Border incidents between 2 countries that have never officially declared an end to their last war are not a sign of governmental insanity or lack of rationality, Rapparee... ;-) They are a very common feature of countries in such a hostile relationship as the 2 Koreas are. Such stuff happens all over the place between unfriendly neighbours.

Israel makes frequent major armed incursions and land siezures on its neighbours' territory, for example. Does this prove that Israel is not a rationally-led state???? Hardly. They have a definitely rational agenda behind what they are doing, and they have been far more aggressive in that sense than North Korea has since the mid-50s. Yet no one in the USA thinks to assess them as "irrational", "insane", etc...and I'll tell you why. Because it isn't politically convenient and it isn't in style to do so. ;-D

North Korea, on the other hand, is one of America's official boogeymen, and Iran's another, so the fashionable thing to do is depict them as "irrational", "insane", "capable of anything", despite the fact that neither one of them has done anything even vaguely comparable to the massive acts aggression committed by Israel and the USA in the last couple of decades.

So who is irrational? Nobody? Or everybody? I think that the various border incidents arising between the 2 Koreas are very predictable, typical of what happens in a situation like that between 2 hostile halves of a sundered nation, and they are usually a case of each saying to the other, "See? You better not mess with me! I'll fix you good if you do! Just watch THIS! Ha! Showed you good that time, didn't I?"

It's oneupmanship, it's fodder for propaganda on the homefront, it's a good way of keeping their domestic population focused on an outside enemy (in the case of either the North or the South), it's macho gameplaying and jockeying for various diplomatic and other advantages.

Could it get out of hand and turn into a bigger war? Sure. There's always that risk. The same risk exists constantly in the Middle East and between India and Pakistan as well. Yet the only countries we hear about that supposedly aren't rationally led are:

1. North Korea
2. Iran

And you know why? Simply because the USA doesn't like them, that's why. If you can convince your own public that another country is led by madmen...well, then your public may be persuaded in their fear of those "madmen" to let you launch a pre-emptive attack on that country...in other words, to commit the act of a madman yourself and yet feel fully justified in doing so.

It's a very convenient line of circular reasoning, isn't it? I bet Hitler thought he was fighting madmen too. I mean, hell....they didn't agree with him, did they? They MUST have been crazy! ;-D