Thanks for your intuitive email that I now only received this morning (sorry, i haven't checked emails for a couple of days). It seems many agree it is the Kim Jeong-il's regime that causes this abyss not the people, and this is why the humanitarian aids from the outside should not be annulled. Some may see this as irresponsible since they claim that most of aids go and maintain the military guarding the regime. However, it also is true there have been more and more North Korean defectors coming out of the nation and seeking refugee status in neighboring countries, since the NK widened its economic and cultural contacts with other countries. More contacts with the outside may fatten the regime partially, but we shouldn't disregard that it would also enlighten people therein, who had been blinded and brainwashed for a half century. They say workers at Gaeseong Industrial Zone get paid almost three times more than any average paid workers in the nation, and South Korean tourists visiting Mt. Geungang have become a direct and/or indirect source to deliver the news from the outside to the people in the enclosed country.
At the end, it would be people who change things, or am I too naive?? I think "stick" foreign policy of the Bush administration will only tighten up the NK and only be manipulated by the Kim's regime to more intensively propagandize its people, e.g., the hostile American will stike them, hence they need to be armed or even preemptively stike the US's allies, etc.
One of the critical differences in a point of view between people there (in the west, or somewhere NK's nuke missile cannot reach) and here (including South Korea, Japan, and China), we cannot just afford to take a risk of observing the current on-going situation as NK having "only" played with its bargaining tool to get what they want. We simply can't ignore the slightest chance of possibility that NK would do what it said to do. In this sense, Japanese react on the occasion is somewhat interesting.
Weather here now is quite crisp yet very pleasant most of time except the early dawn that I have to get up for work. Tomorrow, I have a dinner party (well, more likely a simple supper) with colleagues from the last year, which is kind of exciting since I haven't seen some of them for a while. Oh, and I found a nice and quiet cafeteria nearby my office that I can be less bothered by coworkers, so that I can read leisurely and actually breathe. They make the best chocolate, and freshly baked cheese sandwich in town, no doubt!
I wish you're well,
Alexa.
