South Korean officials love measuring the world in league tables. So they were fuming when their president, Lee Myung-bak, failed to be named as one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world this year. At the beginning of 2010, he simply was not in the same league as Ivorian footballer Didier Drogba or saucy songstress Lady Gaga.

As a conservative president, Mr Lee has tried to ignore North Korea, so it was perhaps his ironic destiny to be propelled on to the world stage by brinkmanship from Pyongyang. His handling of the present crisis on the peninsula has greatly boosted his stature. When Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, repeatedly calls you statesmanlike and North Korea lambasts you as a “scumball”, you must be getting something right.

After North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship on the night of March 26, many bleary-eyed cabinet members feared conflict was imminent as their drivers whisked them to the war bunker. A second South Korean ship had already blasted some shells northwards, picking up something on the radar screen that could have just been birds. History may ultimately portray Mr Lee, a hard-nosed businessman who survived a shipwreck himself in his childhood, as one of the key reasons an apocalyptic war did not erupt that night.