Under Pressure

It's getting hard to keep up with all the threats out there. The U.S. media machine has been feeding us plenty of fears about the Islamic terrorist next door who's probably living next door to you RIGHT NOW. But that loud grinding noise you hear is the shifting of gears to the Asia-Pacific. Time to dig up old footage of North Koreans goose-stepping for dictator Kim.

The U.S. president is working his phones, dishing out words like "provocative" in response to North Korea's missile test. In the global family dynamic, it seems North Korea is quite content to play the little brother anxious for attention. How far can L'il Kim (oops, is that name already taken?) push the boundaries before it's time for a time out?

It's tough, if impossible, to gauge what's going on. We've been hearing snippets of the devastating poverty North Koreans face for years but as usual, military trumps humanity. Is there a chance that by encouraging North Korea to return to international talks, the people stuck under Kim's thumb could wiggle free a bit? Some have speculated that North Korea's nuclear rumblings are part of the game: give us more aid and we won't play with our weapons. What a cruel jest.

In the meantime, we'll up North Korea a few notches on the scare list and add phrases like "six-party talks" to our water cooler vocabulary. And hope that somewhere along the way, someone will remember that there are millions of real people involved for whom rhetoric doesn't fill dinner plates.