ShareThisNorth Korea is preparing to launch a missile designed to reach as far as the west coast of Canada or the United States, while leader Kim Jong-il praises his country as an invulnerable "socialist fortress."
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops are taking part in a massive military exercise just a few kilometers to the south and Japanese airlines are adjusting their flight routes just in case the rhetoric turns out to be real this time. And North Korea was holding two U.S. journalists after taking them into custody Tuesday at the border with China.
In other words, it's high-stakes business as usual on the Korean peninsula. Political observers in East Asia are waiting to see how President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deal with what is sure to be only the first of many showdowns with Pyongyang.
The other variable is just who is in charge in North Korea, after a series of rumors surrounding Kim's failing health and the promotion of hard-core elements of his regime during stage-managed elections earlier this month.
As a result, some believe the current situation may be more dangerous than the usual Korean brinkmanship. The South Korean Defense Ministry said this week that it anticipates a "limited clash" with North Korean forces either along the 1953 ceasefire line or along the disputed sea boundary, possibly about the same time as the planned North Korean missile launch.
"There is a good possibility North Korea may stage a provocative act in some areas after international attention is focused on its missile launch," the Ministry said in a report delivered to parliament in Seoul.
Earlier this year, North Korea announced it was scrapping all peace accords with the South, including one that recognized the disputed sea border as an interim frontier. In the past week, it has also blocked movement across the heavily defended border to the Kaesong industrial park in the demilitarized zone out of anger about the joint U.S.-South Korean military drills. The four-day blockade stranded more than 400 South Korean managers and stopped work at a project that has been a lucrative source of income for the cash-strapped North.
Tensions continued to rise this week as North Korea announced that it would no longer accept food aid from the United States, despite the fact that 9 million North Koreans rely on such help. Five American non-government organizations that had been involved in distributing food in North Korea would have to leave the country by the end of the month.
In its report to parliament, the South Korean Defense Ministry speculated that one of Pyongyang's goals was "pressuring the ... Obama administration to come to bilateral talks at an early date."
Last month, during her first visit to Seoul as Secretary of State, Clinton signaled she would be taking a firmer line with North Korea than the Bush administration had in recent years. She slammed Pyongyang's legacy of "poverty and tyranny" and warned that relations with the United States could not improve as long as North Korea was threatening the South. North Korea responded by turning down a request from Stephen Bosworth, Obama's new envoy to the region, to visit Pyongyang.
But some observers believe that domestic North Korean politics may be what's really driving Pyongyang's new belligerence. Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said that hard-liners appear to have gained ground through the elections last month, though the big question of who might succeed Kim was left unclear.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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