Barry Soper: Chest thumping should worry us

All this activity from a man who said as President he'd be putting America first! Photo/AP

The chest thumping between Washington and Pyongyang should worry us all.

North Korea's in our wider neighbourhood and the dictatorial regime there has always been an irritant since the Koreas were divided, without resolution in the 1950s.

Going to the demilitarised zone on the 38th parallel is a freaky experience.

Western visitors can stand on a platform and look across to the North at the binoculars watching them.

On the odd occasion it's become unbearable for the soldiers looking into the west from the severely deprived North that they've defected, although that's rare.

American Vice-President Mike Pence went for a squiz and declared the era of patience with the North's despot, 33-year-old Kim Jong-un who assumed power five years ago this month, is over.

Pence warned Kim not to test the resolve of the United States, insisting any use of nuclear weapons would be met with an overwhelming and effective response.

From the North the message was equally blunt with a top official vowing his country would beat down enemies with the power of nuclear justice.

It's all pathetic rhetoric and would be laughable, like boys comparing the size of their toys, if it wasn't so serious.

We've got the Americans with their 71-year-old tweeter Donald Trump showing over the past few weeks he's prepared to use his toys, dispatching 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria and then dropping the biggest non nuclear bomb out the back of a Hercules over Afghanistan. His justification for launching the Syrian attack was seeing beautiful babies killed by the Assad regime's chemical weapons attacks.

But the last weapons inspector in Syria to dismantle the weapons four years ago said the regime wasn't capable of producing them, although he admitted he had to take them at face value. He concluded someone's lying, either Assad maintaining a chemical munitions dump had been blown up or Trump saying the weapons had been deliberately used.

But why now North Korea? Well because they tried unsuccessfully to test a nuclear missile which is thought to have been thwarted by an American cyber attack.

The Americans have dispatched an aircraft carrier to South Korean waters which is apparently being shadowed by Chinese and Russian vessels.

All this activity from a man who said as President he'd be putting America first!