USS Pueblo
-- in the middle of Pyongyang
-- using the largest thermonuclear device in our arsenal...
Posted on 05/28/2010 3:05:51 PM PDT by XHogPilot
ONE of the students at my university was killed in the attack that sank a South Korean naval vessel on March 26. A visual communications major, Mun Yeong-uk was only a few months from concluding his military service when a North Korean torpedo split the warship, the Cheonan, in half. His classmates loyally collected money for his family’s funeral expenses, but I was struck by how few people on our campus evinced any real anger toward the regime of Kim Jong-il.
This lack of indignation is mainstream here. Most people now accept North Korea’s responsibility for the sinking that killed Mr. Mun and 45 other sailors. A small but sizable minority suspect an elaborate government conspiracy of some sort. What almost all seem to share is the desire that South Korea put this unfortunate business behind it as soon as possible.
Support for military retaliation appears confined to those too old to fight. Even the rather mild measures that the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, announced on Monday — which included the drastic reduction of inter-Korean trade and resumption of the propaganda war along the demilitarized zone — have caused widespread hand-wringing.
The general reluctance to take the North Koreans to task can be partly attributed to a rational apprehension of the military realities. No one here needs to be reminded that Kim Jong-il could bomb Seoul flat even without using his new nuclear capacity. And in a country where all fit young men must spend two years in the military, “chicken hawks” are much harder to come by than in America.
Historical and cultural factors are also at work. By this I do not mean only the collective memory of the Korean War and its manifold horrors. Up until the late 1980s, right-wing governments resorted to North Korea scares
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
And no, the Norks cannot "bomb Seoul flat". It is much too big to be obliterated but it certainly could be on the receiving end of considerable damage by artillery and enemy special forces engineers.
Given the population of around 10 million, a massive artillery attack on Seoul would be devastating.
Mark
If South Korea really shrugs off the murder of 46 sailors, I guess they’d shrug off the murder of 100,000 college students in a nuclear holocaust too.
Oh well.
As a matter of fact, if thats the real mood. Why do we have any troops there?
Of course its the NY Times, so I don’t trust it
The real agenda comes thru.....
“but I was struck by how few people on our campus evinced any real anger toward the regime of Kim Jong-il”
He’s measuring the South Koreans’ mood by what’s happening on a campus?!
Those students and professors MIGHT get angry and protest if Kim Jong mentally-Il launches chemical weapons against the South. But those will be directed at the South Korean government and America, not their marxist hero KJI...
” My guess is he’s probably presenting a pretty good assesment of the mood among his university students and professor peers. “
I’m guessing that since this is in the NY Slimes, the writer is a Liberal - and therefore, to him, the mood among his university cohorts is the only one that matters....
I stil think we should send in the Navy Seals to blow up Dear Leader’s private wine cellar.
Good post.
The current anger is newsworthy but there will be no sustained retaliation by SK, even if the nutty Norks lavishly deserve it —indeed Kim almost appears to be begging for it.
In the past whenever he acts nutty he gets paid, so a-la-Pavlov he’s doing the same here. In fact, now that President Bailout is in charge here in the USA, it would be totally insane for Kim not to keep acting this way, the better to shore things up for his inexperience son before Kim pere dies.
We say he’s nuts, but I say WE are nuts for saying that Kim now faces a war —he doesn’t.
With death at his door, Kim is facing the cash, and we WILL pay him.
The proper response would have been to sink a North Korean sub. Sadly, the South Koreans are decadent and morally corrupted.
Their leadership knows that while Obama will not support them, the ChiComs support the mass murdering thigs in the north.
1. China doesn’t want a war
2. SK doesn’t want a war
3. Obama sure as hell doesn’t want a war
4. Japan...mostly wants to avoid missile attacks on bases in Japan.
All these forces point to no war over the SK ship, despite rhetoric or SK “mobilization”.
None of this rosiness alters the longer-term reality that the likelihood of an Asian arms race has rocketed skywards.
They have forgotten 60 years ago this June. The DPRK has nothing to lose but hunger.
Bump
“None of this rosiness alters the longer-term reality that the likelihood of an Asian arms race has rocketed skywards.”
Actually that would be a good thing. NK has more weapons than they have people to fire them. China’s building up, regardless of neighborhood events. It’s SK and Japan that need some shaking and need to build up. And if they do build up, that can only be good, in the long term.
-- in the middle of Pyongyang
-- using the largest thermonuclear device in our arsenal...
