Dear Reader,

I have just written a book titled, The Dragon Option. You
can see the entire book online for free at www.TheDragonOption.com .
First, let me begin by saying that as far as any copyright issues on
this book are concerned, all rights are reserved. With that out of the
way, let me add that I strongly encourage you to save the book's four
chapters to your personal computer, so that you and others may read
them off-line at your conveniences. My interest here is in sharing the
information it contains with you, not in making money off of you. Now,
to the book.
Is The Dragon Option fact or fiction? Well, it is both. It
took me ten years to compile all of the data encapsulated in this
text, the vast majority of which is pure fact. To have presented it in
a non-fiction format would have made for mind-numbing and uninspired
reading. That is why I have congealed all of these critical concepts
into a fictional story-line that takes place in the year 2010. By this
means I present you, the reader, with a birds-eye view into the
dramatic and often terrifying realities we are faced with today,
without abandoning you in a maze of seemingly incongruent and
confusing details. To avoid drawing the book's factual basis from
obscure sources to which most people lack access, I have been careful
to cross-check my facts against several easy to find Internet
resources. Therefore, anyone interested in verifying, exploring, and/
or challenging anything that I have written may do so through such
means as Google, Wikipedia, and for those who can afford the nominal
subscription fee, Encyclopedia Britannica.
I was inspired to write this book as a way of expressing
my views of world affairs. I am not a historian by design, but by
9/11. I think that day affected everyone in their own way, and for me,
it opened my eyes to the reality of who we are as Americans, what we
have done in the world, and what we are going to do. Key issues, such
as nuclear and biological warfare, global warming, Middle East oil,
China and the U.S. national debt, the Palestinian Problem, the Ford
and Rockefeller Foundation's Green Revolution, and many political and
historical facets concerning the United States' national interests are
presented in a readable story-based format. But make no mistake.
Though the book's actors may be fictional, almost everything they
discuss in this book is fact.
As a nation, perhaps the United States faced its greatest
hours of unity and national pride during World War Two. Yet, anyone
who reads both sides of history knows that it was a glory short lived,
for the Korean War of 1950-1953 quickly followed. This conflict was
actually the Second Korean-American War, and it was nothing short of
shameful on our part. By comparison, few Americans even know about the
First Korean-American War of 1871 (a.k.a. - Sinmiyangyo) and the many
other acts that we have perpetrated against the Koreans since then,
including our 1905 sacrifice of Korea to Japan by the Taft-Katsura
Agreement. Today, we simply see them as North and South Korea - the
bad and the good, respectfully - an artificial divide that we created
with Russia in 1945. This book is not a justification for Kim Jung Il,
communism, or war. It is an act of accountability for our country's
actions, and how our bullying is driving other nations to acts of
desperation. As in the 1936 translation of Sholem Asch's prophetic
tome The War Goes On, my text does not excuse our inhumanity to one
another, it merely observes and records it.
A second book, a sequel to The Dragon Option, is currently
underway. It is expected to be completed by early to mid 2008, and it
will take up where this first book leaves off. In the meantime, if you
have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this book, please
email me (see the website's Contact page for further information). For
those interested in a detailed description about The Dragon Option, a
chapter-by-chapter outline follows.

