GEORGETOWN, Guyana – The tension that has made the Korean peninsula a global flashpoint for much of 2013 appears to have subsided with the toning down of North Korea’s nuclear rhetoric directed at the South and the US and Pyongyang’s call last week for “senior level” nuclear talks with Washington.
Still, the two states on the peninsula remain in a state of high military alert, that being a function of the quixotic nature of North Korea’s ‘diplomacy’ which is characterized by a propensity to adjust its posture with unnerving speed.
And yet the seemingly eccentric ‘diplomacy’ of the North is less of an enigma than might appear to be the case. The ratcheting up of tensions in the region has long been Pyongyang’s known way of communicating with the rest of the world, its isolationist posture compelling the regime to view most of the rest of the world with extreme suspicion.
