Slate tempers the media hysteria over the North Korea (failed) missile launch.
Kim Jong-il, these past few years, has adroitly played his otherwise miserable hand because of two cards that everyone believes he holds—nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Yesterday's dud raises the possibility that the missile card's a bluff, that there may be (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland) "no there there." The next tempting step is to wonder about the nukes. We know that he has enough plutonium to build some bombs, but has he built them? Can he build them?
Apparently this missile building stuff is more difficult than it appears. The only thing that Slate ignores in this article is that wee sibling to the south of North Korea. Even with this long range missile failure, the denizens of South Korea are still very much a hostage to their madman brother. Who needs missiles when some good ol' fashion shells with the assistance of gunpowder and gravity can do the job? While the Shrub can relax knowing the borders of the US are safe from a sneak attack by North Korea, that assurance doesn't mean much to South Koreans.
I was speaking with a friend who was recently in South Korea visiting relatives and he said that more South Koreans fear the US than North Korea, which is understandable if you realize that the Shrub administration's antagonistic "lone cowboy with guns drawn and negotiation is for pussies" foreign policy could have a very real side effect of thousands of thousands of shells raining down on Seoul. But then again, the problem with a nutso like Kim Jong Il, the great leader and pervert of North Korea, is that he may decide to do this for no reason other than the fact that his nuts itched that day.
My friend also said that along with their fear of the US, Koreans are also suspicious that North Korea's saber rattling will provide (the second closest and most obvious target for North Korea) Japan an excuse to attack Korea (again). And as we all know, the Koreans hate the Japanese.
I'm convinced that the only person who could resolve this whole zero-sum fiasco is...Michael Jackson. Seriously! Everyone in Asia fuckin' love him (They never got the Jackson Five memo that Michael didn't always look like Whitey McWhite) and once he starts singing that "We are the World" shit, it's all over. The soldiers facing one another across the DMZ line would walk over (carefully avoiding the mines) and hug. Japan would send a bouquet of flowers to Korea with "xoxo." Scene End. .