Sincerely,

Robert Ben Mitchell
06/10/07

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CHAPTER ONE begins by briefly presenting the protagonist, Seok Dae Jo,
in an American prison. It then quickly shifts back some sixty years to
the story of Lee Dae Ja, the mother of Seok Dae Jo. In her second
trimester of pregnancy with her first child, she loses her husband,
Seok Jo Hee, in the Yosu Mutiny of 1948 (Yosu, South Korea). This
uprising of South Korean troops occurred in response to the American
sanctioned massacres on Cheju-do Island (1945-1948), in which some
30,000 islanders were killed. Alone, pregnant, and on foot, she
escapes by making a two month long journey along the Korean Death
Marches (1948-1950) from the southern end of the peninsula toward
sanctuary in the North. This was the period between World War Two and
the beginning of the Second Korean-American War (1950-1953) when
thousands of peasants were slaughtered as they tried to cross in both
directions over the artificially contrived Russian-American, 38th
parallel Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Along the way, she meets many
people who, though not better off than she, help her and her unborn
child to survive. These acts of bravery and desperation include
fleeing from civilian militias, fighting off starvation through the
harsh winter trek, surviving an attack by a South Korean fighter plane
(undefended peasant convoys were routinely strafed by military
aircraft during this period), and a harrowing final escape around the
DMZ by boat through the Yellow Sea. In the end, though she loses her
battle, her son, Seok Dae Jo, survives.

The second half of the first chapter tells of Seok Dae Jo's life,
beginning with his childhood in a North Korean orphanage. The Second
Korean-American War (1950-1953) plays out during his early years, most
of which he spends below ground to avoid the fighting. It is during
this period that others become aware of his funny sounding voice which
causes him to speak Korean in a very harsh, broken manner. As many
children in the orphanage were missing arms and legs, nothing much is
made of his speech impediment. He lives, for the most part, a normal
life until the age of nine when he turns in a homework assignment
titled American Imperialism - a relativistic theory of freedom.
Loosely based upon an article he read about Albert Einstein's 1915
General Theory of Relativity, he tries to make the point that American
freedom is not the same for all of its citizens. Unfortunately, his
teacher, a well meaning but not highly educated man, misinterprets the
boy's work as praise for their enemy, a perceived act of treason for
which he beats his pupil furiously and then reports him to the local
authorities. The higher-ups, however, understand that Seok Dae Jo has
a certain political astuteness that is rarely seen in children his
age. Therefore, the boy is transferred from his orphanage in Anju to
the capital in Pyongyang where he is enrolled in the People's Youth
Elite Core (PYEC), while his teacher is sent off to the Kaechon
Concentration Camp for ten years.

In Pyongyang, Seok Dae Jo undergoes a series of tests to determine if
he will be enrolled in the PYEC's diplomatic core or their spy agency.
By error, a series of verbal skill exams are included near the end of
these tests, a fact which perplexes his examiners (called handlers in
the PYEC) as his speech impediment is well known. In a series of nine
humiliating and emotionally traumatic exams, he is forced to repeat
words in his awkward and embarrassing voice. Everything changes,
however, during the last of these nine exercises when he is asked to
say the word 'dog' in English. Seok Dae Jo does it so perfectly that
his handlers, expecting only mangled verbalizations from the boy, do
not even hear his response the first two times. But then, on the third
try, they hear him clearly, for he can speak English just like an
American. What the funny sounding kid from Anju has is not a speech
impediment, but Foreign Accent Syndrome, an extremely rare medical
condition first reported in 1919 in which one's voice sounds like that
of a native speaker from a foreign land. Because of this, he is
immediately enrolled in the Pyongyang Foreign Language College where
he grows up to be one North Korea's foremost authors and speakers of
the English language. During this period, he marries, but loses his
wife in the birth of their first and only child. Yet, after a period
of mourning, he recovers from his loss, and in 1976 he is transferred
to New York City as a diplomatic translator with the North Korean
Permanent Observer's Mission to the United Nations. This is also where
we find him at the beginning of the book, in prison.

