The South Korean People Are Fed Up with US Manipulation

Recently, North Korea has used its missile tests as a signal warning the U.S., Japan and South Korea that continued provocations and military exercises aimed at North Korea will be met with deadly retaliation. Although it is doubtful that North Korea has the power to strike the U.S. effectively, there is no denying that it has the power to strike South Korea on very short notice, whether with conventional or nuclear weaponry. If war were to erupt on the Korean Peninsula, the bulk of the suffering would fall upon the Korean people and economy, not the U.S. Lately, President Park Geun-hye and other South Korean officials have consistently signaled a desire for talks and meetings with the North. From Seoul’s perspective, the Republic of Korea-U.S. military exercises are a poor bargain: The South is required to foot part of the bill for the United States’ expenses and in return receives only a tragic standoff with its own ethnic cousins.

These days, the mood among South Koreans is invariably anxious as they fearfully wonder when the war will erupt and how brutal it will be. While South Korea already intends to use a tit-for-tat approach to respond to North Korea and Japan’s defense minister has ordered the Self Defense Force to destroy any incoming missile that puts Japanese territory at risk, the United States’ actions have been puzzling. One moment it wants to take action against Pyongyang, the next it states that unless it receives information confirming a North Korean attack on the U.S., the Pentagon will not act. The tense atmosphere has underscored the value of peace to the South Korean people, who are now extremely dissatisfied with the U.S. stirring up chaos like it’s going out of style. They yearn for the days of Kim Dae-jung, who signed the North-South Joint Declaration and made national sentiments more harmonious.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula Were Caused by the US

The tensions in recent years on the Korean Peninsula began with the Cheonan incident, in which a South Korean surface ship was sunk by a torpedo of an unidentified nation, resulting in the deaths of 46 soldiers. Lee Myung-bak deemed the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea culpable on the basis of alleged North Korean markings found on the torpedo’s remains. Distrust mounted between the two sides until we arrived at today’s tense standoff. Everyone knows that deception and diversion are common military tactics. If the instigator of the Cheonan incident could pre-mark the torpedo with the lettering of any country and use that as evidence to justify an attack on that country, then the evidence is clearly not very convincing. With the U.S. and South Korea constantly holding large-scale live-fire military exercises, what peace is there to speak of on the peninsula? It could be said that the $5 billion that the Republic of Korea spends annually to fund U.S. military drills is a waste.

Developments on the Korean Peninsula are starting to become inseparable from Washington’s North Korea policy. According to Western media reports, the Pentagon has long had designs on North Korea; it has only been factors such as the Iraqi and Afghan Wars, financial crisis, a persistently high unemployment rate and growing anti-war sentiments among the people that have made it unable to act. The United States’ ultimate goal on the Korean Peninsula is to strategically encircle Russia and China. Former president Roh Moo-hyun was smart; he asked for a three-phase withdrawal of U.S. troops but was unreasonably rebuffed because the White House wishes to be the eternal master of the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul’s Economy Could Be Instantly Destroyed

With an area of 426 square miles and about 7 million residents, Hong Kong is already considered overcrowded. Yet, Seoul is only 234 square miles with a population of 10.5 million; one can imagine the level of congestion there. Currently, over 4,000 of South Korea’s top enterprises that determine the nation’s economic rise or fall are concentrated within the city; it could be said that they are South Korea’s lifeline. And Seoul’s straight line distance of only 25 miles from the 38th parallel means that — never mind nukes — one minute of bombardment from North Korea’s 6,500 artillery pieces would be enough to paralyze the city! Once war breaks out, Washington will be safe and sound; even Tokyo may not necessarily be harmed. However, Seoul could be turned to rubble, potentially crippling the South Korean economy in a single day.

Even if the South were to carry out a first strike preemptively to knock out North Korea’s key military and missile sites, the North could still use the simplest, most primitive methods to obliterate Seoul. Key pillars of the South Korean economy such as Hyundai Motor and Samsung Electronics comprise over 70 percent of the nation’s output. Once war breaks out, not even preemption will be of any avail. According to economists’ estimates, if Seoul was destroyed, the South Korean economy would need at least 30 years to recover. This was one of the key reasons why former president Roh Moo-hyun asked U.S. troops to quit Korea during his tenure.