For a long time I have held that the only way to resove the crisis of North Korea’s (NorK’s) duplicity and continual attempts to get nukes is to bring down the NorK government, an reunify the peninsula under the Republic of Korea (ROK). How to do this? What I suggest may not work, but it’s the best I can come up with. It requires the cooperation of China and ROK. It also requires the US to shovel out money.
The thing to do is to depopulate NorK. Do this by opening the Chinese border to anyone who wants to cross. Such refugees will be taken to camps in Manchuria (financed by the US), then shipped to ROK by sea (escorted by the US Navy). There they will be integrated into ROK, where the constitution of the country already makes them citizens. This will cost a lot of money for ROK. The thing is that it will be cheaper than a war. After enough people leave NorK will collapse,like East Germany, and ROK should reunify with the North as a democratic country. China will be reluctant, but diplomats must make China realize that NorK will start a war eventually anyway and that will be adverse to China’s interests. Even their fear of a democratic government on the other side of the border giving their own people ideas sholuld be less threatening to them than the prospect of an uncontrolled NorK lashing out in desperation. We can propose to withdraw our troops after reunification, their job completed.
What so many do not realize is that the war is coming regadless of what we do. Some day NorK will collapse. When that time comes the rulers of NorK will launch a desperate attempt to grab the wealth of ROK in order to hang on a bit longer. Such a war would, of course, destroy most of the wealth they wanted to grab, but they will be desperate and not rational thinkers (assuming you can call Commies rational thinkers anyway, a dubious proposition).
That may not work, but it seems to me a better plan than handwringing or trying to appease the unappeaseable NorK rulers.
