Nicholas Kristoff column at the NY Times or what to do about North Korea

The columnists at the New York Times are a varied group. Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd I find nauseating, Paul Krugman puts me to sleep, Bob Herbert is annoying, and John Tierney and David Brooks I find myself most often in agreement with. Thomas Friedman I have never read enough to form an opinion on.

That leaves Nicholas Kristoff. I find him knowledgable, well traveled and much easier to read than some of his colleagues. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't but I respect his views. I've got two of Mr. Kristoff's books at home(Co-written with his wife) but haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

Today's column by Mr. Kristoff is no different. He's again writing one of his fields of expertise, namely Asia and more specifically US policy towards North Korea. The conundrum about what policy to take towards Pyongyang and Kim il-Jung regime.

Mr. Kristoff spends the first third of his column describing life in the country. Having just read Bradley K Martin's book on the Kim family, I could have done without this part of the column. Now for what Mr. Kristoff wrote-

And although the national ideology is juche, or self-reliance, the U.N. World Food Program feeds 6.5 million North Koreans, almost one-third of the population. Even so, hunger is widespread and has left 37 percent of the children stunted.

All very true and why I support US food aid to this country. I may despise the regime in Pyongyang, but we can't let North Korean people die of starvation.

Yet North Korea focuses its resources on prestige projects, like an amazing 10-lane highway to Nampo (with no traffic).

A colossal waste of money and very typical for the Kim regime both son and father. Foreign countries grew very reluctant to loan Pyongyang money after they reneged on their debts in the 70's and early 80's.Now for the nitty gritty part of Kristoff's column.

Many conservatives in and out of the Bush administration assume that North Korea's population must be seething and that the regime must be on its last legs. Indeed, the Bush administration's policy on North Korea, to the extent that it has one, seems to be to wait for it to collapse.

I'm afraid that could be a long, long wait. The central paradox of North Korea is this: No government in the world today is more brutal or has failed its people more abjectly, yet it appears to be in solid control and may even have substantial popular support.

First I think there is a diversity of opinion among conservatives over what to do in regards to Pyongyang. There is no easy solution to the North Korean problem, they have nuclear weapons, a leader of questionable faculities, a large standing army and close proximity to a city(Seoul) of over 10 million people. North Korea is a menace absolutely no doubt about it.

What to do about it? Sanctions? We have plenty of sanctions in place already, I don't see any improvement from tightening them. Loosening them rewards Kim for his recalcitrant behavior. So what is one to do?

A military option? That is incredibly risky. The famine that is widespread in the hermit kingdom has to have affected the military. You can also question the Army's readiness but a war could be immensely destructive to both people and business in South Korea. I've heard no one realistically discuss this option.

Talks with Pyongyang other them giving up their nuclear weapons? I am skeptical with reason about how effective talks would be. Kim il-Jung sees these weapons as insurance against an attack from either the US or South Korea. He is a very insecure man, as are most dictators, seeing threats even if they don't exist. Could Kim ever give up these weapons? In a closed society like North Korea is, could we ever know for sure? Again back to Mr. Kristoff

"I think we'll have regime change in America before we have regime change in North Korea," says Han Park, a Korea specialist at the University of Georgia. He estimates that 30 percent of North Koreans have a stake in the system, and that most of the rest know so little about the outside world that they don't realize how badly off they are.

A hermetic seal is the main reason the Kim dynasty has survived so long.

I don't argue with Mr. Kristoff over how secretive life is in North Korea. It's Mr. Kristoff doesn't see the flip-side. Other is getting into North Korea, but nothing is getting out also. How much is really known about life there? Even visits there, as Mr. Kristoff and Bradley K Martin have chronicled, are tightly controlled by the powers that be in Pyongyang. The citizens also fear speaking out, if they do know better.

If the American policy premise about North Korea - that it is near collapse - is highly dubious, our essential policy approach is even more so. The West should be trying to break that hermetic seal, to increase interactions with North Korea and to infiltrate into North Korea the most effective subversive agents we have: overweight Western business executives.

Breaking the seal by what means? There is trade going on both via South Korea and Japan with the north in the last up to ten years. What changes have occured? Very little it seems, the nation is having another famine right now ten years after its last. The regime in Pyongyang is either oblivious to it's own people or clueless to what to do. Mr. Kristoff sees the Bush policy driven by ideology, but so is policy in Pyongyang. An ideology thats failed miserable for sixty years. The last sentence above by Mr. Kristoff is just plain silly in an otherwise good column.

Instead, we maintain sanctions, isolate North Korea and wait indefinitely for the regime to collapse. I'm afraid we're helping the Dear Leader stay in power.

I truthfully think US(Or Japan, South Korea or anyone elses for a matter of fact) influence over what goes on in Pyongyang is limited. Mr. Kristoff may be right about dear leader, but what policy has a chance of working?