The Korean war

Liberator said:

Didn't South Korea started the war?
On the old forum, I remember some one posted "My friend's grandfather was a South Korean soldier at that time, his squad was ordered to raid North Korean border towns to make the NK to attack SK".

Click to expand...

From Russian archives, they claim that SK sent their troops to harass the NK forces along the border in light skirmishes. There were no serious attempt of invasion.

At the opening of the Korean war, the South Korea army was 65,000 strong on paper only. Some sources claim that they only had 38,000 men in the army, with 1/3rd (~12,000) on active duty near the DMZ and the rest on leave/rotation. The army was poorly equipped with a mix of US and Japanese equipment. Artillery regments only had 20-25% of the number of guns that they required, and the army was lacking in tanks.

IMO unless if the South Korean leadership was being lied to, they know perfectly well that the SK military was in no condition to invadion NK.

it was never SK's job to invade, only to harass with skirmishes. that means with small numbers of men and raiding border villages. after a period of time, the NK will of course get very annoyed and want to remove this for good. and NK at the time also knows SK is not as well armed as them, therefore logical choice and "unify" under their rule. of course the US also counted on this so that Sk would look like the victim of communist agression, and can immidiately send troops in to crush NK.

Does anybody other than the North Korean citizens brainwashed by the regime actually think that the South Koreans want to unite with them?

Just take a look at the North's economy. Do you really think that the South Koreans would gladly embrace their impoverished and openly hostile enemies for the last few decades or so that easily?

The South Koreans are doing fairly well in terms of economic prosperity. Whenever you see a Korean movie released 9 times out of 10 it will be from the South. If the North didn't have any aid from the rest of the world it would collapse. I don't think the South Koreans would be eager to unite with the North if it only would weaken itself as a whole and cause a whole string of new economic problems.

Unless they have some very high morals and don't want to see all those people starving anymore, the South won't want to unite. I have yet to see this kind of moral fiber in this kind of world.

Actually....

If the two koreas actually reunite then the south will benifit in the long run. The north has always been the industrial heartland of korea and the south the agricultural side. The north koreas will also benifit from the other paying jobs and the south will benifit from cheaper labour. North koreans also have a very high education percentage. The North will also attract large amounts of tourism eager to see the pristine enviroment


South korea imports around 90% of its Raw material and oil etc. If the south gets a hold of north koreas well developed minning and raw material sector then it would rely less on other sources and become more competive in the world market.

You might try show the german example of re-unification but its not actually similar. Germany is the opposite of korea. the west had the industries(rhine, franksfurt) and the east agriculture.

West germany ave the east germans a big lump sum of cash after re-unification. this money didn't go to improvetheir lives but was wasted on consumer goods.

Not the mention a huge increase in cross border trade with china and a smaller extent russia. South korea now has to use large ships from pusan to go to beijing. This time could be cut using railways to ship good.

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Now the economic side of this is done the polictial and emotional side.


During the korean war many families were spilt apart because of the war and haven't had contact with each other in narly six decades. I think they deserve to see each other again.

A united korea is a more powerful korea.(if could even be used as a buffer to japan). I think communism is dead. The north is now the weaker side of and needs to understand that they are the smaller brother.

End Note

Most koreans want re-unification because of the sentimental value of it. This does not include the added bonus of cheaper labour and a hard working worforce.

Regards,

Chinawhite

Chinawhite,

you make some good points. I also think that in the long run both Koreas will benefit, but after a few boughts of serious food shortages (millions malnurished), being cut off from the rest of the world, and being subject to the whims of their dictator, it is easy to see the main beneficiaries would be the North Koreans.

Also, I would have to say at this point south korea has by far surpassed north korea in industrialization, not to mention most industry in the north is not up to modern standards. in any reunification scenario, the north would require huge amounts of investment just to try to get the standard of living on parity with the south, which would undoubtedly be a high priority. So over time, the benefit of cheap labor in the north will slowly fade, but initially, coupled with the North's resources like you said, this could benefit south korea, too.

I have to admit though, I am not sure i have any idea of what the north has to offer the south as far as products and services are concerned. The only thing that comes to mind are raw materials and cheap labor. The first would undoubtedly strengthen Korea's economy, but think about the consequenses of the second. Millions of North Koreans will stream into the south looking for a better life. It will be a huge strain on resources to find places to live for them, and if they are all willing to work for cheap, then it is not hard to imagine that they could actually steal jobs from the south koreans who are accustomed to high wages and benefits. This is all speculative, of course, and a reunification would simply be the right thing to do, but there will undoubtedly be hardships associated with it.

By a porportion of population, more Americans died than Chinese.

