Agree completely.
Art of the Deal. Everybody has to get something.
USA: Gets out of Korea, bringing our nukes with us.
ROK: Gets the 50-year project of reconstructing DPRK.
DPRK: Gets food, civililzation.
PRC: Gets a non-hostile power on the Korean peninsula and is in a better position to take Taiwan.
Win-win-win-win.
Taiwan loses. Can't make an omlet without breaking eggs.
Last year, I watched a couple of Youtube videos with NK folks who’d escaped and they explained the weeks of adjustment required when entering into South Korean culture.
I see a massive problem in taking the NK people through a likely ten-year phase of living in a modern society. For South Korean business operations....it’ll be an enormous boom with cheap manpower for an entire decade.
I cannot see the U.S. abandoning Taiwan in this exchange.
Two things:
I don’t think we get out of South Korea. In the statement, Moon says that our troops are not part of the conditions that the North is looking for. Sure, this could eventually happen, but not now. Perhaps 10 - 15 years from now when we have completely certified that the North has no nukes and they have pulled their massive amount of troops away from the border and we have normalized relations with them. Even then, I don’t believe we pull our troops out unless South Korea wants us to. We have other interests (like China) in the region.
2. Taiwan only loses if we pulled out all of our troops. We are not going to abandon Taiwan. Even though some things about red China look bad, right now they are developing institutions that are conducive to democracy. If they keep going down the path they are going, their communism will fall on it’s own and at that point Taiwan may want to actually merge with China.