Rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion several years ago that North Korea is completely China's problem. That is, although the rest of the region and the

Rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion several years ago that North Korea is completely China's problem. That is, although the rest of the region and the world has to deal with an increasingly belligerent and unstable North Korea, it's the Chinese who provide them food and are uninterested in any change in the status quo. Not only do the Chinese not want a change, they're more than happy to let Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. continue along with the farcical arms talks that have been going on for decades. In this case, I'm not yet convinced that there is anything going on here besides North Korea yet again yanking everybody's chain. I sure hope that's what it is. I'm watching for further escalation and China's response. And as much as I hate to pointlessly rag on China -- its not clear to me that the Chinese have purposely caused this as much as they've just been distracted and neglectful -- somebody pointed out the other day that wherever in the world you find gross human rights abuses and festering problems nobody seems to be able to fix, somewhere in the background there's always China. This situation bears some concern and watching