It looks this morning as if everyone is trying to calm the situation. Saying it is an exercise and giving them a way of walking this back.
The threat to turn Japan into a "sea of nuclear fire" is the most explicit threat in years if not decades. They didn't threaten a retaliatory nuclear strike on Japan for an American nuclear strike on North Korea.
They threatened a *pre-emptive* and *nuclear* strike against Japan even if we never so much as lift a finger to attack them.
Running your mouth off like that during a period of extreme tension is a provocative and reckless brinkmanship even for the North Koreans.
Saying that kind of thing while you are at that moment mobilizing troops and equipment at missile bases is not "brinkmanship".
It is an attempt at "suicide by cop".
Kim is losing it. The boys in Beijing better do something quick or we will end up staring each other down through nuclear gunsights.
World War I started with an individual act of violence and pulled all the nations of Europe into a war none of them expected or wanted.
The next World War could start with a sudden and unexpected act that escalates into open war that pulls us all into an Asian conflagration that no one wanted.
Nerve gas chemical shipped to North Korea from South: official
24 September 2004 1359 hrs (SST)
SEOUL: More than 100 tonnes of a toxic chemical that can be used to make deadly nerve gas were exported to North Korea by a South Korean businessman via China, the government said.
The ministry of commerce said the businessman exported 107 tonnes of sodium cyanide between June and September last year to an importer in Dandong, China, on the border with North Korea, without government approval.
The unidentified Chinese company re-exported the shipment to a North Korean trading firm, the ministry said in a statement.
Sodium cyanide is widely used to produce herbicides and in metal industries, but can also be used to make deadly nerve gas.
Because of the dual use, the chemical is subject to multilateral export control regimes to which South Korea is a signatory.
The commerce ministry said it first learned about the illegal shipments and reported the South Korean businessman to prosecutors in October last year.
Consequently, the unidentified South Korean businessman received a jail sentence of 18 months suspended for two years in January.
The ministry said authorities were checking a report that a Malaysian company exported 40 tonnes of the same chemical, 15 tonnes of which it had bought from South Korea, to North Korea last month.
North Korea has one of the world's biggest stockpiles of chemical weapons, according to US intelligence sources, and is believed to have biological weapons. The Stalinist state also boasts of its nuclear deterrent force, and Washington believes it has developed a small number of nuclear devices.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/108293/1/.html