What do DUers think should be done about North Korea?

[DealsGapRider]

For starters, I'm not talking about dealing with the nuclear weapons issue. I'm talking about what, if anything, DUers think should be done to address the suffering of the North Korean people (from famine, from heating oil shortages, from the gulags of the police state, etc.) and hopefully ultimately bring about democracy.

Should anything be done at all?

I know many DUers are adamantly opposed to the notion of the US intruding itself in the affairs of other nations. And for good reason. In principle, and indeed in most cases, countries should have an inviolable right to self-determination. But do they sometimes cross a line when international intervention is simply the only moral thing to do? I don't think Iraq was such a case, but what about Nazi Germany? Certainly the international community would have been justified in invading Germany to save the Jews from extermination in the absence of an existing war. Does everyone agree with that statement?

In many ways, no other people on earth suffer the horrendous fate of the North Koreans. Every aspect of their lives is controlled, they have little to eat, basically no hope at all for the future. The defector Hwang Jang Yop, the highest ranking N. Korean defector ever to flee the North said, "As far as I know, the present North Korean dictatorial system is the most precise and thorough in history."

Do I support invasion of North Korea a la Iraq? Of course not. It would be catastrophic. But am I comfortable allowing those people to suffer under that hideous form of government? Not remotely. I think something should be done, but I'm not sure what.

[wuushew]

1. I was pleased with the sunshine policy

unitl Bush destroyed that.

Continued international aid, completion of nuclear power plants and I would like to see China increase its efforts to open up the zenophobic country.

[Stupdworld]

2. ill

wont be going anytime soon. with his nonchalant discussion of the nuclear option, a war would be one hell of a mess. I agree he should be dispensed with. North korea is turning into one festering shithole with the starvation and the nonsense.

if only people like james bond, et al, and these super spy types existed, it would make a nice movie about how he suddenly just "disappeared"

[wuushew]

4. You support assaination as official policy?

I really question the United State's extra-legal authority to do such things.

[DealsGapRider]

5. Me, too.

Because I worry that it would be abused. That having been said, the Nazi analogy is always useful. Wouldn't it have been a grand thing if we had been able to assassinate Hitler in 1939?

[GSCNEWS]

10. Containment

If Bush messes with them like he did with Iraq, it would be bad news.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. I don't know what SHOULD be done but I guess my question would be

Is there a way to deliver heating etc to them without enriching the nuclear energy companies (which thereby gives THEM nukes and materials?

It seems to me some of this crisis is the MAKINGS of the energy lobby.

As far as the moral questions regarding invasions, there is MUCH history that one must discuss to address that and I don't have the time to get into it now.

I frankly think we should continue doing business as usual with them and use diplomacy.

The notion of mutually assured destruction has kept a nuke from going off thus far. I don't see why it wouldn't work now. It worked when a nation that had 100 times the capacity that NK has had them.

on edit: I KNOW you said you didn't mean the nuke issue but one can't address the issues the PEOPLE will have without addressing the NUKE issue.

[Bucky]

6. Humanitarian crisis is real. So is the nuclear threat.

A corrupt, piss poor country with the Bomb is a bad thing to have in the world. The Bush Administration is stumbling, sort of, in the right direction on this. You have to couple those two issues together to make progress on either. Trade support for gradual (face-saving) concessions from the North Koreans for disarming.

This is, of course, the Clinton policy toward North Korea. The Bushies threw this out the window in favor of macho posing tough talk for two years, which led to the current degenerated state of affairs. Now they are gradually coming back around to dealing with the inherent dangers of North Korea, albeit from a much weaker position and with egg drying on Uncle Sam's face. But guns for butter is the right trade off for dealing with these crazies.

It ought to go without saying that North Korea was always 10 times the threat that Iraq could possibly have been. Failing to deal with this threat in a more competant manner is the strongest case for dumping the Chimpmeister and putting a grown up back in the White House.

[DealsGapRider]

8. I mostly agree.

I don't agree with this statement, though: "The Bush Administration is stumbling, sort of, in the right direction on this."

I don't see evidence of Bush doing a goddamned thing on this score, right or wrong. He's just not addressing it.

Agreed on the WMD issue. It made us look like fools to invade a country because of fears of WMD while ignoring another country where another dictator was jumping up and down saying, "Look, I have nukes!"

Finally, I am more interested in addressing the human rights issue than the nuke one. I don't think we honestly have to worry that North Korea will ever do anything reckless with its nukes, knowing that we would obliterate them if they tried. But how do we end the wretched human rights situation over there?

[charlie]

12. Ever hear of Plan 5030?

Bush just may well be addressing the NK problem, but not in any way sane:

Within the past two months, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered U.S. military commanders to devise a new war plan for a possible conflict with North Korea. Elements of the draft, known as Operations Plan 5030, are so aggressive that they could provoke a war, some senior Bush administration officials tell U.S. News.

Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, and senior Pentagon planners are developing the highly classified plan. The administration insiders, who are critical of the plan, say it blurs the line between war and peace. The plan would give commanders in the region authority to conduct maneuvers--before a war has started--to drain North Korea's limited resources, strain its military, and perhaps sow enough confusion that North Korean generals might turn against the country's leader, Kim Jong Il. "Some of the things is being asked to do," says a senior U.S. official, "are, shall we say, provocative."

...

Some officials believe the draft plan amounts to a strategy to topple Kim's regime by destabilizing its military forces. The reason: It is being pushed by many of the same administration hard-liners who advocated regime change in Iraq. The Pentagon only recently began offering details of the plan to top officials at the White House, the State Department, and other agencies. It has not yet been approved. A Pentagon spokesman declined comment.

