Quote:
Originally Posted by k9870
The south should bomb a military post in the north.
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Which would have the same effect as declaring war, or escalate the situation. It would be one thing to do that if the South were sure that the North was serious about war. But at this point, the ROK's leaders understand (as do American leaders) that DPRK provocations are to be treated more like natural disasters than serious threats to national security. They're basically just something that the Kims have to do in order to politically out-maneuver their rivals to-be within the Korean People's Army.
Without sounding insensitive (because I hate dictators and human rights violators as much as anyone else), I lost a lot of sympathy for the North Koreans after I learned more about the internal politics of the DPRK. One of the things that Westerners fail to understand is that political repression usually isn't evil totalitarian regimes repressing democratic opposition. More often than not, it's totalitarians repressing other totalitarians who would be just as bad, or worse, if in power. That's how things were in Iraq under Saddam, and from what I understand, that's how things are in North Korea. In situations like that, it's a lot harder for me to feel moved.
There wasn't even much of a democratic movement in South Korea itself until around the 1970s. Part of the reason we kept Rhee and his successors in power for so long was that we knew most of the Korean population hated us and wanted an anti-American regime in power. Plenty of them also supported Kim il-Sung. We only started pressuring the South Korean regime to hold free elections after CIA analysts concluded that the democratic, Western-neutral opposition had a good chance at winning. Before that, most South Koreans probably would have been fine with an undemocratic, America-hating dictator in power.