Well, I guess we have to give the Uri Party credit—at least they seem to speak for the masses:
Four in 10 South Korean adults think the United States is the country most responsible for North Korea’s declared nuclear test on Oct. 9, a survey said yesterday.
Forty-three percent of the respondents aged over 19 picked the United States as the country most responsible for the North’s nuclear test.
The survey of 500 adults was conducted by Research Plus, a local research firm, by telephone Oct. 10-11.
North Korea was chosen as the second most responsible country with 37.2 percent, followed by South Korea with 13.9 percent, China with 2.4 percent and Japan with 1 percent.
I’m just shocked the Japanese got off so light.
(HT to Lost Nomad)
24 Comments
Maybe they’re right–Clinton should have bombed Yongbyon in 1994.
Of course they are right, and of course it sounds wrong. But let’s face it. The US has hardly handled North Korea with the right frame of thinking. The US has bombs but no one else can???? Tell that to a guy like Kim Jung Ill and of course he will do the exact opposite. The US has to realise that the ball will not always be in their own court when they are dealing with a ultra confusiciast hermit kingdom sandwiched on a peninsula between China and a US guarded border. Does Bush really want things to improve or is he just aching for Kim Jung Ill to give him an excuse to move in on the “axis of evil.” Their are plenty of ways to appease Kim if we thought about it a little more. Lend him Spielberg for a weekend or something.
In any case, I think a well-rounded view of the situation is given here:
http://video.google.com/videop.....7101273554
Or just google “north korea nucleur documentary” on Google Video if the link fails.
The documentary video is quite good, however, the sound track sounds like Chinese music, not Korean. I think someone goofed here.
Look on the bright side. North Korea has threatening to do the test for years if the USFK didn’t leave Korea. Now that they have it, they’ve lost a lot of leverage. From now on, if North Korea delegates use that line in order to weasel out of making concessions, we can say, “Fuck you, you have the bomb. Now sit your ass back down to the table so we can strike a deal”.
The bombing should have taken place during Kim Il Sung’s funeral. Hundreds of cluster-bomb laden cruise missiles dropped on downtown Pyongyang to decapitate the beast. Oh well.
I do not think South Koreans realize how seriously the United States is taking North Korea’s nuclear test. It may even come to the point where the US decides that South Korea has gone over to the enemy, as the above poll suggests, and decide to deal with North Korea on its own even if it means putting South Koreans at risk.
The United States now seems to have Japan firmly on her side in dealing with North Korea, thanks in large part to South Korea’s constant whining about history books, Yasukuni, and “Dokdo.” With the UN Security Council resolution and Japan’s support, the US most likely feels emboldened to take more aggressive action against North Korea, especially on the high seas. if South Korea does not get on the PSI bandwagon, the United States may decide to leave South Korea out of much of the military planning loop in regard to dealing with North Korea. The US may even decide to further minimize her military risks in South Korea in preparation for a possible war, and then test the theory that the North will not attack her brothers in the South if the United States takes action against North Korean facilities.
South Koreans have to realize that the US will do almost anything to prevent terrorists from getting hold of a nuclear weapon.
This poll is useles. Are the americans responsible for letting it happpen because they pressured NK, or not pressuring it enough, or not bombing it, or what?
There’s a lack of information here and it seems designed to do just what it did: Anger American nationals.
Riiiiiiiiight. It’s aimed at American soldiers and English teachers living in Korea (about 3 Americans outside of Korea will ever hear about this poll), since the Korean media has such a vested interest in pissing them off.
It couldn’t possibly be aimed at reinforcing the Blame-America-For-Everything canard that runs rampant among the Korean public and in the Korean media.
It’s definitely not a way for the Roh administration to publicize a shifting of responsibility and blame for the failure of the Sunshine Policy from their own party to the easily scapegoated Americans.
Couldn’t possibly be a PR move to shore up support for the sagging Uri party and an attempt to lift support for continuing to shovel money to the North via Kaesong and Kumgang.
There are a shitload of reasons for the Korean media and the Roh administration to push this kind of crap, and none of them involve thumbing a nose at the miniscule number of Americans that will actually see it.
Koreans don’t have to come up with stuff to piss off Americans and say it’s america’s faut that NK has the bomb. That’s because Americans themselves are saying that it’s America’s fault that Kim Jong Il has the bomb.
Don’t think that Koreans don’t read articles like this that gets translated:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....01068.html
And PS, this is for people who are going to put words into my mouth and accuse me of blaming America for NK nukes (I won’t mention names), I am not blaming the US at all.
The following are also America’s fault:
1. Your missing socks.
2. Your alarm not going off in the morning.
3. Expensive coffee.
4. Lousy phone connections.
5. Any weather other than 72 degrees and sunny.
We apologize.
Cm: Newsflash: There’s an element in America that blames America for everything wrong with the world. Foreigners erroneously think these people have a significant voice, when in reality clowns like Chomsky–as promoted by our buddy Chavez–are only admired in socialist enclaves like Berkeley. The rest of us tolerate the crap because we’re all about free speech, but don’t confuse tolerance with acceptance.
Don’t like numbers of Koreans believe in fan death?
I think 98% of Koreans believe in fan death, at least by my humble informal polling.
