Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

The Beeb once had (and perhaps still has) a great segment called “without comment” in which clips of incredible things are played.  Here’s your print version of our own “without comment” today, from yesterday’s jaw-dropping daily State Department presser discussing the suspension of food aid to North Korea.

While DPRK founder Kim Il Sung was powerful enough to impose his son, no guarantees exist that the North's military, the real power, will meekly accept rule by his utterly inexperienced grandson.

The notion that the Kim regime has absolutely no intention of ever giving up its nuclear capability--at any price, for any reason--is too terrible to face.

In the transition from an old dictator to a new one, some observers were losing faith in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, believing it had lost its magic touch in the arts of dissembling. Others had deeper faith, though, and they were rewarded last week when the State Department proudly announced the umpteenth breakthrough toward the goal of denuclearizing North Korea.

The smallest and oldest Air Force in U.S. history needs to get bigger and newer, quickly. Without an Air Force capable of responding to multiple crises around the world—and almost every major conflict in history has played out on more than one front—the Obama administration’s new strategy is a recipe for decline. 

For America and her allies, dealing with the North Korean regime (to borrow a phrase from the current administration’s own Samantha Power) is a “problem from hell.”

North Korea's neighbors have suffered broader economic costs, and lost economic opportunities, as a direct consequence of Pyongyang’s security policies and practices.