I hate stuff like this:

A day after North Korea backed off threats of violent retaliation for South Korean artillery drills, analysts and policy makers in Seoul said on Tuesday that the North’s unexpected restraint might signal, at least for now, that it is shifting away from its recent military provocations.

That is the lead paragraph of a news “analysis” piece about North Korea. And this is in the New York Times, an institution in global media…

–sigh–

Too often, people of influence set the bar so bleeping low for North Korea, almost anything can be “a sign of progress.” It’s enough to make you want to pull your hair out…

North Korea had vowed retaliation if South Korea went ahead with its planned live-fire drills on Yeonpyeong Island, where a North Korean artillery barrage last month killed two South Korean soldiers and two civilians.

Given this thinking, North Korea has been showing remarkable restraint for a couple of decades (in between attacks), because it has made these pledges of death and destruction routinely and not followed up on them.

North seemed to offer Mr. Richardson an olive branch by its willingness to allow United Nations inspectors back in to monitor its nuclear program.

Been there. Seen that. Watched it come to nothing. And watched the media and some experts play up the idea that it “might” actually mean something. And watched these voices of unfounded optimism lead governments away from trying to tackle the North Korea problem.

Lastly:

Most political analysts in Seoul said the most likely scenario was that the North had decided to bide its time while waiting to see whether its attack last month would pressure South Korea and the United States into talks, and possibly even concessions. They said this was a recurring pattern in the North’s unique brand of brinkmanship: making a provocation in hopes of forcing the other side to the bargaining table.

Well, gidget, if you have so many people telling you that, why did you bury it deep in the article and put up front the nonsense quoted above? How can you use the label “new”???

By refusing to bite at what appeared to be a military challenge by the South, the North was perhaps hoping to cast itself as the more reasonable of the two Koreas…

–Slapping my forehead–