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GOLDSEA |
ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Impact of Corean Unification
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 05:52:29 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.]
Yehenala...,
If the korean issue goes to war. USSR and PRC will back NK to protect their interest. It will be just another repeat of the past Korean war and be another stale mate....if the USA economy can last that long this time.
AC Dropout
Wednesday, March 05, 2003 at 07:50:27 (PST)
[24.136.115.189]
DC Observer,
You obviously don't know much about asian culture. Most Korean retain Chinese characters for their names. "Kim" is the character Gold in Chinese. A common surname for people in the North.
Most of east asia used the Chinese character sets until WWII.
AC Dropout
Wednesday, March 05, 2003 at 07:48:32 (PST)
[24.136.115.189]
""We need someone to deal with North Korea with the same masterful political, diplomatic skills that JFK applied during the Cuban missile crisis."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I agree with you...
Right now...the United States feels that...once developed its nuclear weapon system...a country like North Korea is likely to utilize their capability...posing an imminent threat to US national security and therefore it must be disarmed even through the means of force.
However...I feel that because of the fact that North Korea is indeed ruled by such a dangerous regime...the United States and the international community must be even more patient in dealing with this issue. Several crucial facts must be considered. One being that North Korea is a communist country under an individual dictatorship...which means that its national security is solely dependant upon the judgments and decisions of one person. Another important aspect to remember is that North Korea is isolated. Isolation often implies an absence of common deeds and obligations to comply with. The North Korean regime is used to confrontations and seems not to fear fighting on its own. We might recall that in the 1950’s...it did not hesitate to accept a war against a joint army of fifteen countries. This regime cares little about the consequences of their actions and the sufferings of its own people. Furthermore...the North Korean economy is in a collapsed state...people are starving and internal crisis are intensifying. Under such circumstances...governmental propaganda of foreign threat is especially effective in enraging the mass populace and diverting their attentions. Dictators have consistently applied this method in the past. Having lived in East Asia myself with first hand experience of such propaganda...I know well how vulnerable people can be to them. Not to mention that the North Korean regime has educated its people of imperialist threat for generations.
It is valid to assert that North Korea is more than likely to make reckless moves if put under intense pressure. North Korea will not be able to win a war, but it may cause a lot of damages. In fact...just a few weeks ago...North Korea threatened to shift its entire population for a war against the US and hinted that "The whole Korean Peninsula will become a ruin...once the war broke out."
The objective of freeing the Korean peninsula from Nuclear weapons is to stabilize the region and to remove any nuclear threats. Blindly exerting pressure and claiming an uncompromising stance will be counter-progressive to our intentions and can only further destabilize the region.
If not handled properly...an imminent threat might become an actual war and the results of that would not be in accordance with US interests.
Yehenala...
Tuesday, March 04, 2003 at 19:24:54 (PST)
[67.241.61.12]
First of all, I wanted to post this article from a Korean news website:
North ``Corea’’ Proposes Debate
Korea or Corea? North Korea yesterday proposed a debate over the romanization of the nations’ titles, claiming the current form is a relic of the Japanese colonial rule.
After holding a related debate in Pyongyang Thursday, the North’s linguists and historians proposed a joint debate be held between North and South Korean scholars and ethnic Korean scholars worldwide, according to the North’s Korean Central Broadcasting Station yesterday.
``A joint debate by scholars of the North, the South and abroad should take place soon in Pyongyang or in a third country,’’ it read.
The English-speaking world and Germany use ``Korea,’’ but Italy, Spain and France still use the ``C’’ form, such as Coree or Corea.
The state-run North Korean broadcasting station, which usually reflects Pyongyang’s views, alleged changing the romanization from Korea back to Corea was an issue of national pride.
``From 1250s to late 1800s, the international community used Corea, regardless of language differences,’’ the report said. The Choson Dynasty (1392-1910), the last Korean kingdom, also used the spelling, it pointed out.
The change came with the 1910-1945 Japanese colonial rule, it pointed out, accusing Tokyo of enforcing the change on grounds that Japan should come before its colony in alphabetical order.
``Correcting the nation’s standard romanized spelling is about restoring our nation’s history and doing away with the remnants of the Japanese colonial past,’’ it said, quoting North Korean scholars at the debate.
A corresponding movement advocating the ``Corea’’ spelling also exists in South Korea.
Rep. Lee Sin-bom of the Grand National Party proposed an inter-Korean meeting on the issue during a National Assembly session in 1996.
``Research shows that both `Korea’ and `Corea’ were used before 1910, when the Japanese colonized Korea, but the form with a `K’ took over afterwards,’’ he said at the time.
Lee Ki-choo, then vice minister of foreign affairs and trade, conceded a problem exists in the spelling but pointed out the difficulties involved in making such a major change.
By Seo Soo-min Staff Reporter
***
Now, all this debating over the spelling of "Korea vs. Corea" strikes me as rather funny, as does the North Korean government's apparent obsession with issues of Korean national pride.
The truth of the matter is that in 50-70 years, the penninsula we now refer to as "Korea" will cease to exist, having been absorbed politically, economically, culturally and linguistically by China.
Yes, that's it, folks. "Korea" and "Koreans" will cease to exist.
