http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0305/steyn030705.php3

Those are entirely *your* words, not mine.

However, my question still stands.

What, exactly, would you have the worlds “free governments” do?

Tokin, I don’t want you to think that this is personal, but I get back to the point that “we” don’t just “let” tens of millions suffer. We do what we can. And it isn’t enough to help. It does not mean that we can’t continue to try. But it doesnt mean that we are somehow guilty or amoral in our treatment of the NK people. Just that we can only do so much.

I have seen people dying. You can always do something to prolong life but, at some point, you realize your own limits.

Moreover, you realize the system’s limits: do you spend 100K giving a 90 year old 6 extra months of life, or give 5 kids a college education? Do you spend $X and X lives helping Darfur, or North Korea? Why not invade Burma or Zimbabwe: there is suffering, starvation, and their armies are much weaker and the countries less chronically messed up than NK. But in any choice, denying one access to the limited resource may be hard, but it does not equate with immorality.

Roy, so the moral justification for allowing millions to die of starvation, tens of millions to suffer under a crazed totalitarian government is “democratic governments screw shit up”?. Really?

That might just be one of the best all-time scenes in a movie.

When I was in Korea we had more intelligence gathering assets pointed at the DPRK than probably anywhere else on Earth. There isn’t much going on there that CIA (or more likely, DIA) doesn’t either know or strongly suspect. I concur with Tokin’s first comment. Some of the briefings will scare the piss out of you – until you realize that they are actually downplaying the fear factor, then you go for a thunder run to dull the pain.

Snark aside, that is only a feeling, not a fact. I suspect – also not a fact, just a suspicion based on experience – that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agencies have put together a hell of a lot more information about North Korea than Melvin has.

“…what the free governments on this planet have allowed to occur in that country is shameful.”

It’s ironic to see a statement like that on here. Does no one ever read history anymore? As others have asked: What would you have the “free governments” do? This is especially ironic when you consider that ever since that very same Korean War 59 years ago, any time one of the worlds “free governments” has tried to “do something” – anywhere – it has generated a monumental shit-storm with half the population.

When you say we “let” the Chinese dictate, I suppose thats right.

Its also sensible, when you consider that China is right next door, shows a great interest in what happens in NK, and has an army of more than 1 million people, nuclear weapons. The US is half the globe away.

Of course, don’t forget that
(a) Russia also borders NK
(b) NK has a huge army
(c) Seoul is within artillery range of NK.

In another sense, I dont think it is true that we have just “let” China dictate.

1. Every recent U.S. President has tried to do something about North Korea. Clinton teamed up with all the regional players to try and solve NK (including China). So its not like no one cared.

2. There is a limit to what we can do. The last time we really tried to change things was the Korean war. We almost completely occupied NK until the Chinese intervened to support the NKs.

3. We are doing what our regional partners want. Lets imagine that the NK regime was struck down by a lightning bolt. What next? The regional players do not want NK to collapse, because the entire region would be distabilized. Even if there were no military issues, the flood of refugees would cause huge social unrest. West Germany is only now getting over its take over of East Germany, and East Germany was the most educated and wealthiest part of the Warsaw Pact. NK vs SK is like modern society versus medieval. The neighbors want to gradually modernize and open NK to facilitate the reintegration of NK and SK.

But, how did he get Google Maps to show all those tags when I couldn’t do that for my police misconduct mapping project?!?

Both your points are well taken, but none of it changes the fact that for 40 years everyone sat around and let china, with a minor assist from the soviets, dictate what was going to happen with N. Korea. Up until the 90′s, when NK got nukes there were plenty of opportunities to get something done. The chinese absolutely could have made the Kim family disappear. The millions dying of starvation were completely ignored thanks to the “realists”. Kissinger and baker were more concerned with keeping the status quo instead of doing what was right.

I know that this is something I have a tendency to get up on my high horse about but….it is what it is.

Being that high up on NK’s shit list should also come with a personal bodyguard detachment from Delta Force because the Great Boufant is insane enough that he might want this guy dead.

You don’t really need to be on any sort of Shit List to be in danger from the North Korean government.

I was reading something about Kim Hyon Hui, the North Korean agent who planted explosives on KAL Flight 858 in 1987. Her Japanese teacher was a woman who had been abducted off a beach in Japan at the age of 22.

By the way, when Radley Balko introduces someone as “kind of a badass”, he’s not fucking around.

I give kudos to both of you.

My CIA snark was just that – a snark. It is a fact of life with intelligence agencies that usually only your failures are known. (The successes are only known when there is a political reason for it or 50 years after the fact.) There is a rather glib tendency to dismiss the CIA on the basis of the usually unfavorable stories that come out.

I agree with Tokin42 that it is shameful that NK has been allowed to continue – but I put the blame mostly on the Chinese and Russians and the apologists in the west who have helped prop it up.

As SJE points out, it is impossible and foolish to think of changing the NK situation via military action.

I do hope that, someday soon, the Dear Leader and his cadre get the Ceaucescu (sp?) treatment.

So my friend Curtis Melvin is kind of a badass.

This is at the same time the most awesome introduction ever, and the most accurate.

Cost effectiveness and man-hours. The man-hours put into this project by volunteers is not a good use of the CIA’s limited number of man hours (opportunity cost etc).

I thought a coalition of more than a dozen nations fought a huge land war to stop North Korean expansion. Casualties: over 474,000 on our side, 1.2-1.6 million on the other, and est. 2 million civilians. It cost the US so much money that it effectively kick-started the post WWII-Japanese economy. It almost went to nuclear conflict with China and Russia. At that point, we settled.

Are you suggesting another war? With a nuclear armed country?

So, what else are we expected to do? NK has almost no economy, so embargoes are worthless. The people to blame are (1) the Kim family and the associated ruling elite (2) the Chinese and Russian governments that have protected and enabled the North Koreans.

I think that “we” have done an enormous amount already, and have tried to steer NK into a better place. We give shelter to those who try to escape (unlike China, who gives them back). We provide food aid.

There is only so much you can do.