NoKo fires missile over Japan, harsh words follow

North Korea is up to their old shenanigans again--they fired yet another missile over Japan which landed in the waters off the northern region of Hokkaido early Tuesday, according to South Korean and Japanese officials. This marks a sharp escalation of tensions and testosterone on the Korean peninsula and there is no doubt that harsh words are going to follow this dastardly deed.

The North Korean test appears to be that of the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 missile. It comes on the coattails of South Korean and U.S. military drills, to which North Korea strongly objects.

North Korea has conducted dozens of ballistic missile tests since corpulent Kim Jong Un became dictator. The most recent test, save this one, was on Saturday, but firing a missile over mainland Japan is rare and it is likely that leaders of Japan, South Korea and the U.S. will have something harsh to say about it.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe provided his honest analysis of the situation: "North Korea's reckless action is an unprecedented, serious and a grave threat to our nation."

Abe said his nation was seeking an urgent meeting at the UN to increase sanctions against Pyongyang. The test was a clear violation of UN resolutions and he said the government had protested against the move in the strongest terms. 

It is common knowledge that whenever a leader of a powerful nation condemns the actions of a rogue nation in the strongest possible terms, that it scares the rogue nation and causes them to stop and desist their malfeasance. 

Or not.

And even South Korea condemned the launch. "We will respond strongly based on our steadfast alliance with the United States if North Korea continues nuclear and missile provocation," SoKo's foreign ministry said.

It appears that the President of South Korea, Moon Jai-in, who was hoping to work things out with Kim Jong-Un and his gang, is having second thoughts.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the last NoKo missile fell into the sea 735 miles east of the Cape of Erimo on Hokkaido. The Japanese J-Alert system (the Japanese version of our Conelrad system) broke into radio and TV programming, interrupting thousands of "My Inscrutable Pillow" commercials, warning citizens of the possible missile. Warnings went out over loudspeakers in towns in Hokkaido and bullet trains services were halted.

Global markets reacted to the new escalation in tensions as gold shot up and stocks sold off. Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell almost 1 percent and South Korea's KOSPI index was also down a similar percentage.

The South Korean military said the missile was launched from the Sunan region near Pyongyang just before 6 a.m. and flew 1,680 miles, reaching an altitude of about 340 miles.

Naive (or worse) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to make a peace overture to North Korea last week, welcoming what he referred to as restraint shown by Pyongyang recently in its weapons programs by not conducting any tests since July.

Too bad Rex--it sounded good when you first said it, but you apparently don't know what you're twanging about.

Masao Okonogi, professor emeritus at Keio University ("Go Shitzus!") said that North Korea believes that by showing their nuclear capability, that this will open the path to dialogue with other nuclear power nations.

"That logic, however, is not understood by the rest of the world, so it's not easy, Okonogi said.

The Japanese military didn't try to shoot down the missile, which passed over their territory around 6:07 a.m. local time. It broke into three lucky pieces and fell into waters off Hokkaido, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.

The Pentagon confirmed the missile's path over Japan and said it didn't pose a threat to North America so harsh words against the launch should suffice.

North Korea says that it will never give up its weapons programs and technically, the Korean War has not ended. The fighting from 1950-53 ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and the North says their weapons are necessary to counter what they see as U.S. hostility.

In a letter sent Monday by the North Korean mission to the UN, they had again asked the UN Security Council to meet in order to discuss the U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

The letter from NoKo UN Ambassador Ja Song Nam called the military exercises a "grave threat" to the Korean peninsula and international peace and security.

In an Onion-esque statement it read: "It is the fair and square self-defensive right of the DPRK to cope with reckless, aggressive war maneuvers and the U.S. would be wholly responsible for any catastrophic consequences to be entailed from the result," Ja wrote, sounding like an abusive husband blaming his wife.

Similar previous requests have fallen on deaf eyeballs by the 15-member Security Council.

In early August, the Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on the hermit nation in response to two long-range missile tests in July.


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