Nobody here will be able to refute the fact that Chinese power in East Asia is growing exponentially.
Sooner or later, the current standoff on the Korean penninsula will give way to a multilateral compromise of some sort. This will result in a situation where Chinese political, military, and economic power will easily engulf Korea.
It's already being reported that Chinese lessons are becoming massively more popular in South Korea, and Chinese businesses are invading the South.
Contrary to what some Koreans will have you believe, that Korean ingenuity and industriousness will offset the burgeoning power of China, and keep Chinese influence at bay, the opposite will happen -- and it already is happening.
The coures is clearly set for China to absorb the entire Korean penninsula.
When China finally absorbs Korea as a province, the Chinese language will be made mandatory in all schools and the Korean language will be relegated to second-class status, like the Catalan language in Eastern Spain.
When all school children are educated primarily in Chinese, new generations of children on the penninsula will identify with China and they will shed the Korean language, their former Korean traditions, even their Korean identity. Commerce and travel between the residents of the penninsula and China will be so great that they will reach a critical mass; when that happens, Korea will finally cease to exist.
So I think it's funny that Koreans in the North and South currently have this obsession with maintaining their national pride and identy vis-a-vis the United States. The North Koreans spout unlimited rhetoric about how the evil American warmongers want to enslave the Korean people and rob them of their identity. South Korean youth march in the streets and burn U.S. flags, screaming that the American "colonialists" should leave.
I think it will be poetic justice when in 50-70 years, the grandchildren of the people we now call "Koreans" and who squabble over "Korea vs. Corea" will all be speaking Chinese as their first language, and will be paying taxes to Beijing.
Probably the only thing they will retain will be names like "Kim" that will sound slightly evocative of the forgotten Korean.
DC Observer
Tuesday, March 04, 2003 at 16:53:54 (PST)
[131.216.163.137]
The most famous Korean in the world should have been, could have been Michael Ri, the 7’9” North Korean basketball player who was denied the chance to play in the NBA more than five years ago because America considered that to be “trading with the enemy.” Instead, all that the Korean people have is an infamous “evil” 5’3” ugly midget in a jumpsuit, who wears 4” platforms, named Kim Jong-Il. Nonetheless, this “evil” midget is having the last laugh at America’s policy of treating North Korea as evil because it is actually making North Korea the most dangerous nation in the world.
In contrast, America has good diplomatic and economic relationship with “commie” China and Vietnam, with both of them now being good and productive nations in the world community. Then we have “commie” Cuba, which does not have diplomatic relation with America, all because of a small but powerful lobby of Cuban-Americans with a personal vendetta against Fidel Castro. To the dismay of these selfish individuals who have kept Cuba’s economic future on hold, Fidel Castro has outlasted everyone’s expectation. Nonetheless, I predict that America will finally have official diplomatic relationship with Cuba once the last of the anti-Castro losers pass away.
Can anyone identify what influential lobby group(s) in America is responsible for the systematic depravation of North Korea turning it into the self-fulfilling “evil” nation it is today?
I Ching
Monday, February 24, 2003 at 23:59:53 (PST)
[199.183.29.75]
dss,
"...the merits of Bush's Korean policy given the hand he was dealt."
Madeline Albright went to North Korea at the end of Clinton's second term. Kim Jong II welcomed the US chief foreign policy advisor to the president. I would say that was a pretty good position for George W. Bush to continue North/South Korean unification.
"...Geoff: do you think the underlying cause of current Korean destabilization..."?
Out of the three options you provide, only one is reasonable:
B)Kim's development, posession and willingness to use nuclear weapons in violation of the 1994 treaty.
Options A and C would put too much responsibility on any US president to solve an Asian question and actually go into North Korea and force them to do exactly what we want them to do. That is not our business to do that. It wasn't wise in the case of Vietnam and it isn't wise in the case of North Korea.
"...NK wasn't in breach of the 94 treaty until very recently and they didn't have a nuke until GWB prompted them by his axis of evil speach."
I never said that NK never had nuclear weapons until GW Bush's axis of evil remark. Go back and read my post again.
"Do you think Kruschev would have even dared to put nukes in Cuba if Nixon was president?"
dss, John F. Kennedy didn't take any BS from Kruschev. He confronted his threat directly, offered viable alternatives and the USSR backed down. Nixon would have caused a nuclear holocaust. Who knows if Kruschev would have provoked Nixon. Thank God it didn't come to that.
"Go do a little bit more reasearch first before you make uninformed claims..."
dss, when the president of the US makes a public remark, people listen; the stock market listens; the world listens. GOP strategists and the Republicans on the Supreme Court thought all they had to do was put George Bush in the White House and he could just perform formalities, conduct photo ops, exchange pleasantries and tell him what to say, and everything would be OK.
Well, that is not the case. That may have been the case a century ago, but not in this complex world. When the US president puts another country on notice that we're coming after them, the American people should not expect that we won't have other countries be suspicious of us and, furthermore, hate us.
The president represents us, we rely on his leadership and he, ultimately, must guide the country through his policy decisions and their consequences.
Geoff DB
GeoffDB02@aol.com
Sunday, February 23, 2003 at 21:37:19 (PST)
[172.195.101.35]
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