North Korea: What to do?

S. Korean products from Gaeseong sold in N. Korea

By Kim Se-jeong

Products made in the Gaeseong Joint Industrial Complex have been circulated in clandestine local markets in North Korea, and are highly popular, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported Wednesday.

In its report earlier this week, it said products have a fake tag of “Made in North Korea,” yet people can easily discern them as coming from the zone because of the quality of the products.

The Gaeseong complex is home to more than 120 South Korean factories, which employ some 44,000 North Koreans. Quoting a person involved in the clandestine commerce, the RFA said the business is so lucrative that people involved skip going to work.

“I bribe my boss so that I don’t have to show up at work in the morning. Then, with my wife, I get products sneaked out from the Gaeseong zone and sell them,” the interviewee known only as Hwang told the RFA.

Hwang also said families of employees at the Gaeseong complex are usually far better off because of it.

Theoretically, a market where a wide range of items are exchanged based on supply and demand ― a symbol of capitalism ― is nonexistent in North Korea. However, with a deteriorating domestic economic situation, secret markets have sprung up.

One diplomat from Europe said Tongil Market in Pyongyang even allows outsiders to visit.

RFA also quoted a South Korean businessman who once had a factory in Gaeseong, saying that it was surprising. “I had to face the reality that at least 10 percent of the products were somehow lost at all times.”

Ah. Sorry, we don't have that smiley. "This".
Emphatic agreement about what you said about putting JTT on Ignore.

For all the Armchair Warriors who willy nilly say lets bomb this &bomb that.
Happy Xmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8jw-ifqwkM

I've no problem with measured retaliation against the lunatic asylum that is Nth Korea,
but talk of pre-emptive nuclear strikes pisses me off.
Also gung ho, lets go all out war, crap from the armchair generals.

Yeah, I'm guilty of the armchair general bit, but I'm not down with either the nuclear part or the gung-ho part.

War should always be an absolute last resort.

I wonder how the slaves of communism woud feel about that ?

The recent revelations of war crimes committed in Vietnam by former US Senator, Bob Kerry is illustrative of the US strategy in Vietnam.

Kerry commanded an U.S. Navy special forces SEAL unit, that was sent to assassinate a South Vietnamese peasant leader near the village Tranh Phong, a small hamlet in the Mekong Delta. As they left the village the next day the SEAL unit gathered between 13-20 villagers, mostly children and their mothers, and shot them execution style or slit their throats, according to the corroborated evidence. The soldiers murdered these civilians because they feared that they would report the sighting of the unit.

"Standard operating procedure was to dispose of the people we made contact with," Kerry has stated in self-justification. It was a policy and strategy of the High Command not simply errant behavior by troops in the field.

While the crimes committed by the US in Vietnam are widely recognized because they became the target of a worldwide movement of opposition, anti-war voices were muted in the US during the Korean War.

"I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” General Jacob H. Smith said.

Since it was a popular belief among the Americans serving in the Philippines that native males were born with bolos in their hands, Major Littleton "Tony" Waller asked "I would like to know the limit of age to respect, sir?."
"Ten years," General Jacob H. Smith said.
"Persons of ten years and older are those designated as being capable of bearing arms?" "Yes." General Jacob H. Smith confirmed his instructions a second time.[8]

I personally strung up thirty-five Filipinos without trial, so what was all the fuss over Waller's "dispatching" a few "treacherous savages"? If there had been more Smiths and Wallers, the war would have been over long ago. Impromptu domestic hanging might also hasten the end of the war. For starters, all Americans who had recently petitioned Congress to sue for peace in the Philippines should be dragged out of their homes and lynched.--Colonel Frederick Funston at a banquet in Chicago. [9]

Major Edwin Glenn did not deny that he made forty-seven prisoners kneel and "repent of their sins" before ordering them bayoneted and clubbed to death.[10]

"Obtain information from natives no matter what measures have to be adopted."--General Adna Chaffee [11]

"It may be necessary to kill half the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords."--General William Shafter[12]

"One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures."--General James Bell, May 3, 1901, New York Times explaining why one-sixth of the population of Luzon had died in the previous two years of the Philippine insurrection.[13]

"I suppose that this dengue fever and the sickness which depopulated Batangas is the direct result of the war, and comes from the condition of starvation and bad food which the war has caused." --Senator George Hoar[14]

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War

Dave, Change can only come from within.
Sending a foreign army into a country to "liberate" it's people just does not work.

I admire your sympathy for the people of Nth Korea

but this flies in the face of you also wanting to nuke them and unleash a bloodbath on them.

If Nth Korea pushes it too far and the South feel they have to retaliate, fair enough,
but there's a change of leadership coming up soon,
I reckon so lets play it by ear, maybe it will come to war
or maybe the Nth Koreans themselves will seize the moment.
Either way a pre-emptive nuclear strike or gung-ho attack is in
nobody's interest at the moment, least of all the hapless people of Nth Korea.

War should always be an absolute last resort.