Deranged -- and Dangerous

"The U.S. should not forget that the Anderson Air Force Base on Guam, where B-52s take off, and naval bases in Japan proper and Okinawa, where nuclear-powered submarines are launched, are within the striking range of the [North Korea's] precision strike means.
"Now that the U.S. started open nuclear blackmail and threat, the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea], too, will move to take corresponding military actions."
Supreme Command of the North Korean People's Army spokesman

Nothing, it seems, makes North Korea more splendidly irate that the impression that they gain through interpreting the friendship and mutual agreement between South Korea and the United States of America in considering the North Korean belligerent acts of aggression and its thundering threats to be of huge concern to the world at large.

Where once it was felt there was a certain degree of comfort in knowing that China held some control over North Korea, that assurance seems to be slipping.

North Korea's randomly unexpected and violent actions and threats appear to have taken everyone off guard, including China. In the United Nations Security Council China seems now to be tentatively moving closer to the general consensus of the increasing threat to world order and security that an unhinged North Korea represents. It doesn't seem to take much to set them off on yet another tangent of dire warnings.

And since no one, no nation's intelligence service and the UN's IAEA, as well has any true picture of North Korea's technological advancement in ballistic missiles, satellites, nuclear devices -- other than their partner in the business of sowing terror in the international community, the Islamic Republic of Iran -- the suspense and apprehension is well merited.

Military and intelligence experts and the munitions technology communities all feel a sense of impending danger, but their governments have been unable to establish what can be done to curb North Korea's excessive aggression. Sanctions, which so infuriate both Iran and North Korea, appear to have effected limited harm to both countries.

Vulnerable nations like the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan for starters, are understandably nervous when North Korea's belligerence reaches monumental proportions. The U.S. has seen the need to reaffirm the presence of its "nuclear umbrella" for South Korea and Japan, in response to North Korea's nuclear threats.

It has rescinded the Korean War armistice, amid renewed fears of another attack like the last one it launched on a South Korean island.

 

South Korea's sunshine policy which has been discredited lately within South Korea, appears to still hold some attraction with President Park Geun-hye's vow to reach out to the north, and to send out humanitarian aid. This, despite North Korea's cavalier dismissal of the first "venomous" female president of Korea. The surprise attack on a South Korean vessel killing its sailors, the continued threats to assault the South with a nuclear device, all speak of an executive dementia.

There seems no thread of common humanity through ideological differences linking Seoul with Pyongyang, and despite the new president's intention to continue attempting to forge a link between the two countries, she and her military have had no option but to voice their resolve to return enmity with matching enmity, and the intention to respond militarily should the need arise.

The two countries of the world now linked through friendship and an exchange of scientific-technological expertise in the perfecting of ballistic missile delivery systems, and the miniaturization of nuclear devices each pose a distinct and dire threat to the stability of their geographic regions; from Iran's presence within the Middle East and its threats to hit out at United States' interests and to demolish the State of Israel, to North Korea's threats to destroy South Korea and bring destruction to U.S. geography as well.