The Sunshine policy achieved historic milestones in achieving peace between NK and SK. People were actually talking about the best way to go about integrating the two countries when things looked brighter about 5 years ago.
How about we let the South Koreans decide. Seoul isn’t just teh capital of SK, it is home to 40% of its population. We’re not talking about thousands of deaths. If NK goes all out, they will kill millions of SK citizens before we can scramble our jets. The SK people seemed pretty happy with the sunshine policy (remember, these people shared a common history for 5000 years before the UN decided to tear them in half after WWII (yet another fucked up misplaced consequence consequence of WWII. Japan bombs pearl harbor so Korea gets split in half)).
You are using the word “retaliation” rather oddly. Again, killing human beings because of some splashes in empty water.
Yeah… that’s not what happened.
Of course you did when you expressed shock that we might not respond by starting World war III if some shell landed in empty water. As for your deciding what I do and do not think, you should probably not try drawing such conclusion if this is the result.
Your ignorance of the subject is, luckily, not me projecting.
The Agreed Framework of 1994 was all about stopping NK’s nuclear progress. NK violated that agreement.
You can hardly claim that the Sunshine Policy was set up to provide for an equal exchange and closer relations, and succeeded at that, with the north deliberately violated its agreements with the south and developed nukes.
Pardon my saying so, but you seem to have changed positions without noticing. In fact, shooting artillery into contested waters is a perfectly acceptable way of saying they’re yours. Certainly, it doesn’t merit an actual attack (maybe a firing-back of artillery to the same location.) More importantly, South Korea has been reasserting its sovereignty over the disputed areas lately in response to the attack on the Cheonan —it would be irresponsible and cowardly of them not to do so.
The point isn’t really that North Korea’s nuclear program was still underway —it’s that North Korea did not soften their anti-South Korean stance to any great extent. It may not be obvious, but the economic “cooperation” of the Sunshine Policy was not, in fact, cooperation; the various companies investing in North Korea were being reimbursed entirely by the ROK’s government*. In general, every cooperative act involved a large bribe. But for all that, North Korea didn’t stop the attacks, or the violent language, or… much of anything, really. So it was a bribe that didn’t accomplish anything, other than make South Koreans feel a little bit more comfortable. You can hardly blame the government for ending it!
*Unfortunately, my cite for this is in dead-tree form, namely:
Eberstadt, Nick. The North Korean Economy : Between Crisis and Catastrophe. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2007.
The Sunshine Policy stuff is in the 160’s-range.
Once again, aside from your willingness to sacrifice South Korea and Japan in order to eliminate a country that largely threatens… well… South korea and japan, I would like to point out that NK doesn’t have to win a war to kill a lot of people in Seoul. There are 25 million people in the Seoul metro area, 10 million in Seoul city proper. It is one of the largest and densest population centers in the world. NK has thousands of SCUD type missiles and howitzer type guns pointed at Seoul.
They can’t wage prolonged war against SK (unless China gets involved) but they can rain down death on 10 million people for hours before we can take out their guns and of course it will be too late to take out SCUDS that have already launched (and lets not forget about the nukes).
This doesn’t mean we do whatever they say but it does mean that we can’t just go around waving our guns and say “do what I tell you… or else” The sunshine policy was making demonstrable achievements before the current SK administration, it wasn’t perfect and NK was still behaving badly but it was behaving less badly.
Having lived in South Korea since February of 2005, I find the assertion that South Koreans were quite happy with the Sunshine Policy highly amusing. A few incidents through the life of that policy tested the South Korean population’s tolerance, one incident being the killing of a female tourist to the North. Conservatives, as you can imagine, were never thrilled with the policy and criticized it regularly.
A lot of them already know what normal looks like. They gerry-rig their TVs to pick up SK television. They watch Korean TV and its not just that these TV shows show how things are in Seoul (I suppose they could convince themselves that its all propaganda, they show how things are in Paris and London and even fucking Beijing and it becomes obvious how chitty things are in NK.
NK is going to change, it is inevitable. The question is whether it will be baptized in nuclear radioactive fire or in MTV. I think the South koreans have a marked preference for the MTV version of collapsing the communist regime.