Seok Dae Jo is imprisoned because he is the only North Korean diplomat
left in New York City on Monday, February 1st, 2010, all the others
having been surreptitiously recalled under the guise of a national
celebration in Pyongyang. Earlier that morning, however, the North
Koreans had launched one hundred and forty-four nuclear laden missiles
onto Antarctica, in an effort to destabilize the continent and trigger
a global, environmental disaster that will undermine world economies
and literally level most nations. This is actually more scientific
fact than fiction as Antarctica is covered by so much ice - to an
average depth of 1.5 miles overall - that it has been pressed some
2000 feet below its normal resting place. Should all that ice melt and
its compressing weight run off into the sea, then the entire
continent, all five and a half million square miles, would rise up out
of the Southern Ocean, tearing apart much of the rest of the world in
the process. The North Koreans have taken this tactic in recognition
that they can neither defeat the United States militarily or
economically. Instead, they have chosen to change the world, forever.
Given that their tiny country has been invaded over 900 times during
its 700,000 year history, the leaders of Pyongyang feel more
comfortable rising from the ashes, as they have done so many times
before, than being assimilated into America's capitalist-imperialist
empire.

CHAPTER TWO begins with a review of Korean history from 700,000 BC to
the present and includes one of their most spectacular creations: the
Tripitaka Koreana. Special attention is given to the post World War
Two nuclear option on the peninsula, including the deployment of
atomic demolition mines along the DMZ. World events leading up to the
North Korean advance to the South Pole unfold, after which a
conversation between the President of the United States and the
imprisoned Seok Dae Jo provides extensive details on the North's ten
year, five phase plan to attack Antarctica. It included the
destruction of Iran (Operation Crisis) which also triggered a final
solution to the Palestinian Problem, a peace treaty to end the 1953
Korean-American armistice (Operation Supplication), the sinking of one
of their own research vessels in the Eastern Pacific (Operation
Disaster), the conversion of three cargo ships into covert missile
launchers (Operation Reconstruction), and the final attack on
Antarctica (Operation Commencement).

CHAPTER THREE outlines the origins of our continents, from four and a
half billion years ago until today, with a parallel outline
delineating the evolution of life on the planet. Antarctica's de-
evolution over the past twenty-five million years is highlighted,
including the imprisonment of the frozen continent's oldest and
smallest inhabitants beneath some eight thousand feet of ice and snow.
The conversation started in chapter two continues between the American
leader and the incarcerated North Korean translator, revealing why the
United States does not counter-attack in retribution for the North's
actions. In this process, Seok Dae Jo must force the President to
admit the real reasons the United States declared war on Iraq in 2003.
Korean spies unveil a clandestine, grand power struggle between
American and Chinese forces, with the control of Middle Eastern oil at
stake. A plot unfolds on how the United States plans to acquire as
much of this oil as it can, and then destroy the rest using
petrolphages - a new form of 21st century biological warfare - rather
than let the Chinese take control of it. If America retaliates against
North Korea, then Pyongyang will give Beijing proof of the United
States' poisoned-well policy, throwing the planet into World War
Three. In the meantime, with the help of the entire staff of the
United States National Academy of Sciences, the real goal of the North
Koran attack on Antarctica is unveiled: not to melt all the ice, but
to unleash the genetically volatile bacteria which have lived
undisturbed beneath the South Pole's glacial ice for twenty-five
million years. Such bacteria actually exist. Through interlacing,
viral conservation and coordination, and viroception, these ancient
organisms will trigger global pandemics killing most of the people on
Earth.

CHAPTER FOUR, the last chapter of the book, discusses the history of
petroleum, from Spindletop, Texas, in 1901, through the Ford and
Rockefeller's Green Revolution, to Peak Oil and global warming today.
The relationships between food, famine, fuel, and the future meltdown
of our environment are explained. The history of the USS Pueblo and
its role in the little known Third Korean-American War (1966-1970) are
reviewed. Finally, in 2009, Seok Dae Jo returns to North Korea for the
first time in thirty-three years to prepare for his final mission.
While being trained there under the auspices of Kang Min Do, a special
security agent in Pyongyang, he learns the truth about his family's
past and of the estranged son he never knew. In the end, however, Seok
Dae Jo returns to the United States where, from prison, he must
explain everything to the President. Ultimately, he momentarily saves
his tiny nation, but he cannot save himself, as the Middle Eastern and
Antarctic biological warfare clocks keep ticking.