World Outrage at North Korea

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North Korea's Leader Views Missiles as Bargaining Chips

So what do you do with a guy who has a limp missile that he uses to get the world's attention? You call on China.

Slate: Nukes and missiles are the only bargaining chips that Kim possesses; his brutal regime and self-imposed isolation have kept the country impoverished. However, every time the larger powers bellow about the North Korean threat or seek to impose penalties through harsh U.N. resolutions, they play into his game—they lavish him with the attention that he needs both to negotiate for goodies diplomatically and to justify his totalitarian reign at home.
This is why it's so tempting to ignore Kim's games—but also why it might be dangerous to do so. He requires the "drama and catastrophe"; his regime would probably collapse without them. And so, if the United States and the other major powers paid no attention to, say, his missile test, he would raise the stakes, do something more outrageous, then raise the ante on that as well, until we did pay attention—until we had to.
In this sense, tangling with North Korea is like playing highway chicken with a wild but calculating kid who visibly throws his steering wheel out the window, forcing the other, more responsible driver to veer off the road.
China is the one country that could crack the rod. Nearly all North Korea's trade comes through China, which also supplies Pyongyang with a great deal of aid and investment. Yet Beijing's leaders are so expansive with their largess, and so lax in their discipline, because they know—and Kim knows that they know—that if Kim's regime begins to collapse, tens of millions of North Koreans will rush across the Chinese border, creating a humanitarian crisis beyond Beijing's resources and possibly destabilizing that corner of China as well.

North Korea Stoking Tensions

UPDATE 4-4: North Korea launches. Read more here.
North Korea is getting testy, threatening to blow six party talks to end nuclear weapons testing, putting two U.S. journalists on trial and threatening war with Japan.
North Korea says it's launching a communications satellite between April 4-8. Japan says it's going to shoot it down and Robert Gates says the launch is a mask for development of a ballistic missile. Good grief.

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) - A missile North Korea could launch as soon as this weekend appears to have a bulb-shaped tip that gives credence to Pyongyang's claim it plans to put a satellite in space, U.S. defense officials said on Tuesday.

Washington and others have voiced concern the launch will be a test of a long-range missile that could carry a warhead as far as U.S. territory. Pyongyang's plans have alarmed the region and intensified pressure on the North not to launch its Taepodong-2. A Taepodong-2 test in 2006 failed.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the launch, which North Korea says will occur between April 4 and 8, would deal a blow to six-party talks to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

Further stoking tensions, North Korea said on Tuesday it would put on trial two U.S. journalists arrested this month on its border with China.

The reclusive state accused the two female reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee from the U.S.-based media outlet Current TV, of unspecified "hostile acts."

"The illegal entry of U.S. reporters into the DPRK (North Korea) and their suspected hostile acts have been confirmed by evidence and their statements, according to the results of intermediary investigation conducted by a competent organ of the DPRK," North Korea's KCNA news agency said.

This from Bloomberg: 

North Korea accuses Japan of using the launch, scheduled to take place between April 4 and 8, as a pretext to build its own nuclear arsenal.

The North Korean news agency, in its statement, said, “The primary aim sought by Japan through this is to bring the six- party talks to collapse and delay the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and thus justify its ambition for nuclear weaponization.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on March 29 called the launch “a mask” for development of an intercontinental ballistic missile by North Korea.