it's pretty amazing that all the parties around north korea - china, japan, the u.s., even south korea - are concerned above all the "stabilize" the regime. they explicitly are trying to keep the north korean state from disintegrating. i heard an expert saying that as the south koreans deal with the ship sinking, they're concerned above all not to let it destabilize the gov of kim jong il. now of course you've got a military - albeit pretty broke and incompetent - with nukes and huge standing army. but for everybody's sake - in particular the sake of the north korean people - surely we all want the regime to disintegrate?? even at some cost. the state system pulls together as a world: the u.n. basically makes revolution illegal. so you sit there in the department of state thinking: how we can preserve this murdering idiot, keep people starving and in ignorance, and so on? hell it beats instability.