The current Shoot-Ex on the Korean border is a sign of weakness of the North Korean government. North Korea is attempting a power transfer to the third member of the Kim family. This guy, Kim Jung whats-his-face is a perfect zero. Nobody knows anything about him. Whether he has the stones required to run the nastiest dictator ship ever is unknown. North Korea is dirt poor, unable to feed its people, and yet maintains a humongous army, builds nukes and missiles. There has gotta be a LOT of unhappy campers up there. The rifle carrying privates in the North Korea army all come from somewhere, have family that is going hungry, and might not obey an order to fire on civilians. Nobody really knows.
In short, North Korea could come unglued, overnight. The army and police stop obeying orders, and what little national economy they have comes to a stop. People start dying for lack of food and water.
In this case, South Korea would be under enormous pressure to do something. Lot of South Koreans still have kin living in the North and they will demand their kinfolk be saved. So the South Korean army will drive north in trucks full of food and water and peace flags waving from bumper mounts. If it were just up to the Koreans, things would settle out, the north would become part of the south. But the Chinese won't like this.
China likes having North Korea. It gives them a border shared with a pliable client state. It lets them poke a stick at the Americans and get them all hot and bothered, at little cost to themselves. The idea of having a pushy economic rival, who is hand in glove with the Americans, on their border is anathema to China. To prevent this, the Chinese will send in peacekeepers.
Now we have the People's Liberation Army and the South Korean Army cruising around the same turf. The possibility for nasty shooting incidents is very great. We don't want to think about escalation. The PLA is very big and formidable, but so is South Korea, and the South Koreans have that American connection. A lot of Americans, like myself, have been to South Korea over the years, and brought back very favorable impressions of the Korean people. The Koreans have been loyal and faithful allies for 60 years. The US government would be under great pressure to back up the South Koreans. And that could lead to hostilities between the US and China, which is not a good thing.
I don't know just how to avoid a catastrophe here, but I can at least see the dangers involved.
4 comments:
To me your analyst of the Korean situation seems about right.
Ken G Price
Thanks. The subject came up again in dinner table conversation. There was some diversity of opinion about the North Korean army. As long as the army obeys orders, the North's regime is secure. Things come un glued when the army goes flaky and refuses to break up civilian demonstrations. I have no solid information on this point, and I doubt anyone else does either.
I agree. I'm going to guess that they're trying to hand off power to the 3rd son as a figurehead with the army pulling the strings.
I think Kim Jong-il is trying to avoid his son becoming a figurehead, but I don't see how a twenty-something educated in Europe will have the clout necessary to hold the different North Korean factions together.
Nobody knows who is calling the shots in the current regime. Is it Kim Il? Or is it some unknown figure in the army, the security police, heavy industries, collective farms, where ever? If there is such a behind the scenes mastermind, I've never heard his name. So anything is possible.
On the other hand, its traditional to create a foreign crisis to generate national unity in times of stress. Provoke a crisis, cool it off, and then brag that Kim Il whats-his-face has stood up to those nasty counter revolutionary and capitalist pigs from south of the border.
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