Is a “determined insurgency” possible? 1) Who would fund and supply this? 2) Who would make up this insurgency? 3) Haven’t decades of classicide – a failed PDS and terrorizing the population (concentration camps) – crippled the sector of the population (~8 million) that could make the most impact?

The sooner we resign ourselves to the futility of gradualism, the sooner the killing will stop. Until we resign ourselves to this, it won’t.
Well put…reminds me of Christopher Hitchens on Darfur:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAhwgQ2HoF0

On what basis do you think that Korean-Chinese would shelter and support armed North Korean guerillas? The joseonjok I knew in China were genuinely loyal to China. Culturally they were nearly indistinguishable from Han, save for the Korean-language chatter in the home and the Korean dishes alongside Chinese ones on the table. In fact, South Koreans themselves note the significant cultural differences between themselves and ethnic Koreans in China, and thus consider them as Chinese who speak funny Korean. Chinese in general fear instability and chaos more than they fear tyranny. I just don’t envison locals of any ethnicity in northern China offering any support to snipers or other armed guerillas. Just don’t see it. Rather, I think locals are more likely to out any suspected refugees unless those refugees have strong family ties.

I have no great desire to create widows and orphans in China, I only want to reduce the aggregate amount of suffering, suffering that China is willfully enabling through a policy of sending innocent people to die. Right now, the vast majority of that suffering is in North Korea. If unrest spreading to China causes Chinese to question the decisions of their government, so much the better. Best of all would be the China deciding to open well regulated feeding stations and refugee camps. You think people won’t question why Chinese soldiers and police are dying to prop up Kim Jong Il? Ask any “Truther.”

North Korea isn’t going to change peacefully. Non-violence is useless against regime’s like China’s and North Korea’s. The suffering will only end if the system is overthrown violently. In the case of North Korea, the system is much more fragile than it seems. The regime’s infrastructure is already creaking. If it’s denied the use of one strategic corridor between Pyongyang and Sinuiju, it may very well collapse. If the infrastructure that serves the provincial areas is cut, those areas can be isolated from the center. The regime lacks the financial and military means to survive if a determined insurgency grows in its vast, roadless center, draws the army into the countryside, and strains its logistics, repair shops, fuel supplies, and morale.

The sooner we resign ourselves to the futility of gradualism, the sooner the killing will stop. Until we resign ourselves to this, it won’t.

I recall a murder of a Chinese couple by a North Korean that got lots of attention but do not recall whether it was a soldier or a civilian. Will search this weekend for a link.

I’m assuming this is a reference to KPA soldiers? Or are you suggesting refugees looting KPA arsenals or something? I’m reminded of the border scuffles of the Cultural Revolution in Yanbian…Sounds frightful.

@Sonagi, do you have any citations for the incident you mentioned about rogue KPA killing a couple in Yanbian? I recall stories about lone KPA border guards intruding into Chinese territory with their weapons, but I have never heard of such a murder case. Very curious.

I also enjoyed Gordon Chang’s fact-laden editorial and appreciate your linking to it but wonder if Gordon Chang, or any one else, concedes that China needs to keep its northeastern economy going and needs access to North Korean minerals in particular. What I mean to say is not by way of Peking apology, it’s a question of factions within the Chinese Communist Party that represent capitalist concerns and that don’t want to see access cut to North Korean natural resources. There are two really magnificent essays in the new, open source, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (Vol. 38, No. 3) that explore this notion of CCP factionalism as it effects the formulation and implementation of Chinese economic and foreign policy.

In other words, the evolving nature of the Communist Party (who really might be called ChiCaps in your parlance ever since Jiang Zemin and his Shanghai technocratic fashion took over) might be shifting the justification for the Sino-North Korean alliance onto different plane which requires economic cooperation, joint ventures, etc.

Just a thought, but then again it’s Friday afternoon and I can already smell the soju.

Last thing — there’s an interesting NPR report today which you might be interested in re: anti-American education in North Korea. Nothing particularly new here, but you seem to have a gift for scenting out the contestable stuff in any source in a productive way.

And chief enabler of US deficit spending.

“Do you suppose that China might be even more afraid of refugees armed with Tokarevs and RPG’s streaming onto its territory and capping ChiCom police and soldiers who try to deport them back to the gulag? “

Absolutely. Several years ago, reports of North Korean soldiers and civilians robbing locals and killing one couple fostered a climate of fear in Yanbian. Refugees surviving in northern China almost certainly depend on the goodwill of some local Chinese, goodwill that might evaporate if North Koreans start shooting at PLA soldiers. Just as many Americans have family members, neighbors, and friends serving in our military, so do many Chinese, who will demand the government bring the killers to justice and make the border area safe again.

With reference to what our President knows what he must do: it has been nearly two years since you posted your excellent “Plan B: How to Disarm Kim Jong Il Without Bombing Him”. Since then, what has been done to get the ideas therein circulating in the right places?