When the U.N. Security Council passed a package of uncharacteristically tough sanctions on North Korea over the communist regime's nuclear weapons tests and missile proliferation, the Pyongyang leadership went rhetorically ballistic.

Pyongyang's pro forma rants and raves toward South Korea and the United States were notched up to include scrapping the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War's hostilities. For good measure, North Korea threatened to nuke the U.S. with its newfound but happily not yet deliverable nuclear bombs.

Significantly the latest Security Council resolution was unanimously passed and thus included support from China, the longtime but increasingly wary political mentor of the quaintly titled "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (DPRK).