Seoul

Submitted by The Saker,

First, the bragging dummies

President Donald Trump arrived in South Korea Tuesday for his two-day visit bearing a surprisingly diplomatic message: During a press conference with his South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump surprised his audience by delivering a message to North Korea that was unexpectedly conciliatory.

When asked about the monthslong diplomatic standoff between the two nuclear powers, Trump said he thinks the two countries are “making progress” toward a diplomatic solution, while urging the North Korean leadership to “come to the table and make a deal."

Following President Trump's United Nations' speech threats to "totally destroy" North Korea, lambasting the North's leader Kim Jong-un as "a rocket man on a suicide mission," it appears he is not the only one capable of public and aggressive hyperbole.

As The Independent reports, propaganda fliers presumed to be from North Korea and calling US President Donald Trump a “mad dog” have turned up across central Seoul, including near the presidential Blue House, according to posts on social media and people who found them.

Reports that North Korea is planning to test an ICBM capable of reaching the US west coast opened a trapdoor under stocks this morning, suggesting that investors are taking president’s ominous warnings about “the calm before the storm” seriously.

But in the unlikely event that you’re not sufficiently terrified already, researchers at Johns Hopkins have sought to quantify the horrifying consequences of a North Korean nuclear strike in a new research report published by the university’s 38th Parallel project.

Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

They say that most of the world’s real dangers arise not because of what people don’t know but because of what they do 'know' that just ain’t so.

As a case in point, consider three things about Korea that the bipartisan Washington establishment seems quite sure of but are far removed from reality:

Delusion 1: All options, including U.S. military force, are «on the table.»