how about a scenario from Australia's recent past encounter with this outlaw regime, when our navy caught up with one of their ships after it had dropped off drugs off the Victorian coast? The ship was escorted to shore and was allowed to leave only after certain enquiries had been made - and satisfied.

Perhaps if other western nations started calling this so-called 'democratic' nation's bluff the way Australia did - and publicising it - will that regime start to wither away - of shame.

Good article, The West has no answers nor the guts to carry them out if they do. Do we leave NthKorea to become a delinquent or do we try to force it to behave as we want.

We could do something very convincing, like nuke the launch sites, if we want NthKorea to take notice and since nasty letters seemingly have no effect. Do we wait till they nuke Japan to do something?

Where are all the precautionary principle hand wringers who so loudly believe "doing something is better than doing nothing" on CO2 induced AGW, don't they believe it will work here as well? I'm guessing they switch that to "doing nothing is better than doing something stupid" when it suits them.

Can someone take charge before it gets to nukes, please? Waiting for the UN to do something is like waiting for tobacco to be banned.

Shrode, the Pong Su was chased, captured and the crew put on trial, only a couple were convicted and they are now in jail. The ship was impounded and eventually destroyed by missiles fired from a RAAF F-111 on 23 March 2006, by (that other evil regime /sarc), the Howard government. Usually I would not ever post a link, but this is not a Google sourced argument piece, it is a YouTube clip of the ship being destroyed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQeWD6hm6Ak provided by the Australian Government.

So I don't know what you're referring to with your comment "allowed to leave only after certain enquiries had been made - and satisfied" The Australian government went to great pains at the time to ensure everyone knew what we were doing, and what happened.

At the end of the day, the regime got away with it as only a couple of underlings got charged, such is our court system. We did more than "call their bluff", but it had no effect that has been noticeable.

Very difficult, isn't it? Gareth Evans recently rated the danger from North Korea as far greater than that from Iran. Up till now the US, Japan, South Korea and other, less immediately affected countries like Australia have done nothing physical that would force an action from North Korea. We've had "peace" - no armed conflict - but at the price of appeasement, including sending the regime food aid. This has bought time but nothing else.

And the people are still hungry. News reports say that famine is stalking North Korea again. The regime squanders very scarce national treasure on obscene armaments and an absurd goose-stepping army. Re-education camps reproduce and perpetuate the worst of Stalin's Gulags.

It's hard to understand China's perception of its own interest in providing life-support to the North Korean regime.

At the end of the day, "Tolerance becomes a crime if applied to evil" (Thomas Mann). The external world needs to exclude North Korea from internation banking and capital transfers, and prevent its ships from exporting arms and drugs. It should also make unmistakably clear its preparedness to slap down with massive force any physical belligerence from North Korea.

It's impossible to feel any optimism about the eventual denouement. The economic gap between the two Koreas is far greater than that between the former East and West Germanies, while the population of the North is relatively greater than in the German case.

Reunification of Germany brought collapse in the East, mass unemployment and social depression as many people just couldn't cope with a totally different culture where they were expected to work hard, instead of "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us".

Korean reunification will bring horrendous economic and social dislocation, given that - even worse than East Germany - the North has NO civilian export-capable industries producing anything the rest of the world wants.

The South will face huge economic burdens to bail out the North. Will these be politically sustainable?

Then there's the appalling legacy of mass brainwashing in the North.

God help us all.