North Korea up to its old tricks again?

Here is something rare out of North Korea; Kim Jong-Un was reported by the staterun news agency as urging his government officials to make sure that they succeed in meeting their grain production goals.

According to the Korean Central News Agency, Kim "ardently called for attaining this year's grain production goal without fail" during the last day of a key meeting by the ruling party in North Korea.

Despite its image as a threat to its neighboring countries, North Korea has always been plagued by food shortages, especially in areas outside the capital.

Kim has never been one to make such public calls, and North Korea has never been a country to broadcast its weaknesses or problems to the rest of the world. So what gives? Why are they being so open about this now?

We can’t help but feel North Korea will again use their old tricks. This recent announcement --which North Korea knew would reach the outside world-- coupled with their more frequent missile launches these days, may indicate that they again want to use their nuclear program to wrangle aid from outside.

In a previous editorial about this same topic, we wrote that North Korea was going past a point of no return in pursuing their “irreversible” nuclear program because they would never again be able to dangle suspending it as a form of barter for foreign food aid.

If they intend to use this gambit again there is a more important question to ask: How will they use the nuclear program this time? Will their offer for food aid be to suspend or end it? Or perhaps to threaten to use it since the program has become “irreversible”?

We shudder to think of the latter; the world is already on edge with this nightmare of the standoff in Ukraine ending by way of nuclear option. We really can’t assure Vladimir Putin will not make this hare-brained decision.

The world must be wary; North Korea cannot be trusted. Time and again --specifically in 2005 and then again in 2012-- it has offered ending its nuclear program in exchange for aid. Of course, it resumed nuclear weapons development after getting that said aid.