On the recordSeptember 17, 1997
Well, first of all, we've done everything we could to prevent them from starving to death, you know. I've strongly supported humanitarian food aid to the North Koreans. But frankly, it depends on how you read the risk. I mean, the tension between the two Koreas is still there. They have a million troops there. And my elemental experience in human psychology--and I think a lot of our experts in military strategies agree that sometimes people are most dangerous when they feel most threatened and most helpless, most frustrated. So I would just say to you, the fact that they have had some food problems does not in any way, in my mind, mitigate the risk. And anybody who's ever been to the DMZ and who has ever driven from Seoul to the DMZ and seen how short it is and has seen a million--you know, the numbers of troops there, and you see our people up there in those outposts and how few they are--and again I say, these mines are put along the DMZ in clearly marked areas to make sure that no children will walk across them. There is no place like it in the world. And let me also say, this is not a unilateral American presence there. We are there under an armistice agreement that proceeded from the authority of the United Nations to conduct the Korean war in the first place and then to have the armistice. We are there fulfilling the worldwide community's responsibility to preserve the peace and safety there. And it's very easy if you're not one of those Americans in uniform up there, saying, ``Oh, well, this will never happen. They'll never do it.'' But you could move a million people into Seoul pretty quickly. And no one I know believes that under present circumstances, with the hostilities that still exist between the two countries, that we could do anything to stop that if we didn't have the strong deterrent of the landmines that are in that very carefully marked field there. United States Action Against Landmines
Source
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