Were they really that bad?

Barely a month has gone by since the New York Philharmonic – at the State Department’s urging – visited Kim Jong Il’s North Korea to play sweet music as the populace starved.

At the time, comparisons abounded to the “Ping-Pong diplomacy” that helped normalize US relations with Communist China – as did saccharine moralizing about the power of music to bridge “political” divides.

Maybe Kim didn’t like the show.

“Our military will not sit idle until warmongers launch a pre-emptive strike. Everything [in the South] will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced pre-emptive strike once begins.”

So warned a regime mouthpiece over the weekend, in response to a South Korean official’s more-than-reasonable statement that the South would strike suspected North Korean nuclear facilities if the Hermit Kingdom was in the process of launching a nuclear attack.

But that’s not all: The North also recently expelled 11 South Korean officials from a jointly operated industrial park and test-fired a new round of missiles.

Meanwhile, the long-promised dismantling of Pyongyang’s nuclear programs is what one could charitably call “stalled.”

Kim’s real problem, it seems, is with new South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who’s far less amenable than his predecessors (or, apparently, the State Department) to propping up Kim’s regime in exchange for empty promises. He’s vowed to sizably cut South Korean food and fuel aid unless the North gives up its nuke programs first.

Not exactly music to Kim’s ears.

But doubtlessly more promising than another round of Trombone Diplomacy.