The war of words has intensified alarmingly among North Korean armed circles after South Korea and its patron, the US, carried out military exercises in the region despite warnings from the nuclear armed communist state to desist from this provocation. While the reaction has been limited thus far to only rhetoric, though frighteningly fiery in content, on the part of Pyongyang, the other side also lost no time in flexing its awesome military muscle by a show of reportedly long range B2 bombers and a couple of the stealth B1s over South Korean skies. Not exactly the wisest steps to take under the circumstances when the North is acting like a disturbed hornet’s nest.

To most people, the North, with its closed and apparently xenophobic mindset and a ruling family dynasty that enjoys a near demi-god status among ordinary Koreans, remains a problem and an enigma. Occasionally, reports filter out from defectors or Pyongyang-watchers of the lavish lifestyle of the ruling elite on the one hand and famines affecting various parts of the country on the other. The recent succession of Kim Jong-un to the presidency and tussles between groupings in the communist party and the military for priority of influence over state policy are also cited as being behind North Korea’s apparently illogical and outlandish behaviour. But now it is a nuclear-armed North Korea with delivery systems and sufficient technical ability to launch rockets into space. So its threats cannot be taken lightly.

Since Pearl Harbour, a ‘day that will live in infamy’ when Japan attacked the huge Pacific naval base in 1941, the US remains extremely sensitive to any attack or threat of attack on its soil. For the sole superpower that would be a bruising dent to its pride and world image of invincibility. The 9/11 no doubt helped ratchet up that perception into a paranoia.

The present confrontational stance will no doubt receive top priority at the UN, whose current secretary general is a former foreign minister of South Korea. But the real player in the Korean game is undoubtedly China, which at times seems unable or unwilling to keep its strange protégé in check, and has so far only issued a mild advice for ‘calm from all sides’. Although it would be the first to be caught up in a Korean conflagration, the demands of geo-politics arising out of the US desire to check China’s rapid rise as the next inheritor of world supremacy, and the American ‘pivot’ to the Pacific from the European-Middle East regions in order to encircle it would no doubt also enter into any Chinese calculations. North Korea with its long range rocketry also checkmates Japan – the US’s other major ally in the region. The volatile situation needs to be defused at once through dialogue instead of launching fifth generation aircraft in the region. As for the North, it should also backpedal from its fiery talk of war and restrict itself to rhetoric alone.

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