It's Dangerous being a North Korean

I was watching on CTV tonight about North Koreans being executed in front of a firing squad. Their crime? Trying to flee the country.

The North Korean government thinks it is a good idea to shoot these people to make an example out of them to prevent others from fleeing the country. Does anyone see the logic in this? You want your country men to stay so you kill them?

No doubt they were executed under the guise that they were committing some sort of treason. The type of treason that they would fear and loathe their own country so much that they would flee for their lives to escape i, not the kind that affects national security. There is something wrong with a government that has to exercise lethal force on those citizens that don't want to be there.

Many try to flee to China. If the Chinese authorities catch them they dpeort them back to North Korea, which is a virtual death sentence. China is no shining example of civil liberties itself, but to prefer fleeing to China over remaining in North Korea means that things are getting out of hand.

So why doesn't the US or the UN address this issue? They are concerned with NK abandoning their nuclear ambitions without giving thought to it's oppressed citizens. In a way, I hope NK rebuffs the six way talks and the US is left with no choice but to invade and overthrow their government. I doubt that it would happen though, because unlike Iraq the NK military has some serious weapons backing it up and even if they don't have many nuclear weapons yet (1 and counting), they could still manufacture dirty bombs and ionize thousands of US troops at a time (while inflicting even greater casualties among its own civilians, but as we have seen, the NK government doesn't care about it's citizens).

And last I checked, NK doesn't have any oil.