As North Korea warned foreigners on Tuesday that they might want to leave South Korea because the peninsula was on the brink of nuclear war— a statement that analysts dismissed as hyperbole — the American commander in the Pacific expressed worries that the North’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, might not have left himself an easy exit to reduce tensions.
“He may think he has more running room than the rest of the family did,” one administration official said this week, “and that can lead to miscalculation.”
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching close to a thermonuclear war due to the evermore undisguised hostile actions of the United States and the South Korean puppet warmongers,” the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, a North Korean state agency, said in a statement. The statement added that the North “does not want to see foreigners in South Korea fall victim to the war.”
Meanwhile South Korea intensified its ongoing propaganda barrage against North Korea.
South Korea accused North Korea Wednesday of carrying out a wave of cyberattacks that paralyzed the networks of major South Korean banks and broadcasters last month.
Although some observers said at the time of the computer crashes that they suspected North Korean involvement, this is the first time that Seoul has formally pointed the finger at Pyongyang.
And as more or less always with US foreign policy, the blind are leading the blind.
No U.S. official has ever met Kim Jong Un, taken his measure, or been able to spell out directly the danger he is courting and what an alternative path might offer.