A former prime minister of Malaysia on Thursday rejected sanctions as a way of inducing change in the provocative regime of North Korea, saying the country's people should be left to change their own government as has been happening in the Middle East.
"We should not try to impose our ideas on them through sanctions and the like," Mahathir bin Mohamad told reporters on the sidelines of an international conference in Seoul.
North Korea is under U.N. and other sanctions for its nuclear and missile tests of 2009 and last year's sinking of a South Korean warship, which killed 46 sailors. The country's economic woes have apparently deepened as a result, with recent media reports indicating that its impoverished people have started to demand food and other basic necessities from the iron-fisted government.
"We don't believe in sanctions, because sanctions punish other people, not the leaders," said Mahathir, who served as prime minister from 1981 to 2003. "It is not fair to make the people pay for something that is beyond them."
Instead, Mahathir said a regime change could be brought about from within as in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, where massive anti-government demonstrations recently forced the countries' leaders to step down.
"What we are seeing is that because of the new media, people are being exposed to what is happening in other countries," he said. "Very quickly, they feel that they should change to follow what is happening in the rest of the world, and they themselves will take action."
His remarks fall in line with media reports that the recent pro-democracy wave across the Middle East and Northern Africa has begun to penetrate even the most reclusive nation in the world.
"Slowly, they will pick up the strength and the courage to oppose their own government and to change their system of government," Mahathir said.
"Let's be a little bit more patient and try and persuade the North to give up these ideas that they could isolate themselves and still enjoy the good things of life."