Boom I really can’t figure out North Korea. Throwing missiles around, let alone nukes, isn’t going to make them any friends, let alone reunite them with their prosperous southern cousins. The whole Kim dynasty thing is mysterious, too. Could the latest in the succession actually be the real power, or is this the military throwing up a façade? I don’t believe the they’ve got intercontinental ballistic missiles, but they seem to have rockets capable of hitting Japan, Russia, South Korea, even Indonesia, and possibly Hawaii, Alaska, and northern Australia. (Poor Darwin; last time it was Imperial Japan.) I’m similarly sceptical of their nuclear capabilities. Even assuming the actually do have the bomb, it doesn’t seem they’ve achieved the degree of miniaturisation required to stick one on the end of missile and launch it anywhere, which puts South Korea at risk, still, but fewer other places within their range otherwise. So what do they want? Well, they’re starving over there, and freezing, in winter (except, maybe, the military, who at least appear to have warm coats), so maybe they want a war, one they can lose. Losing a war isn’t the same as saying, hey, look, this whole business since the 1950’s was a mistake, so we’re going to change it up and see if the South will have us back now, so we can have jobs and fuel and food again, sorry. That’d be a loss of face. But losing a war, that lets you bluster along pretty nicely, all in all, except if you get hanged, or shot, or otherwise killed. Look at the collapse of Yugoslavia. The leadership over there did quite well for a very long time. And there’s always exile. Some murderous monsters managed to live peacefully and comfortably elsewhere in the world for many years after they lost their jobs. That might be a little harder to get away with if you throw nukes, but less so otherwise. I’ll bet Pakistan would take in a couple of Kims, although it might not be quite the safe haven these days that it might have once been, given how the U.S. managed to fly in and zap bin Laden. Maybe not. Could be this is just a little more of their usual bluster, trying to get the rest of the world to agree to food donations and fuel oil shipments and so forth in exchange for them stepping back from the line they’re threatening to cross. It’d be a loss of face, too, to ask for help, so getting it offered and accepting it, reluctantly, means they get to goose-step through the streets but go home to a bowl of rice instead of eating grass. Are they really all that crazy? Are there none who question their leaders? No Winston Smiths? It’s decades of propaganda, control, and punishment. It’s possible. It’s terribly sad.