This isn’t what you want to wake up to in the morning:
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea bombarded a South Korean island near their disputed western border Tuesday, setting buildings ablaze and killing at least two marines and injuring 16 others after warning the South to halt military drills in the area, South Korean officials said.
Nice. The Norks decided that a side order of shelling was going to come with their rhetoric, inflicting both casualties and significant property damage.
Remember folks that the Koreas are still technically at war; in 1953 there never was a peace treaty negotiated. Instead, we had an “armistice” – a cease fire if you will. That’s special.
Our government has a history of failed responses, as does South Korea in this regard. If you remember the Norks torpedoed a South Korean ship and there was no meaningful response. Now we have them shelling an island with both military and civilian people on it.
The response?
China, which is the North’s economic and political benefactor while maintaining robust commercial ties with the South, called for calm.
“We express our concern over the situation. The situation is to be verified,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a regularly scheduled media briefing in Beijing. He called on both Koreas without naming them “to do more to contribute to peace and stability on the peninsula.”
To be impolite but precise: **** you China.
There’s nothing to be “verified” when someone starts shelling another nation’s territory. You’re not really going to suggest that the shells pulled a Harry Potter and magically materialized without being fired from the north, are you?
South Korea was running military exercises in the general area, as any nation has a right to do. Yeah, it’s “provocative” to parade around your military assets. So what? Firing artillery shells is an act of war, as was sinking the South Korean ship.
This crap will not stop until it is made clear that such acts will be met with overwhelming response. Unfortunately we and the South Koreans, by failing to reasonably contain these goons and in fact by dropping the sanctions on North Korea, have only emboldened the jackals there, along with their Chinese “benefactors” who in large part make possible the feeding of their people and thus the promulgation and protection of the government.
Yeah, I realize that this viewpoint is at odds with the principle of “detente.” But so is firing artillery shells and sinking ships with torpedoes.
I will remind everyone that the Norks have detonated at least one working (even if poorly) nuclear device and are now confirmed to have a centrifuge enrichment plant.
If you think Iran is a problem you need to look further east. Nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is not in anyone’s best interest but if someone doesn’t stop talking and start doing in putting a stop to this crap that’s exactly what we’re going to end up with.
