My Sneaky Plan To Collapse North Korea's Threat

     As you probably know our political elite have been working hard for the past 60 odd years trying to deal with North Korea. In 1950-53 we lost 33,700 soldiers in the Korean War which ended up a draw. Since then the diplomats took over and well, let's just say talks have been extensively un-successful. Today, the North Koreans have nuclear bombs and a missile that can lob them pretty much anywhere. I have decided it's time to solve this dilemma once and for all and make the world safe from the commie menace. (I just got this idea last week so please, be patient!)

     When you don't know the history of a problem and have no foreign policy experience or credentials two things are critical: 1. You need a good summary of both the causes for the problem and the efforts made to solve it. 2. You also need to understand it from the standpoint of the ordinary people involved because these differences in thinking cannot be changed easily or quickly. (For instance, once you understand the North Korean system you see that the people have never had any chance to overthrow the government. It will either have to collapse or be defeated militarily.)

     The first need above is answered by: The Impossible State: North Korea -Victor Cha  Mr Cha was a part of  many of the negotiations with North Korea under Clinton and Bush. This is an excellent history book on Korea over the past 100 years but with a focus on all diplomatic attempts of the past 60 years involving the US, China, South Korea, Japan and the North Koreans. These basically involve everyone offering  whatever possible to the North to abandon their nuclear weapons program. Then North Korea accepts the food, the fuel, the light reactors and continues the nuclear enrichment and rocket programs. It also does things like abducting 100,000 Japanese citizens, assassinations, bombing airliners.. you know, irritating things to reward the hapless diplomats.

     The second book needed to solve this problem is actually the best book I've read in a long time: Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives Of North Koreans  The outside world knows so little about North Korea because no outsider has ever been allowed access to the country outside of the capital Pyongang. This author decided to focus on the lives of escapees from just one city in the NE part of the country. She uses interviews from these people to reconstruct the past 60 years of their lives and the lives of their families to allow the reader to realize how one man was able to to convince a whole country that he was God and they were building a workers paradise through his benevolence.

     Since tv was introduced in North Korea there has only been one channel: The Kim Il Sung channel. Most people in that country have no idea that there ever was a moon landing or that most people in South Korea drive cars and eat great food. In the north part of the country about 20% of the people starved to death in a 3 yr. period in the 1990's and the majority of the people have stunted growth from lifelong malnutrition. For most of the country there is very little electricity and consequently no industry or jobs. The internet has never existed there except for the elite rulers.