7 ways to get "serious" about North Korea

I read this opinion piece on CNN.com over the weekend and was very disturbed by its warmongering tone. Its title, "Seven ways to get serious with North Korea" underlines its farcical nature, as its suggestions ignore the sovereignty of nations and disrespect the Korean peninsula as a whole. What's so frustrating about this article is that it completely removes North Korean-US relations from any sort of historical context, portraying North Korea's grievances with the US as completely baseless and random.

The author's first "way to get serious" is to "Park an aircraft carrier off the coast of North Korea and engage in regular and sustained bilateral and multilateral naval exercises."

I really hope the author could imagine what it would be like if North Korea and, lets say, Mexico, performed naval exercises off the California coast so he could understand why this is such an egregiously provocative act. Besides the fact that the US already performs frequent naval exercises off the coast of North Korea, "regular and sustained" naval exercises off the North Korean coast are some of the most reactionary and incendiary policies that the US could engage in.

Another ridiculous point on this list is #4, which proclaims that a serious way to treat a country that we almost bombed to oblivion in the 1950s, is to "Re-designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terror."

Besides doing nothing to warrant such a re-designation, the overall tone of this statement, and the entire article in general, is one of incredulity. The unwillingness to acknowledge that we have done anything wrong in our relations with North Korea since the 1950s is the main thing standing between normalizing relations between our two countries. Articles like this that ignore the fact that we are still at war with North Korea and unwilling to sign a peace treaty are even more out of touch than the North Korean regime they deride. The most disturbing aspect of this article is that it was on the front page of one of the most popular news websites in the country.

The list is full of other absurd proposals, like #5 which suggests we use satellites and stealth aircraft to "track Kim Jong-un's movements," and "Provide any imagery to the press."