Written by: Beck

Via Bloomberg, we learn that North Korea will regard any UN Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions as a "declaration of war."

North Korea said it would regard any sanctions by the United Nations as an act of war, after Washington said it may take the issue of the communist nation's nuclear program to the UN Security Council.

"The U.S. may bring the nuclear issue to the UNSC, if it wants that so much," the North's official Korea Central News Agency said late yesterday, citing an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman. North Korea "will regard the sanctions as a declaration of war."

The fact that the United States has been imposing sanctions on North Korea for decades, I suppose, isn't really relevant. What's far more entertaining here is the notion that the one thing which would finally push the North Korean government over the line would be a Security Council resolution. In other words, they're only interested in picking a fight so long as that fight is with the entire world.

I guess they figure anything less would be beneath their dignity.

What's more, the NKs are refusing to resume any sort of nuclear disarmament talks until Condoleezza Rice takes back the nasty things she said about them (namely that North Korea is an "outpost of tyranny"). This sort of begs the question of why it is they were willing to engage in various other negotiations before hand, despite Bush labeling North Korea as part of the "Axis of Evil."

Again, the only thing that would be consistent here is if Kim Jong Il feels "Outpost of Tyranny" represents a downgrade in the evilness scale from "Axis of Evil," and as such, they want to be reinstated to their former position of preeminent evil along with Iran and Saddam's Iraq.

(Hat tip: The Rottweiler)