Next Verse, Same as the First

              There is a noticeable tendency for tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul to flare up in the spring.  Last year North Korea sealed the border, closed factories in the Kaesong Industrial Zone and denounced US-ROKA exercises as a provocation.  Said military exercises occur every year.  Two years ago, North Korea announced it would resume nuclear tests, and the US Navy dispatched Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington to South Korea in response.  Well, last week, on Sunday March 30, North Korea fired artillery into the ocean, over the armistice line, and the Southern Navy responded in kind.  Then on Monday March 31 the South Korean Defense Ministry announced they had recovered a crashed North Korean drone.  These events are nothing new, but later in the week Prime Minister of Japan Abe Shinzo ordered the Marine Self-Defense Force to patrol the Sea of Japan with an AEGIS-equipped destroyer and shoot down any North Korean missiles bringing a new factor into the mix: the Japanese might actually do something.  Previously, Japan was the least powerful party interested in the tension on the Korean peninsula.  However, if the Japanese were to actually shoot down a North Korean device the rest of the region would have to take them more seriously.

America's Bear Run

A few weeks ago, the Japanese Foreign Ministry announced that the JSDF would shoot down any aircraft traveling within its airspace without permission.  Last weekend, China published a new map of its East China Sea Air-Defense Zone, which includes the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu island chain.  Every country has an air-defense zone, that is the territory within which they begin tracking aircraft, and often extends over the territory of other countries.  It does not normally imply any territorial claims, but in the case of the East China Sea the announcement aroused a passionate response.  Two days ago the USAF conducted a fly-through of the Chinese defense zone with a pair of B-52 bombers.  The B-52s refused to identify themselves to China’s air traffic control who tracked the planes and apparently identified them anyway.  Then China clarified its policy; the PLA would respond to incursion according to the threat it presents.  The PLA appears to have accurately determined the B-52s were on a mission to see what happens.  It’s akin to a Soviet-NATO game called “Bear Runs.”