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ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Impact of Corean Unification
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 05:52:34 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 (Korean for those who prefer the colonial spelling) 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.]
> FOR THE JEWS!
As much as the Jews are playing the silent-majority-christians for all its worth - it's actully comical if you think about it - they do provide the very important role of keeping infidel-muslims distracted in the middle east.
For the western civilzation, having a take-no-prisoner state that is actully non-christian, but "sympathithic" to most western values to keep the muslims in check is invaluable.
Now, some will say I am biased. That state if Israel is the cause. Chicken or the egg?
NY?BOY
Sunday, February 02, 2003 at 23:13:51 (PST)
[24.90.48.98]
tigger
Not bad, not bad at'll.
Now, the big question. Now that China has got the market economy religion, say in oh 100 years, can China with its confucian operating system ever surpass or eclips the western civilization?
NY?BOY
Sunday, February 02, 2003 at 23:01:20 (PST)
[24.90.48.98]
tigger,
You wrote, “Christianity has reached such popularity because its main focus is on a subject few religions mention. The soul and life after death.”
I disagree. Actually, it is the tremendous sex appeal of Jesus with his long hair, slender Nordic features in a loincloth that accounts for his popularity, that plus those blonde, blue-eyed, clean-cut Mormon missionary elders knocking on the doors of every nation. ^_^
Sorry to be the one to break you the terrible truth, but according to scientists, Jesus was Semitic with some African blood, had olive skin, crude features, short curly hair, and a big nose, sort of resembling Brutus, Popeye’s bully. http://www.oomo.org/from_science_and_computers%2C_a_new_face_of_jesus.htm The heavy airbrushing of Jesus’ portrait a thousand year ago was done to make him more presentable to the European audience.
At any rate, Jesus is going to have serious competition in Yao Ming, whose popularity in East Asia has easily surpassed that of Jesus’. That guy is practically a saint; he still lives with his parents and even likes to drink his mom’s soup. ^_^
True, Yao Ming can never offer anyone eternal life. But if we must go by that criterion, then Islam beats Christianity hands down with the promised 72 virgins in paradise. Perhaps Islam should be the religion of choice for Korea. Even the Altaic supremacists would go for that, as it would link Koreans closer culturally with the Turks and the Uzbeks. ^_^ But mix the technical competence and fiery temper of a Korean with Islamic jihad and it would be time for the world to shake and piss in its pants! In that respect we are lucky that Kim Jong-Il is not a Muslim. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein wishes he could only be Kim Jong-Il, although certainly not in the “looks” department. ;-)
But seriously, in retrospect, the sum totality of the history of Western civilization from the time of the Roman Empire has been simply a very long delusional millennial wait for the return of Jesus Christ, interspaced by bloody sectarian conflicts over the proper way to worship the Lord. (In my opinion, the “missionary position” is most appropriate. ^_^) Of course, there has been some intellectual brilliance from certain secular rebel-type individuals who took the West out of the Medieval Dark Ages caused by the Church. But as we stand today, the Christian West sees its mission in life is to prepare the world, using the guise of democracy and human rights to pry open closed doors in other nations for the purposes of spreading the Word of God, for the second arrival of the Mother of all Tyrants, Jesus Christ to begin his Kingdom, where there will be no democracy or freedom. The mind boggles. Incidentally, in 1992, Billy Graham met with Kim Jong-Il in North Korea to personally share the Word of God with him. Needless to say, Kim Jong-Il preferred the cult of Kim to the cult of Jesus.
No disrespect is overtly intended to any reader of religious persuasion by my light comments above, which I hope would get us all closer to the truth. And as they say in the Bible, “The truth shall set you free.”
I Ching
Sunday, February 02, 2003 at 22:03:00 (PST)
[199.183.29.132]
Hopes of early unification are over.
Actually, Koreans should have despaired in 1994 when the world decided that Kim Jung Il would truly follow a piece of paper. While North Korea starts to reveal its true nuclear capacity the South Koreans have only two choices. Keep dreaming the sweet dream that NK threw to us in order to gain time and money or wake up and realize that reunification has once again fallen out of our clutches.
NK's nuclear ability ensures that they will be practically invulnerable to any sort of pressure. They hold hostage South Korea and Japan. Some people bitch about different treatment for NK and Iraq, but NK shows that Iraq must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons. Chess players treat a pawn about to become a queen and a queen differently. Obviously.
That NK is able to mass manufacture nukes may cause an outburst of nationalistic pride from Koreans and Asians everywhere but it is not something to be celebrate. Kim Jung Il now tightened his iron rule upon its now more than ever free to torture his suffering people, rape the land of the Korean heritage, and exhort tribute from the cowed Koreans of the South.
Ok, I'll answer some of the attacks on Christianity. There was no mass eviction of Palestinians(who are of the same ethnicity as Jordanians) even today there are high ranking officials in the IDF who are Arabs(watch CNN). There were mass migrations of Arabs just before the 1948 invasions of Israel(before the west supported Israel) when the invaders asked them to move out so they could do their dirty work. The invaders lost and those who heeded their words were abandoned.
And imagine. Christians took over the Holy Land and made Israel-
FOR THE JEWS!
Christianity has reached such popularity because its main focus is on a subject few religions mention. The soul and life after death. Confucianism as a religion was empty even before it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The old Chinese took up the many sects of Taoism, Buddhism kept on strong even after the Yi dynasty shut it down, Japan has its Shinto beliefs.
Today we have communism(if you want a bloody faith, Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot have killed 70million+) and simple materialistic atheism. All empty. Watch the European and Japanese society disintegrate.
