Koreas come closer: “The devil made us do it!”
“Koreas Sidestep U.S. to Forge Political and Pragmatic Links,” by James Brooke, New York Times YT, 27 June, p. A1.
“U.S. Reports Scant Progress in Talks With North Korea,” by Joseph Kahn, NYT, 27 June, p. A3.
The two Koreas are rapidly dismantling the propaganda-blasting hardware that’s lined the DMZ for many years, blasting each side with messages that neither listened to.
Just another sign of how the two sides are coming together. Kim Jong Il hasn’t changed much at all. On the one hand, he lets little experiments of marketization bloom here and there, but on the other hand he still stonewalls after the recent horrendous rail explosion disaster that left hundreds maimed, refusing to let aid workers come into the country to treat the wounded. Kim talks a nicer tune to the South Koreans, but still engages in major-league narcotics and counterfeit currency trafficking all over Asia. His gulag camps are teaming and desperately starving peasants still risk life and limb to escape, but heh! The next generation of South Korean youth think he’s not half bad!
So South Korea becomes the biggest aid, trade, and tourism source, and Seoul becomes Pyongyang’s biggest apologist around the world.
Why can’t America just leave this lovefest alone?
I’ll tell you why. The harder the line we push the more South Korea finally begins to take some responsibility for the peninsula as a whole, instead of outsourcing all the security stuff to the Americans. This country should have been reunited at the same time the rest of the socialist bloc fell apart. This leftover from the Cold War needs to become Asia’s problem and thus Asia’s solution. So the harder the U.S. line, the more Seoul will step up.
In the end, Seoul must be the biggest player in the six-nation team that ends Kim’s maniacal regime. If young South Koreans who today are convinced that America is the real danger on the peninsula later claim that the reunification was pursued simply to halt “those crazy Americans” from starting the war, then so much the better.
Go ahead Seoul: tear down that DMZ!