The regimes imposed by the Soviet Union and the United States on North and South Korea at the end of the Second World War evolved quite differently ? and not necessarily in the way Americans assume they did.
One side, thanks to a shrewd, quick-witted guardian, got what it was promised (the North). But the other side, owing to the obtuseness and confusion of its imperial benefactor, failed to develop into the strong democracy it was expected to become.
Completely ignoring the fact that North Korea was the industrialized part of the country... the South was primarily for growing rice and other agriculture.Second, there was among South Koreans an unrealistic level of belief in and hope for freedom of expression and thought. (Except, of course, when it came to discussing a monarchy.) As opposed to the North, the government in the South was obliged to permit every kind of political party in the name of democratic pluralism.
Sounds like a wanna-be Lil' Kim.And the fact that South Korea has power 24hr/day 7 days a week, people don't starve to death, and has one of the strongest economies in the region...And here we are, half a century later. What has changed? What has stayed the same? North Korea still maintains its hereditary system of rule without any dissent. It continues along its appointed path. South Korea, on the other hand, is struggling to find itself. I have the feeling, if I may exaggerate only slightly, that we are returning to the anxieties we felt before the Korean War.
These anxieties are apparent, too, in the widespread and intense anti-American feeling among Koreans. Anti-Americanism has always been around, but until recently it has usually been embraced by a minority only. When we see the lack of outrage among South Korean students at the fatal shooting of five of their number by the North Korean Navy ? a contrast to the repeated calls for justice for the two girls killed by American soldiers driving a tank ? we must assume there are changes in thinking among these students that go beyond simple nationalistic feelings.
Don't the Koreans have a word for "racism" and "bigotry"?No, it fought Japan for China because of the false idea that the Kai-cheks were fellow Christians fighting against a heathen oppressor. It fought China for Japan in Korea to keep Communists away from invading Japan through Kyuushu. If the ROK army could have fought off the U.S.S.R. and China supplied armies of Lil' Kim's daddy on their own...The problem of American policy toward Korea has been endlessly debated and analyzed. Still, if there is anything to add it is this: the American perspective on Korea has changed little since the end of the 19th century. As John King Fairbank, the historian, made clear in "East Asia: Tradition and Transformation," in the Pacific War America fought Japan for China; in the Korean War, it fought China for Japan.
When I first read these words roughly 20 years ago I failed to catch their full significance, but over time this sentence revealed to me the American perspective on Korea. Namely, even though America's young people fought and shed blood on Korean soil, Korea was not a part of the American consciousness. For America, Korea has always been understood as a part of China or a part of Japan.
And which country was pushing for South Korea NOT to be involved in the talks? North Korea.It seems that still now, 50 years later, nothing much has changed. At the recent Beijing talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis, Korea, especially South Korea, was absent. China met North Korea, and America, to discuss nuclear disarmament on the Korean peninsula, but I wonder if even there America, while recognizing the existence of North Korea, did not consider it to be part of China.
This guy clearly illustrates the dillusional mindset of intellectual racists in the South Korean education and literature establishments.
Maybe the SK government can cut power after 8pm to give the people a taste of what life would be like in the North?
