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ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Impact of Corean Unification
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 05:52:40 PM)
t's been over a decade since the Iron Curtain came crashing down in Europe. The Bamboo Curtain is little more than a quaint phrase. Yet the Cold War remains very much alive on the Corean peninsula.
Across a 186-mile DMZ glare opposing armies collectively totaling 1.7 million. By all reckoning the Pyongyang regime should have become ideological roadkill following the collapse of communism. Instead, it remains an impregnable roadblock to the economic integration of East Asia, the world's fastest-growing region.
How can an economic nonentity be such a roadblock?
Consider its location at what should have been the crossroads of East Asia. With 56% of the peninsula's land mass, North Corea separates on one side the world's greatest market and labor pool (China) and the biggest reserve of natural resources (Sibera) from, on the other, two of the world's leading technological and manufacturing nations (Japan and South Corea).
But for Pyongyang's intransigence Seoul would already be linked by railroads and superhighways to Beijing, Moscow, Berlin, Paris and London. All those cities would also be linked to Tokyo via a bridge across the 126-mile strait dividing Shimonoseki from Pusan. The savings in shipping cost and time alone could amount to tens of billions of dollars a year. Such a trans-Eurasian land link would accelerate the cultural and economic integration of not only East Asia, but the world. In the process, the Corean peninsula would shed the burden of financing the world's most heavily fortified frontier and become the center of the global economy.
That's the vision dancing before the eyes of farsighted statesmen and business leaders pushing for the political leaps of faith needed to keep Pyongyang taking its unsteady baby steps toward opening North Corea.
But skeptics and pessimists abound. Even a loose confederation with the North would only burden and destabilize South Corea's economy and political system, they argue. For decades to come the impact on the global economy would be entirely negative as investors and customers begin shunning the uncertainties, denying capital and trading partners to hundreds of world-class Corean manufacturers. The ultimate result, argue the naysayers, would be to throw a monkey wrench into an alignment that has allowed three decades of strong growth for East Asia.
What is the likely impact of Corean unification?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
What scares me most about North Korea is the fact that the people there are obviously suffering, destitute and ignorant to the rest of the world, YET, they remain 100% faithful to their government. They are worse than the Soviets in that the Soviets were patriotic but knew when to jump ship...wherin, the North Koreans don't.
Missles in North Korea don't bother me at all. If they launch anything, it will be shot down quickly by either China or America. North Korea can't strike anything east of Idaho so itis likely California or Washington are endangered.
Invading North Korea is like going to K-Mart, we've done it already.
Luckily, I had plenty of family in the Korean war who were able to get pictures of the place. I'm never going there so it helps to know what it looks like before the carpet bombing starts.
The North Koreans have NOTHING to live for, yet, they remain patriotic. They are more likely to use nuclear weapons in defense considering they are ignorant to the world and suicide is common among certain groups of Asians.
Frankly, I wish the North Koreans would just give up the communist idealogies and be socialists like China. I would like to see them reunite with South Korea considering the fact that South Koreans stationed at the boarder are eager to meet them and Korean youth want to be a part of them.
North Korea is a very sad situation. The US can't nuke N.Korea but it is likely they would send B'2 Spirits armed with 16 FireBombs a piece and F'16's with Bunker busting JDAMS. We would kill everyone there before they got off the first shot and in the action, probably hurt South Korea to.
I have plenty of friends and in-laws in South Korea and to see them return home and wonder whether or not the US will accidentaly kill them or the North Koreans will makes my heart bleed.
38'th Parrallel of DOOM !
Friday, January 17, 2003 at 04:46:23 (PST)
[211.156.2.115]
ka and huu76,
It is apparent that you two have not fully digested the enormous and dramatic structural changes occurring in Northeast Asia, preferring instead to simply dismiss atheistic and leftist Roh’s recent election victory as the work of a bunch of young spoiled Korean punks and to view the world with an outmoded Cold War mentality. Both of you lack the vision and understanding to see the bigger picture of where Asia is going. Almost a year ago, I posted that South Korea is about to undergo a dramatic change in its anti-communist attitude and that leftist candidate Roh Mu Hyun was worth watching.