N. Korea has become an object of victim worship. Take a typical rhetoric in U.S. of victim worship on aggrieved class. Replace any aggrieved class with N. Korea and you have S. Korea's own pro-N. Korean rhetoric. S. Koreans should expunge their moral guilt by worshiping and apologizing for N. Korea.
They love to claim that S. Korean right is trapped in the Cold-war past, but they are indeed the one outdoing conservatives in that regards. They are permanently trapped in their mentality in 70's and 80's. They swallowed with enthusiasm the lies and gross distortion about N. Korea.
Many of them also disguise their real mentality by using economic argument as their cover. The collapse of property value and damage to economy. So they argue that we should be nice to N. Korean regime. Any criticism about N. Korea is also couched in terms of economic argument. They are bad because they could ruin economy.
When they are asked to say how they judge continued N. Korean aggression and brutality, they basically say that N. Koreans have done it for years and we should not be upset rather be "cool" about it.
Being cool in those under early 40's includes their apathetic attitude toward N. Korean brutality. To them, being worked up about N. Korea is so outdated and beneath dignity. Such attitude has been imposed on the general population that people are shy away from opening denouncing N. Korea. Not that they believe such crap but they want to conform to the 'new normal' set by S. Korean left.
However, it would be gross error to behave that way. Having military dictatorship whose main political plank was anti-communism does not mean that the old view is wrong. N. Korea is indeed abominable totalitarian country and military dictatorship was right about their analysis, even though they used it for political consumption from time to time. The assessment from old military regime is far more accurate than those left-wing experts bent on correcting "lies" spewed by past regimes. It is left's arguments which are total lies.
Having staked so much credibility on a view of N. Korea so diametrically opposite to their political enemy, they made gross error in facing the truth. This is way too outrageous to be explained away by 'natural counter-reaction to past regime's propaganda.' The trouble is that they cannot shake themselves out of it. It penetrated deep inside their psyche and become their second nature. It has become part of their identity. Giving it up and their identity would be at severe jeopardy, and probably create identity breakdown.
Left-wing ideas revolve around their key myths which define them. If one of myths collapses, their whole lifetime faith collapses, making them feel complete hollow. Suddenly their life turns out to be total waste. This is much worse than being exposed as a liar. They have to keep sticking to lies to deter their identity break down and facing the scary truth that their life has been fraud.
In S. Korea, this thing is real threat to local left-wing. N. Korean evil is so unimaginably horrifying. Once the regime falls and its evil nature starts to sink in up close and personal, it will be the end of their myth/faith. Furthermore, in this new situation they become the guilty party who would be forced to penance. I think N. Korean people won't forgive them for next 50 years.
This whole thing would end as a catastrophe for left-wing and their inane imitators. The latter are usually spoiled brats who grow up in affluent new S. Korea and were subject to leftp-wing brainwashing. They will be crushed by the giant boulder of 'brutal truth.'
What can we do the Norks worse than what they do themselves?
We should make certain no aid gets through, freeze li’l Kim’s bank accounts and start arranging “accidents” for North Korean freighters and air transports.
Let them starve and freeze in the dark. When li’l Kim gets the last mouthful of food and the last dose of medicine in North Korea, it will be over.
I think an important thing would be for Japan to crack down on remittances to NK from Koreans in Japan. The current limit on no-declaration remittances is like $100,000....!
Do that 10 times, and it’s a MILLION DOLLARS.
There are many Japanese-Koreans in Japan, and the larger number do see NK as their ancestral homeland.
The limit without declaration should be $2,000 or less, and they should not permit large amounts to be broken down into smaller periodic remittances.
NK depends heavily on these remittances.
I understand exactly what you mean. My wife's mom and dad were born in what is now North Korea. They barely survived the war and it haunts them to this day. That said, their generation is but a small part of todays Korean population. I've traveled to Seoul over 50 times in the last several years and I'd rate it more "upscale" than any city in the US. The disconnect between two (going on three) Korean generations is understandable in that context.
In the much bigger picture, generational discontinuities help define eras. My dad was a product of growing up in the Depression and beginning his adult life fighting in WW2. His once popular values are now alien to America's latest generations. And so it goes. Wouldn't it be nice if we could remember the lessons learned with pain, blood, and heartbreak?
Young South Koreans aren’t upset by the North’s actions because, by and large, they pine for reunification under the benevolent rule of the ‘Great’ Kim Jong-Il.
Seriously. Just listen to their protests against the ‘evil’ Americans and our ‘unjust’ occupation.
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