North Korea enters the war

Thousands of North Korean troops have joined Putin's attempt to conquer Ukraine. At least three thousand are already in the province of Kursk, where hundreds of square miles of Russian territory were seized in a Ukrainian counteroffensive this fall, and there are reports that Koreans have also been spotted in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. Thousands more seem to be training in Russia's far east.

"Putin has been throwing more and more Russians into a meat grinder of his own making in Ukraine," said the U.S. Secretary of State yesterday. "Now he's turning to North Korean troops, and that is a clear sign of weakness." Well, perhaps, though Mr Blinken is too young to remember the summer of 1950, when the grandfathers of those North Korean soldiers sent the US Army reeling back to the Pusan Perimeter on Korea's southeastern edge. It took the US Marines and the genius of Douglas MacArthur to salvage that near-disaster.