Sick Country
Scarlet Fever Crisis in North Korea
By D.W.

There are reports that the glorious nation of North Korea led by the Dear Leader Kim Jong Ill is experiencing a Scarlet Fever epidemic that could lead to the deaths of an ungodly amount of people. Scarlet Fever is one of those old school diseases that should never even exist in the modern world and is easily treated with antibiotics. Of course, North Korea doesn’t have enough medicine to stave off a crisis because Dear Leader is more interested in making nuclear weapons which he doesn’t need instead of making medicines that the nation does need.

The question developing now is how should the rest of the world respond?

North Korea is already plagued with yearly famine resulting from horrific agricultural policies and heavy industrial pollution. The only way North Korea has averted utter collapse and starvation so far is by aid from South Korea, Japan and the U.S. who have been giving generously throughout the years even though much of the aid is distributed to the North Korean military.

The North Korean public infrastructure is poorly developed and can barely provide basic services that we take for granted. Lack of clean running water and cleaning supplies necessary for good public hygiene is the primary cause of this contagious disease. Testimonies from refugees fleeing the country portray a nation in an abysmal state of collapse with horrible living standards. The North Koreans have probably never been happy and healthy people.

This terrible crisis is purely the fault of the regime of Kim Jong Ill who has had plenty of opportunities to correct these problems with foreign assistance, but has decided not to. When we send food and medicine to North Korea we inadvertently aid to the regime first. He first distributes supplies to his security forces and then to everyone else last. Make no mistake here, Dear Leader and his cronies are solely responsible for the country’s problems and they will never take the necessary steps to fix it.

What should the U.S., South Korea, and other wealthy nations do to assist North Korea in this crisis?

My recommendation is to do absolutely nothing.

Perhaps this is an uncompassionate approach but it is a necessary evil. Any action that perpetuates the survival of the regime only exacerbates the problem by prolonging the country’s suffering indefinitely. Aid to North Korea is a foolish feel good measure that prevents us from feeling guilty but it also fails to accomplish anything else. Aid eases some of the short term pain for the North Koreans but it ultimately feeds the disease causing the pain in the first place.

Every person and every nation has a threshold of pain that they can withstand and when they cross that threshold they fall apart. Kim Jong Ill’s tyranny enables him to maintain control over North Korea through extreme hardships that we can only imagine. This is why he is still in power despite decades of famine and neglect. However, his regime is vulnerable and the nation does have a cracking point. We need to passively push North Korea towards this breaking point and cause an implosion in the country.

Kim Jong Ill maintains authority only through his security forces and he takes good care of them to ensure their loyalty. However, they have are not totally immune from what is going on inside the country. They also have family and friends who may be starving and dying from Scarlet Fever. When you are hungry, sick, and clinging for life even the most brainwashed supporters will begin to wonder if maybe the Dear Leader isn’t such a good guy after all.

The best case scenario is that some North Korean generals will understand the chaos that the country is facing and snuff out this dictator in an attempt to avoid total collapse. At the very least he can be isolated and ignored by a bureaucracy that is more concerned with personal survival than following orders. Kim Jong Ill is only as powerful as the extent to which his orders are obeyed and he may lose control of security forces on the micro level.

Another less desirable possibility is that the country succumbs to illness and a large enough part of the civilian population is incapacitated. The population would not be able to support the security forces and they would weaken. This also further increases the likelihood of a coup and regime change.

An incapacitation of the North Korean population would also destroy Kim Jong Ill’s ability to wage offensive warfare. He can have the largest and meanest army in the world but if it is not supported logistically by a capable nation it is worthless. Under these circumstance, even if North Korea did attack the South it could not sustain a campaign long enough to maintain its initial gains. The North Korean military would collapse from exhaustion and hunger before it could dig into any territory it gained.

Not providing aid to North Korea during a crisis could also force the hegemonic Chinese, who are also to blame for this mess, to search for a solution. China probably fears an unstable and chaotic North Korea that would spill problems across its border. The North Koreans have only one place to go and that is north, thus taking their humanitarian crisis with them. An unstable and leaderless state in North Korea would also impose security problems for China.

These potential problems for China are well deserved as they allowed the regime to survive this long and act so recklessly. This would-be superpower should get a taste of their stew and be afforded the opportunity to nation build. Perhaps the Chinese will learn to maintain better control of their puppet states.

The choice of humanitarian isolation for North Korea is not an easy one and it would probably weigh heavily on the souls of those making it. In the long run it may very well be the best hope to alleviate the suffering of the North Koreans. From a realistic perspective, it may also be the best way of securing ourselves and the region from this regime.

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