Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono

Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of
author Douglas De Bono.

North Korea: Then and Now

Now that Saddam’s Iraq lies vanquished in the American military’s rear view mirror, North Korea and Iran are vying to become the world’s most dangerous regime.

North Korea is a basket case when measured by any reasonable nature. A couple of years ago, NASA compiled a composite photograph of the world at night. The great cities of the world are easily made out by the amount of light visible. However, when it comes to North Korea its existence is evident by the absence of light. Besides the development of a credible ballistic missile capability and an illicit drug distribution business, North Korea does not have any viable businesses.

Over 2% of North Korea’s population is currently interred at huge Soviet style gulags—the largest of which covers more land area than the District of Columbia. Famine and starvation is rampant in this communist paradise, where the average diet is supplemented with moss and tree bark.

People are literally voting with their feet and walking as far as Mongolia to find freedom. The People’s Republic of China is understandably upset by the refugee stream rolling across their borders, but they have not taken any concrete steps to stem the human flow. Both the United States and South Korea are mulling policies to offer political refugee status to North Koreans struggling to leave.

North Korea’s vaunted 1.1 million man army is developing a kinder and gentler look as the desertion rate has gotten so high that women are now being drafted into the ranks. This raises a very real question vis-à-vis to the North Korean military will to fight.

Since January 2003, North Korea has made a series of provocative states regarding their nuclear programs. Rewind history about 9 years, and you might swear the North Koreans dusted off their old polemic diatribes. Here are a couple of examples:

1. On March 23, 1993, North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons). They made the same threat on January 10, 2003.
2. Between February and March 1993, North Korea refused to permit the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to inspect North Korea’s 7 declared nuclear sites. Since January 2003, North Korea has dismantled IAEA monitoring equipment and barred inspections of nuclear facilities.
3. In 1993 and 1994, North Korea escalated into a regional crisis involving Japan, South Korea, China and America. In 2003, it is the same cast of nations confronting the same intransient problem.
4. In 1993 and 1994, North Korea demanded and eventually achieved bilateral talks with the United States. This resulted in the 1994 Agreed Framework, which was basically a license to continue to starve the people and secretly build underground reprocessing facilities. In 2003, North Korea is making the same demand. So far, the Bush Administration has stood firm in its demand for multilateral talks.

Most of these statements are interspersed with the normal vitriolic rhetoric that comes with the territory. Hopefully, the Bush Administration will learn a couple of things from North Korea’s recent behavior.

1. We can not trust North Korea to uphold its end of the bargain.
2. There needs to be on site inspections of all nuclear facilities (including those not acknowledged by North Korea).
3. Any agreement or treaty must be verifiable, and when violations are detected, consequences must be immediate and painful.

North Korea cannot be ignored, because it threatens to proliferate WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). North Korea is a major exporter of heroin, ballistic missiles, poison gas (and coming soon to your neighborhood terrorist) dirty nukes. [On August 28, 2003, North Korea announced its intention to test nuclear weapons. Guess they were further along than we thought.] Unfortunately, Kim Jong Il (North Korea’s despotic dictator) is crazy, and the chances of coming to a reasonable accord are slim and none. It will be a miracle if the United States is not engaged in conflict on the Korea peninsula in the next 18 – 24 months.