Condie Rice spoke to the Moonie Rag on Saturday. She had a lot to say, including about North Korea and the ROK-U.S. alliance. Some money quotes:
About the ROK-U.S. alliance:
But I’d just remind people, the South Koreans are in Iraq with us… You ask, do the South Koreans have a near-term or a near-geographic interest in what happens in Iraq? No. They are in Iraq because they believe that that’s what allies do. When the United States believes that it’s got a security concern, then allies help. So I would cite that as a counter to what’s said there.
The second is to be active in making certain that our alliances in the region are as strong as possible. That means with South Korea — and I think we’ve actually strengthened that alliance by what Don Rumsfeld and his folks worked out by removing those 12,000 forces from South Korea — but modernizing the forces, getting out of the area around Seoul, which had been an irritant to the South Korean people. I think that alliance is in better shape now than it’s been in a long — maybe ever.
About offering North Korea incentives ala Iran:
Well, North Korea is a little bit different — a lot different — because we have some experience from 1994 with what happens when you get the incentives too far out ahead of the actions by the North Koreans. And what they did was, they took the carrots and never lived up to their obligations — in fact, started breaking their obligations.
About apologizing to North Korea for calling their proud little republic an “outpost of tyranny”:
Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt that I spoke the truth. And I don’t know that one apologizes for speaking of the truth, you know. It’s sad with the North Korean people. You read these stories, you know, of people eating bark and the starvation there, and sure, the United States has tried to do its part.
But again, yes, we need to solve the near-term problem of the North Korean nuclear program, but we can’t do it at the expense of being afraid to speak out about what is actually going on in North Korea.
Read the rest on your own.
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2 Comments
That’s interesting about how the troops being in Seoul as an irritant to the Korean people. I think Koreans would be happy to have American soldiers here as long as they never have to see them, and maybe the other way too… I thought moving them out of Seoul was to leave the highest risk areas for the Koreans to take care of, but it’ll have more benefits too, I guess. I don’t know actually what’s going on with them moving out, but it seems in general their presence is less seen and less of an irritant these days (maybe ’cause they’re not allowed in a bunch of places?).
There was no point in keeping USFK troops in the Seoul area, and they were an irritant there if the SK press is to be belieed. Since the ROK’s actions including its own troop deployments inidcate they have no fear of a ground attack across the DMZ, keeping highly trained U.S. troops there as hostages and fuel for propaganda made little sense. They’re mobile enough to get to wherever they’re needed.