从此端到彼端

Economitst, Print Edition July 8th 2006

On the cover

THERE is no law against testing missiles, even far-flying ones intended to rattle nerves around the globe. Yet North Korea’s attempted firework display, launching a Taepodong rocket (which fizzled) and half a dozen others (which worked) was calculated to blast a hole in the diplomatic effort by America, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to get Kim Jong Il’s regime to give up its nuclear bomb-building. The bigger worry is that this week’s pyrotechnics will incinerate wider efforts to stabilise a region full of dangerous rivalries.

With its medieval economy and eccentric leader, the Hermit Kingdom often seems more tragi-comic than threatening. By many measures, North Korea is not even the most terrifying country in Asia; that dubious honour belongs to Pakistan (see leader and survey). Evil though Mr Kim undoubtedly is, the chief dangers his regime poses to outsiders are often accidental: that one of its rockets will unintentionally hit Japan, or that North Korea’s economy will collapse (something that terrifies both China and South Korea). Mr Kim claimed that his previous launch—of a Taepodong missile over Japan in 1998—put into orbit a satellite which then warbled patriotic tunes back from space. In fact, although that rocket flew farther than this week’s ones, its final stage plopped into the Pacific.

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