NORTH KOREA: The test-firing by North Korea of seven missiles harmlessly into the sea yesterday may have been a failure as a military exercise, but it has strikingly succeeded in bringing global attention back to the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula and Pyongyang's desire to show off its political muscle.
North Korea launched seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2 which appears to have failed 40 seconds into the flight, a provocative act which President Bush said defied the international community.
While much of the world's attention has been focused on Iran's nuclear intentions, Asian nations tend to keep one worried eye on what Pyongyang is currently up to, especially its southern neighbour South Korea, which combines a dual role as North Korea's chief regime apologist and most bitter critic, and Japan, the only country which has ever actually experienced a nuclear attack and which may well lie within range of North Korean nuclear weapons.
Pyongyang shocked the region by firing a long-range missile over northern Japan in 1998, bringing the North the kind of political attention it seems to feel it is lacking at the moment.
Having left the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and declared that it has nuclear weapons, North Korea's neighbours knew it was a question of when, rather than if, the country would test its ability to transport warheads to certain targets.
Alaska was named among the potential areas which could be within range.
There was some small comfort for those fearful of being within range of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities in the fact that the key long-range Taepodong-2 missile apparently imploded early while still in its first stage.
But the timing was impeccable. The North Koreans picked their day to test the rockets to generate the most public attention possible - July 4th, Independence Day, during a launch of a US space shuttle.
In 2003, they launched another missile shortly before the inauguration of South Korea's new president.
Five other missiles were also launched during the test, mostly short-range Scuds, and another missile later in the day.
Despite the failure of the launch, the point was made, although it's possible that the North Koreans were indeed out to defy the world as President Bush said, with the test of a long-range missile, but were unwilling to let it fly so far as to trigger a military response from the US.
Some analysts have been saying it's almost as if Pyongyang was jealous of the way Iran has been hogging the global diplomatic stage and Washington's attention.
Or perhaps the missiles were launched as a domestic show of strength, with Kim Jong-il keen to show that he has the muscle to make the rest of the world sit up and take notice.
Trying to gauge motive in North Korea is like reading goat's entrails to tell the future.
North Korea has been rattling its sabre in recent weeks, threatening tests unless Washington agrees to talk to the secretive Stalinist enclave directly.
The Americans responded with a clampdown on North Korean counterfeiting, money-laundering and other criminal activities, and suggested that Pyongyang rejoin six-party nuclear talks, which also include China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
Pyongyang promised Japan it would refrain from launching missiles back in 2003 and Tokyo is furious, cancelling ferries, some shipping and charter flights.
Japan is threatening to rein in trade and stop North Korean expatriate workers sending home remittance money.
Meanwhile, South Korea has spoken of cutting food aid.
Japan and the US are now pressing for a UN Security Council meeting next week in New York on the issue, and threatening sanctions.
Which leaves everyone in the region peering at China, North Korea's only real friend of any strategic value in the world and provider of most of its food and fuel aid, to see how it will react.
China's reaction was completely predictable, with Beijing expressing serious concern in a statement and calling for calm on all sides. That is the same line it had taken in the run-up to the launch.
"We hope that all sides will maintain calm and restraint, and do things conducive to the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia and do not take any further steps that will add to tensions and further complicate the situation," the Chinese government said in a statement.
China has long opposed any sanctions against North Korea, and consistently called for Pyongyang to rejoin the six-party talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear programmes, which Beijing hosts.
China sent vice-premier Hui Liangyu to North Korea on Monday to mark the 45th anniversary of a Sino-North Korean friendship treaty.
China will have been angered by the launch, but it is in quite a bind when it comes to North Korea.
Regime collapse would leave a political vacuum on its borders, which it doesn't want, and also lead to the practical problem of millions of refugees who will look to China for help, so any immediate developments are likely to emerge at the multilateral talks.