Would anyone really miss North Korea?

■"North Korea's Counterfeit Goods: U.S. Seeks to Curb Illicit Business in Cigarettes, Drugs, Currency to Augment Diplomacy," by Jay Solomon and Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 1 June 2005, p. A4.

■"Without Apology, Leaping Ahead in Cloning: 'I never destroy any life during my process,' Woo Suk Hwang says," by James Brooke, New York Times, 31 May 2005, p. D1.

North Korea used to earn as much as half a billion a year in missile sales to rogue nations, until the U.S. and others cracked down on that. But it still makes tons of money on counterfeit goods and illicit substances and fake money. Kim's basically the reason why my spouse and I carried so much uncirculated cash in our underwear during our adoption trip last year, and so the U.S. government imagines that if it can't get regional neighbors to realize how much all this smuggling and counterfeiting is costing them, those are just some more screws to be applied to the horrific Kim regime.

Meanwhile, South Korea races ahead inóI guessóanother form of counterfeitingóalbeit a far more technologically advanced one. If a South Korea can reach for such heights while a North Korea descends to such depths, I ask you: who would miss North Korea the state?

And if nobody would, why not just get rid of it any way we can? Put the people out of their misery, their stunted growth, their perpetual low nutrition and caloric intake, their lowering IQ, passed on from generation to generation.

North Korea is the international equivalent of the child whose horrific parents locked her in the closet for the last 15 years. I say it's time to do the humane thing. South Korea's too busy cloning themselves to give a rat's ass. If they have that many extra bodies around, I don't think we should sweat their possible losses in the take-down of Kim's regime, because at some point, the horror has to stop. At some point, you have to strike right into the heart of darkness, killing that mad little nutcase.