[quote=@FreeElk]
<Snipped quote by mdk>

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, just wondering, but why is it better for our economy if North Korea keeps it's current power structure? 
[/quote]

If the DPRK collapses, there's a giant minefield to the south -- largest in the world. The starving refugees with no skills to offer are going to flood China, which is already facing a [b]dire[/b] food and water crisis in the next decade due to the size of its population and the desertification of its land. But they'll go there anyway because they've got nowhere else to go, and China's the closest thing they've had to an ally for half a century. That's gonna be a huuuuuuuge problem, even if all they ever do is eat -- but it's a brainwashed and militarized populace, there's a pretty decent chance they'll do worse than eat. We like to think of China as a big boogeyman superpower but they will straight-up collapse under the weight of a North Korean refugee crisis, and that's just the first domino.

Kim's doing us all a HUGE favor by keeping these people horrifically repressed enough that they can't crash the global economy by flooding China. It sucks, and I hate it, and I'm not saying that to excuse the monster running that deathcamp of a nation -- I'm just saying, if he goes down overnight, it's going to be BAAAAAAD. VERY bad. We need a way to ease them out of it, and we'll never make that happen by toppling the god-emperor in a war. Still, we can't let them have nukes -- that opens up a door to the only thing worse than DPRK losing a regional war.