Now I project that within a year’s time China will replace Japan and South Korea as America’s most important partner and ally in securing peace in East Asia, while South Korea drift to the left. Already, China is officially a partner in America’s War Against Terrorism. To give due credit where it is deserved, I should mention that it was Zbigniew Brzezinski, the ex-National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard” who advocated having China as the Far Eastern anchor for America’s interest. The stage is now set because only China, with its good or improving relationship with virtually every East Asian nation, can extricate America from its diplomatic blunder in North Korea. Of course, the marriage between China and America will be simply one of convenience, so America can run off and pursue its one true love - its Judeo-Christian agenda. (Sorry fellas, but we Asians have always been of secondary interest to Americans, in spite of some of your fantasies to believe otherwise.)
So what will happen to China after America finishes taking out the Arabs in ten or so years’ time? Well, by that time China will have safely grown to become an 800-pound gorilla with a pair of fanatically anti-American guards protecting its front door, (the Koreas,) just as Harvard University Professor Samuel Huntington foresaw almost ten years ago. Your being Korean-Americans, I realize this projection comes to you as being very distressing because it goes against everything you have been indoctrinated to hate as a child; but we simply cannot deny the fact that we are headed irreversibly in that direction. Just last year, China has just become South Korea’s No. 1 trade partner surpassing the U.S. In fact, much of South Korea’s most current GNP growth and prosperity in the otherwise sluggish world economy comes directly from its massive trade surplus with China, which potentially has the world’s largest consumer market. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_03/b3816029.htm Hence, South Korea can now ‘afford’ to be anti-American.
I Ching
Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 22:30:33 (PST)
[206.217.6.29]
Let me introduce you all to this very informative news article I read on MSNBC:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/859191.asp
This of course is an old news for those who follow what is going on in NK, but right now there is political genocide in NK. If you read 1984, well, George Orwell's grim fantasy world has become reality in Pyong Yang--everything except the surveillance camera television.
AC, you keep on going on about evil white US "containing" China. You tell me what does that mean by "containing" China. I mean, what kind of world do you want to live in? Do you want US to give logistical support for the PRC invasion of Taiwan? Do you want US to stay out of Afghanistan and instead ask the PRC to march into Afghanistan and bomb every al-qaeda infested cave on behalf of US? Do you want US to lift the nuclear umbrella off of SK, and instead force SK to become a Chinese province? I mean, why would we need to "contain" China unless China was sending out military forces abroad? Of course, China has indeed taken aggressive postures certainly in Tibet and certainly on the Indians.
China certainly has a legitimate interest in hoping that NE China is not flooded with NK refugees. And to this end, I offer a simple solution: Force the refugees to take ships to SK financed by SK government.
How can you expect me, a Korean American, to have any sort of friendship with you, a Chinese, when you incessantly insist that the NK refugees who are seized by Chinese security agents and sent to die in NK, is noone's problem except NK's?
MOney money money, you keep talking about how great CHina is becoming richer, but at the same time scoff at SK materialism and US capitalism. Isn't it an irony, that the true communist here is me, and the true bourgeois oppressor is you? All I'm asking for is that NK children to be fed, NK women not to be sold to sexually slavery in Jilin, NK men to find a way to better themselves besides joining the DPRK army. And to this end, all I'm asking is that my chinese friends would support the flow of NK refugees into SK. I mean, can't you see the beauty of this?
Today there is some kid in freezing cold North Korea who is in a concentration, very much like the Nazi concentration camps. These are the places where NK refugess are sent to once the Chinese police rounds them up and sends them back to NK. I am not playing "arm-chair" general here. Today there are SK Christian missionaries, those whom I Ching especially mocks, who are one of the few people left building under-ground railroad so that CHinese police do not obliterate EVERYONE who flees NK out of fear or desperation.
