Question: Good morning, Mr. LaRouche. Thank you so much for addressing us. I'm an organizer in the L.A. office. Well, it seems like we've really messed up our chances, as a nation, of disarming North Korea's nuclear weapons peacefully. As a Korean, the son of Korean immigrants, I don't exactly want to see the Korean Peninsula go up in flames; but, you've done a lot of work, trying to bring about a different political environment, in which the various countries in Northeast Asia could cooperate, and get a peaceful resolution to the North Korean nuclear standoff, I guess, if you will. Can you give me your thoughts on that, and how we can move forward, even in the kind of Iraq mess period, to fix the situation?

LaRouche: We've got a very interesting situation. You know, this government may be largely insane, but it's not entirely insane. Even President George Bush, the incumbent President, did reject Gingrich, definitely--and in no uncertain terms--whether it's because Gingrich stepped into an area he's not supposed to. But, what Gingrich did: Gingrich went after the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Now, if Colin Powell were to be run out of the government, or forced to resign, the Bush Administration would disintegrate. And people in the White House know that.

Therefore, when Gingrich, on behalf of his buddy, "Bugsy" Rumsfeld, moved in to attack Powell, on Middle East policy and other policies, the White House, in its own self-defense, had to react--and kick Gingrich in the face. They didn't kick Cheney in the face; and they haven't kicked Rumsfeld in the face, yet. They should have. But so, it's not an entirely hopeless situation. Sometimes you can deal with the situation, even when don't have a "good guy" in the picture, you can sometimes operate on circumstances, to move things in a useful direction.

Now, no one with any brains, wants to force North Korea into a confrontation with its limited number of nuclear weapons. Nobody wishes to do that. The majority of people in Asia, and in Europe, do not want a heated-up conflict between North and South Korea. They don't want it. Apart from--in Japan--I don't know where the Prime Minister stands; he's rather a funny fellow--but other Japanese do not want that kind of conflict.

So therefore, there are people from the old Bush crowd, typified by Scowcroft or Donald Gregg, or so forth, in the situation, who would agree with me, on the importance of an open-door approach to discussions with the government of North Korea.

Evidently, something has occurred to that effect this past week. There were discussions in China. One should not look for remarkable results from the discussions themselves. The most important thing, is that the discussions have occurred--and they did not involve Bolton from the State Department. If Bolton from the State Department had been involved in those discussions, he would have blown them up! So, he's one of these Cheney types. He shouldn't be in government at all; but, he's there.

So, anyway: So far we've covered that hurdle. It's still dangerous. But, my view is this. You have two ways to look at this: You have a defensive position, by some people in government--including inside the Bush camp--who are simply saying--and I think people like former President Carter, former President Clinton, and many other Democrats, who've come into this on that side; the question is, what's the bottom-line real solution for the problem. Now, my view, the only way we're going to avoid war--and we're stumbling into it--is, we're going to have to do that by putting the economic questions first.

First, the economic issue: North Korea is a very poor country. It has, within it, a relatively small portion of privileged people, associated with the government, with the military. So therefore, you have, in a sense, a conflict on the ground, between very poor people, and a government by a group of people who are trying to retain their relative privileges. There is no hope for this situation, if you leave it that way. So therefore, what we have to do this, is, do this: We have the Sunshine Policy, put forth by the people in South Korea--some of whom I've talked with, and whom we've been in touch with directly or indirectly over some time.

Now the policy here, the Sunshine Policy, starts on two railroad systems which used to be in the united Korea. One branch of the system goes into China. The other branch goes north towards Siberia, toward the Trans-Siberian Railroad route. Now, if these railroad systems are repaired and restored, brought up to snuff, then we have, from Pusan at the tip of Korea, to Rotterdam and so forth in Europe, we have continuous lines of transportation of goods, by either the Siberian route, which goes through Russia, Kazakhstan and so forth; and through China, which is called the "Silk Road" route.  So therefore, we have a revolution in the trade relations, between North Asia and Europe.

At this time, Europe is bankrupt, like the 46 or more Federal states in the United States are bankrupt, now--hopelessly so. So therefore, Europe needs new markets. The great new markets are in Asia, which going through a large-scale development program, as in China. But, Japan is bankrupt, financially. It's banking system is hopelessly bankrupt. But Japan still has a core industrial economy. That industrial economy is marketable, in terms of long-term contracts for industrial technology, into the countries of North Asia and Asia generally.

So therefore, China, the Koreas, Japan, Russia, and so forth, have a common interest in peaceful economic cooperation, there. Western Europe has a vital interest, in that cooperation, in the Koreas.  My view is, in this case, as many other cases, the overriding approach must be an approach toward economic reconstruction of a planet, which is now in the midst of a general collapse of the existing monetary-financial system. Therefore, I'd start from the standpoint of the fight for the reform, of the present international monetary-financial system, around a set of recovery agreements--long-term treaty agreements on trade and development. And these kinds of things present fundamental solutions for problems, which otherwise may lead to conflict.

In other words, if you let--take the case of the Middle East: There's not enough water, presently in area around Israel and Palestine, to meet the needs of all the people in that area. So obviously, if you don't have water development, you're going to  have conflict. No military or other agreement is going to eliminate that conflict, if you don't have water. That means, we have to have power, too. We have to have enough water, enough power, to meet the needs of all of the population, and their development opportunities. Therefore, we need a generalized Middle East economic approach to providing a peace policy, in the Middle East. The road map thing is coming up now.

Similarly in other areas, such as North Korea. The real solution will come through the application of a general economic recovery to each of these areas, as the basis of building the conditions of life and opportunities, which people would rather fight to defend, than fight over. And, that's the basic approach.

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