusions of North Korea based on that. How many refugees are there from North Korea?

[Mika]

And an addendum: one of the interesting questions is, how much influence does China have over North Korea? Some Chinese told that North Koreans tend to act by themselves, but I can't be sure about that. My understanding is that China does not want to change what is happening inside other countries. On the other hand, I guess they don't like North Korea doing stupid things like the torpedo incident as they pretty well know that there will be international repercussions.

Now that North Korea has got nukes despite the international community saying don't do that, how does Kim Yong-il think he can prove he has disarmed, if the proposed bargain idea is correct? Especially when it is not allowed to have international inspectors in the country. I was rather perplexed when they announced that something big had blown up in North Korea that US or NATO didn't respond by then.

[Nuke]

yay! potential nuclear war!

[iamzack]

Let's just nuke North Korea (North Koreans are probably so brainwashed they'd fight us until nearly all of them are dead anyway) and then move all the Zionist Jews there and give the Palestinians their land back. That seems like it would be the best plan for all involved.

[SpardaSon21]

I'm pretty sure the Jews have had a historical presence in Palestine for at least as long as the Palestinians, if not longer.