North Korea Taps into the Power of Distraction

Magicians and medical professionals use distraction. Look over there, and while your attention is diverted, something unusual happens or a shot is administered. Distractions are useful, but, beware, they also can be dangerous. In a school lunchroom, one student calls attention to someone coming in the door; an accomplice steals a cookie or two.

     In international relations, countries often need to maintain focus on more than one problem. In my eBook, A Dangerous Mix of Washington Outsiders, I imagined an espionage plot occurring while the U.S. was celebrating the first budget surplus in 28 years, impeaching President Clinton, and preparing for the 2000 elections. My plot is imaginary, but North Korea's recent missile launches are real. Dealing with the coronavirus cannot be allowed to distract world attention from North Korea sending missiles into Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone three times during the month of March, 2020. Because of COVID-19, the Olympic games, scheduled to be played in Tokyo this summer, already have been moved to July, 2021. Canceling them altogether may be necessary, it there is a danger athletes might be killed by a wayward North Korean missile.

     North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, who failed to see any progress on a nuclear deal with the U.S. in 2019, resumed missile testing shortly after 700 legislators met for the country's Supreme People's Assembly. The size of the meeting also indicates North Korea, which had imposed a national lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19, is no longer concerned about large congregations.

     What U.S. attention is focused on Korea is devoted to figuring out how to share the cost of military defense spending with South Korea and the virus-related cancellation of joint U.S.-South Korean military drills. Those preoccupations also avoid concern, not only about North Korea's missile tests, but also about the World War II reparation claims that undermine cooperation between U.S. allies, South Korea and Japan. The lack of Russian and Chinese sanctions needed to control North Korea's nuclear ambitions also is overlooked.

     At stake is more than a couple of missing cookies.