Kotaji draws attention to an article on what he calls the "soap opera" of US-North Korea relations. What stands out is the confusion and hesitation that now reigns in Washington regarding Kim Jong-Il's regime. As Kotaji says elsewhere, citing Kim Ha-yong:

...[North Korea's] nuclear announcement, far from being a reaction to US military threats to the North and the increasing threat of a war on the peninsula as many on the Korean left have claimed, was only possible precisely because the US is not in a position to attack North Korea.

Iraq has ended up weakening the US' ability to intervene anywhere.

Kotaji, I should add, is an Anglophone socialist commenting on Korea without the slightest inclination to cover up for the horrors of the North - but who also holds little faith in the possibility of the US or its (increasingly recalcitrant) client in the South delivering meaningful democracy. Though the immediate focus for Washington is exclusively Middle Eastern, his blog provides a very useful commentary on events at the other end of the "axis of evil".