NORTH KOREA: A PRODUCT OF APPEASEMENT?

OUTSIDE VIEW: NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR TEST

James Zumwalt

UPI.com, February 19, 2013

HERNDON, Va., Feb. 19 (UPI) -- In the 1976 psychological drama "Taxi Driver," Robert De Niro plays a socially outcast cab driver. In a real-life drama today, North Korea's Kim Jong Un is an internationally isolated world leader. In both roles, these characters communicate messages delivered with a sense of bravado, taunting a non-existing threat.

In an iconic scene in the movie, De Niro, alone in his room, is on an adrenaline high precipitated by insomnia. Looking in the mirror, he challenges no one with, "You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here! You talkin' to me?"

In North Korea, Kim Jong Un is on an adrenaline high due to the success of his country's third nuclear test -- this on a device purportedly smaller and lighter than the others and, thus, capable of placement into a long-range missile.

Issuing his challenge, the well-fed leader -- a giant compared to his diminutive, underfed countrymen -- warns he will take further steps if the United States maintains its "hostile approach" toward North Korea. Trying to create the illusion of a U.S. threat where none exists, Kim taunts an America perceived to be the lion from the Wizard of Oz -- i.e., lacking the courage of its convictions.

Pyongyang knows there is nothing to fear from U.S. foreign policy toward the North -- whether under a Republican or Democratic president, whether the talk is tough or not, whether sanctions were increased or lifted -- for such policy has always failed to influence its conduct away from aggression and nuclear armament.

Years of U.S. and South Korean appeasement have only served to encourage it. As a result, for years, the United States and South Korea have repeatedly been victimized by unprovoked aggression. To this day, a U.S. warship remains in North Korean hands as a continuing reminder of it.

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