The North Korean leadership has been quite literally insane for decades; perhaps they’ve finally decided to destroy themselves.
“perhaps they’ve finally decided to destroy themselves.”
If so, South Korea is on their own. There will be deaths in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The South’s military is set up for a cold-war scenario more involving China and Russian than North Korea. They’ve had about 10 years to change that, but I haven’t noticed the types of weapons purchases that would take out all the North’s guns on the DMZ; which would be a PDQ necessity. It would require thousands of pin-point accurate shells and cruise missiles. Also, we can only hope that the South has developed and deployed nuclear weapons. The sinking of the Chonan and our lack of response should have told them they needed their own weapons.
BTW, a strong and decisive response to the sinking would probably have stopped the North from any further adventures. But we sent a “strong” diplomatic note “deploring” the sinking. Nixon responded to the killing of two US officers by sniper fire over the DMZ by whistling up two carrier groups and getting himself quoted in the press about “blowing them back to the stone age.” The North apologized and shot the snipers. No more problems while Nixon was in office. But Obama failed the test.
I don’t think that family tree has any branches. Coo-coo...
food shortages and economic disaster correlate with violent, mass insane behavior.