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Kim has popped his top and air-mailed a number of rockets to the Sea of Japan. Attitudes have been leery and brittle regarding the launch; and why not? What could be worse than the man pilloried in "Team America" finally putting paid to the crackpot notion that the world's worst pariah state can dig itself out of oblivion by indulging in the blackmail gambit of the nuclear gunsel?

Our friends at the Washington Realist, for one, suspect to the contrary that the real indulgence is ours to be had. Why not, it's been suggested, let the Fools Themselves shoot off whatever third-rate missile (like last season's Scuds) is at their disposal -- and the use the occasion to both sum up the capabilities of the enemy and take advantage of the stunt to mobilize world distaste? And sure enough here comes Japan, while we scramble to assemble the data.

North Korea is digging its grave in the worst possible way, as it has since the day of its birth; the firings, for all their uppity would-be comeuppance, are unfortunate jokes told by a dying nation that has lost above all its sense of humor. But the laugh is on Kim: test shots that fail fail in more than the practical regard, and anyone who has doubted the wisdom of penning Pyongyang into a corner of managed containment (this means you, China) has now got to have doubts upon doubts. The fix is in. The world agrees. And the hoary old dinosaur regime of Baby Fat Kim is on thinner, more spindly legs than we could even hope of Cuba.

topics:
North Korea