RELIGION or POLITICS ??? About North Korea, did you Know?

Wow, and here it is another new week to enjoy and experience, hope you do and will, all to good, of course. Today will complete the North Korea presentation, and hope it provided some new insight for you on the Korea Peninsula situation. And to repeat, the contents herein are from the most recent monthly Newsletter published by Hillsdale College, and written by Ass't Professor Sung-yoon Lee of Tufts University.

If you will remember, we are up to the part where the United States had stopped Japan's aggression through China, and Korea and had advanced into Manchuria, when they were defeated by the USA at Pearl Harbor etc.,and the Allies had partitioned the Korean Peninsula at the 38th Parallel.  And Now.......


      The United States, in control of defeated Japan and the southern half of liberated Korea, now emerged as the key shaper of geopolitics in Northeast Asia.   But after governing South Korea from 1945 to 1948, and despite lingering misgivings about North Korea intentions, the U.S. began to withdraw troops from the South.   By the summer of 1949, it had returned to a policy of benign neglect.    At this point Kim Il Sung, father of the current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il -- took advantage of the power vacuum and launched an invasion of the South.    This attempt to unify the Korean Peninsula under communist control was thwarted by a multinational coalition led by the United States, and South Korea was saved.

      In the 57 years since the armistice, North Korea has time and again shown its willingness to take considerable risks to turn the strategic environment in its favor.   The sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean naval ship, in March of this year, and the bombing of a South Korean island on November 23, are but the latest in a long history of deadly attacks.    But today the North Korean regime faces its most serious internal political challenges in nearly 20 years;   severe economic stresses, the increasing infiltration of information, higher numbers of its citizens attempting to defect to the South, and the challenge of handing over dynastic power from a long-ruling father to an unproves son in his twenties. 

       This uncertain situation presents a rare opportunity for policymakers in Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo to bring about changes in the North Korean regime and to ensure peace and stability in the region.    Engaging the North Korean people --rather than the regime -- by means of information operations and facilitating defections, while simultaneously constricting Pyongyang's cash flow, is best means to that end.    It's also important for Washington to hold quiet consultations with Beijing to prepare jointly for a unified Korea under Seoul's direction, a new polity that will be free, peaceful capitalist, pro U.S. and pro-China.

      In an Orwellian world, "war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength".    In the North Korean world, the past 57 years of defacto peace is war, a life of servitude to the state is freedom, and national strength is rooted in ignorance of the outside world.    Today, as trouble is once again brewing on the Korean Peninsula, we would do well to remember the noble resolve of those who fought back the North Korean invasion in 1950-53 and the precious gift they left behind:  and extended period of peace and prosperous South Korea.    Those courageous soldiers taught us that deterrence is peace, freedom is not free, and that to remember the past is a mark of mational character and strength.

      The great and noble efforts of Americans in the Korean War, the legacy of a 60-year friendship between the U.S. and South Korea, and U.S. strategic interests should not now be sacrificed on the altar of diplomatic peace.    Now is rather the time for prudent and pragmatic peace.    Now is rather the time for prudent and pragmatic policymakers to pave the way for a permanent peace of the Korean Peninsula, and, in so doing, to pay the greatest honor possible to all those who served in a war -- often referred to by historians as "The Forgotten War" -- that is decidedly forgotten no more.


Thas' all folks, from me here in sunny and warming Bradenton, Fl., and I do seriously trust everyone's week will by, above, HAPPY.   Cheers   CJ