I thought #3 might be at play too.

Or is DPRK so desperate for money that it intends to keep it's prospective customer of nuke material - ROK - happy and hence no escalation?

I think a variation of #1 was probably the reason. The DPRK reached a point in the confrontation where all the consequences of taking it further would be negative for them, so they backed down.

This is why I think the US and South Korea should turn the situation in its head, and use the fact that A)North Korea will lose a war, and B)the Kim family wants to stay in power in Pyongyang against them. Worried about them selling nuclear material? Stop and search all their boats. Concerned they might be building up nuclear weapons and missiles? Build up South Korea's capabilities, and sell them anti-missile systems.

Anymore negative analogies to the NY Giants will be met with serious retaliation in the form of negative Red Sox analogies. You have been warned!

Dan: Love your blog in general. Informative as well as funny. And I dont know how you guys dare to write about DPRK since everytime I do that, there are always a disturbing majority of comments that cavalierly (if thats a word) advocate the use of military force. But that is a separate issue.

FYI, as you know nothing in international affairs is as straightforward as it seems and thats certainly the case with the DPRK. So just to give you a little more info, some of the North's offers were already on the table. For some time now, it has been willing to restart MIA recovery mssions. The USG had decided to take them up on that before the Chenoan sinking (see Wiki leaks) although the ROK was fighting that. They have been repeating it to visitors ever since including a visit I made with others in mid-November.

Second, the offer to ship out fresh fuel and to work with the ROK on that has also been on the table for some months now. It was also made explicitly during the mid-November visit of our group to Pyongyang and has been briefed to the USG by myself and others (for me, that unfortunately was the day of the artillery barrage)

Letting the IAEA inspectors back in wasnt on the table but I suspect people are asking for that as a way of monitoring progress in the uranium enrichment plant at Yongbyon since we are essentially blind on that front. It falls short of a suspension of the program as a precondition for talks but we have been down that road before with Iran with no results.

Overall, as a first step, the nuclear offer seems like a good one--more than many would have expected, particularly since the fresh fuel contains some 10 bombs worth of plutonium once it is irradiated. And I have no doubt the North will restart the reactor to do that early this spring.

Not sure how this all links up with your explanations. But one more to consider is that the dprk is clearly uncomfortable with its new found close friendship with China, something it has avoided for decades. That was pretty obvious during our visit and I dont think it was just posturing. They want to "balance" as much as possible but of course are limited by the need for Chinese support in the fact of our policies.

I think it is a complete misreading of the situation to think that non-retaliation meant that North Korea blinked or backed down.

Yeonpyeong achieved whatever domestic messaging they required and that was that. Any subsequent gestures are irrelevant unless they directly threaten DPRK's territorial integrity.

Besides you can bet your house on the fact that 99.99% of the North Korean population likely heard nothing about the events following Yeonpyeong including the war games.

3 with a dash of 4

Bill Richardson was in NK at the time. It would have been a loss of face to Richardson, who is one of only a handful of Americans that they respect to retaliate while he was in-country.

It's always been clear the DPRK isn't interested in self immolation, that it rather prefers a continued lavish survival -nay- great prosperity for the elites of the Workers Party, the military, NK technocrats who liaise with with nuclear bomb makers in Pakistan, the PRC, Iran and elsewhere; and, for others of the chosen few in the frozen North.

I go 80% with the first option with a major modification to #3, i.e., the CCPPRC took it on the chin.

Those who provoked the current crisis on the Korean peninsula are the triumverate of Pyongyang-Beijing-Moscow and after their backdown today these three are big losers. Congratulations to Pres Obama for his policy of 'strategic patience' towards the DPRK- CCPPRC-Moscow.

The three have seen their past standard and reliable strategy and tactics completely fail this time and fall on its face, forever. There's no saving of face possible later under more favorable conditions because after this it only gets worse for the three. No longer will Pyongyang-Beijing-Moscow be able to manufacture a crisis in order the get the better half of the six-party talks to rush to the surrender table to make immediate or wholesale concessions to appease the blackmailers. After this successful diplomacy led by Pres Obama, the good old days for the serial blackmailers are gone, over, done with. The gang of Pyongyang-Beijing-Moscow no longer will be able to manufacture fear and surrender by such brinkmanship.

Because now the old rules have been broken and the old game thrown out, It's time for Pyongyang-Beijing-Moscow to go back to the drawing board. Adm Mullen in S Korea recently had spoken directly to Beijing in the (now past) crisis. Adm Mullen admonished the CCPPRC to back off their inflexible support of Pyongyang, to instead become a responsible participant in the international system, and to take this first step by reversing its constant encouragement of Pyongyang (in league with Moscow). Beijing would not listen to Adm Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff so now Beijing has shi, er, egg all over its face. Consequently, the arrogant and the stupid get what they deserve, Beijing gets in its terrible judgment as Beijing gives, i.e., loss of face to everyone.

1, 2, and anti-3.

Everyone assumes Kim Jong-il is murderous, irrational, vain, and/or nuts. What if he is murderous, vain, and Machiavellian, with a hefty dose of realpolitik added in? He may act irrationally because he wants the world to always be unsure of his motives. The shelling wasn't a bluff, just another in a long series of acts intended to keep us guessing. The deaths of the Cheonan sailors and countless others simply do not register in his Stalin-esque brain. If 1-2 million deaths of civilians due to starvation does not register with him, why would a few more?

