Kim Jong-Il has another hissy fit

There are two things that amaze me every time the Korea's have a spat:

1- that the North still insists on randomly blowing up planes, ships etc. sneaking people in to the south, tunneling under the DMZ etc etc etc

2- That western media jumps straight to the "this could lead to WWIII....." conclusion. I guess when you run news 24/7 you need something to fill the void.

The fact is that this is one of the largest bombings attacks by either of the Korea's since 1953 and, yet again, it comes on the heels of South Korea taking another step in its development. You'll note that the G20 conference was recently held in Seoul and that war games (I love that they are called "games") that were supposed to be held between the US and South Korea in the Yellow Sea and were cancelled due to CHINESE concerns have been restarted as a South Korean excercise with US observers. the same thing happened in the lead up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics (plane bombing), Korea's nomination to host the G20 summit (ship bombing), Korea's first democratic election (Rangoon bombing) etc. and nothing ever happens.

The simple fact is that North Korea's old friends, China and Russia now have many thousands of their citizens living and working in South Korea (there are many Russian students in Korea and many Chinese students and language teachers, much higher numbers than the 20,000 ESL teachers that are here), they do billions of dollars in trade with the south and the south isn't looking for handouts from them every week.

How this usually works is that China will "suggest that North Korea halt its actions" and then offer some food or financial credit when they do. The Americans, who have spent the 21st century to date scared of everyone and everything, immediately jump to the WWIII scenario, which is stupid but gets them thinking North Korea. Finally the South Koreans might lift some food restrictions, or they may not. However, they will continue to be China's 3rd largets trading partner, America's 5th or 6th (I'm not actually sure but it's in the bottom half of the top ten) and have one of the highest standards of living in Asia.

Finally, the south knows that one war like the 1950-53 one will destroy 30 years of building and unprecedented growth, so they will NOT go to war. Since South Korea is linked to every major power in the Pacific economically and is home to tens of thousands of nationals of those countries, those same countries will not allow South Korea to be attacked. Finally, North Korea knows that a real attack is suicide, and the Kim regime does know how to hold on to life so they WILL NOT actually invade.

The two Koreas are a great study of those who believe that a big military is strength versus those who believe that economic power and friendship is strength and I'm happy to see that the military side has lost this debate thoroughly.