(In Hindsight 41/Jun 8-13, 2010)
The world is a boring place these days. There just aren’t enough wars being fought.
The North Koreans finally did something exciting and torpedoed a South Korean ship last March. Last week, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak responded, “If the enemy continues to taunt us… they will have to suffer the consequences!”
The consequences, it seems, are another good sleep for the border guards.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted on action: “For nothing to happen would be a very bad precedent!” Tell that to the president.
(Since then, nothing has happened.)
Mr. Gates has also conceded that “there’s not a lot you can do about it, to be quite frank, unless you’re willing at some point to use military force. And nobody wants to do that.”
Well, why didn’t he say so in the first place?
Worse yet, Mr. Lee has been telling investors, “There is absolutely no possibility of a full-scale war on the Korean peninsula. Don’t worry about a war: invest!” Is this the level to which politics has (been) sunk? He’s more interested in doing deals than patriotically slaughtering the enemy! Shameful!
At least, South Korea has OFFICIALLY REFERRED North Korea to the U.N. Security Council, which is the harshest thing it has done since the last war. Ooh! The U.N.! I’m sure those guys will fire at least a statement against North Korea.
Thus Mr. Lee continues his diplomatic dance. Is this Korean suffering from chorea? (If so, will he at least raise it to the level of severe chorea, also called Hemiballismus or ballism, in which people violently strike out with their limbs? Does he have the balls for it? Or will both Hemispheres remain inactive?)
Then again, Mr. Lee is more aggressive than his predecessors such as Nobel Peace Prize (or should it be renamed the Chicken Prize?) winner Kim Dae-jung; and has torpedoed the Sunshine Policy of greater contact with North Koreans: having effectively told them to put it where the sun doesn’t shine.
And remember, the two Koreas are still TECHNICALLY at war because they didn’t sign a peace treaty after 1953. But that’s little consolation.
Our hopes rest with the other leader, Kim Jong-il of North Korea, whom former EU Commissioner Chris Patten reportedly described, after a meeting, as being “mad as cheese”. Mr. Kim has allowed many of his countrymen–including soldiers–to starve to death, showing a rare even-handedness in treating friends and enemies equally.
While Mr. Lee denies the possibility of a war, Mr. Kim affirms it. Yet Mr. Lee too hardened his position after the naval incident, instead of just navel-gazing. What he did was to freeze trade (though he couldn’t freeze the water and save the ship) and, most aggressively of all, resume radio broadcasts into North Korea. Those starving northerners can now dance their cares away.
And there’s still a small chance that the two Koreas will do battle during the football World Cup, as both have qualified. (THIS is the kind of ballism I want to see!) However, North Korea has already scored an own goal by cleverly listing a striker as a goalkeeper, leading to his disqualification even before anyone’s balls were kicked. More wisely yet, Mr. Kim has said that only North Korean victories will be shown on TV to his people: which means that once again they’ll probably be kept in the dark.