12/26/2002: Korean peninsula

[Undertoad]

This was presented on the web log of "Corsair the Rational Pirate" which I currently don't have an URL for, so if you were particularly motivated you could find it. Corsair didn't include any further information on the image.

This is a heat and light signature of the Korean peninsula.

Two days ago I took faux credit when U.S. defense head Donald Rumsfeld talked about what the Korean night sky looks like. (South Korea is all vibrantly lit up, while North Korea is entirely dark.) I had previously cut up the "night sky of the world" image to feature Korea, and I thought I was being clever, but anyone who looked at that part of the world would notice the same thing.

It's all a very interesting lesson in what happens when your country is controlled by socialistic megalomaniacal (?) morons.

By many accounts, the Korean people have a fairly workaholic culture -- similar to the Japanese, early Americans or modern immigrant Americans. They view work as a positive, desireable thing. Neither Korea nor Japan enjoy a remarkable wealth in natural resources, and yet both became quite wealthy once their people had the freedom to be productive.

All of which makes North Korea's nuclear proliferation even more incredibly outrageous. Partly because North Korea lets its people suffer without heat or light or even food, when just letting them loose would result in another South Korea - a boon for the world.

But mostly because it means that the battle lines of the world are increasingly between productive and unproductive countries -- and the unproductive countries have stronger political control of their armies and their missiles, and more will to wreak havoc because the peace-loving public doesn't have a say.