Christianity is a baseless, proofless faith. Yet, it rings true in so many people's minds.
"Man without mysticism is a monster"-Whittaker Chambers
That a commie should speak about stifling free thought is plain ironic but anyways some of the best thinkers of the western world were devout Christians. And Christians have even gone to war over free thought(30yr war anyone?). Because Christianity concerns itself with the real and ultimate truth it is confrontational, but shouldn't everyone seek the truth?
tigger
Sunday, February 02, 2003 at 07:10:01 (PST)
[210.180.96.42]
I Ching:
I think you are nuts to write that we don't need Jesus. You must be from Communist China where Christianity is forbidden. No wonder your country sux.
Loco Bruddah
Sunday, February 02, 2003 at 00:31:37 (PST)
[66.171.51.239]
I Ching
If you going to fight or go to war over something, why not set up the highest stakes - the soul or life after death. I mean, what fight over - land and gold or women - been there, done that.
nytherevboy
Sunday, February 02, 2003 at 00:28:05 (PST)
[24.90.48.98]
Confucian Dog
Ultimately it's about individualism and individual rights, to be superior to Confusiam dogma, when one talks about wealth creation/market economy and technology innovation. (Japan is NOT a capitalist society.)
Without all these advances due to the benefit of the individualism, you and I wouldn't have the dis-pleasure of meeting like this.
Confusion dogma and socialism can only take us so far - Chinese technolgy and social advances stopped evolving - oh what, several centuries ago. Evolutionary advances happends in incremental steps, if you have to justify a advance for teh entire group b4 you are allowed for evolutionary advaces, it'll get stuck - just as it did in China, serveral centuries ago.
The richer and smarter one gets, the more individual one becomes - this is a natural law. And the richer and smarter you wanna get, you gotta leave the pack behind.
Individualism is ultimately traced back to Judism, when its founder had the audacist to bargain, negotiate with G_d eye ball to eye ball.
Every dogma has its extremes, I would say an extreme version oc Confuciam dogma, Dog, is Seppuku as practiced by the Japanese; and its ugly opposite - not the best example - is the Muslam suicide zealots, who kills non-beleivers in order to assure himself an early entry into a heaven with all the virgins he can want.
Confucian dogma has its uses and its good points. I like to know what they are.
NY1+1=3BOY
Saturday, February 01, 2003 at 23:54:19 (PST)
[24.90.48.98]
AC,
Learn to read sarcasmn.
Which is worse? Being ruled by NK or
having the Americans hanging around to ensure NK doesn't kill you?
For America, fighting in Corea is a lot easier when you already have access to 1/2 the peninsula.
huu76
Friday, January 31, 2003 at 17:59:45 (PST)
[65.95.192.192]
NYx+y=Xboy,
You wrote, “One thing about (the) cult of Jesus, it singularly allows one to forgive and forget, everyone has a new chance, new beginning at anytime...it allows one to jump ahead and try new things...it’s probably the best solution for NK citizens to get over their schizophrenic brainwashing - when they start toward market/open economy.”
I respectfully disagree. North Korea does not need Jesus, although conservative right-wing America and you seem to think otherwise. In fact, this is the basis of an active ideological battle that is waging in North Korea right now. America is more concerned about making North Korea Christian than they are in the economic development of North Korea. America has done nothing to advance North Korea economically. Instead, evangelical Christian groups have been illegally smuggling hundreds of thousands of Bibles into North Korea to underground worshippers, who in turn are regularly shipped off to the gulags for deprogramming, which in turn becomes America’s topic of choice to embarrass North Korea. In contrast, Kim Jong-Il is very interested in economic development since he has concluded many trade agreements with South Korea, and now, sections of the DMZ are about to be opened to allow trade with South Korea. North Korea deeply wants membership to international trade organizations and international recognition, but America treats it like a pariah state partly because of North Korea’s refusal to accept Jesus. To this day, the conservative right-wing Christians have consistently been the most anti-China and North Korea lobby in America. The North Korean people truly want to advance economically just as China and South Korea have integrated with the world economy. Michael Ri wanted to play basketball with the NBA, but America held him back because they considered that to be ‘trading with the enemy.’ It is the same old silly game that America was playing with China from 1949 to 1971, until America realized that it needed to use ‘commie’ China to counter the Soviets, while America was losing the war against communism in Vietnam.
From a purely economical point of view, Christianity is counter-productive because much time is wasted in endless mass gatherings to commemorate the achievements of the great leader, its inherent anti-materialism and anti-capitalism teachings, its stifling dogma severely limiting free thinking, and its disincentive to work as everything is shared communally. There is fundamentally very little difference between the cult of Kim and the cult of Jesus. The only thing that is unique about Jesus’ teaching, whereas everything else has been borrowed from other religions at the time, is Jesus asking us to “Love thy enemy.” In the end, Jesus will just become a hypocrite who will hate and annihilate his enemy, Satan. Even today the Jews consider Jesus to be a fraud and a leader of a deviant Jewish cult better known as Christianity.
As to what orbit the Koreas are moving, it is clear that South Korea is no longer America’s satellite state. Lately, it has been South Korea telling America what to do. It forced America to apologize about the accidental deaths of two schoolgirls from what is otherwise a very ordinary vehicular accident. South Korea even forced America to negotiate with North Korea making the Bush Administration eat their words. Meanwhile, South Korea continues to sign economic agreements with North Korea. Obviously, the Bush Administration has been completely embarrassed by its wayward satellite.
I Ching
Thursday, January 30, 2003 at 23:15:37 (PST)
[209.232.16.86]
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