SO WHO’S PROVOKING WHO OVER KOREA?

Yesterday the White House said that North Korea ‘should stop making provocative threats’ but, when one examines the extent of the threats and counter-threats that have been made over the last few weeks, one finds that it is the US and their allies that have by far been the most provocative.

All the North Korean leader has done is wave his hands around a lot and been a bit noisy with his rhetoric threatening to do things he can’t possibly do with stuff which in all likelihood he hasn’t even got while, at the same time, parading around his massive toothless army whose primary skills seem to be an ability to goosestep en masse and in unison. In short, apart from shifting a bit of outdated armour up to the border and a couple of barely tested rockets over to the east coast of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un has really done nothing of any real consequence accept shout angrily in response to America’s continued attempts to further isolate North Korea through sanctions and demeaning and nonsensical propaganda. While Kim Jong-Un has loudly voiced empty threats, the US has silently threatened North Korea by flying very real B2 bombers close by, sending powerful and very real US warships to seas off Korea and shipping anti-missile defence systems to the region while shipping men and F-22 stealth fighter jets to South Korea. All of these things are not going to do a thing to help the North Korean people. All they succeed in doing is creating more reasons why the North Korean people should loathe and detest the West which, in turn, gives succour to the likes of Kim Jong-Un.

The West – indeed, any one of the world’s well-armed nations – could destroy North Korea in a blink of an eye, and North Korea knows it. Threatening to do so, however, is not the way to free the North Koreas people from a tyrannical dictator. The rest of the world needs to find another way.