Well, I’m not excusing the Northern government for placing its survival ahead of the needs of its citizens, but it has been acting like a cornered animal because it is just that. Just look at how North Korea has been moving some of the aid that it receives to its military warehouses. Since it’s increasingly dependent on South Korean and Chinese aid, it worries that it wouldn’t last long if either of these countries made a move to annex North Korea. Without this food aid, North Korea would have little choice but to surrender.
“about 3 Americans outside of Korea will ever hear about this poll”
I’d put the number a little higher than 3: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20.....1016024433
That is, if anyone bothers reading the news.
okay nomad, i’ll concede to 4 or 5.
call every american you know living in the states, and i’ll bet you as many have read this story…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20.....hdA–
…as have read the Korean poll story.
And another thing:
It’s not a majority view. The majority of the (five hundred) respondends think the blame lies with the Koreas. Anyone using this yellow journalism as a basis for fanning the flames of nationlist rhetoric/ personal-issues-venting should be embarassed.
iheartblueballs,
You underestimate the popularity of cricket in the U.S., sir. It’s right up there behind soccer.
Meh, predictable. How can you blame them when the media spoonfeed crap that probably suggests that the North was coming around until that big meanie Bush came around?
Before I add to my previous post, I want to make clear that in general, I have a great respect for Korea and Koreans, and I am not in the least bit cynical of my stay here.
Anyways, some Koreans seem to be incapable of blaming anything on anyone who is also Korean. I am sure that I will get slammed for writing that, but I have seen this in practice too many times.
As an example I even had cases in the past where I would have an issue with a poorly behaved student, would refer him to the director, and the director would take the 10 year old brat’s word over mine. If memory serves, she actually told me that she took his word over mine, because he was Korean and I wasn’t.
Also, if I remember correctly, in Michael Breen’s book ‘The Koreans’ there is mention of this phenomenon as well.
I’m surprised 57% Koreans don’t blame America. Certainly better numbers than what’s going on in America these days. I don’t blame Bush for what’s going on in NK, but he certainly has wasted a great deal of “good will” capital on Iraq.
What “goodwill?” One of the biggest myths of all time is that the world had all this goodwill toward America after 9/11 and big bad meanie Dubya squandered it. Let’s face it, Europe has always hated us because we’re successful and we represent a threat to their vacation-loving wealth-redistributive ignore-the-problem-and-it-will-go-away way of life. At least Asians respect us because they’re not afraid to compete.
I think Clinton set the stage for the little b*stard to throw the switch. His weak deal with KJI gave the creep the time he needed to sharpen his axe with no inspectors in sight. I don’t blame the US, I blame Clinton.
Ned Lamont, the liberal hero who vanquished Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in a Democratic primary in August, declared a few months ago that our nation is stronger when we “negotiate with our enemies.” He thus neatly summarized post-9/11 Democratic foreign-policy thought in four words. The criminal regime of North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il has now issued a rejoinder to this foreign-policy axiom that measured 4.2 on the Richter scale.
The North Korean nuclear test punctuates more than a decade’s worth of deal-making, confidence-building, cajoling and negotiating with a regime that has responded to it all only by enhancing its rogue status. The risible six-party talks, an effort by the U.S. and neighboring nations to reason with Kim Jong Il, had been in abeyance since the North walked away from them this year. But Democrats are attacking the Bush administration for not talking with the North directly, as if it is the shape of the negotiating table, rather than the nature of the North Korea regime, that has been the problem.
The Clinton administration dealt directly with the North, producing the Agreed Framework, a sham that the North Koreans began cheating on, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, “as the ink was drying.” The North agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors and fuel deliveries. Immediately, however, it set up a secret uranium-enrichment program and obstructed inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency. When the U.S. called the North on it in 2002, the North confessed, expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accelerated its nuclear quest.
Democrats would have us believe that this is all the fault of Bush cowboy diplomacy. The U.S. had the temerity to notice that the North Koreans were cheating, by pocketing the Agreed Framework’s economic goodies while still pursuing its weapons. How undiplomatic of us!
Which is not to say that the Bush administration has performed well. It has repeatedly said things like “we are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea.” This is an empty threat that serves only to erode U.S. credibility and convince other rogues — most importantly, Iran — that they can get away with things we warn against in the strongest possible terms. North Korea is nuclear, and we are indeed going to live with it for now, because there is no viable military option.
The administration’s six-party talks, meanwhile, made sense in theory as a way to bring North Korea’s most influential neighbors into any deal-making, but the neighbors have proven unreliable. As North Korea has become ever more aggressive, the South has become ever more supine. China is the North’s economic lifeline and at any point in the past decade could have helped bring Kim Jong Il to heel. But Beijing fears a North Korean collapse that might send desperate refugees fleeing into China, and prefers a divided Korean peninsula to one that is united, democratic and allied with the United States.
We need to junk the six-party talks and pressure Pyongyang on all fronts, toward the long-term goal of the collapse of its government. All of the North’s sources of income are illegal — counterfeiting, WMD trade and narcotics trafficking — and we can crack down on them further. We should refurbish our nuclear deterrent by telling the North Koreans that any use of nuclear weapons will mean the end of their country, and perhaps by rotating nuclear bombers into Japan. Together with the Japanese and Taiwanese, we can implement a strict inspection regime on all North Korean shipping, a necessity since the most dire aspect of the North Korean threat is the possibility it will slip nuclear materials to even more malevolent actors.
In the case of North Korea, we have talked to our enemy, and it only has made him stronger. It’s time for action.