Miscalculation could trigger new Korean war

Mr Everard went on to talk about a spiral of violence, outlining how North Korea's leaders "believe they are the victims ... and being hounded by the United States".

Certainly the region is on a knife edge. Yesterday, tensions escalated even further – with reports the US intends sending a missile defence system to Guam and North Korea moving what appeared to be a mid-range Musudan missile to its east coast. There were also reports of Chinese troop movements around the North Korean border.

Given all of this, just how worried should we be about the possibility of all-out conflict on the Korean peninsula?

Writing in this column just over a month ago – in the wake of North Korea carrying out the country's third nuclear test which has evolved into the current crisis – I outlined how the Pyongyang regime has deployed at varying times what renowned US intelligence analyst, George Friedman, described as a strategy of appearing either "ferocious, weak or crazy".

Ferocious by appearing to have, or to be on the verge of having, devastating (weapons) power.

Weak in that no matter how ferocious they are, there would be no point in pushing them because as a state they are on the verge of economic collapse and therefore of no real threat.

Crazy because they have occasionally positioned themselves as such, showing signs of the most extreme retaliation at the slightest provocation.

Working on the principal that this assessment is valid, and there is no reason not to, just which of these strategies is North Korea and Kim Jong-un deploying right now?

All the signs would point to Pyongyang being determined to present its ferocious and crazyfaces in this round of brinkmanship and sabre-rattling.

North Korea has a penchant for testing new South Korean presidents and the latest, Park Geun-hye – only inaugurated in February – is no exception.

That Ms Park views her erratic northern neighbour with some suspicion goes without saying.

In 1974, at the tender age of 22, she became South Korea's first lady when her mother was shot dead by a North Korean assassin's bullet intended for her father – the then President Park Chung-hee.

Since that time the North has shown a tendency to test the mettle of the South's leaders by disturbing the peace in the form of submarine incursions, missile tests or naval clashes.

Where things worryingly differ from the past, though, is that South Korea is no longer prepared to roll with the diplomatic punches and military posturing, especially when it morphs into the seriously threatening standoff it faces now.

Think back to 2010 when the North blew up the South Korean navy ship the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors.

In the aftermath of that incident, Seoul tore up the rule book on military engagement with Pyongyang and made it clear it would respond "kinetically" as military parlance calls engaging in battle.

Bolstering Pyongyang's stubborn stance, while simultaneously ringing alarm bells in Seoul, is the sobering fact that North Korea is now in a position to fire as many as 500,000 rounds of artillery on Seoul in the first hour of any conflict and could bring conventional weapons to bear on all of the country.

This brings us back to the question of Kim Jong-un, his motives and intentions.

As a number of leading analysts have pointed out recently in the influential US magazine Foreign Policy, more important than asking whether Mr Kim is insane is establishing whether he is cautious or a risk-taker.

For more than half a century, neither side in this volatile standoff believed the benefits of starting a major war outweighed the costs.

Where Mr Kim's father Kim Jong Il was a past master in the calibrated calculation of squeezing what he could from the outside world through a combination of playing North Korea's ferocious, weak or crazy diplomatic hand, the pressing question right now is whether today's young and politically inexperienced North Korean leader is as wily and adept.

There is considerable speculation as to whether Mr Kim is simply feeling pressure from among his own political cadres and is determined to convince the country's ancient generals that he has things under control.

He may, too, be trying to bolster his position ahead of celebrations marking the anniversary of the April 15 birthday of Kim Il-sung, the state's founder and the younger Mr Kim's grandfather.

In doing so, however, there is no telling what price he might be willing to pay in a country where some 150,000 to 200,000 North Koreans continue to rot as political prisoners in vast gulags.

As for the response of the West, it is more important than ever –for Washington especially – to cajole China to press for change in its Asian neighbour.

Encouragingly there are some signs that Beijing is tiring of Mr Kim and his henchmen, a recent indicator of which was China signing up to fresh UN financial sanctions against North Korea after the latest nuclear test. Beijing, more than any regional player, has the capacity to close down Pyongyang's cash flow.

In some quarters there is the firm belief the crisis means the time has come to face down Mr Kim.

Every time he or his father before him (or his father before him) rattled their sabres, they got something in return. Many diplomats and military strategists insist those days are now over.

For the moment the face-off continues, as does the belligerent rhetoric, and there are precious few signs of either side backing down. While there is no single red line that, when crossed, would trigger war, the potential for miscalculation and escalation is very high as Mr Everard pointed out in his radio interview.

He is not alone in thinking this. Yesterday, General James Thurman, commander of US military forces in South Korea, conceded that, in these circumstances, miscalculation could easily trigger "a kinetic provocation".

Waking up to news on the radio of the possibility of war in the Korean peninsula is one thing. But for the foreseeable future at least this crisis is certain to give lots of people across the region and beyond a few sleepless nights.