Not since “Dewey Defeats Truman” adorned the front page of the Chicago Tribune has a headline-writer gotten it more wrong:
“N. Korea appears to back down on threat“Â
That Associated Press story, posted hours before the North Koreans announced a successful nuclear test, detailed newly-elevated Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s trip to China, and noted his success in getting Beijing to issue a strong joint statement condemning North Korea’s stated intention of testing a nuke.
This unusual Sino-Japanese rapprochement might have been a primary cause of the North Koreans’ decision to go ahead with the test, rather than evidence Kim Jong-il was about to back down. By way of further explanation, here’s a snippet from an article in Dong-a Ilbo detailing recent developments in the DPRK:
“North Korea’s stance is clearly revealed in Kim’s message to a meeting of heads of North Korea’s overseas diplomatic missions held in Pyongyang from July 18 to 22 that said, ‘We should solve difficult problems on our own as the whole world is our enemy.’“Kim didn’t attend the meeting but is said to have criticized China and Russia for supporting the adoption of resolution and Korea for freezing additional aid of fertilizer and food as ‘not reliable.'”
The Bush administration has long campaigned to totally isolate North Korea, and now it can be fairly said to have succeeded. The question now is: how many more such “successes” can we afford? Â
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