No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

New Confirmations on Typical North Korean Behavior

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on the history of North Korea over the last 50 years as indicated in newly opened Eastern European and Russian archives. It isn't very pretty.

North Korea cannot support itself, and may never have been able to. They have cadged aid from the USSR and China until the collapse of the USSR. Now they are trying to extort aid from the US.

But they have never lived up to agreements made to get the aid, either to the USSR, to Chin, or to the US. As soon as they could possibly get away from it, they ignored any concessions they had made.

They still want to get control over South Korea, but are simply too weak to do so.

So what do we do with the efforts to extort aid by an untrustworthy enemy nation?

By the way, anyone interested in the history of the Korean peninsula since WW II should look at "The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History" by Dan Oberdorfer. It is well written and probably as objective as can be found. I strongly recommend it. It is worth the $18.00 US.
posted by Richard at 1:44 PM