Is A Second Korean War Looming?

Kim Jong Un
-the fat little "Dear Leader"

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) or "North Korea" has a new boy king, Kim Jong Un, who took up the mantle of "Dear Leader" at the behest of the North Korean generals who really run the country. As with all tin pot dictatorships, the people are starving to death while the leadership builds a nuclear arsenal and mobilizes for war.

Predictably, North Korea claims that its nuclear program is a response to U.S. hostility that dates back to the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula still technically in a state of war.

Kim Jong Un (Dear Leader) announced to the world that he intends to cancel the armistice agreement on March 11. "We aim to launch surgical strikes at any time and any target without being bounded by the armistice accord and advance our long-cherished wish for national unification," the statement said, according to Fox News.

Because of treaty obligations, the US would be bound to defend the Republic of Korea (ROK) or South Korea from their bellicose cousins to the North. 

The North Koreans are tied to China economically such that if China decided to stop North Korean adventurism, all that they'd need to do is stop shipping them free food and the DPRK would wither up and die. Maybe they'd fire off their nukes as a last great act of defiance?

The North Koreans have been torpedoing and sinking South Korean Navy ships and engaging in what the fat little boy king, Kim Jong Un, referred to as "surgical strikes" for a long time. They will open up with artillery on a South Korean city across the border or do any one of a number of odious things without provocation because they are literally starving. It always comes down to a national choice between guns and butter and since the North Koreans can't eat their bullets and barbed wire, they starve.

What's new this time? 

Crosseye'd Mahmood Ahmadinejad,
Iran's answer to Kim Jong Un

Nothing really. The DPRK doesn't want to be ignored and for the most part nobody cares about them. Their military has degraded technically and the only big stick that they have in their hands is a developed nuclear capability. They've exported that capability as much as they've been able to in exchange for hard currency, but there are limits to the number of rogue states, such as Iran, who will deal with them.

Kim Jong Un's generals are taking a page from the Iranian playbook in a sense. Iran threatens Israel and builds atomic bombs to bully a region in the same way as the North Koreans do.

The DPRK understands that the role of the US in South Korea is to keep the ROK from going north and embroiling the peninsula in another war with China. So they feel comfortable running a stick up and down the bars of the lion's cage, comfortable that the door is securely locked.

Update - Today, Thursday, March 7, 2013 the Fox News headline is "North Korea vows Nuclear Attack on the US, ad UN Prepares Vote on Sanctions".  Which begs the question of what the US should do? We can nuke them from orbit without the danger of a paper cut. I'm not suggesting that we do that -- but it does open interesting options.