Guhh

This recipe for Gamja Jorim is the first drawing I've done in weeks.

Re Calls for Military Intervention in North Korea

Look in the comments section of anything in the media pertaining to North Korea and you're almost guaranteed to see something like this:

"If only they had oil- the West would intervene without a second's thought!"

Whether this school of thought is accurate or not, it does pose the question: Would Western intervention actually be the best thing for the North Korean people...or anyone for that matter?

While I hesitate to precede 'Intervention' with 'Military', it is saddeningly obvious that this is what I refer to. Our humanitarian aid sectors being so borderline-corrupt, unregulated and somehow still overly bureaucratic, it seems that the only stability we can offer at this point is the stationing of countless armed troops on questionable if at all existent legal grounds. "That is, if your country's choked with oil", he shrouded thinly with a bassy array of coughs.

The UK and US, amongst others have thrown mind-boggling sums of money, resources and most importantly lives on imposing some semblance of the Western image of order onto troubled states such as Iraq. In doing this, we not only raise serious ethical and legal questions (questions which, judging by the perpetually smug look on Tony Blair's face, will probably never be answered), but we also start to do something very dangerous: we begin to fuel and even validate the North Korean propaganda machine.

The movement of South Korean activists struggling to bring foreign media to their indoctrinated brothers in the North is one that has been steadily brewing for decades now. A troubling notion it is then to have legitimate doubts whether, if given access to objective foreign media, the North Korean people would actually view us any differently. It'd certainly be hard to blame them for not ditching their principles pumped into them from birth by a monarchy of war criminals, in favour of values from a society run by...more war criminals.

Of course this is just hyperbole; Western society may be an IMF-funded capitalist nightmare (or a Thatcherite wet-dream -- your call), but at least we're not run by an insane dynasty of faux-communists in a country riddled with poverty and grotesque class divides. I enjoy press that is free in large part, and rice that seldom exceeds £4 to the kilo. Thus, assimilation into this society would still constitute liberation for the North Koreans, but is military intervention really the right way to bring this about?

North Korea possesses the fourth-largest armed forces on the planet, mostly due to a 10-year mandatory conscription to the force for able males. It doesn't matter whether or not their allegiance to Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un or their subscription to the insane propaganda is sincere, the fact of the matter is that knocking on the front door in camo suits toting AK-47s and bloated tanks will do nothing but confirm paranoid suspicions and inspire retaliation. Like Iraq, we'll just end up in a long and bloody battle costing yet more lives and dollars, before eventually leaving with tensions higher than ever.

Aside from the potential severing of diplomatic relations with China, military intervention in North Korea would have one key distinction from the Iraq War: there is actually irrefutable proof of the endeavour to produce weapons of mass destruction. Being the rogue, neurotic hermit it is, who's to say the DPRK wouldn't use them on their neighbours south of the DMZ, or Japan, or us? While they have suspended their Uranium enrichment program and warmed somewhat to the prospect of nuclear diplomacy in return for hugely generous food aid, North Korea are notorious for their eat-and-run policy of accepting aid before withdrawing swiftly back into recluse.

Basically, Western military intervention in North Korea would not only cost lives and money, but could have dire consequences on the home front as the country would be more than equipped to retaliate. It would also force the DPRK further into recluse and its people deeper into poverty. If the unnamed online commenter quoted at the beginning is correct in his thesis, I guess we're all lucky North Korea isn't choked with oil.