You are moving the goal posts from can we kick their ass (and, YES, I think we can, the NK military is a very top down operation, it doesn’t operate in cells the al qaeda does. The war will look a lot more like the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan than the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. We will not occupy North Korea, they will defect en masse to South Korea and look for their family members and try to start a new life. It will be a tough transition but not nearly as tough as dealing with the nulcear fallout or all the SCUDS falling on Seoul).
First of all, they only need ONE salvo if it includes nukes or biochem and probably even if it doesn’t include nukes or biochem, second of all, their first salvo will not be their last. They have literally thousands of artillery guns pointed at Seoul. If they employ even rudimentary ‘shoot and scoot’ tactics or if they will be a thorn in our side until we get in there with troops or we carpet bomb the whole place (the turn around time on such a carpet bombing is long enough that they will lay waste
to Seoul).
I agree, assuming NK doesn’t have a nuke they can toss over the border.
Yeah but the People’s air force would only achieve air superiority if the rest of the world ran out of fuel. Their air force supports their infantry:
“However, since nearly all of North Korea’s aircraft inventory consists of aging and obsolete Soviet and Chinese aircraft, the primary goal of the air force may have changed in the last years to providing ground support for the land forces and threatening South Korean population centers and military targets with a massive air attack.”
The South Korean Air Force would beat the NK air force hands down in a battle for air superiority. The real threat is the Chinese air force getting involved.
Its a speed bump. The NK military has its artillery which can destroy large chunks of Seoul before being rooted out and the infantry can stream over the DMZ and kill a bunch of SK civilians if they can dodge all the landmines but they will lose air and sea very very quickly unless China gets involved. I think that is about as close to military fact as you can get.
Maybe I am mistaken but I thought South Korea was sending food to North korea as humanitarian aid. You think South Koreans WANT to see North Koreans starve? Almost all of them have relatives in North Korea. IIRC the humanitarian aid started when Noth korea had a famine, it didn’t do anything particularly threatening or belligerent that year versus other years.
The current administration has taken the stance that humanitarian aid should be dependent on North Korea’s halting its nuclear program. Its a pretty hard line to say you are going to let other Koreans starve until the government which they have no control over, changes its tune.
OK, there are so many people who think that South korea is sending food to North korea because of threats made by North korea. Can you please provide a cite, here is the wiki article about the NK famine.
My recollection was that the food aid was humanitarian, the same as we would do for any other country. In fact Bush took some flak for “using food as a weapon” when he cut food aid to North Korea from 350,000 tons in 2001 to 40,000 in 2004 over the nuclear weapon issue. The aid was not given because of threats from NK, it was withheld because of threats from NK (at least in the case of US aid).
Yeah and originally I wasn’t responding to you.
You responded to my response to another poster who seemed to think this was some unprovoked random act of violence. You got the notion that I was excusing NK somehow.
I never said otherwise.
By many accounts that is changing as SK broadcasting leaks into NK. YOu just can’t maintain impermeable borders these days anymore.
You’re exaggerating. “Almost all” of us actually don’t have direct ties to North Korea anymore. The generation that was torn apart by the divide has almost died out.
You’ve seen this map right?
The blue line is the current UN recognized maritime border. It is atypical in the sense that it does not even grant NK control of its "territorial waters. Typically a nation has soveriegnty over its territorial waters (12 miles), the ability to enforce its laws for another 12 miles (the contiguous zone) and exclusive economc rights (fishing, minerals, etc) out to 200 miles except to the extent it conflicts with other coastlines.
That is why the maritime border is contested.
I’m not saying everything about this makes sense but the SK military knew this was provocative when they did it. You seem to be returning to notion that the North wasn’t even provoked.
You are arguing a position I don’t disagree with. I don’t think that NK was justified or within its rights or any of that. I’m saying that this was a forseeable result of the military exercise especially because NK said this is what it would do if SK conducted the military exercise.
You’re right, they were contested waters. You still shouldn’t assume the other guys isn’t going to do anything.
Heres what I said “Its an issue of sovereignty. If the USSR held war games in the Bering Strait and fired into Alaskan waters, we might have responded similarly.”
