I've had to consistently state that I am a fan of the neocons foreign policy. I've been specifically supportive of Bush's policy towards North Korea.

I was catching up on my daily reading, when I saw an interesting link to an article saying that North Korea had trained up to 600 professional crackers for cyberwarfare.

There has been a lot of speculation regarding North Korea, most of it's simply estimated guesses at best, since NK is so secretive.

I remember when we first attacked Iraq, there was a lot of questions as to, "Why not NK?" This is a quite valid question. NK has admitted to developing WMDs, it is a large producer of opium, it has engaged in trading of illegal weaponry, and its human rights violations are staggering. So why not?

Obviously, the goal for every country in the world (including China) is to somehow get NK to embrace democracy, or even to get NK to embrace the open-market system (China has been doing a great job moving away from Communism to a free-market system, although they are still quite repressive, but this is no different than many other supposedly free countries like South Korea).

There are two primary ways of changing the NK regime:

1. Conventional warfare
   Destroy the NK's in a war ala Iraq
2. Engineer some sort of internal collaps
   Somtehing along the lines of the USSR's collapse in 1989

The problem with option 1, as people suggested during the Iraq war, is that every possible endgame scenario for conventional warfare ends up with Seoul being obliterated. If your geography is a bit weak, Seoul lies about 70km from the DMZ where millions of NK artillery pieces are aimed ... at Seoul. If you're not a fan of the metric units, 70km is roughly 40 miles.

Within minutes of any war with NK, Seoul would be obliterated. That is not a very good price to pay, even for victory.

And what else have we learned from Iraq? What's worse than having a million-four (1.4 million men is supposedly the strength of the NK army) fanatics with a leader is a million-four men without a leader and without a job. (In the defense of CENTCOM's Iraq operations; they were aware that giving jobs to former soldiers in the Baath regime was a top priority, but somewhere along the way it got screwed up, so they weren't entirely ignorant on this). If NK were to be toppled militarily, there would be no guarantees that things would get any better.

Couple this with the fact that SK's economy is so weak that it would not be able to handle an integration with NK like W. Germany did during the 90s, and you have a big mess.

So what's the best solution? I see it as trying to embrace NK as a separate country with a separate ideology, but pressuring them to open up their markets and their country, similar to what China has done. Opening up their country does not mean that their existing regime has to be toppled; China and Vietnam are clear examples where Communism continues to rule nominally. If NK can play ball with the rest of the world, then they would be less inclined to produce opium and engage in weapons-trading. They will also be more likely to embrace peace, and will probably take a less aggressive stance towards the region in general.

Of course, we constantly are being sidetracked by NK and its supposed nukes. This where I feel Bush has made the right steps. North Korea wants bilateral talks with the US; that is to say that NK wants to talk to the US and the US alone. But does this make sense? NO! If NK is developing nukes, who is affected? Its neighbors. Russia, China, Japan, and S. Korea all have a LOT to lose if NK joins the ranks of the nuclear superpowers. The US has been pressuring NK to join in talks with all six countries so a peaceful resolution can be reached. But NK has rejected these talks and continues to make claims that we have bilateral talks. If the US engages in bilateral talks, critics will claim that the US is acting unilaterally to solve the NK problem. And of course, if we don't engage in bilateral talks, people criticize the US for not doing enough. It's tough. This is where Bush has made the right decision. Bilateral talks are bad, bad, bad.

If you remember back during the Clinton era (I think it was 1996), we were suppsedly at the verge of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula. Of course, Clinton came in and "saved the day" by basically making the NKs agree to not process plutonium in return for light-water nuclear reactors for power. What happened? NK basically cheated and started developing uranium-based nuclear weapons. Bilateral talks with NK will only end up with them cheating ... holding talks with 6 other countries will hold every country much more accountable.

In any case, I don't think Kim Jong-Il is as much of a maniac as the West paints him out to be. He's got to be an intelligent and ruthless politician to have survived his stay on top (believe it or not, even Communist countries have power struggles all the time - look at the Chinese and their never-ending game of politics). Honestly I think that KJI only wants to be continue to be the "big dog" in NK and has no real intentions on engaging in warfare. Everything KJI has done so far has simply been to get more bargaining chips; I think he ultimately wants to cash out with a peace on the Korean peninsula and an ironclad treaty with the West that we will not invade them again. If they get nukes, they believe that this will happen.

It's not a horrible plan. Look at Pakistan. I can remember only a few years ago when Pakistan was viewed as a rogue state in constant warfare with India. Then they got nukes. Then India got nukes (or whatever the order was). And what's happened? Pakistan has obtained some legitimacy (also their help in the War in Afghanistan was a big boost) ... I think NK is trying to obtain the same thing by going after nukes.

In any case, a long rant. Let me know your thoughts.