...

..."America's allies in the region--South Korea and Japan--think so. They, along with China, worry that if the Bush administration puts too much pressure on North Korea, Pyongyang could strike back in unpredictable ways. "Once we push them too hard against the wall," says a Japanese official, "we do not know what kind of reaction Kim Jong Il will have."

Reprint of July US News and World Report article

[poskonig]

7. I would support military action.

North Korea as a nuclear K-Mart should not be an option for the United States.

That being said, it looked like all North Korea wanted was a non-aggression pact, which I thought was a no-brainer, since if they break the pact, we go to war. Putting them on an "axis-of-evil," calling their leader a "pygmy," et cetera, and then making unconditional demands was clearly the wrong way to go.

If there was a war, Seoul would be destroyed by conventional weapons, and the precarious world economy would collapse. But if they sell warheads to terrorists to feed their desperately starving population, we would have warheads going off in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv instead.

[DealsGapRider]

9. Again, I'm focusing on the N. Korean people, not the nuke issue.

Wouldn't giving Kim Jong Il a "non-aggression pact" simply ensure that the North Korean people would continue to live in perpetuity under that monstrous system of government? And are we comfortable with that? That's what I'm getting at.

[wuushew]

13. many humanitarian issues are present in Africa

But humanitarian goals never dictate U.S. policy they are only tacked on as justification after the fact for things more sinister.

[tnlefty]

11. We should invade the country, kill all of their leaders and convert them

to christianity! Oh crap, wrong board.

Toning down the sabre rattling from Bush*Co would be a start. I remember seeing a documentary a few months ago and a gov. official was being interviewed and the electricity went off during the interview. He seemed concerned about the plight of the people, but it was also pretty clear that as long as NK feels threatened money will be spent in arms, etc. and the people will be secondary.

[Snow]

14. I feel as conflicted as you, DealsGapRider....

being a former Korea Peace Corps vol and married into the country, you'd think I'd have some bright ideas, but I really don't. The south has been working on getting closer for some time - I actually wept watching the two Korean teams come in together at the Australia Olympics - but it is very time-consuming, and there's always the one-step-back problem. There's some of that going on right now - lot of old-liners feel President Noh is just a bit too much too fast. SO he's in major political trouble. We shal see. The two countries will eventually rejoin, but another fear of the South is trying to support that disaster in the north. They all take the German reunification as a cautionary tale, and in Korea it would be considerably worse. Finally, there's the question of unifying governments - how does that get handled? And a coupla times talks have gotten to that point where they realized that matter had to be addressed, and some ideas were considered. One which had me worried, but made some sense, was to bring back the rulers of Korea when it was last unified as an independent country, namely the royal family. Not as rulers, of course, but as a unifying symbol. Probably wouldn't work, but is was and maybe still is being considered. Hope it never gets off the ground, because there's serious possibilities for immediate family disruption if it does. But anyway, what to do about the North? I think the main problem is the degree to which they're isolated from the world, and taught to be fearful of the US in particular, and taught that the South is a US puppet. That seems to have worked very well, but the simple observation that you and your neighbors are starving and dying is enough to persuade you to take some very desperate measures - like escaping to China.

Anyway, what was the question? Oh yeah - what should be done? Well, it's more a matter of who - and who is emphatically NOT the US. And it's hard to be patient, and talk about things taking time, when people are suffering. But there it is, and anything the US could do would make things worse, except possibly flooding the place with aid of the humanitarian variety. I really think that would begin to change the people's minds, would, I believe, begin to undermine the Kim dynasty, and begin to end the isolation.

[Bandit]

15. My idea would be to encourage engagement with South Korea

By engagement I mean talks and joint ventures. Let the two Koreas solve their own problems. They were getting very close until Bush* was selected ruler of the world. He put a stop to all negotiations between North Korea and any other country. The best thing that could happen to deal with North Korea is to get rid of the Bush* Cabal.

[Karenina]

16. I just love reading threads where

Americans wax philosophical about what should happen in a nation most could not find on a map if their lives depended on it. Worry about getting fucked in the ass yourselves by an out-of-control *cabal that is destabilizing the globe. DEAL WITH THAT FIRST and just maybe the humilility will come that will enable you to lead the way.

[Cleita]

19. You are so right Karenina.

We need to clean our own house before we go in and meddle in others.

[Snow]

22. Both of you could do with a little less in the way

of pointless uninformed sarcastic remarks meant to show off your own superior positions. You could try reading the questions and discussions and offer a bit of thought and insight. Your assumptions are highly offensive and plain wrong.

[Character Assassin]

20. Township of tangential, hasty generalizations; Population = You

Americans wax philosophical about what should happen in a nation most could not find on a map if their lives depended on it.

Are you suggesting that people engaged in this thread are unable to find NK on a map? If not, what is your point in speaking of 'Americans' in general since 'most' of them are not reading this thread in the first place?

Worry about getting fucked in the ass yourselves by an out-of-control *cabal that is destabilizing the globe. DEAL WITH THAT FIRST and just maybe the humilility will come that will enable you to lead the way.

Utterly irrelevant to the matter at hand, but thanks for attempting to add something to the conversation.

[wuushew]

17. Nothing good can happen in NK as long as this man has a job

Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security -- John R. Bolton

[Karenina]

21. Bingo!!!

.

[knight_of_the_star]

18. Simple solution

A knife between Kim Jong Il's shoulder blades would not raise any objections from me.