People who cry wolf too often, especially petulant children, in the end find that their empty protests are ignored. Unfortunately with North Korea, which has cried wolf so frequently in the last two decades, there is no way that its complaints can be dismissed as phony. It is a highly militarized state with a nuclear weapon and rockets that are probably capable of delivering a thermonuclear attack on South Korea at the very least. In recent years it has bombarded a South Korean island and sunk a South Korean warship. Its threats are therefore not to be taken lightly. Now, in a worrying escalation of tension with its southern neighbor, it has cut the hotline that exists between Pyongyang and Seoul, saying that since the country is on the brink of war, there is no longer any need to keep up communications with the South. However, of equal concern is the general attitude of those who make a business out of studying Pyongyang in the same way the Kremlinologists used to read the limited runes that came out of Soviet-era Moscow. The consensus appears to be that this is simply yet more saber-rattling. The grounds for this conclusion are various. First the North's new dictator Kim Jong-un needs to establish his primacy over influential members of his family as well as the country's top generals who constitute its elite. Then, say the pundits, North Korea has always raised the political temperature whenever the South has a new president, as it does now in Park Geun-hye. When she was sworn in just two weeks ago, President Park said she wanted to improve relations with the North. Now, as a result of Pyongyang's threats, she has vowed to respond strongly to any provocation. Finally, there is the calming argument that in the final analysis China, upon which the North Korean regime is dependent for fuel and power in particular, would never allow its difficult ally to provoke a war on the Korean peninsular, not least because it would justify the US presence in the region which Beijing seems set on displacing. This last argument overlooks entirely the fact that the increased UN sanctions which have clearly triggered North Korea's new aggressive pronouncements have been prompted by the February 12 underground nuclear test. It is known that this exercise was carried out in the teeth of Chinese opposition and indeed brought condemnation from the Chinese leadership. Yet past North Korean provocations have also been deeply criticized by Beijing, and no substantive action has ever been taken against the regime, as far as is known. Will China's new president Xi Jinping break with his country's passive policy toward Pyongyang and use his economic and political leverage to bring Kim Jong-un and his government into line? Or is the dangerous destiny of a militarized state with powerful armaments unfolding with an awful logic? The possibility exists that North Korea could either deliberately or by mistake exceed its endless game of bluff and plunge the region into terrible conflict. The problem with a peevish child that cries wolf is that one day there could be something genuinely wrong but no one willing to believe it, with disastrous consequences. The deadly threat that is posed by North Korea must be taken seriously.
