Will there be war?

No, I think is the easy answer. I'm of course talking about SK and NK. I seem to rarely talk about anything else. This week you may of seen the symbolic ending of military and political agreements that were made early a few years ago. It also deals with some maritime border disputes.

Then, more recently it's thought (US and Korea suspect) that NK will test out another missile in the next two weeks. What is significant about this one I hear you shout, well it's an improvement on the Taepodong 2 missile that they tested near Japan. I'm no weapons expert but from the little reading I have done it's like a scud rocket that could theoretically act as a nuclear delivery system. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who knows more. More importantly analysts are saying it can reach 6000- 6700 km. That puts Alaska (and I think Hawai) into touching distance. Although realistically I'm not sure it can carry heavy loads that far.

Does this mean the heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula are reaching climatic stage? Well, I don't think so. NK lives on and needs attention, they have been sulking about the lack of attention the new US govt has given them. The fact that special envoys have been sent to the Middle East and South Asia, whereas North Korea hasn't been mentioned apart from the 6 party talks (NK have wanted bilateral talks for a long time). Add to this Lee Myung Bak is currently really unpopular in the South and they are playing on this.

What all this tension does is increase it's leverage in negotiations and make the issue seem more important than it actually is. They said very promising things about a new relationship with the US and therefore this creates pressure on the Obama regime to do something. LMB is essentially a puppet in this but for once I think he is right in taking a tougher line. Without LMB help and US ignoring them, NK has no where really to go apart from make threats. The problem is NK can't really go through with these threats because it gives their enemies an excuse to remove them. Therefore all they have left is to make symbolic gestures to try and create a sense of fear in the public sphere that puts pressure on governments to change it's policy (how the media spins these symbolic gesture will decide how successful they are) . If you read my blog post of a few weeks ago I did actually predict this (It's not often I'm right so I have to highlight it when I am)

I'll leave you with a random fact. For the third year running, South Korean students have made up the largest proportion on foreign students in the USA, accounting for nearly 15% of all foreign students ahead of both India and China.