NORTH KOREA, QUEST FOR A MASS SUICIDE?

Despots all over the world usually do not like to go out cold and alone. No, they like to go out accompanied and possibly with as many people as they can ensnare. Iraqi Saddam Hussein did it and till today he is still claiming victims, both Iraqis and foreigners alike. Was it Hitler? Mussolini? Charles Taylor, Pohl Pot? Just name it and you get the same answer. Never alone!

Kim Jong-il, North Korea's 67-year-old leader, pale, frail and fraught with anxiety about his future since he suffered a stroke last year, is now trying and getting ready to make his final exit with a bang! So true to type, the almost dead-man walking despotic leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il does not want to quietly go into the sunset to meet his creator; and is now stirring the conundrum of crisis to herald his thunderous exit? He knows and his people of North Korea knows it, that he is a nitwit when it comes to war with the world, but yet he is sounding as bellicose as you can get? Peradventure, his wish will soon be granted him and woe betide those his one million man army, who must be made to suffer being incinerated by the most powerful bombs ever known to mankind? Icheoku asks, why don't they avert this problem by taking Kim Jong-il out in a coup or putsch now, and save North Koreans further decimation both economic and through possible military action? He is nearly dead and he knows it; but he does not want to die alone - the way of all despots!

It is pitiful that Kim Jong-il cannot read the handwriting on the wall to understand that he can only fire just one shot, that provocative shot, and his land will be turned into a pile of dust? Icheoku says, if he is so incapacitated by reason of sickness to comprehend the faith that awaits his buffoonery, why is he still in charge of North Korea or its armed forces? Where are the men and women of North Korea or are they all cowards of the country who must tremble and cower at the sight of their ailing leader? Icheoku says, Kim Jong-il is over-playing his hands; and now, is the time for the world to be ready to forever solve his problem, the Saddam Hussein way, if need be.

In the interim, the world should simply ignore him and await, trigger-ready, for any further provocative move he might make and pray it is the firing of the first shot. Since Saddam Hussein was taken out, that part of the world known as the Middle East has rested from being on a perpetual edge; except the dust of apprehension which Iranian Ahmadinejad intermittently raises. Icheoku is not a war-monger but at the same time, we do not shy away from the good fight; and we conclude here that North Korea is steadily graduating into such a good fight which the coalition of the willing must be ready to stand up to! Enough of this jittery on North East Asia peninsula! Icheoku says, end the tension, take Kim Jong-il out!

North Korea's penchant for defying the world is known and continual: last month, in utter disregard of international calls for restraint, it launched a rocket which it says was a communications satellite; but which the world believed was part of its ballistic missile program? When the world denounced the launch, instead of apologising and/or backing off, North Korea threatened to carry out more tests and followed through with that threat. It triggered an underground nuclear test in its border with China, believed to be comparable in force to the blasts that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki! This was followed with the launch of three ground-to-air missiles in the area of the test, immediately soon after. They also fired additional short range missiles subsequently; and had since become recalcitrant about further six-party talks.

Lastly, when its brother neighbour to the south, South Korea threatened that it will join a United States of America-led initiative aimed at intercepting NOrth Korea's shipments suspected of carrying equipment for weapons of mass destruction, North Korea warned that such move would be considered by it as an act of war! Now South Korea has technically joined with Pyongan saying it has ended the 1953 armistice between the two Koreas and hostilities shall soon begin. So what next? May be smarting to fire the first shot? Icheoku asks, when is the first salvo going to leave the guns of North Koreans with projectiles raining down on the South? Further, when shall enough be really enough of these provocations by a repressive country that once executed a factory boss, by a firing squad in front of 150,000 people, for just making an international phone calls? His offence, trying to reach the outside world? Really! Also, we ask, when he finally and foolishly fires the mother of all shots, will the world be ready and resolved to respond in kind and forcefully too, in unison?

Until then, Icheoku says, Kim Jong-il, his army and people of North Korea are not that suicidal to provoke a fire-fight with the world. It would appear that they are merely huffing and puffing, craving for attention and should just be ignored; with a watchful alert maintained in case they over-reached thenselves. In the event of their miscalculations, the world must be decisive in conclusively solving this problem, once and for all. A caveat however, provided China is in tandem with the world!