DPRK say: I'll thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick

Yesterday North Korea gave a typical response to the suspension byt teh USA of food aid.
 

"We have thus become able to take necessary retaliatory measures, free from the agreement. The US will be held wholly accountable for all the ensuing consequences," its foreign ministry said.

THe North Koreans also rejected condemnation by the United Nations Security Council, including China, of the failed launch last ure that iday.

Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said on Wednesday that China has suspended the refugee repatriation deal because it was not consulted about the launch, seen by the US and its allies as a covert test of ballistic missile technology. The paper quoted two Chinese officials as saying the longstanding policy of swiftly returning North Koreans as economic migrants - despite the punishment they face back home - had been put on hold.

"North Korea failed to disclose specific plans of the missile launch to the Chinese side," the paper quoted one unidentified official as saying.
The suspension reflects Beijing's displeasure with its neighbour which "did not show the necessary attention to its friend China", the official said.

Pyongyang insists its failed satellite launch did not breach a February deal with Washington, under which it vowed to suspend uranium enrichment and nuclear and missile tests in return for food aid.But the US called off plans to start shipping 240,000 tonnes of food, saying the North could no longer be trusted.

On Monday a Security Council presidential statement "strongly condemned" the launch. It ordered a tightening of existing sanctions and warned of new action if the isolated state stages another nuclear or long-range missile test.

Pyongyang said Washington had imposed a "brigandish demand" on the Council and that every country has the right to launch satellites for peaceful purposes."Nothing can stand in the way of (North Korea)'s space development for peaceful purposes," it vowed. (Apart form their own incompetence)


"With the February agreement broken down in practice, the North will likely take many of the steps the US and South Korea have long feared, including another nuclear test and a long-range missile test," said Paik Hak-Soon of the South's Sejong Institute think-tank.

Paik tvelieved it was hard to imagine any conciliatory US gesture in an election year, and a with a presidential election was looming in South Korea.
"The North has realised, given the situation in the US and the South, that it is unlikely there will be any major diplomatic breakthroughs with either country until early 2013. So it will do whatever it wants to do until then," he said.

Yang Moo-Jin of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies said that when the US and the Security Council start taking punitive actions, "Pyongyang will certainly respond with actions as well. "These would include a third nuclear test, or test-launching of an inter-continental ballistic missile or stepping up activities involving weapons-grade uranium," Yang said.

To be honest I simply cannot get my head around  the DPRK. Personally I would simply forget about an my conciliation or aid to the country, help ensure that South Korea's defences are adequate to meet an attack fro the North (if  they are so stupid as to try an invasion) and get on with other things.

If the DPRK wushes to shout and scream like some petulant child then why should we listen. As for China, it looks as if they are reaching the end of their very long tether. It is unlikely they would attack DPRK but I am sure they have the facility to make things difficult for Kim Jong Young 'Un if they so wished.