Yet with the latest food crisis looming, Pyongyang doesn't want to ask the South Koreans for help for fear of being embarassed at having to ask the new conservative government for that help:
Lee's Grand National Party has argued that South Korea's previous two presidents gave too much unconditional aid to buy reconciliation with the North. The party was a regular target of North Korean criticism. Now Pyongyang finds itself having to work with someone it dubbed a "philistine" and "traitor."
That makes it hard for the regime to make the opening pitch for aid "because that could be seen as an expression of its weakness," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies.
The World Food Program predicts North Korea will fall some 1.4 million tons short of its food needs this year, because of flooding triggered by the heaviest rainfall in 40 years. The floods, which left some 600 people dead or missing, also destroyed more than 11 percent of the country's crops, according to North Korea's state media.
Let's set aside the horrible calculation that Pyongyang is making that it is better to have starvation than to ask Lee's government for help.
What I want to know is why the North Koreans are so sure they can survive yet another food crisis. Perhaps they can. They have certainly survived past crises. Yet after each crisis, the situation does not revert to the initial state. With each crisis, internal order weakens just a bit.
One of these days, if we keep the pressure on North Korea, the terrible regime will collapse.
