Zaryi wrote:
No, I'm going to have to disagree with you. Every time North Korea postures like this it's always been to get something. Last time they rolled out their nuclear weapons program was because they wanted a seat on (I think this was the committee), the Asia-Pacific trade commission (or something along those lines). This happens, China/The US will put him where he wants to be, and he'll go back to his harem.
They usually make demands, but their demands are pretty superficial and aimed more at keeping the game going, rather than winning it. Whenever they approach their alleged goal, normalization of relations, they take a step back by doing something provocative.
Zaryi wrote:
And South Korea wins, hands down. North Korean couldn't launch a nuke if they wanted to, and if they tried, they'd end up with the entire US military knocking on their front door. As I said, he's just posturing and putting on a show.
I'd agree that they are posturing - and that is their intent. It's an empty threat, yes, but the reaction itself is their goal, not to "get" something.
South Korea doesn't really win either - they still have these people next door.
There's no question South Korea will outlast the North. It is a certainty in a way the US outlasting the USSR never was. The problem is, what happens next?
For sixty years now these people have stared over the border at each other. What was once a single people, a single culture, have diverged into two totally contrary civilizations.
On the one hand you have utterly Western South Korea, that lives the same lifestyle Americans, Europeans and Japanese do, and then there's 1984-like North Korea. When North Koreans cross over, they actually have to go to a sort of training session to integrate them into South Korean society. A lot of them can't handle it and wind up sinking into depression or suicide. East Germany was never so different from the West. It's a strange culture accustomed to paranoia, total control of every aspect of life, and seeing loved ones literally starve to death.
They're even physically different, because of their diets and lifestyles.
Someday, integrating these tens of millions of people into their society will be the South's problem.
Meanwhile, they have to deal with all the assorted expenses associated with living 50 miles from putative hair-trigger annihilation. From the perspective of insurers and defense contractors and the billions in wasted resources they represent, it's real enough.
