According to the BBC UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said the North Korea “crisis has gone too far” after Pyongyang announced plans to restart its main Yongbyon nuclear complex.
In late-February ex-Laker and Piston rebounder Dennis Rodman paid a visit to North Korea. The retired basketball star met with Kim Jong-un to discuss basketball and said on ABC’s THIS WEEK, “He asked me to give Obama something to say and do one thing. He wants Obama to do one thing, call him.”
The phone call was never made.
Last week North Korea declared that it was still at war with its southern neighbor and threatened to attack Hawaii, Washington DC, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, even though his missiles only have a range of 5000 miles, putting the Aleutian Islands in danger.
The US Navy has positioned a guided-missile destroyer off the Korean peninsula and the US Air Force has stationed a pair of sleath fighters as a show of force. The rogue nation ratcheted up its rhetoric and yesterday said that they were restarting their nuclear program. China has responded to the war talk by conducting Level-One war exercises on the Yalu River, while South Korea’s military has vowed to defend the country by any means at hand.
Winston Churchill said, “Better to jaw-jaw than war-war.” and my hunch is that North Korea has run out of funds.
This war threat might well be blackmail with a little basketball diplomacy on the side.
There’s no telling with Dennis Rodman on the court.
I didn’t have an Easter Break, but went through Easter Broke.