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PYONGYANG'S HEAT-SEEKING THREATS

Asia Times, February 7, 2009

SEOUL - The time has definitely come to talk of nukes and ships and missiles, of why the sea is boiling hot and whether the pig has wings - or at least the notion of sending missiles into flight and exploding another nuke or two.

Yes, it's crunch time again on the Korean Peninsula. First, North Korea showed signs of wheeling a fearsome Taepodong-2 to the launch site, and now there's talk of a few lesser missiles being fired down the Yellow Sea. Shades of July 2006 when North Korea fired off seven missiles, including a Taepodong-2, four months before exploding its first nuclear device?

No doubt, only this time the North Korean tekkies had better get it right. Last time, the Taepodong-2 arced like a giant Roman candle, plunging into the waters off the east coast about 40 seconds after lift-off. Presumably, the scientists and engineers have now perfected the process and the missile will zoom off, possibly on a trajectory over northern Japan, the route of the Taepodong-1 more than 10 years ago.

But that's not all. Now experts are saying North Korea might also fire off a few missiles into the West or Yellow Sea, just to bolster its barrage of rhetorical defiance of the Northern Limit Line set by the United Nations Command after the Korean War. What better way to show that Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is not only alive and recovered from whatever terrible medical event laid him low in August - but is fully ready to celebrate his 67th birthday on February 16.

It's not at all likely Kim will be seen blowing 68 candles off a cake - Koreans count the day you're born as the first birthday - or bowing before a throng of well-wishers. There's not a chance he'll actually appear in public, waving his hands to prove the reports of a slight paralysis on the left side were all nonsense.

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