Let's hope this isn't what does me in

“South Korea broadcast a pop song extolling freedom of choice and a warning on the dangers of overeating into North Korea, ending a six-year moratorium on propaganda in retaliation for the sinking of a warship… The propaganda broadcast made on FM radio began at 6 p.m. local time yesterday when a woman anchor announced what she called the “voice of freedom.” North Korean listeners were regaled with a song by a South Korean girl band, Four Minute. In the tune, “Huh,” the band sings: “When I say I want to appear on TV, when I say I want to become prettier, everybody says I can’t do it. Baby, you’re kidding me? I do as I please…”
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Yup, that's the best deterrent that Lee Myeong Bak and Hillary could come up with. Kim Jong has already pledged to destroy the speakers with artillery shells. And with China dragging its feet, it looks like I'll have to rely on the 4mintue girls to hold off the mobilizing NK army (and its dirty bombs and nukes) for a little while, at least until the South Korean elections take place on the 2nd, and some of this stupid saber-rattling can be taken down a level.

The western media also seems to be sleeping on the fact that Kim Jong Il is apparently started to hand over power to his mysterious and youngest son, who, by some accounts, doesn't have the full backing of the military or leading officials in the party. Overall I'm really not too bothered by it all, but the fact that there could be a power vacuum, in an already very fragile and belligerent state, makes the whole mess a bit more concerning. Plus the value of my bank account had dropped by about 12% in the past week.

At least I still have the celts.

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Some tidbits from the NYT
Relations between North and South Korea, already strained over the sinking of a South Korean warship, deteriorated to their worst point in many years on Tuesday as the South Korean president redesignated the North as its archenemy, and the North retaliated by severing its few remaining ties with the South. The moves heightened concerns about where the acrimony on the Korean Peninsula was heading. North Korea’s state news agency said the North would cut off all communications between the countries, including a Red Cross contact at the border, as long as the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, was in office. The North also said it was expelling all South Korean officials, but not workers, from a joint industrial park at the North Korean town of Kaesong.

The North also banned South Korean ships and airplanes from using its territorial waters and airspace. On Tuesday, the South’s two main airlines, Korean Air and Asiana, began rerouting passenger jets to avoid North Korean airspace. On Monday, South Korea cut off trade with North Korea, denied North Korean merchant ships use of its sea lanes and called on the United Nations to censure the North for what it called the deliberate sinking of one of its warships by a North Korean torpedo. Forty-six sailors were killed in the March 26 sinking.

Tensions between the Koreas escalated after the sinking of the vessel and after Mr. Lee’s pledges to make North Korea “pay a price.” The two countries have technically remained at war for more than 50 years. A 1953 armistice ended three years of fighting in the Korean War, but no peace treaty has ever been signed, and the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas is among the world’s most heavily armed borders.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, whose government has threatened an “all-out war” against any sanctions, has ordered his military and reserve forces to be ready for war, said an organization of North Korean defectors on Tuesday. Last Thursday, when the South formally accused the North of torpedoing its ship, a senior North Korean general relayed Mr. Kim’s order through a broadcast to intercoms fitted at most North Korean homes, said North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a Web site based in Seoul and run by North Korean defectors.

The news caused the main stock index in Seoul to drop more than 3 percent in early trading. The South Korean won also weakened sharply. The ruffles in the financial markets indicated that investors, already shaken by financial trouble in the euro zone, were seriously monitoring the current phase of tension-raising on the divided Korean Peninsula. The exile group said it learned of the order from sources inside the North. “We do not hope for war but if South Korea, with the U.S. and Japan on its back, tries to attack us, it’s Chairman Kim Jong-il’s order to finish the task of unifying the fatherland, which was left undone” during the Korean War, the group quoted the instruction as saying.

It said the North Korean authorities were also mobilizing outdoor rallies of reserve soldiers under the slogan of “Retaliation for retaliation! All-out war for all-out war!” Those mobilized were ordered to wear their military uniforms. With Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling the Korea situation “highly precarious,” the Pentagon and South Korea announced they would soon conduct joint naval exercises, including antisubmarine drills in the Yellow Sea. On Monday evening, South Korea resumed its “Voice of Freedom” radio broadcasts directed at the North Korean people. It broadcast a South Korean pop song by a girl band, boasted the South’s economic prosperity and belittled the North Korean government for failing to feed its people.

Soldiers were also rebuilding loudspeaker systems along the border to bombard the front-line North Korean soldiers and villages with the same broadcasts. On Monday, the North warned that it might shell those tools of “psychological war.” On Tuesday it said it was launching an unspecified “counterattack.”