Reply #70: There is no reason to provoke a war. Given time, NK will collapse on its on.

[GreenStormCloud]

It is entirely possible that this could have been a rouge action. There have been other actions by NK that I think were rouge individuals. SK is in charge of how strong the response will be. The response must be measured, strong enough to be taken seriously but not strong enough for a war to start over. At present, SK is setting up huge loudspeakers on the DMZ and will broadcast propaganda over them. The North (I am guessing) will likely set up strong speakers of their own and the
DMZ may be real noisy for a long time. I hope that is all they do.

Definitely we should not fire any shots ourselves, unless fired upon first.

The problem is that NK is entering another famine. They are already having starvation deaths. Kim may be generating an external crisis to distract his people. He may need a war to keep control.

There is an excellent book, "The J Curve" that discusses the internal problems a government like NK's has. They are fragile with a very limited ability ability to withstand social shocks. His is so far on the extreme over controlled end of the curve that internal collapse could happen at any time. Nor can he loosen the control on his country because the immediate result would be to descend into chaos before recovering into a democracy.