Then again, wasn’t South Korea the true warhawk for decades? Begging and groveling at Uncle Sam for heightend military build up againt North Korea, taking far far rightwing stance against North Korea than the US? What a difference a generation makes.

I just feel a bit apprehensive about Japan’s possible decision to end aid and sanction NK. It’s not that I am against taking punitive action against NK, it just feels like a flip-flop move on Japan’s part. More importantly, I don’t think Japan would really keep up their hardline stance when KJI calls their bluff.

I would love to see some consistency. If they are trully serious about encouraging NK to change, then a clear regimen of stick and carrot is needed. But Dr.Lankov’s view from the link above, is essentially that NK would never do something as foolish as reform and possibly shoot themselves in the head. Could be true. Who knows? I would love to see Dr.Lankov’s policy suggestions.

In a world of No Moo Hyun-Al Gore/Kerry presidency or Lee Hoi Chang-George W presidency, we probably wouldn’t have half the problem we have now.

Like most all things, a case by case basis is necessary.

http://ifes.kyungnam.ac.kr/ife.....amp;page=1

And I also wanted to add that the auto-genocide of Cambodia can also be construed as a ?€œstrength in collective action against the state.?€?

I?€™m not against a sanction, but people should know what a sanction is before they start to embrace it whole-heartedly. Sanctions punish the weak and the destitute mostly, and is a way to force the weak and the destitute to use violent means to overthrow their oppressors. To put it bluntly, sanctions kill the poor through hunger and the one who puts up the sanctions hope that the poor will kill the dictator out of desperation. Obviously, many of the poor will die during the insurrection. Unless we are talking about a targetted sanction, which who knows if it?€™s even feasible or not. Maybe it?€™s better to shorten the lifespan of a gruesome regime by shortening the lifespan of some poor people in North Korea?€“and I say this without saracasm. But that is exactly what sanctions are aimed to do, and we should talk about sanctions in this term, because it?€™s horribly unethical to sugarcoat this.

Re-reading my 2 comments, the wording is somewhat too harsh (seemingly) to your article alone. In reality, I mean to point a dissapointed finger at a strong trend in outside views of North Korea. I’ve read and heard too many people give the North Korean government way TOO MUCH credit for “reforms.” The desire to be “optimistic” is much, much too strong.

Yes, I do see it as hopefull. I would agree with you that if the ROK/PRC/whoever agrees to feed them on a truly large scale, they will happily go back to old ways of the 1970s. But I doubt whether anybody is going to give them enough money, especially because they are so good in using money inefficiently. Much more likely, however, that the regime will gradually fall apart. And I do not feel too sorry about this.

I don’t buy it. It takes a perverse view of the old “half-empty or half-full” conundrum. With NK, the optimist outsiders simply jump for joy when a couple tiny drops of water splash into the wasteland desert that is North Korea.

One thing unusual about this article, however, is that it doesn’t even pretend that the Korean government has a thawing heart toward change that will lead (eventually) to lasting social structural changes. This author simply sees the desperatation of the North Koreans at the bottom during the faliure of the state as hopeful change. It’s a little odd.

He is most likely correct in saying NK won’t return to the past when the Korean government was strong enough around the whole nation to keep the people from opening markets and such by means of the state providing enough to the people to keep them from revolting. The North seems to be clearly pinning its hopes that they can win over the United States into joining South Korea and influencing Japan and China to replace the USSR and The People’s Repubic of China as the milk cows that allowed the nutty North Korea regime to pretend to establish “complete” Juche in the past. And if they gain such massive support from other nations to replace what they got before the 1990s from China and the USSR, you can bet easy money that the regime will crack down completely on all of these “reforms” people see as such magificant “signs” of “coming change” in North Korea as a whole.