It's Politics time: The North

Now, today the North attempted to launch it's "Satellite" into orbit.  The north claims it is transmitting data, although quite what that data is is anyone's guess.  However, the US, Japan and the South all claim that it was a dud and broke up somewhere over the Pacific.  I'm inclined to believe that the US are right on this one, but the larger question is really: How does this change anything?

The UN will send a very-strongly-worded-letter to whichever Party aide opens the late Kim Jong-Il's post.

The North will continue with it's human rights abuses and attempts to bring its technology into the 1990s.

The South will continue with the frankly foolhardy policy of rattling the North's cage, so long as it has the backing of the US.

The rest of the world will tut and get on with their lives, knowing that whatever happens, the North can't hurt them.

I can't act as if I know all the answers.  To be perfectly frank, the actual missile launch and North Korea's plans to build a weapon that can hit Alaska (Yes, that hotbed of US and global politics) don't really bother me.  The north has had the capability to strike anywhere in the peninsula for the last 15 years, and they haven't used it.  So it's not the maybe-they-will, maybe they won't worry about invasion in the short term that bugs me.  

The fact is that there is no real solution to this problem.  As long as China backs the North, any attempts to lay economic smackdown on the North by the UN will be vetoed.  As long as Lee Myun-Bak stays in office, he'll keep cutting off the aid (both economic and material) to the North that it's people sorely need.

The problem is similar to one that is endemic in Korea; that of pride and competition.  Parents send their children to hagwon to make them better than their classmates.  Men treat their best suits as a second skin.  The confucianist culture has created a society where keeping face is everything.  And now, when the eyes of the world are on the Korean peninsula, this concept of not losing face (be it through not backing down on the missile launch, or by cancelling the much-lauded Sunshine policy) is perpetuating and exacerbating the mother of all Mexican standoffs. 

So, unless the governments on either side of the DMZ shake off thousands of years of the same philosophy then no-one can move forward.