I don’t favor an unforced collapse, I just favor forcing it through economic and political (rather than military) means. I favor pressure against the regime’s weaknesses rather than its strengths.

If the regime can’t or won’t reform, what other possibilities exist?

While we disagree about how, we both agree Joshua that the regime in Pyongyang must be eliminated. At some point the people of NK must be seen as victims and deserving of international intervention to save a people captive to a rogue regime that is bent on self-destruction.

I know you favor an unforced collapse through non-lethal political, economic and diplomatic means, but I as a military man believe that power is rarely if ever relinquished by paranoid dictators without external force.

Of couse that could never happen under an Obama administration, so unless the Pyongyang Juche regime suffers an unforced collapse and welcomes UN peacekeepers (and we all sing Kumbaya), the medium range strategy seems to be more of the same: prop up the regime with just enough assistance to keep KJI in power and allow him to bleed off his suffering people.

I would also add that the threat of “cultural infiltration” has the regime plugging the religion of Juche with unprecedented intensity. The godmakers in Pyongyang know they cannot keep the world out indefinitely, so their answer is to magnify the presence of the Kims in the minds of the NK people through the invigoration of the Juche cult. That is no doubt behind the spike of mass killings in stadiums.

As noted before, NK is the most hostile regime on earth towards Christianity. It fears Christianity more than all other threat factors combined. This is of grave concern to his Porcine Majesty because he knows that just south of the MDL are thousands of zealous SK Christian missionaries and evangelists poised to pour over the 38th parallel at the appearance of the smallest crack of opportunity. Kim will never admit to this publicly as it will arm dissidents with the magic bullet needed to support a coup or clandestine infiltration efforts.

Christianity is not a threat because it will bring capitalism or racial impurity to the north; it is primarily a threat to bring long term cultural transformation that will make Juche null and void forever. The DPRK has bet the farm (ah! a useful metaphor) on Juche as the sacred revolution’s glorious religion – and whatever threatens Juche threatens the regime.

A showdown may be coming if indeed the report by the Peoples Safety Agency is correct; any dimunition of Juche combined with the interest of other cults/philosophies/religions/praxis is the beginning of the end. You can only coerce belief for so long. Time is almost up.

We saw this with the uprising of the sorely oppressed Shiites in Iraq. Saddam had murdered their clerics, oppressed their mosques, outlawed their pilgrimmages and feasts, and imposed his own brand of Sunnaism upon the state. While in public the Shiite Iraqis appeared docile, loyal and patriotic, the moment Coalition Forces rumbled over the Kuwaiti border all feigned loyalty to the Butcher of Baghdad evaporated.

While the DPRK’s military capabilities are much more substantial than Saddam’s were in 2003, one must wonder who’s side would be taken should SK and UN troops rumble into Pyongyang as the screws tighten on the starving, terrorized NK people to be ever more loyal to the cult of Juche and the adoration of the Kims.