It has long surprised me how western gosu starcrafters (and the commentators "Tastosis") have freely moved to Seoul to advance their gaming career. Despite the fact that the country is at war and in range of their foe's nuclear weapons. Millions of lives hang by the single fragile thread that is the ceasefire between North and South Korea. I'm here to tell you though, that North Korea is not a threat whatsoever. Not as long as Kim is in power anyway.
It's very easy to think otherwise. North Korea is one of the most militarized nations at the moment. It's industry and economy is devoted to military endeavours and North Korea is literally a fortresss. A landscape of redoubts and anti tank trenches. They also have enough missiles and artillery to flatten Seoul and nuclear weapons to boot. All of the above is exactly why the world has nothing to fear from Korea.
Not so much from a purely military standpoint (nukes are scary), but from a psychological one. Much like Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, Kim Jong-il's North Korea is his own cult of personality. He is paranoid, his missiles, defenses, trenches; the fortress he has built in North Korea is simply the fortress he has built for himself in real life that he couldn't build inside his own head to defend himself from his own fears.
I know what you are thinking: "But Alex, Kim Jon-il's paranoia only makes him more dangerous!"
Let me ask you a question, in World War 2 Stalin was paranoid that Nazi Germany would invade (and he was absolutely right) but did he ever declare war on the Germans? No he did not.
There is a difference between knowing an enemy will attack and knowing that if your enemy does attack he will completely obliterate all traces of your existence. Kim Jong-il clearly believes that he is not only in danger of being attacked by the west but furthermore they kill destroy him utterly. Hence the missiles and militarization. It's not that he wants to use them to attack South Korea, he just wants the world to know that it is not worth attacking North Korea. The risk of nuclear retaliation is too high a price to pay and a land invasion of "Fortress NK" would cost too many lives.
Again, this is analogous to Nazi Germany in it's final days. Those V2 rockets were never made for offensive missions, they were made purely to deter the Allies from invading.
The scary thing is though, is that Kim Jong-il's reasoning is absolutely right. With his nuclear capabilities, no nation is going to touch North Korea anytime soon. It's only a matter of time until Kim kicks the bucket and when that happens can we really trust his successor to be just as defensively paranoid as cooky ole Kim?
In my opinion, American leaders seem to be pathologically incapable of shrugging off The Mother Theresa complex - they're ALWAYS trying to meddle in everybody's business, saving the world and blah blah instead of like, DOING something about the fact that they're heavily in debt and shouldn't be spending billions of dollars.
ReplyDeleteOn sending American troops to the WRONG Middle-Eastern country, for instance.
Okay, so I just realized you didn't mention America in your post at all, but I was alluding to its alliance with South Korea, which makes North Korea doubly wary and hell bent on militarization.
But anyway, I agree with you on this point. Many leaders operate on precaution to ward off future attacks from other more influential countries. It's the same with China. There isn't a huge need to fuss over why they're developing their military force because what they're aiming for isn't violence, it's just to stop America from always picking on them.
And in some sense, China thinks its their time to start picking on other people. Hence, the increase in their military spending budget.
Well I hope you're right.
ReplyDeletecool post, kind of puts your mind of ease a little when you think of the tensions between countries
ReplyDeleteI read some article today saying that many of the soldiers in the NK army were dying from malnutrition because of the severe shortages of essential goods, like food. North Korea may be a fortress, but it's really not difficult to over take a fortress that isn't able to defend itself, because there is no one left to defend it. Although, the question of what will whoever succeeds Kim do with the nuclear weapons is a worrying one; because, what other way is there to get out from under a fathers shadow than to do something that he never dared to do? Could be interesting.
ReplyDeleteActually, a lot of people believe that the reason Nazi Germany ended up attacking Russia was because Hitler knew that Stalin WAS planning on declaring war against Germany...
ReplyDeletegood view on this, will have to take this into consideration when watching the news!
ReplyDeleteTeam America was so amazing. Wish they'd make more movies.
ReplyDeleteI feel really bad for the people living there. Some (if not most) are completely ignorant about the outside world, and yet are starting to dislike their gov't, especially with the crazy food rationing they've been having.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope, I don't feel like getting nuked any time soon
ReplyDelete