We open urgent talks with China, so each side knows in advance just how things will go down if l’il Kim decides to do something spectacularly rash. We don’t want any hostilities that break out on the Korean peninsula to turn into a shooting war between the USA and China!
Would you like to know more?
I have no doubt that every single military installation in NK has been located and precisely targeted by the appropriate US/ROK weapons system for some decades. Anything they’re stupid enough to use, they’d lose. And the top military people who I’m pretty sure are actually in charge know it, and they’re doing their best to get this fool kid of a figurehead under control.
Service Guarantees Food (for length of enlistment.) (Actually I heard a piece on NPR that while all the men do their compulsory army service, women are allowed to start businesses, so the only people who have enough to eat in NK are businesswomen and their familes, army-age men (but then most of them are kicked out after enlistment and then are out of luck, because men aren’t allowed to start businesses,) and the officials the women can bribe.
God I hate even looking at public comments on this stuff.
Goddamned stupid people on the BBC comments for fucks sake. “North Korea is the only ones acting rationally here” “The USA flew B2s over NK airspace!” “The US is the only country to ever nuke anyone, of course they’re in the wrong!”
Maybe we should deliver the aid packages of pallets of grain at terminal velocity on each of the rocket sites. Nobody says we have to attach the parachutes to the pallets of grain 
If Dennis Rodman says he’s ok, then I say he’s ok. Daaaa bullsdabullsdabullsdabulls.
Kim Jong Un says that each soldier recruited is part of the foot that kicks the American Imperialist Dog. His elite forces even have a new catch phrase…
“Go Toe…!”
I expect that such talks have already occurred and are on-going. I’d be shocked if the US and China are not communicating furiously. That doesn’t mean the two will be conducting those communications in public. In fact, this is a situation where private behind-the-scenes discussions might be for the best.
Neither China nor the US have any interest in a new Korean war becoming a wider conflict, and a lot of incentive to keep any such conflict contained.
My Korean students are just shrugging their shoulders over this. To them it’s just the same old same old. New president means threats from the North.
Yawn.
dp
What they don’t realize is that the US Press is reporting on it this time. That means that either the administration or the pentagon is feeding them information. There is a definite difference.
Whatever it costs, I hope we are finally going to do something to help the Korean people. What’s going on over there is appalling.
ETA: OK, I can’t fix the double box, it just keeps adding itself back in. Weird.
Can Kim Jong-un or his generals really be under any illusion that their regime could survive a war, let alone win it?
No. This whole thing has to be an insane game of chicken. He supposedly went to school in the West. He CAN’T be clueless to what the rest of the world can do to his country. I mean, right?
Since North Korea tested its nuclear weapons, the South Korean government has maintained a publicly stated policy that it will launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korean military installations if it sees evidence that North Korea is preparing to launch a nuclear attack.
Threaten, bluster, threaten, provoke, threaten, incident, threaten. All to win concessions.
Only, and this is the thing that shows Republicans who badmouth Obama as weak to be utter fools - Obama isn’t giving them jack. Rodman came back saying Kim Jong-Il wanted Obama to call him. Wanted Obama to chase him, to reach out to him first, which then gives Kim Jong-Un more prestige as the one being approached. He didn’t get it. Every taunt, every provocation meets a stone wall, not a reward, not recognition, not attention.
And frankly, this kind of response is overdue. We have to stop rewarding the negative behavior. As the expression goes; “Behavior that is rewarded, is repeated.”
But it means the Toddler Kingdom is going to keep throwing a tantrum and finding ways to try to get the attention and recognition it wants.
I’d kinda like to do it with an A-10, but that’s just me.
If god did not want us to make nuclear strikes, he would not have invented North Koreans.
And now the Fat Little Runt is restarting a nuclear reactor that was shut more than five years ago.
Actually, it seems there was a US group which met the twit last year in NK - he couldn’t be engaged in person, so he is not getting a second chance.
Right about here is when a Chinese commando squad needs to sabotage the reactor in question - it is only about 100 miles (google maps) from their border.
Then again, it would be nice if they didn’t return defectors to be tortured and enslaved.
SK may push the button, but it will be an American weapon which is delivered. I doubt SK could take out the artillery (which is NK’s real deterrent) quickly enough to avoid massive damage to Seoul (which has expanded to the DMZ).
Maybe the border will be the safest place - the shells will go over your head.