Michael Walker: America and Kim Jong Un Play a Dangerous Game of Escalation!

News about North Korea falls into two categories: The comical and the frightening. Examples of the former type of stories abound, a memorable one being the claim by a Japanese expert in 2008, that the country's Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, had in fact been dead for five years, and was being played by a series of doubles. More recently, bizarre footage was broadcast by North Korean state television, in which the country's fresh faced supremo, Kim Jong-un, paid a seaborne visit to an artillery unit stationed near the country's southern border. Kim was greeted by a group of hysterical soldiers, who raised their arms aloft, and cried as if they had been visited by a deity, rather than a portly young man with an odd haircut. Unfortunately, the news from Korea has of late, been of the frightening variety. In February Pyongyang tested a nuclear device for the third time, prompting the United Nations Security Council to impose further sanctions on Kim's beleaguered regime. Even China, the North's supposed ally, voted in support of this resolution. Then, in March, it was reported that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to use the country's official name, had declared the 1953 armistice agreement, which had brought the Korean War to a close, null and void. These worrying developments have been accompanied by an uptick in the North's usual strident rhetoric against South Korea and the United States. The gravity of the situation is apparent from the message broadcast by Pyongyang's official news agency on March 30th, which spoke of the existence of a state of war between the two Korea's. The United States has hardly been passive in the face of these alarming events. In addition to increasing the pressure on North Korea at the UN, annual US South Korea military exercises are ongoing. Escalating the tensions, the Pentagon dispatched a pair of nuclear capable B-2 stealth bombers on "a training mission" over the Korean peninsula, at the end of March. This sortie was described by US officials as a way of underscoring the US commitment to its long standing regional allies, Japan and South Korea. Presumably it also had the objective of intimidating Kim Jong-un and his advisers. What the North Korean leadership is hoping to achieve by its belligerence, is anyone's guess. As a senior US official told the Reuters news agency that, when it comes to Kim's strategy, It's a little bit of an all bets off kind of moment!