Interesting point. Do you think that the NK people would do better if they were to be integrated into another country, such as becoming a province of China or a territory of the US? That could help them preserve a sense of “Koreanness” while also providing a more developed country to support and guide them. They could avoid having all the South Koreans come up and try to tell them that they have to do X, Y, and Z to really be Korean etc.
Especially with no oil revenue. Do the NKs have anything at all to sell (besides weaponry)?
But rebuilding/building the psyche of the people is an excellent point. There is very little chance of an “invasion this year, democratic elections next year” working even if NK is made part of South Korea. I think five years, maybe ten, where they are ruled as a province.
Even a quick cheap victory where South Korea suffers minimal damage is going to cost a buttload of money in the short- and long-run. And the rule of law is going to go down the crapper while people from outside grab everything they can find. Think Russia after the USSR went tits up, only worse.
Best case scenario -
[ul][li]Quick, nearly painless victory (for SK).[/li][li]Six months or so to round up the leaders and shoot them. (Yeah yeah fair trial blah blah).[/li][li]Set up a commission to fix their agriculture so at least they are not starving.[/li][li]Sell what ever factories are still there to some South Asian business men for a dollar. [/li][li]The only thing the NKs have to offer is cheap labor. Slave labor isn’t worth much, and they won’t be worth much more for a generation or so. Feed them up for a while - maybe they will recover enough to be worth hiring, especially if they were in the army. [/li][li]Figure out how to make a profit off the rebuilding. Charity will not help - some plutocrat is going to have to exploit them in his own interest to make it an ongoing concern. [/li][li]Let anyone who wants relocate to SK. It will be a mess. It will be a worse mess to try to keep them down on the farm after they have heard of Paree.[/li][li]In three years, they can have local elections. In five, they can vote for national office. In ten years, they can be full citizens. [/li][li]Hope for a series of miracles.[/ul]It still probably won’t work.[/li]
Regards,
Shodan
This is about the only hope NK has. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the best possible outcome would probably be a very quick, very deadly plague that takes out the leadership and about 3/4 of the population in about a week. Then foreign powers could move in and try to integrate the survivors into the 19th century.
The realpolitik answer is that South Korean politicians may talk outwardly of reunification, but they will never actually support it because they don’t want to stomach the decline in living standards that will result from having South Korea subsidize the North for decades to come.
But I think this is overly cynical. I wager that conquering the North is both possible, beneficial, and morally required. Here’s why.
This would be feasible. The US has unrivaled military power that dwarfs the capacity of North Korea. China’s relations with North Korea have actually soured of lately over China’s concern about NK’s recklessness and nuclear ambitions. Moreover, the scenario can be modeled by game theoretic models: if the US moves first, China and Russia will have to either do nothing but complain and retaliate economically or risk a cataclysmic military confrontation. If China and Russia anticipate our actions, they can station troops and issue threats in such a way to negate our ability to attack unimpeded. But for now, the opportunity is ours to lose. Furthermore, the North poses almost no threat to the US homeland or other allies in the region (excepting SK). Seoul could be evacuated via a false-flag terrorist threat to minimize loss of life. Apart from artillery aimed at Seoul, there’s little the North could do to threaten the bulk of the South Korean population. Finally, the US is the breadbasket of the world with a wealth of experience distributing aid and dealing with humanitarian catastrophe. We’d have to move fast to prevent famine, but an attack wouldn’t necessitate millions of deaths.
Next, this would be economically beneficial in the long run. One of the primary critiques of US interventions overseas is the high cost of blood and treasure. But in this case, many costs would be borne by South Korea. The South has a demonstrated ability to create and sustain free markets and enjoys a per capita GDP of about 25,000/year. Moreover, the South experienced a meteoric rise in living standards from a tin pot backwater to a first world nation. Given that they share the same language, cultural institutions, environment, and genes as the North, there’s no reason to think what worked for one half of the country won’t work for the other. In the long run, this will surely pay off both for Koreans of all nationalities and the world at large.
