The broader implications of a restive North Korea

Malaysia – and much of the world – has been convulsed by the latest developments following the murder of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport three weeks ago. Yesterday, North Korea’s foreign ministry said that all Malaysians would be "temporarily prohibited from leaving the country until the incident that happened in Malaysia is properly solved".
This was swiftly denounced by Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, as an "abhorrent act, effectively holding our citizens hostage", and he ordered that North Korean citizens in Malaysia be prevented from leaving until the safety and security of Malaysians in North Korea could be assured.
Pyongyang’s embassy in Kuala Lumpur, in which two suspects in the murder are believed to be holed up, was cordoned off by the police, who have vowed to wait it out, even "if it takes five years", until the pair emerge.
This comes after the North Korean ambassador, Kang Chol, was expelled after making a series of wild and deluded remarks accusing Malaysia of colluding with outside powers to defame his country. I have met Mr Kang, and can testify that even when conducting a "charm" offensive his manner is dour and unappealing.
But his manufactured outrage over the fact that the Malaysian authorities have insisted on carrying out a postmortem examination and a criminal investigation – rather than just handing over the body to Mr Kang, as he wanted – would have been unacceptable to any government. He had to go. North Korea then retaliated by expelling Malaysia’s ambassador to Pyongyang; although since he was already back home after being recalled two weeks earlier, the gesture lacked a certain potency.
Provocative behaviour from the North Korean regime is nothing new. Indeed, as Monday’s launching of four ballistic missiles shows, North Korea frequently flaunts its prickly aggression. The tests, it said, were conducted by forces ready to strike "the bases of the US imperialist aggressor" in Japan. Admiral Harry B Harris, the United States Pacific commander, said this only confirmed the prudence of South Korea and the US in deploying a new anti-missile system on the Korean peninsula, and its implementation has been sped up as a result.
But the inflammatory words and the rapid escalation of tensions with Malaysia are bizarre. It would be too strong to say the country is the only friends Pyongyang had, but it had been one of the most open to links. Until the murder of the unfortunate Kim – whose only crime appears to be that he was perceived as a potential rival by his brother – Malaysia was one of the few countries to allow visa-free travel with North Korea.
Diplomatic relations were opened in 1973, during a period when Malaysia shifted towards a policy of non-alignment and established ties with other communist countries such as East Germany and, most notably, China. Embassies opened in Pyongyang and Kuala Lumpur in 2003, and while trade between the two countries is statistically insignificant, one might have thought North Korea would have been keen to encourage amity with one of the few countries not to publicly call it a pariah state.
It certainly was in the past; the occasion on which I met the former ambassador was when he and two colleagues came to the think tank where I work desperate to explain to us how misunderstood North Korea was, and how keen they were on reunification, if only those pesky Americans and ungrateful South Koreans wouldn’t keep getting in the way

Source: The National