Ah, thanks for the comment in my weblog. I guess what I meant by South Korea not wanting to risk their population and cities to give American troops bases is that they wouldn't be very kosher with allowing us to use South Korea for the staging of offensive military actions. The 44,000 troops that are in South Korea are, ostensibly, for defensive purposes, but if they start attacking North Korea then they become legitimate targets for retaliation, which would be all sorts of bad for those living in South Korea.

I really don't think the whole mess with North Korea will solve itself before the country collapses inward. Right now, the way I figure it, without world food aid a huge number of people in the country would starve or at least go greatly malnourished. I don't really think we should just yank all the food aid (I have nothing personally against the North Korean people, you know?) but at the same time it is hard to sit there and watch Pyongyang buy weapons while we (and I use mean the royal we) buy them food. I dunno... eventually I'll collect my thoughts on this and post more coherantly.