[KS] When North Korea Falls: article by Robert Kaplan in Atlantic Monthly

[Afostercarter at aol.com]

Dear friends and colleagues,

More Koreana in non-specialist sources. Kim Jong-il graces the cover of
the latest Atlantic Monthly, which contains a longish article by Robert D
Kaplan entitled "When North Korea Falls." Three different people have
already sent this to me, so on this sombre anniversary I pass it on.

The URL is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200610/kaplan-korea
- but for subscribers only. It's too long to embed in full, so I shall attach 
it
(if the Listmeisters and technology permit).

Although an uncomfortable read on several levels, the issues Kaplan raises
seem to me to be real and important. Were I Korean, or resident in Korea,
I would now be worrying about scenarios of this kind.

That said, this is very much the view from USFK. As one correspondent
notes, there are major omissions:

* The row with China over Koguryo
* The opcon transfer issue with the US
* I would add: the implications of any DPRK nuclear test.

More generally, many Koreans will be offended by the assumption that any
DPRK collapse would be handled on the ground primarily by the US and China.
Would South Koreans let that happen? Kaplan's most intriguing passage,
reproduced below, suggests why in fact they just might - uri nara 
notwithstanding.

Then again, it might never happen....

Best wishes
Aidan

AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University 

Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK 
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[Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me 
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_______________



[excerpt]
.....

The truth is, many South Koreans have an interest in the perpetuation of the 
Kim Family Regime, or something like it, since the KFR's demise would usher in 
a period of economic sacrifice that nobody in South Korea is prepared for. A 
long-standing commitment by the American military has allowed the country to 
evolve into a materialistic society. Few South Koreans have any interest in the 
disruption the collapse of the KFR would produce.

Meanwhile, China's infrastructure investments are already laying the 
groundwork for a Tibet-like buffer state in much of North Korea, to be ruled 
indirectly through Beijing's Korean cronies once the KFR unravels. This buffer state 
will be less oppressive than the morbid, crushing tyranny it will replace. So 
from the point of view of the average South Korean, the Chinese look to be 
offering a better deal than the Americans, whose plan for a free and democratic 
unified peninsula would require South Korean taxpayers to pay much of the cost. 
The more that Washington thinks narrowly in terms of a democratic Korean 
peninsula, the more Beijing has the potential to lock the United States out of it. 
For there is a yawning distance between the Stalinist KFR tyranny and a stable, 
Western-style democracy: in between these extremes lie several categories of 
mixed regimes and benign dictatorships, any of which might offer the North 
Koreans far more stability as a transition mechanism than anything the United 
States might be able to provide. No one should forget that South Korea's 
prosperity and state cohesion were achieved not under a purely democratic government 
but under Park Chung Hee's benign dictatorship of the 1960s and '70s. 
Furthermore, North Koreans, who were never ruled by the British, have even less 
historical experience with democracy than Iraqis. Ultimately, victory on the Korean 
peninsula will go to the side with the most indirect and nuanced strategy.

The long-term success of America's basic policy on the peninsula hinges on 
the willingness of South Koreans to make a significant sacrifice, at some point, 
for the sake of freedom in the North. But sacrifice is not a word that voters 
in free and prosperous societies tend to like. If voters in Western-style 
democracies are good at anything, it's rationalizing their own selfishness -- and 
it may turn out that the authoritarian Chinese understand the voters of South 
Korea's free and democratic society better than we do. If that's the case, 
there may never actually be a Greater Korea in the way that we imagine it. 
Rather, the North's demise will be carefully managed by Beijing in such a way that 
the country will go from being a rogue nation to a de facto satellite of the 
Middle Kingdom -- but one with sufficient contact with the South that the 
Korean yearning for a measure of reunification will be satisfied.

.....





 
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