Regretful Notice

"We have noticed the statement made by the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and feel regretful about it. China urges all parties to remain calm and restrained."
Hong Lei, Foreign Ministry spokesman, Beijing

Beijing feels the latest escalation in the belligerent rhetoric of Pyongyang to be an episode that is most regretful. China's client state has gone beyond the boundaries of anticipated taunting of its perceived mutual enemy. China, after all, is not all that interested in seeing the United States of America brought to its knees by a nuclear attack. China, as it happens, has too much invested in the United States.

Aside from the fact that the huge American debt is held in large part by China, the United States also represents an immensely enthusiastic, profitable market that China relies upon to ensure its manufacturing sector, churning out all manner of products that Americans are eager to acquire at low-down prices from children's toys to electronic devices have a reliable market.

One that keeps a lot of Chinese workers gainfully employed who would otherwise be staging citizen protests, giving Beijing a right royal headache. And they have more than enough headache sources as it is from citizen protests. Beijing is obviously more acutely aware of such things than North Korea is, placing its joint venture with South Korea in the Kaesong Industrial Complex in jeopardy.

And China, as it happens, has enough on its political plate, as it were, what with its own territorial ambitions causing stress and anxiety among its neighbours, with its own bellicose warnings about territorial imperatives and the rightful ownership of the natural resources embedded under the South China Sea.

Ban Ki-moon is nervously studying the raging threats emanating from Pyongyang. With its adorable new leader asserting his authority, implacably resistant to reason, and revelling in his new role as ruler of all he tyrannizes. The very thought of the international community and his near neighbours quailing in trepidation at the uncertainty of the situation fraught with danger must titillate him no end.

"I consider the current North Korean threats very serious. If the North attempts any provocation against our people and country, you must respond strongly at the first contact with them without any political consideration. As top commander of the military, I trust your judgement in the face of North Korea's unexpected surprise provocation", ordered South Korean President Park Guen-Hye giving instructions to her generals.

A photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency on March 11 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun, center, on Wonae island, about six miles from the South Korean island of Baengnyong.

 North Korea's announcement that its General Department of Atomic Energy plans to beef up its operational uranium-enrichment program and take reactors out of storage, and hasten the completion of those still under construction, has not gladdened the hearts and minds of his neighbours. And the United States, not yet entirely certain it is dealing with a paranoid lunatic, hardly knows how to react.

Other than hastening to place defensive projects in a state of emergency completion. Even without restarting its Yongbyon nuclear reactor it is assumed that enough plutonium to produce six to eight atomic bombs had been unloaded from the reactor before it was mothballed. So they are, more or less, ahead of their game.

That game being to commit to pre-emptive nuclear strikes. Just to teach the United States, that egotistical imperialist non-entity a lesson. "Kim Jong-un certainly is more aggressive than his father, and behind his aggressiveness is a confidence following the North's successful launching of a long-range rocket and its nuclear test", observed Cheong Seong-chang, senior fellow at Sejong Institute in South Korea.

Associated Press/APTN, File - FILE - In this June 27, 2008 file photo from television, the 60-foot-tall cooling tower is seen before its demolition at the main Nyongbyon reactor complex in Nyongbyon