Mr. Potato Head, Kim Hyok-jin

North Koreans the Irish of the Far East?????????

From the Korean Central News Agency website:

" International Scientific Symposium on Potato Held Pyongyang, July 24 (KCNA) -- An international scientific symposium on potato was held here on Monday and Tuesday. Present at the symposium were Kim Hyok Jin, vice-minister of Agriculture, officials concerned, and scientists, technicians and experts in the field of agriculture and representatives of the International Potato Center and different countries. The symposium discussed the theoretical and practical problems arising in putting the potato farming on a scientific and modern basis, increasing the potato production and widening its use. Ko Kum Hak, vice-president of the Academy of Agricultural Science, made an opening address which was followed by congratulatory speeches by Kim Hyok Jin and Regional Leader of the East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific of the International Potato Center Fernando N. Ezeta. The speakers expressed belief that the symposium would provide an opportunity to widely exchange advanced scientific and technological successes and good experience gained in different countries and thus make a great contribution to prosperity and development of each country and each nation and development of human civilization. The participants heard papers entitled "Potato farming and its prospect in the DPRK" and "Potato Research and Development Strategy for East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific." Then followed speeches made by scientists and researchers of the DPRK and other countries on the subjects of cooperation projects for potato cultivation, potato breeding, seed potato production, cultivation and insect pests of potato. A letter to leader Kim Jong Il was adopted at the symposium. "

KCI: Suffer the little potatoes to come unto me

France: North Korea nuclear test was a failure

According to the Associated Press, French authorities claimed that North Korea's test was so low yield, it must have been a failure. Other analysts tried to shoosh the French, worrying that North Korea might conduct another test. What???? Is everything knee jerk? Does anyone think these things through?

The whole Western world is tap dancing as fast as a frog on a frying pan to Kim Chong-il's tune. John Bolton, the most personable diplomat since Ghengis Khan is screaming for sanctions and wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork arguing we should put all the North Koreans out of their misery to get Kim. The Japanese want to starve the North Koreans into submission. China's afraid they'll all stream across the Yalu and eat the bark off their trees.

I say encourage Kim to run eight or nine tests to start! We estimate Kim only has enough plutonium for eight bombs, don't we? Kim can't pedal what he blows up under the Korean mountains to Al Qaeda or Iran!

But if we make things ever worse for North Korea with sanctions--cut of access to Japanese markets and blolckade shipping, we can almost GUARANTEE a high-priced sale of a nuclear device to some wealthy non-state actor or state-sponsored terror organization.

Negotiate with the jerk! Let him humiliate you from time to time. Make him look good with his people with food, health care, fertilizer, equipment, and energy. Make him dependent on and glad for inclusivity in the community of nations.

Encirclement/isolation didn't convert China and it won't convert North Korea.

Beating the crap out of kids doesn't improve their behavior. Starving and kicking dogs doesn't bring them to obedience. Ignoring their tantrums and rewarding their occasional good behaviors appears to be the way to go.

Chicken Littling is not the answer. Let's act like adults for a change. And let's rein in the bully boys.

Doc Rock

Paper Tigers: North Korea a Future or Weapons?

Chris Hill the State Department's latest empty threat-monger has put us in the enviable position of either being paper tigers (once again) or having to flex muscles we've wasted and bled away on the Bush-Cheney-Rumfeld triumph in Iraq--at least Congress has ponied up $20 mill to celebrate mission accomplished in 2007!

Kim Chong-il, the bouffanted rock-star Dear Leader of North Korea, must be cowering in his bunker waiting for our bunker buster to end his cowardice!

The Bush bully boys need to learn not to throw aound threats that we can't deliver on, don't have the stones to deliver on, don't have the friends to help us deliver on. There were those who argued that the Bush's planned misadventure in Iraq would leave us in just this state. And it has.

Korea specialists such as myself argued in the run up to Iraq, that North Korea and Iran were much more important and threatening states and Iraq, piled on top of Afghanistan would leave us impotent to deal with these threats! Ironic, isn't it, that in bringing about Iraqi regime change, we removed the only countervailing force/challenge to Iran in the region.

Then we sent that arrogant loose cannon, Bolton, to P'yongyang to insult Kim Chong-il out of dealing with us and it's been all down hill from there.

The queston prior to our invasion of Iraq which I raised then is the same I raise now--is Iraq or North Korea more likely to sell missiles and/or WMD's to non-state actors such as Al Qaeda?

Doc Rock