[KS] "Advantage Pyongyang" by Richard Lloyd Parry

[J.Scott Burgeson]

Once again the London Review of Books offers up top-notch commentary on North Korea:

   http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n09/richard-lloydparry/advantage-pyongyang

Anyone disagree with this statement?:

   And the Six-Party Talks, and every other form of diplomacy which imposes a central role on China, are a waste of time.

Further along, in a discussion of North Korea's recent propaganda blasts against the US and the ROK, Perry writes:

   The noises from the North are widely misunderstood. They are not unilateral threats of war, but promises of retaliation in the event of US and South Korean attack. (This gets lost in much of the reporting because of the famous verbosity of North Korea’s official communiqués: the threat is quoted, while the balls-aching conditional preamble is cut.)

This was observation was underscored during a recent conversation with several restaurant waitresses from Pyongyang here in Dandong, who asked me in all earnestness: "Do you think Obama really wants to start a war with us?"

More encouragingly, the same official state restaurant was playing The Carpenters on its sound system, and at a DPRK restaurant in Beijing last week, the floor show broke out into "Rock Around the Clock" at one point.

Skip the politics for now: I call for a Six-Nation Rock Festival on the Yalu River this summer!

– Scott Bug
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