海角大神

North Korea announced today in a blizzard of threats that it is ready to target US military bases in Guam and Hawaii as part of a full-alert military posture. The threats included other targets in the United States, and in South Korea, in what has been a steady escalation of rhetoric.聽

The Korean People鈥檚 Army Supreme Command, which rarely itself issues such statements since it is a wartime body, stated the alert was due to the American nuclear 鈥渨ar racket鈥� that has 鈥済one beyond the danger line, and entered the phase of an actual war, defying the repeated warnings from the army and people of [North Korea.]鈥�

The statement warned 鈥減uppet authorities鈥� in Seoul to 鈥渂e mindful that everything will be reduced to ashes and flames,鈥� reported Yonhap news agency.

North Korea has vowed in the past to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire." And the latest threats from Pyongyang 鈥� which has made technical progress with its missile range, though has not yet proved it can "weaponize" or nuclear-tip those rockets 鈥� apparently do not target the Japanese mainland.聽

The escalation of threats on the peninsula largely follow new articulations: a US-South Korean military exercise; the election of South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, whose father was in various trysts with the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, North Korea鈥檚 new leader; the North鈥檚 own declared abrogation of the historic Korean War armistice; and other frictions, some of which appear created by Pyongyang to create waves and to make North Korean citizens believe their world is at the center of the universe.

Think, for example, of the colorful recent visit of former NBA-bad boy Dennis Rodman to the Hermit Kingdom, and the mass attention that got.

The New York Times today writes:

Of course, the status of North Korea鈥檚 leader is always paramount in speculation, informed and otherwise, about the North.

Kim Jong-un is still a very young dictator, said to be 30, and is consolidating his power and style. North Korea is for outsiders a dense black box; it is not always clear whom the Kim regime鈥檚 threats are meant to satisfy. There are generals who want to see young Kim continue the 鈥渕ilitary first鈥� policy of his father and grandfather. There is an ongoing need to keep the woeful problems faced daily by ordinary North Koreans, particularly those outside the carefully constructed and supposedly racially-pure world of Pyongyang, at bay, and to ensure that the masses continue in the standard patriotic stupor that is the bedrock of stability in the Kim dynasty.

One theory making the rounds among DPRK watchers is that Kim created internal joy in Pyongyang with a successful cyberattack on banks and websites in South Korea last week, and the threats are an effort to keep that happy ball rolling.

The difficulty for Western planners is that while threats are a stock in trade for Pyongyang, defense establishments have to take all threats with some modicum of seriousness. One US military analyst described Kim鈥檚 father, Kim Jong-il, as 鈥渃razy like a fox.鈥澛�

Today, South Korean military officials monitoring activity inside the North, according to Reuters,聽see no out-of-the-ordinary military action or rallying action commensurate with a full alert.聽

And it's important to note that in the past, Pyongyang has not been able to muster full-scale alerts since it has lacked the gasoline and electric power to do so.聽聽