I can’t help but think of the movie Team America and the UN writing Kim Jong-il a naughty letter after reading this:

North Korea’s plans to launch a rocket as early as this week in defiance of warnings threatens to undo years of fitful negotiations toward dismantling the regime’s nuclear program.

The U.S., South Korea and Japan have told the North that any rocket launch — whether it’s a satellite or a long-range missile — would violate a 2006 U.N. Security Council Resolution prohibiting Pyongyang from any ballistic activity, and could draw sanctions.North Korea said sanctions would violate the spirit of disarmament agreements, and said it would treat the pacts as null and void if punished for exercising its sovereign right to send a satellite into space.

“Even a single word critical of the launch” from the Security Council will be regarded as a “blatant hostile act,” a spokesman with North Korea’s foreign ministry said Thursday, according the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency. “All the processes for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which have been pushed forward so far, will be brought back to what used to be before their start and necessary strong measures will be taken.”

That would be a sharp reversal from June 2008 when the North made a promising move toward disarmament, dramatically blowing up a cooling reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex.  The Star Press

Does anyone really think the North Koreans care about any statement from the UN?  They are just once again using the Six Party Talks as a bargaining chip to get even more concessions from the US.  We will probably give in because we always do.  At least someone gets it:

But the regime routinely backtracks on agreements, refuses to abide by international rules and wields its nuclear program like a weapon when it needs to win concessions from Washington or Seoul, analysts say.

“History has shown them that the more provocative they are, the more attention they get. The more attention they get, the more they’re offered,” Peter M. Beck, a Korean affairs expert who teaches at American University in Washington and Yonsei University in Seoul, said today.

Despite years of negotiations and impoverished North Korea’s growing need for outside help, it’s clear the talks have done little to curb the regime’s drive to build — and sell — its atomic arsenal, experts say.

“If this is Kim Jong Il’s welcoming present to a new president, launching a missile like this and threatening to have a nuclear test, I think it says a lot about the imperviousness of this regime in North Korea to any kind of diplomatic overtures,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview broadcast on “Fox News Sunday.”

How long have I been saying this?  It actually doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out because as the past two US administrations have shown us,it is far easier to just pay the North Koreans off and mortgage the problem to someone else so you can focus on more pressing issues.  All indications are that this is what the new administration is eventually going to do.

So what you are probably going to see happen is that the North Koreans will fire their missile and the US and Japan despite all their rhetoric will not shoot it down.  The Japanese as they have already announced will only attempt to shoot down any booster that may fall on Japan.  If the US shoots down this missile I would be shocked.  Thus what you will see play out after the test is a bunch of diplomatic nonsense that will amount to nothing which the North Koreans know all to well.  The best thing that can happen is that the North Koreans embarrass themselves with another failed missile test like they did in 2006.  Considering the embarrassment of that past failure you would think they would have this missile test squared away.  I guess we will see, in the meantime enjoy the show.