Today the South Korean and American military have a joint training session which will last for 12 days. It's the biggest exercise of the year and is usually met with animosity from the North. The strange thing is that I only heard about the news from the bbc website. After checking The Korean Herald website sure enough there is a report, but not headline news.
It's a strange feeling living on the door step of a rogue state. Most of the time you never think about it and then you here they are threatening to immanently destroy Seoul because South Korea elected the 'wrong' president. The recent warning comes before the latest military training by the South and the Yanks. Incitements to hatred and fear out pore like a 1970s cold war propaganda video. Threats of instant invasion by the North or the barbaric and hostile outsiders threatening North Korea's enlightened path. However, as far as I can see the average person on the street is either completely aware of the North's bitter utterances and treats them as an annoyance rather than a threat, or is completely disinterested.
Kim Jung Ill has begun grooming his third son for power now that he can see his health is failing. I wonder what will happen to the North once he is gone. The contrast between the freedom of Seoul and that of Pyongyang is striking and saddening. In my view if there ever were a people who could embrace democracy and freedom, yet are held back by a dictator it must be the Koreans.
Over the last two years I have think the North has gradually increased its rhetoric against the South. Growing ever more venomous and spiteful towards it's southern kin. As the Republic grows prosperous, its people become well fed, and its young enjoy ever more integration with the international system, North Korea starves. Its encirclement ever more evident and ever more unified. Its traditional ally is departing on ideological grounds and lacking any need to continue trading. Its outbursts become ever more synonymous with the thrashings of an ignored child. Screaming louder to be heard and threatening to use violence if it is not acknowledged as the great nation it thinks it is. Sadly North Korea continues in its delirium to think itself an international power worth listening to; while in reality it is little more than a thorn in Asian unity. \Meanwhile North Koreans suffer under its theocracy.
One local man I spoke to put the military training in a better perspective.
'about time the US troops do something aside from hitting on girls in frog'
It's 6:35pm and no bombs have fallen yet. Fingers crossed.
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Is there such a thing as a single 'Korean' nation anymore? After more than half a century living under arguably the world's most repressive regime, in a land so isolated from the rest of the world that it might as well be on Neptune, do you think the good people of the DPRK have the same way of thinking and capacity for liberal democracy as the southern Republic?
ReplyDeleteCorrection: On Neptune they would at least receive some early radio and tv broadcasts by now, so North Korea is maybe even more isolated than Neptunians ;-)