Finally, this is a rare opportunity to save millions of people from lives of poverty, misery and oppression. Let’s be clear: if the US does not act, the status quo will not change. North Korea is a real-world Airstrip One, a nation whose government is so powerful that it will never fall from internal action. The US is alone in the world in having both the means and the will to conquer and rebuild North Korea. By our inaction, we are in effect sentencing these people to die at the hands of a tyrannical and corrupt regime. The US rebuilt Europe after World War II and defanged the militaristic societies of Germany and Japan. We have shown a real capacity to permanently change the hearts and minds of millions of heavily-indoctrinated people.
Yes, invading North Korea will lead to death and destruction. But it will also pay off in the long run and rehabilitate our national image. Moreover, we have an obligation, by virtue of our preeminent status in the world, to make difficult decisions. This is an action we must do.
We might not be the ones to do this. Our recent track record, looking at Iraq, is not so good. Especially if you want to do this without pissing off the rest of the world.
Well, Germany seems to be doing OK after reunification. There was significant expense for the former West Germany in rebuilding and upgrading infrastructure in the East, you’d presumably have something similar in a reunified Korea. The two regions are still not equal in terms of wealth, but having regional differences in wealth and development is hardly unique to Germany. There are some cultural differences, but again, regional cultural differences within a country aren’t unique to Germany. I don’t know if former East Germans feel as if former West Germans are “telling them how to be German”, though. I’m not sure how conditions in East Germany in 1989 compare to conditions in North Korea now, either. Germany, of course, also didn’t have a war between East and West immediately preceding reunification, so there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure damage in the former West Germany to deal with.
If someone does overthrow the government of North Korea, they’re going to either have significant expenses in bringing living conditions up to something acceptable, or else there are going to be a lot of people migrating out of the former North Korea. China and South Korea will probably get a lot of migrants, whatever happens- not all the former North Koreans are going to want to stick around while the infrastructure is repaired and upgraded.
[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
We might not be the ones to do this. Our recent track record, looking at Iraq, is not so good. Especially if you want to do this without pissing off the rest of the world.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, this would be completely different. This would be out and out conquest with the intent of unifying Korea. This wouldn’t be occupation and an attempt to install a new government, and ‘we’ wouldn’t really be doing that part of this…the South Koreans would be.
Of course, it’s a crazy plan and, regardless of whether ‘we’ could do it (which I have no doubt) the death toll would be out of this world…as would the hit on the worlds economy and what it would cost in all the facets of ‘cost’ you can think of…and this is without nuclear weapons rearing their ugly heads. And assuming China and Russia both roll over for this.
[QUOTE=The Joker and the Thief]
This would be feasible.
[/QUOTE]
Only from the perspective that it could be done, militarily. I don’t believe it would be feasible, however, from a political perspective unless the North did something so heinous or stupid that it forced our hand politically both on the world stage AND to the average US voter.
If the long run equates to decades or maybe a century or two then yeah…it probably would be. But it would take a hell of a long time to repair the effects of such a war not only regionally but globally…and the cost in lives is hard to even imagine.
You’d save lives (perhaps) in the long run by sacrificing millions now. Even using only conventional weapons the North could inflict horrible damage on the South…and the damage they would take, especially with their fragile infrastructure would be even worse.
What happens if South Korea takes a look at the costs involved and says “thanks but no thanks”? This doesn’t look like such a good deal for them. They get pummeled militarily (with or without nukes), and then have a poor country with very poor infrastructure to integrate into theirs. Why would they want to do this?
If nobody wants to annex the former North Korea, then either some other dictator from within North Korea takes over (this might be better or worse than the current government), or we have lots of factional fighting, possibly with nukes.
[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
What happens if South Korea takes a look at the costs involved and says “thanks but no thanks”? This doesn’t look like such a good deal for them. They get pummeled militarily (with or without nukes), and then have a poor country with very poor infrastructure to integrate into theirs. Why would they want to do this?
