North Korea threatened Friday to break off all dialogue and negotiations with South Korea in anger over Seoul's alleged contingency plan to deal with potential unrest in the communist country.
The National Defense Commission — the North's most powerful state organ headed by leader Kim Jong Il — also warned the North will initiate a "retaliatory holy war" against South Korea over the plan, which the North claims is aimed at toppling its regime.
A holy war? From the communists? Heavens to Betsy.
It's a bad day in Pyongyang when the threats from the worker's paradise no longer make Seoul quake in its boots, and the northerners have to appeal to the martyr's paradise, instead, which seems to work for any cave-dwelling loser with a $200.00 video camera and a smattering of English.
The north may not like it, but South Korea needs contingency plans like that.
UPDATE: Hello, hyper-inflation?
The past month has seen an extraordinary spectacle in North Korea: the failure of a hastily announced "currency reform" and the subsequent collapse of the won, the official domestic currency. These developments are of more than numismatic interest. Pyongyang's currency move marks the end of an era of hesitant economic experimentation and ushers in a new era of greater economic, and perhaps political, uncertainties.
And with the destruction of the tiny private market, kiss goodbye the good it did in averting starvation by providing a profit motive to get and sell food.
Strategypage has the overview. And I do wish to commend the Obama administration for refusing to halt the collapse of the regime by shoveling money north. As Strategypage put it, in regard to Pyongyang's demand for a peace treaty and normalized relations:
The U.S. quickly turned this down, and told North Korea to start negotiating, or else they can starve in the dark.For too long, North Korea's leaders have leveraged the fact that we care more for their people than the regime does.
