North Korea Developments

Dan Drezner rounds up Web opinion and news about the fallout from this week’s declaration by Pyongyang that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a nuclear-weapons state. Among the more interesting bits of speculation Drezner highlights: China may amend its mutual security treaty with North Korea to end Beijing’s pledge to come to the DPRK’s assistance if attacked, and Japan may block North Korea’s fishermen from selling their catch in Japan’s staggeringly huge seafood market. This is a serious threat, New York Times says:

“It will hurt, it will pinch, it will be felt by North Koreans who are significant,” said Chuck Downs, an American expert on Korea and author of, “Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy.” “This will have a major impact on people who are on the snow crab gravy train. They are making more money than the drug runners, than the diplomats. It is one of the few lucrative things you can do if you are North Korean.”

Isn’t Communism grand? Among all the other endemic shortages and weird surpluses, you also get a situation where the guys from A Perfect Storm have more bling than GTA.
The Japanese are irked at the North Koreans for another reason besides Pyongyang’s implicit blackmail of Tokyo: The reculsive Stalinist state has admitted to kidnapping dozens of Japanese citizens over the past few decades. In one case, the DPRK returned remains said to be of one such abductee–but investigation has confirmed that the remains were of at least two other people.
In response to a North Korean overture, the White House has rejected calls for bilateral talks, reports Washington Post. Post separately carries a world opinion roundup, focusing on regional sources, that demonstrates the depth of global concerns over the hermit kingdom’s declaration.
Finally, stepping into the Wayback Machine, I find this Times article from the ninth of February, just before the current fracas began. It’s worth remembering that North Korea is not an isolated state, and that its nuclear weapons program was apparently fed by Pakistani A.Q. Khan’s terror network (which I discussed in this December post) and fed, in turn, nuclear ambitions in Libya. Conservatives, who recognize the power of the free market and of free association, nonetheless persist in believing that unilateral action can break up these complicated and sophisticated networks. The evidence is against that supposition.