North Korea: They don't make things easy

I despair: why is the North Korean regime so clinically obsessed with threatening its neighbours with war, like, I don't know, every second day? Are the daily gruel rations spiked with a shitload of cocaine or something?

South Korea must be pleased though - for once they're getting a break. This time it's Japan getting threatened:

"North Korea’s government vowed to wage war against Japan if Japanese defense forces try to shoot down a missile that the communist nation says will carry a communications satellite.

“Should Japan dare recklessly to intercept the DPRK’s satellite, its army will consider this as the start of Japan’s war of reinvasion more than six decades after the Second World War,” the official Korean Central News Agency said today in an e-mailed statement."

The North Koreans are off their rockers. The "start of Japan's war of reinvasion"?! Someone should inform Kim Jong-Il that the regional political landscape has somewhat changed since the halycon days of Hitler, Japanese emperors considered Gods, and aggressive military expansion by fascist powers. The Japanese have vowed to shoot down rocket debris if it comes into their airspace, as is their sovereign right. The only player in this saga threatening war or anything close to it is North Korea.

But sadly, in this screwed up world, they're the ones with the nukes, and quite possibly, the ability to launch them ballistically, too.

More on this as it plays out in the next week.