Into A Corner

The slow and steady drip-drip-drip of a malfunctioning faucet can drive people to distraction. The increasingly swift and unrelentingly bellicose statements emanating from North Korea are dulling the sensibilities and sense of reality of other nations who cannot bring themselves to really give credence to threats by a impoverished regime that has lavished all of its disposable income on perfecting weapons of mass destruction.

In the full paranoid knowledge that those they claim are their enemies are in possession, through a benefactor, of weapons whose lethality far surpass their own.

Another day another sinister set of statements issued, portending the possibility of heart-stopping events that transcend mere conventional conflict. Not only has North Korea informed foreign embassies in Pyongyang that the government will be unable to guarantee their safety, urging them to depart their missions for home by April 10.

Now the warning has been extended to include "all foreign institutions and enterprises and foreigners including tourists in South Korea".

The obvious to be taken from that is that North Korea's neighbour, South Korea, is directly in Pyongyong's crosshairs. South Korea does not have possession of other than conventional weapons to protect itself from aggression, albeit technologically advanced as such weapons are.

North Korea regrets to inform its audience that "The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the South Korean puppet warmongers."

To characterize these side-by-side statements as wildly deranged is to understate the situation. A demented regime headed by a militaristic society with a egomaniacal juvenile represents so absurdly insane a situation it would be dismissed in novel form as the work of a clumsy writer uninformed about human intelligence and self-preservation as a defining force in human destiny.

South Korea is an advanced society of normal human beings, enjoying an excellent relationship with its neighbours -- with that singular exception of the North -- and a booming economy, with a robust trade among its economic partners, and the assurance of support from the most powerful nation on the globe. Whereas North Korea represents a stunted humanity, warped and miserable, pugnacious and irresponsibly volatile.

Thus far the offensive has been verbal. Intelligence has not noted a build-up of troops and weaponry on the demilitarized border that would indicate swift and determinate intention to escalate the rhetoric into violent action. An exodus of foreigners from South Korea would mean the migration of 1.4-million expatriates fearing being embroiled in a conflict that would endanger their lives.

Britain, which has thus far shrugged off both the clumsily diplomatic embassy threats and the foreign visitor advice, has not altered its travel advisory. It does not recommend avoiding either of the Koreas to visitors on its diplomatic-advisory sites.

"It's not clear to me that he has thought through how to get out of it, which is what makes this situation particularly challenging", Admiral Locklear, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet declared to the Senate, in suggesting that Kim Jong-un has imprudently left himself no escape route out of the crisis he has so skilfully maneuvered himself into.