Treat me well and I'll call you friend, and treat me poorly and I'll call you my enemy. I see my sister being hunted down like a dog, beaten, dragged to die by Chinese policemen, and you tell me that it is not a problem. You say, well, you say precious little. You look the other way and pretend it's not there. Then you point the finger to Uncle Sam, and do what Kim Jong Il likes to do--just pin everything on Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam to the rescue! Only if Uncle Sam did this, only if Uncle Sam didn't do this, only if. But you don't really talk about how we can possibly free the people there. Well I'm telling you that only if China WANTS NK refugees to LIVE, they will live. Right now, Beijing wants them to die. You think I'm brainwashed. You have stopped reading NYTIMES, Washingtonpost, BBC, Asahi news, Joonang daily, and all the world's news agencies except for the People's Daily.
You think you have become very wise, because you have realized that newspapers do in fact lie to us. Congratulations. I hope now that you can take this lesson and heed it well when you read the People's Daily.
huu76,
It is so very tiring and disheartening when I see so many people of Asian or in fact even non-asian ancestry who writes purely out of pride, and fascist notions of racial superiority. I don't mind when someone points out a legitimate gripe against America, but most of the times, it's ignorant children who discovered that the world isn't such a nice place, and since America's at the top, it must be America's fault. Why does everyone have a double standard for the US? If Saddam Hussein gasses Kurds, well that's all swell, because he is an Iraqi. If George W threathens to invade Iraq, because of WMD, well geez golly George W must be a madman. I see a hord of Chinese people with the same type of mentality German youths had prior to Hitler. "We need living space! Let's take over Tibet! America wiped out the native americans, once we take over the Tibetans, they will say that our colonization policy was superior to theirs!" I wonder how many Chinese people believe that the NK holocaust is the fabrication of American Jews at Washingtonpost. Of course, it's really saddening when I see so many Koreans and Americans alike who holds these types of delusional thoughts.
Just how many of us writes thinking about the old lady who has to wash her clothes by a freakin' freezing river in NK, because Kim Jong Il doesn't know how to supply enough electricity? Or the NK orphan who is taking care of his younger siblings, because his parents are on the Chinese side begging for table scraps?
Reading these postings scared the bejezus out of me, because it appears that most of the world is indeed stupid, ignorant, heartless, and at the same time believe that they are 100% correct. It's not so much a differences in opinion I'm seeing, but just an out-right denial of facts---like the modern day holocaust that is NK.
ka
Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 14:29:22 (PST)
[168.103.180.35]
huu76,
"With Iraq, the U.S. faces virtually no direct consequences (nuclear, casualties) from war."
So I guess if death tolls mounts in Isreal, Suadi Arabia, Kuwait occurs due to war, we just bury it in the sand.
And since your not paying for the war its all just free entertainment for you.
AC Dropout
Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 10:44:20 (PST)
[24.136.115.189]
Geoff DB,
What does Bush care. He's a trust fund baby. Like even if the entire USA went in the trash, I'm sure the Bush clan have enough foreign bank accounts to last them a few generations.
AC Dropout
Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 08:57:05 (PST)
[24.136.115.189]
ka,
"US was invited onto S Korean soil. So since when did the Dali Lama invite the People's Army into the Himalayas?"
And since when did China acknowledge the independence of Tibet Province. They recognized the sucession of Out Mongolia and Siberia. But never Tibet. Get your history straight.
USA was invited to leave SK recently to by popular vote. I don't see Bush acknowledging the will of the SK people yet.
I also notice Roh begging Bush to reconsider his position on NK. I don't see much movement on that front either.
Now China is asking Bush to give up on Taiwan, if they want China assistance in defusing the situation in NK. Well I guess that mean were going to lose 2 democracy puppet states in one presidency. You see what happens when dumb people enter the leadership position.
Yeah and you're completely mute when we return Mexican refugees back to Mexico, where they to face harsh conditions.
I find it even more disturbing you would even contemplate supporting the current Bush adminstration policy on NK at cost of live to your SK compariots. Bush was really thinking about the best interest of the people of SK with his axis of evil garbage.
I guess it is true, once a dog always a dog. Time to wake up, the current USA administration does care about asia.
AC Dropout
Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 08:55:42 (PST)
[24.136.115.189]
huu76,
Education yourself in the "Cold War" period and USA involvement in Indeonesia, Maylasia, Philippines, during that period as well.
AC Dropout
Thursday, January 16, 2003 at 08:42:47 (PST)
[24.136.115.189]
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