korean unification studies

Our first guest post is a doozy of a diatribe by ‘anonymous’. I must say though, I don’t adhere to the last line!!!

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Perhaps it was reflective of the ‘zero sum’ Cold War era, or perhaps it was actually reflective of the leaders themselves, but Park Chung Hee and Kim Il-Sung, both in their own way seemed to harbour a much greater desire to achieve national unification than the current leaders of South and North Korea.

Lets look at Roh Moo-Hyun. Sure, he talks a lot about unification and seemingly does a lot on unification, but - is he seeking unification or just seeking to delay it so that ROK living standards are sustained in the face of the economic challenge that unification would present? While some people accuse him of pandering to Kim Jong-Il, in fact, he is really just doing what many South Koreans want, ensuring that young Koreans (actually their parents) can continue to spend millions on learning English, designer clothes and the latest cell phones. When the conservatives get in, they will do exactly the same, except with a bit more attitude.

Now Kim Jong-Il. The flame of unifying the peninsula by force went out of his sails when his fat butt could no longer fit into nappies. Lets face it, before he even regals his troops to invade the South they’re just as likely to lop of his head, drag that iron statue of his daddy through the streets and start running South to learn English, buy designer clothes and talk loudly on the latest cell phones.

Unification of the peninsula is a dead issue. Nobody who can do anything about it really wants it. The only people who care are the poor turds in the concentration camps up North and a few eccentric foreigners (mostly Germans and American evangelists) that make more noise (and less sense) than a Southern Baptist teetotaller drive in a Bavarian beer hall.

If the South really wanted unification and if unification really was a burning issue of divided families and desperate separation, then letting the North collapse in a pile of communist economic rubble would be pursued. There would be no payments of truckloads of cows, no shiploads of cement, no repairing of roads and infrastructure. Only shit-loads of propaganda, balloons floated radios across the DMZ and occasional infiltrations to kidnap members of the fat elite in Pyongyang so they can serve jail terms for crimes against humanity. Finally, as the decrepit communist economy breathes its last gasp, the South would welcome the implementation of a well prepared plan to take over the god forsaken place and repair the damage done by the fat man and his dad. But it ain’t this way. Unification is a dead issue (ipso facto so is this blog).