China pivotal in calming North Korea

Kim “needs to show he has the guts. The best way to do that is to use the military might that he commands,” said Lee Yoon-gyu, a North Korea expert at Korea National Defence University in Seoul. “This paves the way for greater praise for him if North Korea makes a provocation later and claims victory.”

Kim will eventually be compelled to do “something provocative to prove the threats weren’t empty,” Lee said. (from "North Korea forces at ‘highest alert’ against U.S., South Korea ‘imperialist aggressors’" by Hyung-Jin Kim, The Associated Press, in National Post, March 26, 2013, below)
There are far too many situations in geo-politics, in which leaders use the school-yard bully to attempt to establish their credentials, as if the show of force were a reasonable and responsible sign of power.
There is clear evidence that George W. Bush was entrapped in that scenario, when he entered the war on Iraq. Now the young Korean leader is flexing his military muscles as if to prove to his people that he deserves the inherited mantle of leadership of his "failed state" nation.
A far more mature, responsible and forsighted act would be to join the community of nations, put down his arms and reap the rewards by feeding his people.
However much the west responds to the new leader's sabre-rattling, it will take a phone call from the leaders in China, who seem singularly uninterested in making such a call, to calm the pugilistic bravado and erase North Korea from world headlines.
Is there some part of the Chinese menetality, leadership and culture that  either requires or delights in open military cancers around the world, as part of their strategy to keep China itself off the front pages, thereby enabling many more discreet, subtle and dangerous moves out of the eyes of the global reporting pool? The very fact that China seems pivotal to such 'hotspots' as Syria, North Korea, Iran (from whom they buy much of their energy supplies, shipped in Chinese ships recently purchased from the Asian giant), suggests that China is not only the holder of many of the U.S. Treasury Bills, thereby making the U.S. both dependent on and sensitive to Chinese interests. but also integral to the solutions to many of the world's contentious files where real people are suffering greviously, too often for ends that will seem completely incomprehensible when the fighting stops.
Imperialist designs, no matter the manner in which they are achieved, are nevertheless, still imperialist designs. China reaps much of its economic power from producing "knock-offs" to many western designed products. And it does so with impunity, given her inordinate power to fend off the many skirmishes that could see her in court with many countries, over many issues.
With North Korea, it would seem only reasonable that eventually Chinese leaders will make that phone call to the new leader in North Korea, if for no other reason that to prevent nuclear contamination in the region of the South China Sea.
No one wants the young "pup" pontificating his missiles to demonstrate his "guts", even the Chinese.


North Korea forces at ‘highest alert’ against U.S., South Korea ‘imperialist aggressors’
By Hyung-Jin Kim, the Associated Press, in National Post, March 26, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s artillery and rocket forces are at the highest combat posture, the country’s military warned on Tuesday in the latest in a line of threats aimed at South Korea and the United States.

The North Korean army’s Supreme Command said it will take “practical military action” to protect national sovereignty and its leadership in response to what it called U.S. and South Korean plots to attack.
The statement, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, cited the participation of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in South Korea-U.S. drills.
orth Korea’s field artillery forces — including strategic rocket and long-range artillery units that are “assigned to strike bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor troops in the U.S. mainland and on Hawaii and Guam and other operational zones in the Pacific as well as all the enemy targets in South Korea and its vicinity” — will be placed on “the highest alert from this moment,” the statement said.

This is the highest combat posture North Korea has ever issued, and South Korea is analyzing the threat while staying alert for any provocation, Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok said by telephone. Tuesday’s threat came days after the U.S. and South Korea signed a contingency plan against potential attacks from North Korea.

Seoul’s Defence Ministry said it hasn’t seen any suspicious North Korean military activity and that officials were analyzing the North’s warning. Analysts say a direct North Korean attack is extremely unlikely, especially during joint U.S.-South Korean military drills that end April 30, though there’s some worry about a provocation after the training wraps up.
North Korea, angry over routine U.S.-South Korean drills and recent U.N. sanctions punishing it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test, has vowed to launch a nuclear strike against the United States and repeated its nearly two-decade-old threat to reduce Seoul to a “sea of fire.” Despite the rhetoric, outside weapons analysts have seen no proof that North Korea has mastered the technology needed to build a warhead small enough to mount on a missile.
The North’s recent threats are seen partly as efforts to strengthen internal loyalty to young leader Kim Jong Un and to build up his military credentials.

Kim “needs to show he has the guts. The best way to do that is to use the military might that he commands,” said Lee Yoon-gyu, a North Korea expert at Korea National Defence University in Seoul. “This paves the way for greater praise for him if North Korea makes a provocation later and claims victory.”
Kim will eventually be compelled to do “something provocative to prove the threats weren’t empty,” Lee said.
he rival Koreas have had several bloody naval skirmishes in disputed Yellow Sea waters since 1999. In November 2010, a North Korean artillery strike on a South Korean island killed two marines and two civilians. A suspected North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship earlier that same year, killing 46 South Korean sailors. North Korea denies the warship sinking.

Tuesday is the third anniversary of the warship sinking, and new South Korean President Park Geun-hye urged the North again to abandon its nuclear weapons program. “Focussing its national strength on the development of nuclear weapons while its people are suffering starvation … will only bring international isolation to themselves,” Park said in a televised speech at a national cemetery south of Seoul where the 46 sailors are buried.
eanwhile, websites and organizations run by North Korean defectors in South Korea said they suffered cyberattacks on Tuesday, one week after computer systems at some South Korean banks and TV networks were widely disrupted.

Daily NK, which posts news about North Korea, said it experienced a cyperattack, and South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said Free North Korea Radio also was attacked.
Yonhap said a computer network used by seven local governments was also briefly attacked, as was a network belonging to broadcaster YTN.
Authorities have not confirmed who was behind last week’s cyberattack but suspect North Korea.
With files from Bloomberg and Associated Press writer Sam Kim