One could call it North Korea's ongoing full-employment plan for the U.S. military in the Pacific.
Just weeks after announcing it was going to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for food from the United States, Pyongyang has announced it is going to launch an observation satellite into space.
Ostensibly it is to celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of the first president of communist North Korea, Kim Il Sung, in the middle of next month. The United States says it doesn't care what the North calls the launch, it is a ballistic missile test.
It's nice to see the crazy gene has been passed down to a third generation of North Korean leaders. The new leader there is Kim Jong-un, grandson of Kim Il Sung and son of Kim Jong Il, who died in December.
The family has a long history in the despotism business and has famously succeeded in keeping North Korea's people starving for some six decades.
It also specializes in spending any extra cash it has lying around enriching fuel for nuclear weapons. Then it threatens to sell that fuel to terrorists and outlaw nations - as well as creating its own nukes.
The United States responded to the missile launch announcement Friday by sending out its Sea-Based X-Band Radar tracking ship from Pearl Harbor. The ship is part of the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system and can track any Korean launches from the mid-Pacific Ocean.
So, on a positive note, as long as the Kim family is in power, there will be a lot of folks employed in the U.S. military in the Pacific.
* Editorials reflect the opinion of the publisher.
