The fact that North Korea has produced a dozen or so nukes since Bush did it 'his way' with hard nosed negotiations, and that NK is testing ICBM's that could hit the USA should (not) make Americans sleep better.

Kim and Co. are a very dangerous bunch (unlike Saddam), & there is no chance Bush would start a war with North Korea. They are also persistent bunch and are likely to eventually succeed with their ICBM.

Brings back memories of Dubya's pontificating bluster from SOU, 2002:

"We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

Looks like time is on the evildoers side as NK perfects it's missile, Iran bides it's time enriching uranium, and America bleeds in the terrorist training ground of a broken Iraqi state.  

Kim is only dangerous to South Korea.

South Korea and Japan, which has been subject to covert hostile actions dating back to the 70s, when there were a series of kidnappings tied to the DPRK (when I lived on the Sea of Japan, in the early 90s, they still had signs up warning beachgoers to be wary of strange boats).  I think the assumption of military planners in Japan is that they will probably get hit, in the event of a war, one way or another (it doesn't help, I suppose, that Japan is going out of it's way to piss off other East Asian nations these days). 

And Japan has been acting as the US's "stalking horse" with regard to NK for some time now.

The Japanese government apparently feels that if they can provoke NK into a war with the South and the US, it will inevitably destroy South Korea's industrial sector as well - a plus for Japan since South Korea is a major trade competitor, doing more business with China than the US does, actually, last I heard.

So here you see the Japanese motivation for ratcheting up the rhetoric against NK. Of course, the historical animosity is no surprise, given that Japan once invaded Korea - and got their asses kicked.

Too true.

Well, 'got their asses kicked' kind of underestimates the level of animosity: Japan colonized Korea for a generation, forbid any language but Japanese in Korean schools, and forced a great many Koreans into slave labor.  Anti-Korean animus in Japan has never particularly gone away, and most Koreans in Japan have adopted Japanese names and try  very hard to keep their ethnicity secret.  

But the idea that Japan wants a war on the Korean penninsula is pretty hard to swallow, especially now that the DPRK has the bomb.  It's not as though there is that much distance spanned by the "Sea of Japan."  And even leaving out the idea that Japan would be a military target, I'd think that a war that kills hundreds of thousands of East Asians, even if it wiped out the industrial capacity of one competitor, wouldn't be especially good for Japan, either, from an economic standpoint.

I think that Japan is well aware of the threat that a nuclear NK would prove to the Japanese mainland.  One sign is that, when we were in the first nuclear crisis back in 1993 or so, there was a leak to the press in Japan about 70 kilos of plutonium from a Japanese reactor being unaccounted for, which I took to be a message to Pyonyang that two could play at that game.

Just to clarify, when you say that 3rd Gen. Koreans have to carry ID saying so, what they have to carry is the standard "Gaijin Tourokusho" that all non-naturalized Japanese have to carry, which is to say that, no matter how many generations it is, they do not get to consider themselves citizens.  That's not better in principle than an ID that says they are Korean - in principle it may even be worse, but in practice it's maybe slightly better - but it's a little different.

I think they're definitely still pissed off - the abductions of the 70s, when I lived there ten years ago, were still vivid, and it came up recently with the brouhaha that led to the repatriation of a couple of Japanese who had been kidnapped and taken to the DPRK (including one married to the American defector).

Thanks for the perspective - I'm still not sure I agree with you, but I'll definitely watch events over the Sea of Japan with an eye to seeing if you're right.

Yes, Japan is now seriously considering whether they should put in place legislation allowing them to pre-emptively attack North Korea if North Korea continues its missile tests.

This is unlikely to actually occur - I don't think Japan is THAT stupid or greedy. Not that North Korea could really do much to Japan other than fire missiles at it - and vice versa - the North wouldn't initiate a nuclear sub infiltration under that scenario - too risky.

But it does show that Japan is very happy to be pushing North Korea. Either that or it must be that "samurai" attitude cropping up again, or saving "face", or something.