North Korea, up to a couple weeks ago, was acting like a crazy guy waving a gun around while surrounded by cops. They were mobilizing to a certain extent and alarming the neighbors with their missile exercises and nuclear "sea of fire" threats. (Maybe) China is the cop that decided enough was enough, stepped in, and put the gun to their head.
If I were talking to a North Korean military or intelligence officer (or the "Dear Leader"), I'd say that the nuclear and missile brinkmanship your country has been pursuing has reached a dead end and is now making a bad situation even worse as all your immediate neighbors are now talking about intervention. China is lining up on the border, Japan is talking preemption, and South Korea has leaked a military plan to move north and reunify - - all in the span of the past 2-3 weeks.
And what provoked all this? National maneuvers with nuclear-capable missiles.
Some deterrent.
Self reliance? Hardly. Self destruction? Definitely.
It's a dog-eat-dog world and you're the one wearing milk-bone underwear.
(That probably doesn't translate well, but you get the idea.)
The nuclear and missile programs are not your salvation. They have become your undoing. They are not deterring intervention but forcing it. Get rid of it. Put down the gun and don't commit "suicide by cop". Invite a UN force of acceptable neutral nations to oversee and verify the dismantling of these programs and simultaneously they would serve as de facto "human shields" from intervention. The UN could put a humanitarian assistance force together like they did for Albania in the mid-90s. No one is going to intervene with a multinational UN force on the ground.
Think about it.
"North Korea, up to a couple weeks ago, was acting like a crazy guy waving a gun around while surrounded by
cops"
It's hard to reason with a madman slowly dying from syphilis of the brain...Caligula was another similar case.
"China is lining up on the border, Japan is talking preemption, and South Korea has leaked a military plan to move north and reunify - - all in the span of the past 2-3 weeks."
Megabump
I pray that cooler heads will prevail, but I am doubtful.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200410/200410190017.html
China's Alleged Plot to Annex North Korea
If the North Korean system collapses or a coup d'etat takes place in the North, South Korea will naturally fill the gap. This is an illusion. An opening of room for unification won't necessarily mean a unification of the two Koreas.
Though it has not been played up in the media in the absence of confirming its authenticity, an article appearing in the Internet recently stirred up ripples. Written by an anonymous person, the story is said to have rearranged a lecture given by a professor of politics at Beijing University, which plays the role of academic adviser to the Chinese government. Its gist is as follows.
"The North Korean regime cannot survive more than 10 years. If a pro-Chinese military faction grasps power following a collapse of the regime, China intends to incorporate North Korea into its military federation and eventually make it a subordinate state. The Northeast Asia Project now in progress is aimed at accumulating a historical basis for it...¡°
The article appears to have shocked netizens. Each portal site has recorded it as a mostly-read story and attracted hundreds of comments. A concern that China or any other neighboring power will keep an eye on North Korean territory when the Korean Peninsula is about to be unified or when the North Korean regime collapses is common sense to those who have studied international politics or law.
"China intends to assert preemptive rights to the North Korean region following a collapse of North Korea." "China schemes to assert vested interests in North Korean territory." A few scholars have long made these contentions, Professor Song Ki-ho of Seoul National University among them. Furthermore, those concerned about Japan's right-wing views of history make this contention: "If Korea-Japan relationship deteriorates or South Korea's strength weakens, Japan may come up with a claim that Japan has preemptive rights to a southern portion of the Korean peninsula."
Our constitution prescribes North Korean territory as that of the Republic of Korea. In the international community, however, this is nothing but wishful thinking of ours. If one trusts that China, Japan, Russia and the United States, when circumstances develop in favor of a reunification of the two Koreas, would stand by seeing the two Koreas unified, he or she is naive indeed. Legally, China can dispatch its troops to North Korea if and when the South advances into North Korean territory, making use of the automatic intervention clause of the North Korea-China Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance Treaty. North Korea is a territory that China, Japan, the U.S. and Russia are reluctant to just leave alone.
National security calls for preparedness against even a 1 percent possibility. The possibility of such a development far exceeds one percent. We might encounter little problems if we are strong enough to exclude the four superpowers. Under the current circumstances in which the political leadership pledges "independent defense in words only," that wouldn't be easy to achieve in a decade. If so, we must make a certain country with solid capabilities a friend of ours and make use of it. Among the four superpowers surrounding the Korean peninsula, it is only the United States that has such strength and with which we have had friendly relations.
Until a few years ago, we expected that the U.S. would stand on our side under such a situation. Many harbor doubts about it today, though. Even some scholars assigned to public agencies are concerned, saying, "Even for the sake of restraining China, we have to strengthen our alliance with the United States." An official involved in the six-country talks observed, "With Seoul moving further from the United States, other participants do not seem to pay attention to statements South Korea makes like they used to."
The strong United States, which shares with us values like the market economy and democracy, and has gotten along well with historically with few territorial ambitions on the Korean Peninsula, is a useful tool in blocking Chinese greed and preparing for unification. Those who condemn the good use of such a nation as "idolization" are the real anti-Korean, anti-unification forces.