Education & Opinion: "If North Korea were an island, it would now be under a strict blockade—minimum punishment for sinking a South Korean warship and killing 46 sailors in March, for building an illegal nuclear enrichment plant, and for killing South Korean soldiers and civilians with last week's sudden artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong island.
But North Korea isn't an island. It shares a long border with China and a short one with Russia. The so-called China-North Korea Friendship Bridge connects, by road and rail, Dandong on the Chinese side and Sinŭiju on the North Korean side. Without the traffic it carries—everything from coal, petroleum products and fancy foods to the Chinese-built locomotives that pull North Korean trains—the dictatorship of the Kim dynasty could not long endure."
