China Hand, on BDA, concludes:

Maybe the world lost its appetite for vigilante financial justice American style and decided it wanted to let North Korea get the $25 million and give diplomacy a chance.

In order to see where the international united front against North Korea crumbled, it may not be necessary to look much further than South Korea.

And then, China Hand turns on the Bush administration:

Now, the United States has gone overboard in imposing the North Korean financial sanctions.

It is not only trying to force the international community to participate in a unilateral sanctions regime that goes beyond the wording and intent of the UN resolution.

It is attempting to maintain that regime even when it conflicts with the agreements made by its own State Department to denuclearize North Korea under the Six Party Agreement.

It’s come to a point where I think that many countries are getting sick of the US preoccupation with the $25 million in BDA.

More dangerously, it threatens to discredit the pretensions of the Patriot Act Section 311 regime to legitimacy and effectiveness in the eyes of the international community—in fact, making it look like another piece of dangerous, stubbornly and incompetently executed idiocy by the Bush administration--just as we wish to use it as the vehicle for our anti-Iran diplomacy.

Finally, the WSJ does one better, and blames the UN:

Mr. Ban is staying mum on the missed U.N. deadline. But on the evidence so far, Kim can be forgiven if he concludes that the world isn’t serious about enforcing any of its deadlines concerning North Korea.

Far from taking a holier-than-thou attitude, it's readily apparent that the NK problem is a result of the very real difference of opinion between Seoul and the US, as well as the other other members of the Six-Party coalition. The Bush administration has scant diplomatic capital to spend on selling its position. And, this is where the problem lies. There are many global crises, and for any pundit to elevate one of them into a moral imperative might make for good blog ratings, but it's hardly good foreign policy. Even without consensus or hegemonic leadership, there needs to be consistency at the national foreign policy level. Unless, of course, one considers muddle as a consistently deliberate choice. For instance, allowing market forces to dictate US Taiwan policy, but then taking the moral high ground against Pyongyang is hypocritical.

Beyond that, there's an excellent discussion of Nicolas Eberstadt's new book on North Korea's economy at AEI. And then, there's also this (ultimately negative) appraisal of Stephan Haggard's and Marcus Noland's Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. Just lop off the last paragraph, and it's a helpful article.