What Now, Dear Leader?

There, the war games -- two long months of them -- between allies, Washington and Seoul, are finally concluded. The allies demonstrated their capabilities, their armoured war machines, their proficiency in the use of advanced technology, their determination to show unequivocally that they are equal to any and all threats of military might and intention emanating from their common and most vexing enemy.

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US military vehicles cross Unification bridge, which leads to the demilitarized zone separating North Korea from South Korea near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea, Tuesday. The US-South Korean annual military drills ended Tuesday without incident.

Ahn Young-joon/AP

An enemy whose persona seems a caricature, and would be viewed as such if it were not that it was in possession of a deadly arsenal of weapons almost as lethally effective as their own.

A half-century and more represents a long time in human memory, but it is not too long, not too distant from the present time to have mellowed the minds of Pyongyang's Little Dictator and his generals. The 1950-53 war between the Koreas was stilled through the effective auspices of an armistice, not a peace treaty. And so, they remain officially at war with one another -- on a perpetual war footing thanks to the cantankerous North Korean paranoia.

Knowing how prickly and cartoonishly given to howling inventive and threats Dear Leader Kim Jong Un tends to be, it would be interesting to know how exactly the U.S. and North Korea defend their decision to prolong the agony of the war games, inciting Dear Leader to ever greater heights of oafish acting out, promising to send long-distance love letters to his tormentors.

On the other hand, these displays of inchoate juvenile rages cannot be left unfettered with no response whatever to leave the illusion that such evidence of moral lunacy is acceptable.

In the meantime, Pyongyang has prettified itself on the occasion of great national celebration in memory of their founder and their Great Leader's births, and the world waits with breath bated to witness the next act of witless bravuro - will it be an even more advanced ballistic missile, or yet another nuclear impact?

And where does the funding come from to allow these brave new creations in advanced military hardware threats? This is an impoverished country, after all, one that even its sponsor China is not eager to fund for fear of its hysterical use of those weapons.

The one assured source of income represented by South Korean technology and manufacturing skills employing 53,000 North Korean workers in the vast Kaesong industrial complex has been shuttered under order of Dear Leader. So that the income generated by that inter-Korean industrial cooperation has vanished.

Curious and curiouser.