What I think we should do soon; email #2 of 3
[Dear “Instant Replay” Hagaloo list subscribers, you may be getting this email twice]
Dear friends,
Here’s what I would do if I were in a position of power and wanted to attempt staving off conflict in the Korean peninsula and beyond.
This is not completely realistic, but it’s feasible in great part, in my opinion.
If I were in a position of power, I would drop millions of tons of food, clothing and toys in one night all over North Korea. I would have included fliers in the packages telling the population that their lives are considered to be needlessly bleak by the rest of the world.
I would also ask China to withdraw all border control along the Tumen river, allowing North Koreans to wade across the river to meet neutral reception on the other side. It would be nice to do the same thing along the southern border as well, but there is the DMZ on that side and it is extremely hard for the population to get close to it.
The food and consumer goods drop would have to be done almost all in one single night; it would be a huge blitz of humanitarian aid that would involve thousands of military planes from the US and South Korea. Japan and China would help by acting as staging stations. The drop would be followed by a second, smaller one the next night, which would by then be met by ground fire. Just like D-Day this blitz would have to be organized in great secrecy and would be hard to pull off, but D-Day worked, and this could, too.
Naturally, this would be viewed as a US aggression by the DPRK and its response would be armed conflict, but at least, the population would have been given a glimpse of better things, and if China let things happen on their side, we might just have an exodus similar to that of the East Germans who left in 1989. While this is an “at best” scenario, I am convinced that once the 90% of North Koreans who live outside Pyongyang are exposed to the niceties of life outside their world, Kim Jong-Un’s authority will be cut in half almost instantly. He would not go down easy, and this is not like the fall of the Berlin wall, but exposure to the rest of the world and a little of food, clothes and toys, may create a wave of awareness and a beginning of doubt inside the country.
We’re all entitled to wishful thinking, right?
Chantal