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Amnesty for Kim Jong Il? I wholeheartedly endorse the Marmot’s response to Prof. Andrei Lankov’s proposal to offer Kim Jong Il amnesty. The promise, of course, would be illusory even if it were advisable to throw away the deterrent value of a potential prosecution, even if that value may pale in comparison to the countervailing deterrent of the lynch mob he most fears. In a sense, the reasoning mirrors the debate on giving terrorists full POW status, something to which they’re simply not entitled for very good reasons, ie. discouraging tactics that unnecessarily endanger innocent life.

Just for a moment, step back and consider that serious people everywhere are talking about dealing with Kim Jong Il’s destruction of his country, while South Koreans are divided between apathy and open adulation. I lived through that coming to pass and still can’t understand how intelligent minds reached such a state. Perhaps my favorite aphorism of late is that “you can’t reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into.” It would be just as accurate to say that intelligence is defenseless against an onslaught of emotion.