Check, Mates

Low level simmer, high-level stakes. North Korea just doesn't like to be told it must do what it does not wish to do. And it does not wish to do anything that it is informed it must do. Conversely it hastens to do that which it is forbidden to do. Pyongyang's intransigent boorishness, an inherited familial trait that its dictator infests the country with is legendary. This ongoing game of testing the nerves and patience of its neighbour, South Korea, and its farther neighbour Japan, is some board game, enervatingly tedious and fraught with explosive tension.

As in, think: nuclear. Kim Jong-il is adamant, his illustrious country will launch its Taepondong-2 missile. Its parabola to sail a mission over Japan and thence into the Pacific? Testing, just testing. And should a nervous Japan, alerted and abetted and itself missiled by its great good friend and protector, the United States, take self-protective steps to intercept the Taepondong-2 missile, war, glowers Kim Jong-il, is inevitable. North Korea will wipe out South Korea, Japan, and in good time the United States as well.

China is fascinated, keen and eager to witness the outcome. The Patriot batteries representing the anti-missile technology that Japan is using are as imperfect in their technical proficiency and reliability as is the North Korean Taepondong-2 missile. Meanwhile, Japan and the United States have their warships patrolling the Sea of Japan. China-based political prognosticators advise that the U.S. and Japan stand to lose considerable 'face' should the missile violate Japanese sovereignty without a correspondingly accurate targeting of the missile by the Pac-3 Patriot missile batteries.

Within Japan there is much nervous tension, with the population being advised to remain calm. In the face of a prospective assault (accidental to be certain) on Tokyo's various districts, political and financial. South Korea is reeling on its own slender tenterhooks of apprehension of a violently irate North Korea striking it as pay-back for any triumvirate interruption in North Korea's bid for a successful missile mission - preparatory to additional exploits.

This globe is such an intriguing, exciting, unpredictable orb.