[/QUOTE]
Why did the West German’s want to take on integrating East Germany? In the short term…hell, in the medium term…it didn’t really make sense from a purely economics perspective. It was (still is) a huge pain in the ass. Yet they did it anyway. I’m pretty sure the South Koreans would do the same thing assuming the chance ever presented itself. I doubt they would do it just to do it, but assuming North Korea did something really vile or stupid (or both) and made an all out war inevitable I’m pretty sure the South Koreans would be open to re-integration.
If South Korea refused to re-integrate and re-unify the nation of Korea then China would annex the country in a post war period…it wouldn’t just be left to fall back into some new North Korean dictatorship.
A possibly more plausible scenario: If the North launched a massive attack on the South, and the South and the US victoriously turned back the tide, would the South simply battle the North back to pre-war DMZ borders? Or would the South push all the way to take the whole peninsula?
Nah. The only way China would consider annexing North Korea would be if they also happened to get South Korea in the bargain. What do they want with a shithole that’s already flooding their borders with starving refugees they don’t know what to do with, and whose leadership they can’t stand ?
Well, back in 53 the North only held thanks to help from China and Russia and the nascent Cold War. That’s not the case today. Russia might still provide token money/guns as a general “fuck you Amriki”, but without much in the way of ideological drive. As for China, as I said they seem more embarassed than anything about the Kim these days - Juche is an obstacle to their search of trade partners and getting respect from the West. They’re still notional allies but I don’t think there’d be many tears shed in Beijing if Best Korea vanished in a cloud of fire.
It makes more sense in the case of Germany, though. The former West Germany didn’t go through a war right before German re-unification.
China has the same problem, though. They probably don’t want to pay to bring North Korea’s infrastructure up to their standard. They have done things like build border fences to keep illegal North Korean immigrants out of their country. They probably want to do this about as much as the US wants to solve problems in Mexico by annexing part or all of Mexico.
If they annexed it then it would be part of China…so they wouldn’t be dealing with leadership they can’t stand. They would BE the leadership. There wouldn’t be the same issues with hordes of starving North Koreans fleeing to China to find snacks either, since, again, they would be part of China and could deal with the issue (eventually…initially it would be pretty ugly, though at least there is logistical infrastructure between China and North Korea which probably means China is actually in the best position to at least initially deal with the massive humanitarian crisis such a war would cause).
And there are several strategic benefits (as well as potential future economic benefits) that they would get by annexing a defeated North Korea and adding it to their territory. Certainly there would be a ton of downsides, but China doesn’t seem to always think in strictly cost to benefits terms wrt their regional policies (or even internally).
[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
China has the same problem, though. They probably don’t want to pay to bring North Korea’s infrastructure up to their standard. They have done things like build border fences to keep illegal North Korean immigrants out of their country. They probably want to do this about as much as the US wants to solve problems in Mexico by annexing part or all of Mexico.
[/QUOTE]
The US HAS annexed parts of Mexico, though…and if there was a war and Mexico completely collapsed such that there was no more Mexico it’s possible that the US would or at least might annex more of it.
China has built border fences and such to prevent starving North Koreans from flooding into China, but that’s because there still IS a North Korea and China couldn’t solve the issue by just allowing more North Koreans to flood in. If they annexed the entire (or, more realistically part) country then it would be a different matter. I could see China doing this, even if it would be a hit in the short and medium term. In the LONG term, however, it would be a benefit to China to have North Korea part of their nation and under their control…if for nothing else it would give them direct access to trade with South Korea, but it would also allow them to more directly pressure South Korea and intimidate them on the South China Sea issues, as well as give them more leverage in the region…and thus more influence. Also, they would rightfully be seen as a very mature regional power who could and did step into a humanitarian disaster and influence the outcome…that alone would be a huge benefit for them.
True, but there is a similar dynamic to reunification ideas, especially with the older generation. I think that the South would be, if not eager at least willing to reunify the nation, even if in the short and medium term it would be bad. I assume that, if North Korea initiated all of this and forced our and the South Koreans hands, the UN would also be stepping in to help out as well, so it wouldn’t ALL be on the South Koreans heads. The US would, of course, also be helping quite a bit, as would Japan (though there are some dynamics there that would be interesting).