110,000 Chinese out of 450,000,000 died.
54,000 Americans out of 150,000,000 died.

walter,

Interesting view and you make good points made. The actual reason that some North koreans are malnurished is because of their one million man army and the people that support this army. This drains food resources and man-power from farms and agriculture. When re-unifrication begins this army will be scaled down(since the need of invasoin is now unnecessary) This will actually cause a grain surplus, and in the coming years a even bigger one.

Its true that in all areas the south has surpassed the north but the north has large steel mills(not very modern) and a good transportation system. They require massie investment to bring them up to scratch. But this is not going to be provided by te government alone.

South Korean compaines at this point invest many bilions of dollars in chinas economy and others around the world. This investment can be shifted to the north which has all the quailties the chinese workers have(and know how to live it tough). But it woun't be south korean alone japanese chinese taiwanese compaines will also invest in this new market place. So the problem of investment shouldn't be a big problem.

Now about living standards. When East and West germany re-unified. the West german government just gave large lump sum payments to east german families so their living standard could increase. Many people started living on welfare checks and this was funded by West german taxpayers.

Now i am going to sterotype asians for a sec. Asians dont stay at home collecting welfare, they have a drive to increase their goods(so they can brag about it). North koreans i presume are the average sterotype asains and when they are offered a job that pays 10times more than what they are getting, they are going to work hard. maybe in a decade north korean workers would get about 3/4 the average south korean gets.


Now about employment.

South korea doesn't have enough people for all the jobs they have, they hire a lot of foriegn workers into the country. The north koreans wont be replacing south korean jobs but the forigen workers which enter south korea. Not all north koreans would be rushing south to El de rado.

They would be busy in the construction buinesses and the jobs they already have, They won't be out of work..

Regards,

Chinawhite

Sorry for pushing up an old topic (Well, actually only 3 days old) but I felt that I wanted to add some realistic views on the Korean unification...

As I had posted earlier, I don't know if all South Koreans are really eager to reunite with the North in a rapid fashion. Looking at history, they can see what kind of problems it could trigger just by taking a look at Germany. The discrepancies between the two Koreas in nearly every category (economy, society, political system) is certainly wider than the two Germanies at that time.

What makes things even worse is that Kim's regime is probably determined to hang on to power. A unification scenario would make overhauling the regime very likely, so instead of unification of would be the South absorbing the North (Like in Germany). This scenario is probably not that desirable from the perspective of North Korea's regime at this time.

Im my opinion, North Korean security policy is pretty much regime survival. One crucial factor is that the most powerful state in this mess (USA) doesn't grant it full sovereignty and the rhetoric used by that asshole Bush has definitely added fuel to the fire.

After the shift in the balance of power in the beginning of the 90s (Soviet Union declined in status in the region) North Korea found itself without the support that it used to have, making the isolated form of society increasingly difficult to maintain, especially when faced with severe humanitarian crisis. (famine in 1995 e.g.) and one mean to extort some form of recognition, ANY form of recognition by the international community and much needed aid was the threat of a nuclear arsenal, which Pyongnang decided to employ.

Even though regime collapse seemed to be what many are hoping for, it is unlikely to happen in a short amount of time. Or, to put it differently; all the outside powers involved (South Korea, USA, China, Japan) should employ a strategy which solidifies the status quo and prevents any drastic alteration, because any event which is perceived by Pyongnang as regime threatening could lead to military escalation. Even though the US and China are not directly pitted against each other in a fashion like the Taiwan strait, military intervention in Korea could lead US troops pretty close to the border of China, something Beijing wouldn't be amused about.

Some time ago (Last December I think) there were secret talks between North Korea and the US. Even though North Korea broke off the 6 party talks about its possible/probable nukes, possibilities for negotiations are still there and kept alive. It seems that the US is/was willing to conduct talks with Pyongnang, even hinting at the possibility of offering some form of normalization of diplomatic relations, emphasizing that the US doesn't want to take any military action against North Korea. Bush may have ruined it all with his "Axis of Evil" insanity, but I believe hope is still there.

My view is that there many problems to consider in unification, not just "US is stopping Korea from uniting" and that they have to be solved before anything else can be done.

I just hope to god that the US and China won't get in a spat over Korea or Taiwan... of course the big losers in those scenario would be the innocent people that happen to live in those areas... like my family... -_-

Don't the SK have a "Unification Ministry"?

watch out for one liner...

SK does have a unification minister, but he is not very powerful. afterall, both sides have to decide on the matter. and not everyone in Sk supports unification.

Also, ender wiggins, please read the rules to the forum before posting, we are going to be following the rules religously here, since we want to remove certain problems we had on the forum before. and Oneliners are a big problem we want to get rid of.