The South Korean military is worried North Korea, which had declared South Korean participation in the PSI a “declaration of war,” may initiate limited military clashes along the West Sea NLL or along the Military Demarcation Line in the DMZ once it gets bored of killing fish with short range missile tests.
My concern, if you call it that, is not so much that the North will try something along those lines — I think it likely they will, since they probably think they have to do something — but rather that when they do, LMB and Co. may give them a good wacking.
UPDATE: A North Korean military spokesman in Panmunjeom threatened an immediate and tough military response if someone were to attempt to stop and search one of its ships. He also said the North Korean military would no longer consider itself bound by the Armistice Agreement, blah blah blah, and that the North would no longer be able to guarantee the safe passage of US and South Korean naval vessels and civilian ships in the waters around Baengnyeong-do, Daecheong-do, etc.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
A declaration of war! Oh No! Errr… Wait… Aren’t North and South Korea still at war? Did someone sign a peace treaty I missed?
Seriously though, for the North to be acting out like this there must be some serious instability up there. This kind of acting out insures they get a nice enemy response to help stabilize the local populace. Kim’s health has diced things up up there, and he is now trying to push in his 22 year old untried son as heir apparent, as all his other offspring are such losers. His pushing the enemy card means all is not well up North.
Worse this may be considered a win in North Korea. Ask the last of the Tsars, when the population starts to revolt a loss is much better than a win. After a loss you can ask for belt tightning. A win gives you a short term respite, then the people want conditions to get better. Bad move Mr. Kim.
I am really nervous that this extreme card playing actually be the beginning of the end for the North, not the end of the beginning. Reunification, as forced as soon as it is possible, by the South’s constitution, could really mess up life in the South. Economy in the tank and a bunch of emotionally retarded and violent people suddenly forced on this society. Not pretty.
“Economy in the tank and a bunch of emotionally retarded and violent people suddenly forced on this society.”
….Based on my drive into work this morning, I would say they are already here
I don’t care what N Korea does, so long as they do it AFTER the USFK leave this schizophrenic country.
Ask the last of the Tsars, when the population starts to revolt a loss is much better than a win. After a loss you can ask for belt tightning. A win gives you a short term respite, then the people want conditions to get better.
The Romanovs were toppled during a time when the Great War was going badly for Russia. They were weakened by a ruinous war that killed millions of Russians loyal to the crown. They had this much in common with the Chinese Nationalists, who were equally weakened by the deaths of millions of troops loyal to the KMT, even though they technically won, even as the Chicoms spent the war hiding from the Japanese. As long as KJI keeps it low-key, he’ll be fine. All all-out war marked by huge casualties will lead to his defenestration, given that he can’t actually win, with Uncle Sam backing the South.
“Reunification, as forced as soon as it is possible, by the South’s constitution, could really mess up life in the South. ”
I think that any reunification will result in a the North Korean people being exploited in every possible way, by the Sought Koreans.
The land will be bought-up in a heart-beat, the population will be put to work for Gaesong-like slave wages, and the women will be used and abused by the South Korean men.
South Koreans
#5
I think that any reunification will result in a the North Korean people being exploited in every possible way, by the Sought Koreans.
I believe some guy named Karl Marx already discussed this in far greater detail. Exploitation is an inevitable feature of Industrial Capitalism. “Freedom” is an indulgence of those who do not confront abject poverty and starvation. Many a well-fed Westerner ought to spend some time in a North Korean forced-labor gulag to gain a much needed perspective to judge whether that is preferable to “exploitation” at the hands of the South Korean bourgeois class in South Korean factories.
The land will be bought-up in a heart-beat, the population will be put to work for Gaesong-like slave wages, and the women will be used and abused by the South Korean men.
In the United States, we call them Mexicans.
The sudden influx of North Korean labor into South Korean markets will be a force that will present challenges to both North Koreans and South Koreans alike. For the South Korean, it will largely be material. A unionized, well-paid South Korean blue collar worker will have to compete against cheaper North Korean counterparts.
For the North Korean, the challenges will mostly be of a spiritual nature. Suddenly imposing freedom upon the institutionalized soul is a heavy burden. Not many of us can appreciate what it must be like for the average North Korean unleashed into South Korean society. Perhaps it is akin to the scene in the movie Shawshank Redemption, where the elderly prisoner was released after decades of imprisonment. The old man found a world that was much faster, chaotic, frightening than the safety and structure of the prison he left behind. There is a profound sense of disorientation and disenfranchisement.
For the North Korean, the challenges will mostly be of a spiritual nature. Suddenly imposing freedom upon the institutionalized soul is a heavy burden. Not many of us can appreciate what it must be like for the average North Korean unleashed into South Korean society. Perhaps it is akin to the scene in the movie Shawshank Redemption, where the elderly prisoner was released after decades of imprisonment. The old man found a world that was much faster, chaotic, frightening than the safety and structure of the prison he left behind. There is a profound sense of disorientation and disenfranchisement.
I think this is a significant concern, and one that most people have given little, if any, thought to. And I think your comparison with Shawshank was an apt one.
#8 driftingfocus:
I think this is a significant concern, and one that most people have given little, if any, thought to. And I think your comparison with Shawshank was an apt one.
Thank you.
My own parents, borne, raised, and educated in South Korea well into adulthood, emigrated to the US during the late 70′s. As such, their Korean identity became largely stuck in a stand-still, time-warp spanning over three decades. So now when they return to Korea on occasion, they find a largely unrecognizable, alien society. My father says: “I find myself a foreigner in the land of my birth. My long time friends and acquaintances consider me a kind of barbarian…” He cannot decide whether he prefers the “interesting hell” that is Korea or the “boring paradise” that is America.
Extrapolating this to the experience of a North Korean, who has largely been stuck in a stand-still, time-warp since the 1950′s in North Korea, it is not difficult to imagine the cognitive dissonance and the sense of perpetual exile that may arise.
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