South Korean officials appeared to feel vindicated today after their high profile “live fire drills” against disputed territory along the maritime border with North Korea failed to start a massive, peninsula-destroying war. Then they went back to work trying to figure out more ways to stir up the North.
The drill was virtually identical to a previous drill which had sparked a brief but deadly exchange of fire along the border, and officials were ordering civilians into bunkers in anticipation that the new drill would start a full on war.
But North Korea, despite harsh rhetoric, didn’t bite, which is to say didn’t go along with starting the massive war, and the United States mockingly praised the North, with State Department officials saying this was how they “ought to behave.”
So South Korean officials are now lookingh at yet more drills to “send a strong massage” to North Korea, which is to say they are going to take a few more swings at the hornets nest and see if anything comes out this time.
It is certainly gratifying that the drill managed to not start a massive war that would kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people, but it must be concerning how many people seem to be taking that as a challenge to provoke the North even more. The aversion of war was certainly a sensible move by North Korea’s notoriously flakey government: how much more sensibility can be counted on?
It seems Mr Ditz is less familiar with the peninsular issues than he is with, say Afghanistan. The drills that SK gov is pushing is strictly for the domestic politics, or rather politicking. It is unlikely to provoke NK gov as they already achieved what they set out to achieve. You see, Bill Richardson came out yesterday (local time) and said that he and his NK counterpart agreed on basically two things: one is that the IAEA folks will return to Nk and resume their inspection, and the other is that NK will export some nuclear materials (to SK in return for some economic compensation, presumably). This poses some annoyance for SK gov, in that this was exactly the plan of SK gov before the last presidential election. Back then pres. MH Roh worked out a basic framework with NK people to buy NK nuke stuff. After some technical issues, Obama being Obama (i.e timid) and the most crucially SK presidential election in which the party of Roh lost to the conservatives, this was binned. The next SK president (current one), when it comes to NK policy was basically ABR: Anything But Roh. But but but. Now his game is up. ABR had some effect within the domain of domestic SK politics. And such was allowed because Obama did not really have any concrete position on NK issues. Now Obama made up his mind, this kind of brinksmanship from SK would be frowned upon. But the current SK pres. Lee has to maintain his conservative street cred, hence the drills.
So, summary. NK got what they want, a better relationship with US. SK did a lot of dumb things because people voted for a stupid guy to be their leader. And now SK will have to pay for NK's gain. Oh, by the way, there really is no possibility of war from SK. Current president.. let's just say that he has no balls to do that despite some idiotic statements from him and his flunkies.
In fact the South Korean pres and not the NK leader looks like the nut case.
And the US would stop joining these ROK "exercises" if it were serious about peace – but of course it is not. The US is simply trying to roil the waters on China's borders.
john walsh
p.s. Can we not call the North the DPRK and the South the ROK, their official names? Is this too hard for Americans?
pps. I advise people to read the English online edition of China Daily each day to follow things like this. You will get a different flavor of things and then you can compare it to the NYT. You might be surprised at which outlet has more propaganda.
Lets just leave Korea, 'nuff said.
The megalomanic SK, marching foreward as learned and teached by their US advisors, play the
game of selfdestruction for themselves, and the rest of the world! Why is that Clown Obama not
able to stop them????
The North Koreans = Crazy like a fox.