North Korea has never wanted in their ability to add bluster and bravado to what seems an endless line of leaders, growing increasingly crazy by succession.
North Korea’s present leader Kim Jong Un makes his father’s choice of sunglasses and platform shoes coupled with a penchant for expensive cognac seem merely eccentric when his words are examined.
“One has the impression of an impetuous wind blowing about one’s ears when one is near that man,” stated Mademoiselle de Stahl of Napoleon, one can only trust that if Dennis Rodman took to his knees during his “diplomatic mission” to North Korea last week he would have felt that same crazed vacuousness around the brain of this “leader” over two centuries later.
The newest madness, North Korea’s “right to pre-emptive nuclear attack.” Though most see it only as illegal privilege limited by science and readiness and multiplied by bluster. Not unlike a teenager claiming his or her right over your car given their new driver’s license. Jong Un, however, seems to make teenagers a rational lot.
“Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to pre-emptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest,” the North’s foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
One would think the North Korean military might want to re-investigate their need for their country to be turned into a parking lot, given the few cars the country possesses, a number that will be made smaller when the U.N. Security Council votes to add sanctions that would keep yachts and luxury cars from North Korea’s elite later today.
A spokesman for South Korea’s defence ministry told Reuters that the military was “watching the North’s activities and stepping up readiness.”
Given that North Korea has threatened to resume the war against South Korea as recently as last week, one should be prepared. Given the pure irrationality of North Korea’s leaders going back to the truce laid out in 1953, one has to think they are kind of always ready for it.
Additionally, the folly of these threats while the United States is preparing full-scale exercises with South Korea this week is baffling.
“There is always a lot of saber-rattling when the U.S. and South Korea stage large-scale military exercises,” said Angus Walker, ITV News correspondent in Beijing.
It’s easy to be cavalier about this latest round of North Korean claims of war, unless of course you sit in Seoul within artillery range of the generals who don’t seem to have a lot of good advice for their newest madman.