It should come as no surprise that North Korea is threatening parts of the United States with annihilation. For decades, the North Korean regime has been systematically annihilating segments of its own population. More specifically, the North Korean regime has been engaged for decades in the supreme human rights offense of genocide – the deliberate attempt to exterminate entire racial, ethnic or religious groups.
The entire human rights framework embraced by the civilized nations of the world in the aftermath of the Second World War is rooted in a desire to avoid genocide. The civilized world had recoiled in collective horror at the full extent of Nazi atrocities in the concentration camps. So a legal system was created that confers an affirmative obligation on the United Nations and U.N. member states to do something to stop genocide wherever it may occur.