Editorial: Clear field for tyrants

By Herald Staff|Yesterday

As if the world didn't have enough on its plate to worry about ... North Korean claims of its first hydrogen bomb test are indeed the stuff of nuclear nightmares.

Even if it turns out to be something less than the "H-bomb of justice" Pyongyang claims, whatever set off considerable and recordable seismic activity at the blast site was enough to cause the U.N. Security Council to meet in emergency session.

North Korea has already been the subject of five U.N. resolutions relative to its nuclear testing program and has been under U.N.-imposed sanctions since its first nuclear test in 2006. So it's obvious how effective those sanctions have been - other than impoverishing the people of this already destitute and dysfunctional nation.

The international hand-wringing continued apace yesterday - as it always does when this rogue regime, well, goes rogue again. But it's South Korea that stands in the deepening nuclear shadow of its lawless neighbor.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said of the test, "It's not only grave provocation of our national security, but also an act that threatens our lives and future. It's also a direct challenge to world peace and stability."

No nation should know that better than our own - which by treaty has a commitment to defend South Korea up to and including the use of nuclear weapons in its defense.

Of course, three of the four explosions set off by North Korea in the course of its nuclear bomb development have occurred during the Obama administration. In 2009 President Obama said Pyongyang's actions "pose a grave threat to the peace and stability of the world." In 2013 he called the next test "highly provocative."

Boy, them's fightin' words, no?

Clearly Kim Jong Un wasn't impressed. And why would he be? As long as Obama is in the White House there are no consequences for bad behavior. Every tyrant in the world knows that.