North Korea: What to do?

Do you think that China &/or Russia convinced them to back off?

but I still think it would have been a "measured" response.

in which as many as 70,000 residents of the southern island of Cheju were ruthlessly murdered during a single year by Rhee's paramilitary forces under the oversight of U.S. officers.

Rhee took office as President on August 15 and the Republic of Korea (ROK) was formally declared. In response, three-and -a-half weeks later (on September 9, 1948), the people of northern Korea grudgingly created their own separate government, the Democratic People's's Republic of Korea (DPRK), with Kim II Sung as its premier.

Korea was now clearly and tragically split in two. Kim Il Sung had survived as a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese occupation in both China and Korea since 1932 when he was twenty years old. He was thirty-three when he returned to Pyongyang in October 1945 to begin the hoped-for era of rebuilding a united Korea free of foreign domination, and three years later, on September 9, 1948, he became North Korea's first premier.

The Rhee/U.S. forces escalated their ruthless campaign of cleansing the south of dissidents, identifying as a suspected "communist" anyone who opposed the Rhee regime, publicly or privately. In reality, most participants or believers in the popular movement in the south were socialists unaffiliated with outside "communist" organizations.

As the repression intensified, however, alliances with popular movements in the north, including communist organizations, increased. The Cheju insurgency was crushed by August 1949, but on the mainland, guerrilla warfare continued in most provinces until 1959-51.

In the eyes of the commander of US military forces in Korea, General Hodge, and new "President" Syngman Rhee, virtually any Korean who had not publicly professed his allegiance to Rhee was considered a "communist" traitor. As a result, massive numbers of farmers, villagers and urban residents were systematically rounded up in rural areas, villages and cities throughout South Korea. Captives were regularly tortured to extract names of others. Thousands were imprisoned and even more thousands forced to dig mass graves before being ordered into them and shot by fellow Koreans, often under the watch of U.S. troops.

Do you really think they would have had the **** blown out of them if they repeated the prior stunt?

I suppose if South Korea was ever going to get tough with them it would have been now, but I still think it would have been a "measured" response.

In any case, they'll probably just wait until tempers cool and fingers are taken off triggers before trying it again.

I'd be interested to find out what happened in the conversation with Richardson, but I don't expect to. He's a local here. I've mixed feelings on him, based on hearsay, not information I know, and I was very guarded when he was in the running as a presidential candidate. I also seem to remember being appalled at his ability to communicate back in the early presidential debate thing. On the other hand, he seems to have a good record for cooling boiling waters. In NK, he could have been highly snubbed, or had some kind of conversation, or... both.

...I have to think they gain the status more from being malleable than tough.

Ah, cross posting. That makes sense.

I'm not getting the special friend thing - was that used re him and NK? But, anyway, one would wonder what he could have said, if what he said somehow worked.

... He could play his practiced role in the prelude to the North Koreans making a sharp shift in activities.

Maybe it relates to his brief stint as ambassador to the UN? I'm not sure I would take that as much of a qualification, but there does have to be some sort of reason.