North korea is pissing everyone off..

Even China is getting upset with them.

See, China is in an interesting place right now. They can't attack the U.S., much as I'm sure they would like to. This is because we are investing a lot of money in/with them, and they require the financial capital in order to grow.

China is attempting to play on the public market, and requires some clean-up in order to do so. For instance, with the Bejing olympics only two years away, they are attempting to teach their populace to wash their hands and not spit in public.

How does this fit in with North Korea? Well, as China can't attack us directly, they have to use intermediaries. And right now, they have us in a bind.

North Korea, has enough conventional arms pointed at Seoul to wipe it out on first strike if a war should break out.

So we have to protect our ally carefully.

On the other side, we have to protect our heavy investments in Taiwan. China wants to bring Taiwan back into the fold, but Taiwan isn't having any.

So how are these related?

Simple. China will use the threat of one to counter-act the other. If we protect South Korea in a war against North (again), our protection of Taiwan falters. And, if China makes a push to retain Taiwan, it simply has their North Korea puppet get hot over in South Korea in order to spread our forces out.

Bush is playing a diplomatic tightrope right now, and playing it well. The only reason we aren't in a mad rush to go in hot and heavy into North Korea is that Kim Jong Il isn't paying $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers in South Korea. He is only starving his own people, and not really attacking outside his borders, except for the occasional saber-rattling (I.E. missile tests). We can take our time and see how far a diplomatic approach takes.