Is North Korea provoking our President?

Yes I would say so. Interesting article in The Washington Post.

He (Kim Jong Il) would like the Obama administration to engage his regime in bilateral talks — excluding South Korea, Japan and other U.S. partners — and then offer it economic and political bribes in exchange for North Korea releasing the U.S. hostages and shutting down Yongbyon again. Mr. Kim has already succeeded in selling a Yongbyon closure to two U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; why not, he must reason, try for a three-peat?

The Obama administration must do whatever it can to free the American journalists. But caving to Mr. Kim — again — would be foolish. A better response would be to restore and improve on the financial sanctions built by the Bush administration, while encouraging South Korea to join multilateral efforts to stop North Korea’s illegal arms trafficking. China, which has more leverage than does the United States, should be enlisted to apply a squeeze, as it has in the past. Refugees in northern China should be helped. Meanwhile North Korea should be encouraged to return to the six-party talks — where its extortion gambit is far harder to pull off.

In short, the administration should make clear that it feels no urgency to respond to Pyongyang’s provocations. "We have to be strong, patient and consistent and not give in to . . . the unpredictable behavior of the North Korean regime," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Congress last Wednesday. The weekend’s events shouldn’t change that position. Ok we’ll just sit and wait. Let them call the shots, right?

Then, Fox has an article which says, ultimately, the hostage-taking of those three young women during the first 100 days of the Obama administration proves one thing — dictators and tyrants have heard Obama’s call for “negotiation” and they’ve decided to gather bargaining chips. This is what happens when you send a message to the world that, as referenced by French President Sarkozy, the American president is weak and an “empty suit.” We should also be appalled by the fact that we have a woman of color as
first lady from whom not a sound has been made about the plight of
these three journalists.  Someone should demand their release!