It is unclear how much Kim Jong-un is actually doing. Did he really order the shelling, plus the sinking of the Cheonan, or is he just a spoiled brat like his brothers who is acting like a boy with toy soldiers? Not that this would make him any less dangerous. On the contrary, it may make him even more dangerous than his father and may lead to the military taking him out as soon as Kim Jong-il dies. And how much control will his aunt and uncle, i.e. Kim Kyong-hui and Chang Song-taek, have? Kim Kyong-hui told the great Kim Il-sung that she was going to marry Chang Song-taek, and if her father did not like it, tough. She might surprise us all after Kim Jong-il's death.

And while we're on the subject of Kim Jong-un, did he really attend Kim Il-sung National War College -- I vote not -- and did he really attempt to kill his brother Kim Jong-nam? NK is trying awfully hard with their propaganda to convince he is anything other than a fat, stupid playboy like his brothers. Maybe the Japanese cook was right -- or maybe Kim Jong-un just hates Japanese because of what they did in WWII.

As to #3, don't make me laugh. NK is China's useful idiot; the only question is whether Kim Jong-il understands this. China knows that NK will not attack China and NK serves as a buffer zone to keep the USA away from China's borders. This is similar to China's belief that its sphere of influence is the entire South China Sea, annoying Vietnam, the Philippines, and a few other countries in the bargain. Also, the world cannot crack down too heavily on China's trade practices while the world believes it needs China's help to handle NK. Do you realize that China shipped six times as much as the USA shipped in return in 2008? NK is a small price to pay for such a huge trade advantage.

Always, Don Bacon drops in his comment then never comes back to discuss or to defend it.

Don Bacon is a hit and run forumist/poster. He states his opinion, leaves it at that, then quickly disappears from the thread, never to be heard from again at the thread, time and time again.

Where are you Don Bacon fat?

North Korea on November 23 made its first attack on South Korean territory since the ceasefire ended the Korean War in 1953. North Korea had never before attacked civilian residential zones in South Korea. The attack is against Yeonpyeong Island clearly is contrary to the Korean War Armistice Agreement and the signed 1992 South-North Basic Agreement in particular to which North Korea itself is a signatory party.

The Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation mutually signed between South and North Korea, which entered into force in 1992, precisely stated, “South and North Korea shall together endeavor to transform the present state of armistice into a firm state of peace between the two sides and shall abide by the present Military Armistice Agreement until such a state of peace is realized.”

As concrete means to guarantee nonaggression, the agreement prohibits the two parties from conducting any form of armed attack against each other or staging armed provocation that could cause damages to their counterpart.

In 2000, North Korea published the “Order of Navigating to and from Five Islands,” which specifically acknowledged Yongpeong Island and the waters around the island up to the 12 nautical mile limit as within South Korea’s sovereign territory. The latest attack thus clearly goes against the mutually signed 1992 North-South Basic Agreement.

In 2009, North Korea in violation of the 1992 Basic Agreement unilaterally and arbitrarily decalred that “all the agreed points concerning the issue of putting an end to the political and military confrontation between the north and the south will be nullified.”

The sudden North Korean change in stance on NLL now has resulted in the Nov 23 attack on Yeonpyeong Island which, under the mutually signed 1992 Basic Agreement had been sovereignly controlled by South Korea for 57 years since the ceasefire of the Korean War (1950~1953).

Under the mutually signed North-South Basic Agreement of 1992, both sides had agreed to withdraw troops from other coastal islands occupied by either of the two sides at the time of June 24, the eve of the Korean War, and decided to have Paengyong-do, Taechong-do, Sochong-do, Yonpyong-do, and U-do remain under the sovereign control of South Korea.

The 1992 South-North Korea Basic Agreement confirms nonaggression between the two sides. As for the coastal boundary line, it stipulates, “The South-North demarcation line and the areas for nonaggression shall be identical with the Military Demarcation Line provided in the Military Armistice Agreement of July 27, 1953, and the areas that each side has exercised jurisdiction over until the present time.”

The First Battle of Yeonpeong Island.

However, in the later 1990s, North Korea began insisting that the NLL “is invalid” by citing the U.N. Convention on Law of the Sea which stipulates that 12 nautical miles from the baseline is a coastal state’s territorial waters. In June 1999, a North Korean torpedo boat advanced southward beyond the NLL and fired at South Korean vessels. South Korean naval forces launched a counterattack in response and sank two North Korean warships, the First Yeonpyeong Battle.

In September 1999, the Korean People’s Army Chief of the General Staff suddenly, arbitrarily, unilaterally drew the military demarcation line in the West Sea of Korea (the Yellow Sea) and proclaimed as invalid the NLL set by the U.N. Command. The Navy Command of the DPRK People’s Army in March 2000 issued a communique “on declaring ‘order of navigating to and from the five islands’ as a follow-up measure related to the fixing of the Military Demarcation Line at the West Sea of Korea.”

The communique states that military and civilian vessels of the U.S. forces and the South Korean military can be “free to navigate” in waters but only outside of the five islands and their 12 nautical mile territorial "limit."

The Second Yeonpyeong Battle.

This sudden policy change by North Korea intensified military tension and caused frequent armed conflicts in the Yellow Sea, resulting in the Second Yeonpyeong Battle. In June 2002, warships of both sides again engaged in a battle off Yeonpyeong Island, the Second Yeonpyeong Battle. One South Korean warship was sunk and six South Korean soldiers were killed.

In November 2009, both sides' naval forces fought a gun battle. In March 2010 a South Korean patrol boat, Cheonan, was sunk and 46 sailors died. The South Korean investigative team later announced that the Cheonan was sunk as the result of a torpedo fired by North Korea.

So here we are, the Third Battle of Yeonpyeong Island. This time the NK-CCPPRC-Moscow tag team tandem has suffered a stinging slap in the face. Congratulation to Pres Obama for his policy of 'strategic patience' which has at long last smitten and stung the three lesser parties of the now deceased six-party talks group. The times they're a changin'.