At first glance, this would appear to be a huge step towards peace with the troubled nation. But it’s simply a reopening of the border so the North can make some money from the South.

Still, a positive step and one worth noting.

From Reuters:

North Korea said on Monday it had agreed to reopen the border to South Korea its neighbor and allow tourism and family reunions to start again.

The agreement to ease restrictions on the border follows a meeting between the reclusive state’s leader Kim Jong-il and the head of the South Korean Hyundai Group who had gone to Pyongyang to seek the release of a detained worker. The visit followed hot on the heels of one earlier in the month by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who also met Kim, to win the release of two jailed American journalists. [...]

North Korea has portrayed both visits as paying tribute to leader Kim, 67, whose health is the subject of speculation. He is believed to be trying to ensure his youngest son becomes the third generation in the family to head the destitute communist dynasty, its coffers drained by heavy military spending, poor economic management and years of U.N. sanctions.

One would hope, between Clinton’s visit and this one, that the North would start to realize that how much good will can come their way if they stop rattling their sabres and open their borders for good. But something tells me that even if they do, the citizenry is so brainwashed that it’ll take a few generations for things to return to any sense of normalcy.

NY times article…

Nothing has been proven, but it sounds all too intriguing…at least to a cartoonist.

Alan wrote yesterday about things heating up with North Korea, and nownuclear tensions are growing on the high seas…

The U.S. military is preparing for a possible intercept of a North Korean flagged ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.

The USS John McCain, a Navy destroyer, is positioning itself in case it gets orders to intercept the ship Kang Nam as soon as it leaves the vicinity off the coast of China, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The order to inderdict has not been given yet, but the ship is moving into the area.

“Permission has not been requested. Nor is it clear it will be,” a military source told FOX News. “This is a very delicate situation and no one is interested in precipitating a confrontation.”

Here’s the question…if this isn’t sanctioned by the White House, why are they moving into position? Is that protocol? Genuinely, I don’t know.

And to that point, how ironic is it that the ship is the USS John McCain?

More as it develops…

Government officials say they will act within the bounds of a recent UN Security Council resolution which permits international navies to request the inspection of North Korean cargo vessels but does not give them the right to board. If the North Korean ship docks in a foreign port, the local authorities have broadened inspection rights.

North Korea has said any attempt to board a North Korean vessel would be considered an act of war. This threat likely explains Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ order to increase Hawaii’s defenses against a possible incoming long-range missile.

Gates’ order is almost certainly done out of an abundance of caution and not because the U.S. is planning to take action against the North Korean vessel. However, North Korea is not known as a rational actor and there is very real reason to worry even a small provocation could escalate quickly.

I’m not sure what North Korea’s endgame is, but the nation’s recent actions have been more than a little alarming. Hopefully things will simmer down. The world has enough to worry about already.

Looks like last week’s nuclear test angered a key ally too.

From Bloomberg:

China suspended government exchanges with North Korea after Kim Jong-Il’s regime last week tested a nuclear device and fired short-range missiles, Yonhap News said.

China has halted plans to send officials to North Korea and won’t accept visits from Kim’s government either, the Korean- language news agency said today, citing unidentified diplomatic sources in Beijing.

China’s foreign ministry has said the country “resolutely opposes” North Korea’s nuclear test. China on May 25 agreed with the U.S., Japan and Russia to work toward a United Nations Security Council resolution censuring North Korea. The U.S. and Japan want the statement to call for cutting the communist country’s global financial ties, UN diplomats said.

And that begs the question: if China can’t get through to North Korea, who can? After all, China has long been seen as one of the only real partner North Korea has, and if they can’t exert some type of control over them…what then?

Troubling stuff.

Well, North Korea has the world’s attention. Exploding a nuclear bomb and launching missile tests will do that. All that’s left now is for the world to respond.

North Korea has long been a foreign policy conundrum, frustrating a long line of U.S. presidents who’ve attempted to stop the so-called hermit nation from threatening its neighbors. North Korea’s leadership has repeatedly placed raw pride over any other consideration, content to let their people suffer rather than enter normal relations with the world. To complicate matters more, both Russia and China have, at various times, backed North Korea, finding such alliances a convenient way to irritate the United States and our allies or, in China’s case, the easiest way to prevent massive numbers of refugees from streaming over their border.

Has this latest outburst from North Korea changed anything? Early indications are that, if nothing else, the world is generally united against Pyongyang.

Russia, which called the test a “serious blow” to the effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, suspended a Russia-North Korean intergovernmental trade and economic commission, apparently in response to the nuclear test. The slap on the wrist was a telling indication that Moscow, once a key backer of North Korea, was unhappy with Pyongyang.

And China, which has been the closest thing North Korea has to a friend, is reacting by holding high-level meetings with South Korea to discuss ways to respond.

