A lesson: you cannot effectively negotiate with madman

How many North Koreans have been murdered or starved to death because the world can not come together on regime change? There is plenty of blame to go around. I especially damn those South Koreans who blindly protest against America and support the North Korean leadership simply because it's the same tribe. Of course then there are the American Leftists who serve as propaganda agents for the "Dear Leader". Just listen to your local Pacifica radio station to find widespread support for dictators worldwide.

North Korea Scrapping Accords With South Korea
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea unilaterally declared on Friday that it was scrapping agreements it had signed with South Korea to ease military tension on the divided Korean Peninsula.
The announcement followed a series of recent saber-rattling gestures from North Korea that officials and analysts in Seoul have said were aimed at raising tension to gain attention from the new administration of President Barack Obama and to win concessions from President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea.
“All the agreed points concerning the issue of putting an end to the political and military confrontation between the North and the South will be nullified,” said a statement from the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the North Korean agency in charge of relations with South Korea.
It said the accords to be nullified included a 1991 agreement on reconciliation and non-aggression, as well as North Korea’s promise, contained in the agreement’s appendix, that it would honor the western sea border claimed by South Korea. North Korea has flouted these agreements by developing nuclear weapons and sparking naval clashes on the disputed sea border in 1999 and 2002. After the 1999 clash, it unilaterally redrew the sea border.
Government analysts in Seoul scrambled on Friday to figure out the North’s intentions. For one thing, they said, it remained unclear whether the North was also nullifying the agreements its supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, signed with President Lee’s two predecessors in 2000 and 2007 during rare inter-Korean summits.
Those two agreements have been the basis of a decadelong softening of relations on the peninsula. During the "sunshine" period, billions of dollars of trade and economic aid — as well as millions of South Koreans on tour or for family reunions — crossed the heavily armed border.
North Korea has even called the oldest and primary agreement for peace — the 1953 armistice that ended the three-year Korean War — a “useless piece of paper.”
Won Tae Jae, a spokesman of the Defense Ministry in Seoul, said Friday in a news briefing that the South would respond “resolutely” if North violated its western sea border again.
“We will see more tension in western waters,” said Lee Byong-chul, senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation, a nonpartisan policy advisory body based in Seoul. “It doesn’t appear that it will just end up as empty words from the North.”
He predicted that North Korea would focus on improving ties with the Obama administration while snubbing President Lee. Driving a wedge between the allies has been a favorite tactic in North Korean diplomacy.
The North Korean committee said it was scrapping the agreements because Mr. Lee had violated them first with his “reckless confrontational rackets against our republic.”
“Relations between the North and South have worsened to the point where there is no way or hope of correcting them,” the committee’s statement said. “They have reached the extreme point where the clash of fire against fire, steel against steel, has become inevitable.”
North Korea’s oratorical attacks on the South have increased in intensity since Mr. Lee took office a year ago with a vow to take a tougher stance on North Korea, reversing 10 years of his liberal predecessors’ efforts to engage the North with substantial economic aid.
Two weeks ago, the North Korean military declared an “all-out confrontational posture” with the South.
North Korean officials also told a visiting American scholar that the country had “weaponized” enough plutonium for four or five atomic bombs.
Verbal threats from North Korea, which has at various points vowed to turn South Korea into a “sea of fire” and a “heap of ashes,” are a recurring feature of postwar relations between the two countries. They seldom raise an alarm among South Koreans.
Since the 1970s, the two Koreas have signed a series of agreements for non-aggression and cooperation, which the North has flouted repeatedly, rendering them little more than symbolic. Still, this was the first time North Korea has said that it was officially nullifying them.
“We hope the North will realize that spawning and raising tensions between South and North Korea is not appropriate for peace not only on the Korean peninsula but also in Northeast Asia and the rest of the world,” said Kim Ho-nyeon,the South Korean government’s main spokesman in inter-Korean relations.
Mr. Kim said the government was dealing with the North Korean blustering “with calm.” But some analysts said that the chances of North Korea launching a limited border skirmish to prove its points were rising.
Still, the South Korean military heightened security along the border in the recent weeks. So far, it has reported no unusual movement by the North Korean army.