Judo Paradigm, N. Korea

WORLD NEWS: "Pyongyang Reports an Aging, Less Healthy Population," by Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal, 22 February 2010.

Kim's legacy, as measured from the country's two most recent censuses:

1) population up from 21.2m to 24.0m

2) infant mortality up from 14.1/1,000 births to 19.3 (not bad but wrong direction, obviously)

3) maternal mortality up from 54/1,000 births to 77

4) life expectancy drops from almost 73 years to 69

5) farming remains the biggest employer at 3.4m, with the gov/mil second at just under 700k (guess that's no million-man army then), followed by education, machine manufacturing, textiles and coal mining. 40k work in electronics.

Some glimpses into the Hermit Kingdom.

OP-ED: Magical thinking on North Korea, By Leon V. Sigal, Boston Globe, February 24, 2010

After saying it's "magical thinking" to expect NorKo to collapse, or for China to step up, or for negotiations to stop Pyongyang's nuclear cowboying-up, the Globe makes a strong pitch for an aggressive soft-kill:

The only way to get North Korea to reverse course, short of war, is to reconcile with it - ending enmity through robust political, economic and cultural engagement, investment and aid, security assurances, normalization of relations, and, above all, a peace treaty ending the Korean war.

I like anything that's aggressive against the war-criminal Kim regime. I think an aggressive opening-up campaign would be highly destabilizing for the regime, and that we'd trigger a crisis point faster that way than what we've done for the last two decades.

So I like this argument very much.

(Thanks: John P. Ryan)

Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett on February 26, 2010 4:53 AM Permalink

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I'd like the time to run that thru a paradigm engine,

might be something to it.

Gerald

Antropologist

THE CT BLOG · February 27, 2010

Life under Kim Jong Il

Good argument on North Korea