But that’s kind of the point, and it’s the same sitch West Germany had to deal with : maybe long-term China might could profit from it (and even that is doubtful - is North Korea resource rich ? Prime agricultural land ? I’unno, seems like a big heap of karst to me), but short term it’s a shithole filled with millions of starving unproductive mouths to feed that doesn’t bring anything to the table. I mean, China’s not exactly starving for land, y’know ? Or even simili-colonial opportunities - they’re big in Africa and the Middle East these days. And in SE Asia of course.
What the hell would they want North Korea for*, precisely *?
Which ones ? A potential invasion platform on Japan ? Come on, son. This ain’t Red Dawn.
[QUOTE=Kobal2]
Which ones ? A potential invasion platform on Japan ? Come on, son. This ain’t Red Dawn.
[/QUOTE]
And I’m not making Hollywood claims either. Had you asked (or read my follow on post) I would have been happy to list some. The biggest ones are that it would position China to more directly influence South Korea (with influence being something slightly less ominous than intimidate). China wants to be seen as THE regional power and wants all the other nations to be in their sphere of influence. They could also influence Japan…and it would give them some nice additional basing areas on the current North Korean west coast.
What would they want with Tibet? Precisely I’d say they would want the ability to directly influence and make more connections with (and potentially move into their sphere of influence) South Korea. In addition, just not having a potential melt down on their border would be a benefit…they wouldn’t have to guard against starving North Koreans invading them looking for food.
Personally, I can’t imagine the South Koreans saying ‘no thanks’ in the event of a war where North Korea completely collapses, but I really don’t see all of this push back about the idea that China could or would step in to annex what was left. To me, the REAL question is the fight between South Korea and China as to who gets to annex what (or, perhaps, China attempting to install a new puppet government). Regardless, if there WAS a war, the costs you guys are all complaining about would be sunk costs…we’d ALL be paying them whether South Korea reunified or China annexed or a puppet government was installed. That’s why even considering this is a nightmare…there are zero good options or good outcomes, IMHO. Just ones that are less horrible.
I guess I don’t really see how having North Korea helps with that. China is *already *in contact and trading with South Korea and Japan (via Guangzhou, Shanghai… ports have always been better than land routes when it comes to mass trade). I’m not sure a potential “we could invade you if we wanted” bludgeon would really help there, quite the opposite.
Tibet and Taiwan are a different story, in that they were historically part of Imperial China at one point and it’s kind of a national/nationalistic pride thing. Plus Taiwan is linked with Chang Kai Shek, the Guomindang, etc… ; political and ideological fuckery galore there.
Korea was never that though, at best it was a Chinese colony. It’s the Poland of Asia - always its own thing, but thoroughly fucked by everyone all along :).
I’m not saying that Korea was ever part (or considered part) of China. You are right there…it never was more than a tributary nation (which, I suppose, it still is today, at least the northern part). That wouldn’t preclude China annexing the northern part if there was a complete collapse though. However, I think it’s a moot point and not worth really arguing about, so let’s say that in the event of an all out war on the Korean peninsula that China just goes along with and that is won, decisively by South Korea and it’s allies, and in the event that South Korea says ‘no thanks’ to reunification (that, again, China just goes along with), that China would push for some sort of puppet government installed there instead (that the US and South Korea just goes along with). How about that? We could meet to discuss this further at Milliway’s if you like over a cup of whatever it is you are drinking…
Even assuming a minimal conflict, some people who do DPRK for a living had this to say:
http://38north.org/2015/02/jlind021215/
For those interested in NK, I suggest you browse this site from time-to-time.
Short-form: even if there is no coordinated military opposition, it would take years and more money and manpower that it is probably worth.
Throw in real military opposition and the costs go through the roof.
All scenarios assume China is on board - which will not be the case until a few million starving Koreans come across the river (which China can choke at will).
From the books I’ve read on NK, I would agree that China LIKES that buffer between the US… er South Korea and it’s National Border.
The few (in comparison to trying to feed and rebuild the entire country) refuges now they can handle.