Friday, December 10, 2010

Cock of the walk of a united Korea: Lee Myung bek? Who is he kidding?

South Korea's president Lee Myung bek is a cocky fellow. He fancies himself the unifier of a reunited Korea. He doesn't pull the weight.
Lee contributes to the fiction that 'unification with North Korea has become more likely as the people in the North become more aware of the South's affluence'.
Did this evangelical Christian consult a shaman in order to boldly proclaim his prediction? He has overstepped the bounds of reality and wandered in the land of wishful thinking.
Morally 'armed' and full of an overabundant supply of 'pie in the sky', his words, however, scarsely capture the imagination of the 'people in the North'.
Visitors to the North, over time, have come back with stories of North Koreans' awareness of South Koreans' abundance of creature comforts and a style of living foreign to their own. How do they know this? Well, there is a wide circulation of dvds of television dramas, films, and an endless supply of info seeping through the porous border with China.
What else do the North Koreans know of the South? They are well aware since Lee scuppered the welcome 'Sunshine Policy' of Kim Dae Jung, relations have turned ugly between the South and the North.
In 2010, the dark clouds of war have continued to gather more darkly as the South and the US have increased joint military manoeuvres along the NLL [Northern Limit Line] dangerously close to North Korea's territorial waters.
In fact the South's live shelling fell into the North's waters, even though Pyongyang warned Seoul that should that happen the North would reply. And it did, marking the first time in more than 5 decades that the two Koreas exchanged fire which looked as though the frozen Korean war would suddenly turn hot again.
Lee throughout his two years in the Blue House has clung to his desire to teach the North a lesson, in more plain words...to exercise tough love. He has not strayed from his stiff resolve, and like the armchair general that he is, he delights in conducting campaigns from his desk in Seoul.
For all the affluence and the shiny glitter that its 'Asian tiger' economy bestows on its citizens and the strength of its economy, Lee's bellicosity seems to dull the mind to the dangers South Korea runs in his sabre rattling and muscular brinksmanship.
Has he forgotten that the North has massed on the DMZ at the 38 parallel one million heavily armed men? And should Lee heat up the kettle of war to higher temperatures, well, between the North at the DMZ and Seoul lies 40km [30 miles], and in the case of war, it would take a very short time to destroy the engine and symbol of Lee's touted South Korea's affluence, and not only that, think of the millions in dead and casualty.
So much for Lee's hollow excessive pride and sense of self. Freud calls the South Korean president's thumping of his chest 'flummery'!

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