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13186705&postcount=207
Can you tell me which post I said we would start WWIII if the USSR lobbed artillery into our side of the bering strait?
I don’t assume you think anything at all.
So the 1994 agreement was the basis of the sunshine policy? I was under the impression that the sunshine policy was a unilateral policy undertaken by SK not a negotiated diplomatic stance taken by SK under an agreement of some sort.
The Sunshine policy undoubtedly yielded results. There is an industrial park in North Korea that is run by South Korean companies. There have been South korean tours into North korea by South korean tourists, something that hasn’t happened in over half a century. There have been several summits between north and South korea. There have been family reunions.
If you believe that the sunshine policy was based on denuclearizing NK then you are simply incorrect.
If you think some other policy (short of military action) would have stopped the nuclearization of NK, then you are incorrect.
I don’t know if you are ignorant or simply looking at the situation through some sort of distorted prism but the nuclear issue is not the ONLY thing that happened and there is no evidence that we could have prevented nuclearization in any event.
I never left the notion that the North wasn’t actually provoked by the South. Navies conduct training operations. Being waterborne craft, their ships necessarily must be afloat to conduct that training. The North arbitrarily decides that training conducted by the South’s navy is provocative doesn’t mean that the South must stop all training. That’s a ridiculous notion. Saying that the North is provoked by the South conducting the training operation in question isn’t similar to, it’s exactly like saying that the police conducting patrols provokes criminals into committing crimes.
The South did not actually provoke the North. The North obviously intended to do something to the South prior to asking in their warped way for help and chose unwisely.
BTW is this the Agreed Framework of 1994 you are talking about?
If so and Wikipedia is correct, then the agreement was between the USA and DPRK. Please enlighten my ignorance and tell me how this agreement was an agreement between Nk and SK?
I think its very telling that you would make this sort of mistake. You are not really concerned about the effects of the sunshine policy on South korea’s relationship with north korea, you are concerned with teh sunshine policy’s ability to advance US interests. This is fine but it does not make the sunshine policy the failure you make it out to be.
You are correct. The waters are disputed. I don’t know the protocol of military ipeen wagging and perhaps the appropriate response is to kill the same fish that the first guys killed, but in this case, the NK said they would retaliate pretty much the way they did. So, I think you shouldn’t be totally taken by fucking surprise when they do pretty much what they said they were going to do if you shot artillery into that particular patch of water.
Did we really expect NK to turn 180 degrees overnight? I disagree that NK didn’t soften their stance. There were tour groups and family reunions. There seems to be widespread agreement that the sunshine policy was easing tension on the peninsula and reviving hopes of a reunification.
I haven’t read that the investment in the industrial park was in fact being paid for by Korean taxpayers. I would have thought that something like this would be more widely known.
I thought it was pretty clear that the government ended it on ideological grounds.
I don’t think “foreseeable result” would justify the ROK not conducting military exercises —as I said earlier (too politely —everyone ignored me!), South Korea really can’t afford to back down to threats of violence. This is especially true when we consider how vastly superior the South Korean military happens to be.
In regard to the Sunshine Policy, could you please address my point that it was pure subsidy? I should also point out, the same book I mentioned earlier talks about South Korea paying a $500mil bribe just for the summit — that’s from p.164. Just to hold a summit! I imagine the audience was domestic — trying to show that the Sunshine Policy was working —but I really don’t see any of this as evidence of North Korea being more cooperative thanks to the Sunshine Policy. It still looks like a complete failure to me. Similarly, you’re missing FinnAgain’s point — sure, the Sunshine Policy did not address nukes, but there’s really no other plausible target than South Korea for those weapons (in the short-term, at least), so it qualifies as another sign of North Korea’s continued hostility.
On this point, I believe you are right — politicking occasionally makes countries withdraw humanitarian aid (or delay aid, like in the 1990’s), but its actual provision is usually on humanitarian grounds. That said, it certainly is rather galling to feed your enemy, particularly in light of the (undoubtedly true) accusations that aid gets diverted to be sold or fed to the military. Nor does any of this cover the “investment” earlier.