North Korea Starving...Again

It's being reported that the North Korean regime, in an effort to avoid mass starvation again this summer, is sending millions of civilians living in the cities to assist farmers in the countryside.

Meanwhile, US efforts to push North Korea away from further development of nuclear weapons continues at it's glacial pace, as the Pentagon deploys a whopping 15 stealth fighters to South Korea, and Cheney, beating a very large and dead horse, encourages China to step up it's pressure on North Korea.

One would be inclined to think at first glance that the prospect of mass starvation for the second time in a decade would give the North Korean regime pause, and push them towards some sort greater willingness to abandon their nuclear ambitions. On this score, one would most likely be wrong. Kim Jong-Il seems to be hanging onto his nuclear weapons like a drowning man grasping at a peace of a driftwood, as to him it appears to be the last hope of his regime to stave off humiliation by foreign powers, or internal revolution. The willingness to continue to dodge serious and substantive talks, even while facing another round of starvation of his people, is not as crazed as it appears at first. In fact, nuclear weapons are the last card North Korea has left to play against it's neighbors and the United States, and Kim Jong-Il can elect to play them either for definitive national security, by keeping them (with the implicit threat of their use), or the prospect of greater economic development, by giving them up for something in exchange. But since it is the last card he has to play, he must hold out until such time as the exchange seems worth it to give up the security of multiple nuclear weapons. The question on our minds at this point should be, what will it take for him to give them up?

While Kim Jong-Il has shown himself perfectly willing to tolerate mass starvation in his country for his own political purposes, there can be no doubt that there is pressure on him to act to avoid just such a tragedy again. One would imagine that this would be a good time to entertain the prospect of direct talks, which to this point remains taboo in the Bush administration. Instead, the Bush administration seems content to continue putting the pressure on China to assert itself over North Korea. Given that the Chinese most certainly have their own agenda when it comes to North Korea, this is not a possibility that we can spend much time hoping for.

As the summer progresses we will more likely then not begin to hear a trickle of reports of starvation in North Korea. Such starvation brought North Korea to the table in 1994; it would be shame if this time we showed we were again willing to wait for such a death toll to prompt North Korea to accept even just our terms regarding serious discussions, and not even a final resoluation to the standoff.