Although the famines in North Korea are now an annual fixture and are routinely exacerbated by the regimes whimsical refusals to accept food aid, it is difficult to see how the situation would be improved by what would probably be a long and protracted war followed by permanent unemployment.  South Korea has no welfare state to speak of and retired people live off the income of the working ‘middle’ generation.  Mostly the situation works well but it does assume that at least somebody in the household is capable of getting a job at some point.  Per capita incomes are approximately five per cent of those to the South.  Although it is possible to make a moral argument that the world has a responsibility to avert another famine in the North, they certainly do not have the moral authority to impose, asked and unwanted, a solution that runs the very real risk of making things worse for citizens on both sides of the 38th parallel.  It is questionable as to whether the South has the right to meddle in its neighbours affairs for the rest of the world, en masse, to take it upon itself to do so is as lacking in moral authority as it is in economic credibility.