they ve been at war for 60 years, since there was no official peace treaty, well, not just according to him, there wasn t, an official peace treaty put in after the korean war. what is the time line forial vi north korea? why now? the big issue is kim jong-un is a relative unknown, both in the international community and likely in north korea. he has to assert himself as the iron-willed commander as kim song un. these are major heroes to live up to in north korea. he has to put himself out there as a rightful successor. the time line is unclear, because we don t really necessarily know what s going on inside north korea and what the leadership dynamics are. whatever does happen, the united states and their south korean allies are going to have to respond to in some fashion, and those responses, again, will definitely have to reflect whatever the north koreans end up doing. let s talk a minute, if we
really make this ballistic missile technology worrisome, that has been a problem in the past. we don t know at this point at which phase this test may have failed. but, again, there are initial indications from u.s. officials that from what they are seeing, it looks like this launch may have failed. philip yun still on the line with us. do we have a sense yet, does our intelligence community have a sense of how to deal with kim the younger if you will, this new leader in north korea versus the tactics taken with kim jong il, his predecessor? you know, i said before that right now at this early stage we know a lot about north korea that we didn t know perhaps 20 years ago. we know a lot about their negotiating behavior. there is a lot of information now because of what s going on, the border between china and north korea economically what is happening, but we just don t know a lot about their internal leadership dynamics