New ROK Compromise: Appeasement

[Sierra Mike]

From MSNBC.com:

Jan. 4 — South Korea honed a compromise plan Saturday to resolve the North Korean nuclear standoff and said the crisis was closer to ending, but the communist nation warned the situation was still “serious and unpredictable.” In addition, NBC News has learned the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency will on Monday give North Korea more time to end its nuclear program and that the United States will support the notion of a grace period.Some other quotes, taken from deeper in the article which I do think need to be called out:


The communist North alarmed the world in October by admitting to a U.S. envoy it had a secret uranium-based nuclear weapons program, in violation of a 1994 accord.
As punishment, the United States and its allies halted oil supplies promised in the agreement. North Korea then announced it would reactivate its older plutonium-based nuclear program, saying it needs to restart a reactor to generate electricity.

--snip--

One South Korean compromise being considered calls for the United States to resume oil shipments to North Korea, in return for it abandoning its uranium nuclear development, media reported Saturday, citing an unnamed government source.
Giving the North oil removes any justification for its restarting a nuclear complex to produce electricity, the reports said. A government spokesman could not immediately comment.OK, if they really think this will alleviate expanding acrimony, I have no issues with it; giving the DPRK oil is not a bad thing to do, though it is one of the few tools available to discipline it with. I would very much like it to be a matter of public record that the ROK agreed to suspend the oil shipments initially, though they have been working overtime to avoid being put on that hook.

Is this appeasement?

Read all about it at South Korea Hones Nuclear Plan (http://www.msnbc.com/news/850567.asp?0sl=-11)

SM

[Biker]

Hell yes it's appeasement. And there's no guarantees that DPRK won't abandon their nuclear program just because it has oil again. They've already admitted that while getting oil in the past, they were working on the program. Giving them oil just sets things back to where it was when all this BS started.

[Sierra Mike]

Agleed, round-eye devil.

SM

[Coot]

Well, I suppose we could give them irradiated oil. They burn it, they spread the contamination around their own little hole on the continent, problem alleviates itself and then we can just blame it all on their clumsy handling of their nuke program.

[Copzilla]

Oh, that's brutal, Coot. rofl

I think that if they break one agreement, what stops them from breaking a second? They've got to make assurances.

[jamming]

What I want to know is who cloned Chamberlain and sent him to South Korea?

[Sierra Mike]

Well it is THEIR country, after all. If this is what they want, then I guess they should get it. Though I do think they're being rather short-sighted, but...

SM

[Coot]

Well, with 7 million facing starvation, (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=366462) the DPRK also believes that it is not bound by the same requirements that every other country is that needs aid.
North Korea has suffered from famine for a decade, and at least two million people have died of starvation. The US has been the largest contributor to emergency food deliveries over the past seven years which have fed nine million people a year. Although George Bush has said the US will not withhold food, the US Agency for International Development began insisting last June that North Korea meet the same conditions for aid that are mandatory elsewhere, such as providing a list of beneficiaries and unimpeded access for aid monitors. On this issue, however, as with efforts to defuse the nuclear crisis, there is deadlock.

[Sierra Mike]

Again, in order to maintain total control, the DPRK must elude all attempts to enforce "transparency."

I think even the most casual observer of this region will be able to deduce the DPRK is hardly a regime which is interested in furthering the ways and means of its people. It is, truly and honestly, a twisted regime which is deeply psychotic.

Hussein is avaricious; he, like the leaders of the PRC, seeks personal entitlement and wealth, which in the region constitutes personal freedom. While repellent to a liberal democracy, his basic motivations are indeed understandable. We have seen this before.

The DPRK represents something deeper, darker, and more insidious. They offer the world nothing. They covet the South. They are and have been for over 50 years a closed empire--they've existed in self-exile for longer than the PRC, and have been the only empire to exist as such since after the Meiji Restoration opened up Japan. Even in these troubled times, the benefits of going out and interacting with the rest of the world far outweigh putting up a big fence and keeping everyone else off your property.

It is an interesting situation, to be sure.

SM