Roger Cohen published an article in the International Herald Tribune on Wednesday, 23 March, called "No U.S. 'logic of force' exists on North Korea". Cohen makes a number of good points, but what struck me most is something that appears to have struck him as well, although he is more discrete about it than I am about to be.

In recent years North Korea has endured famine. We do not know exactly how many people have died in one of the last monuments to Marxist economics and Leninist one-party rule, but estimates run up into the millions. Those who have not died suffer hunger and malnutrition sufficient to retard their growth, turn children's black hair orange, and create wide-spread mental retardation. The end of Communism seems to be its cruelest period.

These numbers make it not unreasonable to speak of a North Korean Holocaust, even as we apply that term to the exterminations of Armenians and Ukrainians. The word was coined to refer to the mass murder of European Jews during the Second World War, but history affords several examples of genocide. The monsters oppressing North Korea do not appear to be exterminating their countrymen systematically, but they do maintain a system which brings suffering and death to their people. The leadership certainly knows that they could save millions of lives by writing themselves fat checks, moving to the French Riviera, and giving their country to South Korea.

The people of South Korea know it, too. Nobody in Seoul is uninformed about the misery of their fellow Koreans - people who speak their language, share their culture, and look like them.

I have several times had conversations with South Koreans in which I ask them how they feel about this and what they plan to do about it. The answers I got were always variations on one word: Nothing.

Roger Cohen seems to have met the same attitude in a South Korean professor he quotes: "We want to change North Korea at the minimum price. We do not want a flood of refugees making things unstable. Millions have already died on this peninsula. This is the only time we have had the lives of normal people, so it is understandable that we are very realistic about things."

The circumstances to which the genial professor refers are what a Second Korean War would probably be like: Seoul bombarded, and large numbers of South Koreans dead. The specific example he mentions, though, is "a flood of refugees making things unstable" - that means, large numbers of starving Koreans running south to find food to eat and to give to their children.

A young Korean woman whom I met in Europe, with whom I occasionally chat online, told me in rather plain English, that she did not particularly care what happens in the northern dictatorship. I asked her about the terrible suffering her fellow Koreans endure while she studies in a university, plays the 'cello - for some reason, almost every Korean I know has chosen that instrument - and indulges her taste for Thai food, which she told me has lately become popular in South Korea.

Cohen's professor said echoed her attitude by saying South Koreans want to change North Korea for "a minimum price." Meanwhile, dying North Koreans are paying the maximum price.

"We are very realistic about things" - West Germans paid a substantial price to integrate their Eastern cousins in a messy and expensive job that is not yet complete after sixteen years. North Koreans represent a bigger proportion of all Koreans than East Germans did of Germans. The gulf between the economics, education, and health of the northerners and those of the Southerners will make Korean reunification much more difficult than German reunification was. Taking on this responsibility will be a major burden to South Korea, and nobody can deny it.

West Germans paid a steep economic price to reunite with their "Ossi" cousins. The Ossis suffered under Communism. Because of the Red Army, West Germany had no military option to send the German army forward to rescue them. Now that North Korea has been so foolishly allowed to become a nuclear power, there might be none for South Korea, either. Even apart from their nuclear option, the North has heavy artillery trained on Seoul that could destroy much of the city within hours. The peril is real, and the costs of rehabilitating the northerners will be great.

But these costs and dangers do not account for the indifference South Koreans seem to feel toward the fate of other Koreans. This indifference astonishes me. I would have expected mass demonstrations in Seoul every day demanding the government do something to rescue their brothers and sisters from Communism, hunger, and death. I can see that the South can do nothing that would subject them to nuclear attack; I am less certain that it is wrong to risk an artillery bombardment on Seoul that would kill thousands while saving millions of northerners; and that the South Koreans would have to skimp on Thai food to pay taxes to help their northern brothers and sisters brings no tears to my eyes.

Even if it is impossible to do something military now, it was possible a few years ago, when the famine was even worse than it is today. Even if there was never a military option, where is the anger in the heart of Cohen's professor? Where is the rage in my 'cello-playing, Thai-food eating friend? Why is Korean reunification - which really means Korean rescue - not the absolute, number one national priority for every South Korean?

South Koreans do in fact have very strong nationalist feelings. In recent weeks they have had a major crisis with Japan over fishing rights and some uninhabited rocks, loosely called islands, in the sea between them and Japan. One hears very negative thoughts about Japan among Koreans. They dislike - not to say hate - Japan today because of the grave suffering Japan inflicted on Korea during the thirty-five years when Japan occupied and enslaved Korea, using Korean men as slaves and Korean women for enforced prostitution. This historic memory is strong among South Koreans, as well it should be.

HOWEVER, the North Korean government has oppressed its people for sixty years - almost twice as long as the Japanese did, and the suffering that government has inflicted on its people is even greater than the Japanese created. The Japanese killed fewer Koreans than other Koreans do in North Korea. Koreans killed by native Communists are just as dead as those killed by foreign invaders.

Moreover, if South Koreans are such big nationalists, they might envision a reunited Korea as a country of seventy million people. It would take a generation at least to make the northern part of the country as much of an economic powerhouse as the south is today, but it will certainly happen. A reunited Korea, prosperous and strong, would be more powerful economically and diplomatically than any European country apart from Germany. Korea looks small on the map, but only because its neighbors are China, Japan, and Russia. If moved by magic to the European Union, united Korea would rank with the biggest players. If the human argument does not interest South Koreans, one would think the nationalist argument would.

"Such realism - some might prefer a less charitable term - makes war almost unthinkable", writes Roger Cohen. I think I can guess who will prefer less charitable terms than "realism".

Much recrimination has been written about who could have done what to save Europe's Jews from the Germans. Inaction, whether motivated by ignorance or by indifference, has led to some very bitter accusations against Jews and non-Jews, and some equally bitter regrets.

Some day, somehow, North Korea will come to an end. I hope its death will be less bloody than its life has been.

A new genre will then enter Korean literature: Memoirs of North Korean Horror, even as Holocaust survivors have written extensively about what they went through. Soon after reunification, an ex-Northerner will write a book called something like, "How Did Your Thai Curry Taste on the Day My Mother Starved to Death?" He or she is now about twenty-five; the author has watched people taken to prison to be tortured and murdered. He has seen hungry babies. He survived while eating bark and rats, as many North Koreans do, even though rats and bark do not appear on Thai menus. The story he tells will make uncomfortable reading for comfortable South Koreans.

How will Cohen's professor and my 'cellist answer this writer?