Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 8:20 pm Post subject: Philip Gourevitch on NK and Sunshine |
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http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/articles/030908on_onlineonly02
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You write that in South Korea, which presumably has the most to fear from North Korea, people place a lot of the blame for the situation on the U.S. That�s where their anger is directed.
Because they�re helpless. South Koreans don�t control their own destiny, and so they blame escalation on those whom they depend on. North Korea has been extremely skillful at playing on the fears of the South. South Korea, of course, had as antagonistic a view of the North as the North had of the South through the nineteen-sixties, seventies, and eighties. Then, as the Soviet Union collapsed and everybody assumed that the North would also collapse, the South Koreans started looking at Germany�s reunification. And they said, �Whoa, it�s very, very expensive.� South Korea has become a booming economy, now the twelfth biggest on earth, but these are people who have a very recent memory of Third World-level poverty, and who are now living at a level of economic success that�s really quite remarkable. They fear that, if the North were to collapse, the cost of absorbing a country that�s totally bankrupt, has no industrial base, and whose workforce is stunted by famine and isolation would wipe out their great economy. North Koreans are deeply out of touch with anything like the modern world, and deeply disoriented by it. South Koreans fear that they would be an immense burden. No doubt they would, at first, but it seems inevitable. It�s a very shortsighted view, frankly.
Have memories of the Korean War shaped the South�s view of America?
Until recently, South Korea was almost our best friend. We saved them in the war. There�s no ambiguity about that. With time, what�s happened is that a younger generation has come in which has no memory of the war, and they resent America for their dependence on it�they don�t like to think that they were saved by America. They also grew up under military dictators who were supported by the United States and who produced a kind of counter-propaganda toward the North which was itself very deceptive and overhyped. So this younger generation regards the threat of the North as a sort of propaganda thing rather than as a reality. |
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