At this point, I doubt China will want to do anything which might create the feared refugee crisis. And outside of military action – which really isn’t on the table for a large number of reasons – nothing will change in North Korea without Chinese intervention. That leaves President Obama in an unenviable position. He has to take a tough stand but knows he’s no more likely to directly affect North Korea than were his predecessors. As such, his best bet is to work behind the scenes with Chinese and Russian officials (because it’s always prudent to include the Russians in these matters) to develop a coordinated and meaningful response.

Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of resolute response presidents (and the American people) prefer. But I’m not exactly sure what other options we have.

Before anyone jumps up and declares this cartoon tasteless, I do not condone genocide.  I just want to imply in a satirical way that these two regimes are shooting each other in the foot with their nuclear tests.  For now it may seem that they both have a long while to go before developing a considerable threat, but in tandem I think this sets up two fronts that UN and Washington are not fully prepared to deal with.  I pray that this situation or any detonation does not triggers a nuclear assault…I just want to illustrate the absurdity before our eyes.

Fred Kaplan has an excellent article in Slate detailing why North Korea is so hard to deal with and how Obama should proceed after the recent missile launch.

Over the last few decades, our policies towards North Korea have seemed to be all talk and no action. We’ve all but wagged our finger off. Kaplan explains why:

The strange mix of high drama, tense showdown, then limp backpedaling has been going on for decades, and it stems from two immovable facts—the nature of the North Korean regime and China’s vital interest in keeping the regime from imploding.

The nature of North Korea’s regime is to act like a guerilla state because it knows the only way to stay relevant is to irritate the major powers. As for China, they hold most of the international bargaining chips because they supply North Korea with most of its aid and trade. But China is very reluctant to take real action against their neighbor because they know the failure of Kim Jong-il’s regime would lead to millions of North Koreans rushing across the border into China, creating a humanitarian crisis Beijing desperately wants to avoid.

So, if North Korea is hell-bent on causing trouble and China won’t use the only bargaining chips the international community has, what can the Obama administration do?

Whatever President Obama does, he should not go rushing off to the negotiating tables. Despite its failure, the rocket launch did violate a U.N. resolution warning North Korea not to launch any more missiles, and the reaction cannot be a reward. However, Obama should also resist mounting a long and ambitious campaign to stiffen the sanctions already in place—unless he can get the Chinese to agree beforehand that they’ll go along. Too many times, U.S. officials have labeled some North Korean action as “unacceptable”—only to accept it in the end, thus making all future warnings still less credible.

The best thing right now is to spend as little time as possible on this subject, then drop it. We have a lot more important things on our plate than North Korea’s puny bomb and flaccid missiles. As Daniel Sneider, associate director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, said of the missile launch in a phone conversation today, “This is not the action of a strong state—this is the action of a weak state.” Obama should behave accordingly.

I think they used to call that strategy “containment.”

While liberals tend to promote the healing power of “talks” and the recent generation of conservatives have promoted the decisive power of “action,” there’s something to be said for just keeping the situation stable. North Korea is hardly the world’s greatest threat. There’s little use in treating them as such.

The North Korean saber rattling corresponds to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Seoul today. As of yet, the U.S. has issued no formal response, but I imagine the Obama administration will not be pleased. Look for U.S./North Korea relations to remain as strained as ever.

The Obama Administration may be trying out a kinder, gentler style of foreign policy, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already put North Korea on notice: test a long-range missile and they can forget about a better relation with the U.S. While in Japan, Clinton responded to North Korea’s assertion the nation has a right to “space exploration” with this comment:

“The possible missile launch that North Korea is talking about would be very unhelpful in moving our relationship forward,” she said, adding that if Pyongyang wants to end its isolation it also has to fulfill unmet denuclearization pledges made during the Bush administration.

“The decision as to whether North Korea will cooperate in the six-party talks, end provocative language and actions is up to them and we are watching very closely,” Clinton said, referring to the six-nation talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons.

“If North Korea abides by the obligations it has already entered into and verifiably and completely eliminates its nuclear program, then there will be a reciprocal response certainly from the United States,” she said. “It is truly up to the North Koreans.”

North Korea is one of those foreign relation situations where there is no good answer, just a series of bad answers with varying consequences. Apparently, the Obama Administration is not going to rush to establish a new tactic to handling Pyongyang and will stick to the Bush Administration’s policies for the time being.

I don’t expect Obama to have any more success in reforming North Korea than did his predecessors. I do expect him and his team to be smart enough to follow a policy of containment. Really, the most important aspect of the six party talks is not to get North Korea to agree to change but to get China, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the U.S. to all agree (and to continue to agree) that the rogue nation needs to be contained. The best Obama can probably hope for is ensuring the large powers don’t fracture over the issue. Changing North Korea seems unlikely. Ensuring the nation is more nuisance than threat is the real goal.