South Korea delays food aid to the North

[wicket]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060707/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_missiles

South Korea said Friday that it will delay food and fertilizer shipments to North Korea until international tensions created by the North test-firing missiles this week are resolved.

The North had requested 450,000 tons of fertilizer and 500,000 tons of rice this year. The South has already shipped 350,000 tons of the fertilizer.

"We will hold off" on plans to send 100,000 tons of fertilizer to North Korea, the South Korean Unification Ministry quoted Minister Lee Jong-seok as saying.

"In addition, we will hold off on providing 500,000 tons of rice," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This will continue until there is an exit out of the missile problem."

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

1. Good news from all over, eh Kim?

This ought to get a rise out of him. It'll be interesting to see how he responds to South Korea, given the wild threats he made against Japan for doing something much less important.

[Deja Q]

2. Well, Lil' Dong has one of two options:

1. Submit and withdraw.

2. Press on.

Will he agree to ending the short-term starvation of his people? Or does he think there's a higher power and all that other nonsense that he prefers to obey?

[acmejack]

3. This punishes the people

More children starving after eating stuff made form tree bark flour (really). Kim will eat, he didn't develop his rotund little physique by missing many meals. It is always the regular people who are punished, those who have absolutely no say as to what happens in their country. Life is not fair, indeed.

[Imajika]

4. Then the people will have to take action...

South Korea should send NO food aid of any kind to the North. Nor should anyone else. No food aid, no fertilizer, no fuel oil, no nothing. The North Korean regime survives as it does with its Army First policy because outside nations are providing for its people. We are, in effect, prolonging the existence of the monsterous North Korean regime.

Kim Jong il's rotten government will fall all by itself if the rest of the world just stopped propping it up. We can't stop China from subsidizing it, but the rest of the world can sure as hell stop contributing to keeping this guy in power.

[rayofreason]

8. Unfortunately...

..the system of terror and control is so well entrenched and society is so atomized that it is impossible for the North Korean people to easily overthrow the government. In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge slaughtered up to a third of the population and were only removed from power by a Vietnamese invasion. A similar level of terror and control existed during Stalin's purges, and exists now in the DPRK.

The most humane way to make real change in the DPRK would be for a single bomb to blow up Kim Jong Il and his cabinet, followed by a rapid entry of South Korean forces into the north to stabilize the situation and provide support to a traumatized population. I think than any other scenario for change in the DPRK involves much more suffering by the people, i.e. boycotts that result in further economic collapse, pushing people beyond the breaking point. Unfortunately, that is the most likely path, and one that carries with it a significant chance of war as the DPRK leadership finds itself up against the wall and decides that the only thing that can save them is to forcibly annex the rich south. The least likely (if pigs had wings...) path is that the leadership of the DPRK realizes that they have run the country into the ground, that the people are literally starving while the the south prospers, and so they agree to unification under a an open democratic system.

[Imajika]

11. I agree...

...with pretty much everything you've just posted.

Though I'm not keen on attacking the North Korean leadership hoping that we will like the outcome - IF our goal were saving the people of North Korea your point about the most humane way to do it is probably correct.

So yeah, your comments are pretty much dead on in my opinion.

Sadly, even knowing the North Korean people would find it extremely difficult to near impossible to topple the regime, I still do not support sending any aid of any kind. We just prolong the suffering of this generation of North Koreans, and the next generation and the generation after that. Worse, by providing food, fuel oil, fertilizer and other aid, we allow the North Koreans to put that much more money into their Army First war machine.

If some act of God struck North Korea - a tidal wave, asteroid, earthquake, etc, I'd provide assistance along with the world community the way the US normally does. But we should absolutely not prop up tyrannical regimes who fail utterly as nations because they chose an unworkable economic system - especially ones that routinely threaten their neighbors.

[Show_Me _The_Truth]

5. Assuming

...the food would have even been distributed to the people in the first place. Just because it goes to N Korea, does not mean it is distributed.

Even Dan Rather said that when he was there, he saw UN rice being SOLD at a market. I doubt the UN sends rice to vendors to sell.

[slackmaster]

9. If that's what it takes to foment a revolution, so be it

Or at least some serious policy changes by NK leaders.

[Igel]

6. Juche redux. n/t

[KKKarl is an idiot]

7. Koreans

I met some South Koreans once who had lived their whole lives in South Korea. All of them went through the military as required by law. None of them wanted a separate Korea. They spoke about North Koran's as if their were no differences at all. We saw the Korea's united in the Olympic games. I think it is only a matter of time before Kim is brought down & the Korea's united again.

[wicket]

10. kick

:kick:

[daleo]

12. What would Jesus do?

I don't know about starving innocent bystanders as a basis for foreign policy. But is is certainly well within South Korea's rights.

[wicket]

13. Good point

n/t

[omenapoint]

14. I really hate that guy.

Kim Jong Il needs to go. Communist-Nazi tyrant.