South Korea should take over North Korea

[mattbell]

I should preface this by saying that I am not well schooled in international relations.  I could be missing some key facts or concerns.  I could be totally off.  However, I'd like to think out loud in this post.  

After reading about recent North Korean shelling of South Korea, I was surprised at my intuitive reaction that South Korea should invade North Korea.  Generally I'm not very hawk-ish.  I was very opposed to the war in Iraq when it was being contemplated.  What's different?

One of the US's great failures in Iraq is that we did not follow up our invasion force with an administrative force who could take over the day-to-day operation of the society.  Furthermore, we banned anyone who had held significant administrative positions (the Ba'ath party) from holding positions in the new regime.  We also didn't have enough Arabic speakers to adeptly handle translation issues.  As a result, we essentially let the administrative functions of the government collapse, and the Iraqis were not impressed.  It's taken several long years, thousands of lives, and over two trillion dollars to crawl out of the deep hole we got ourselves into over there.

Korea could be different.  South and North Korea share the same language.  They are, geographically speaking, right next to each other.  South Koreans have relatives in North Korea.  People will care.   If South Korea had a halfway decent plan for absorbing North Korean administrative functions, it would be much easier for them to take over than it was for us to take over Iraq.  The situation is probably more similar to what happened when Germany reunified.  West Germany had to put in an enormous amount of money to reintegrate East Germany from an infrastructure perspective and a social perspective.  However, twenty years later the results are amazing.  Berlin is beautiful.  It feels strange to even write the words "West Germany" now.  

North Korea is probably one of the most dangerous regimes around.  Unlike Iraq, they actually have weapons of mass destruction, and they seem more fickle and irrational than just about any other regime on the planet.  They're not integrated into the global economy or social web; the closest thing they have to a friend is China.  This makes them more likely to take rash actions without regard for the consequences.

North Korea is also a humanitarian disaster; starvation is a common occurrence, and the government appears to not give a damn.  If there was a Child Protective Services for countries, North Korean citizens would long ago have been placed in a foster home.  In a sense this is what I'm proposing.

Sure, there are numerous countries in Africa that are just as messed up, but North Korea appears to be a low hanging fruit.  It would be easier to turn around North Korea than, say, Sudan.  I'm not saying that we should not have given humanitarian aid to Sudan -- what I'm saying is that it would be easier to bring North Korea up to first-world status than Sudan.  it would be a good use of South Korea's money.

Generally democracies are not in the habit of starting unprovoked wars, but in this case North Korea has already attacked the South, so the international community would probably find it relatively understandable if South Korea attacked back in an escalated manner.   Sure, many people would die, but in the long run these deaths will more than be outweighed by the end to lost generation after lost generation of North Korean citizens.  

If any of you have interesting articles you can point me towards about South Korea's long term strategy for dealing with the North, I'd love to see them.  

Comments

[crotchgoblin.livejournal.com]

Link dump of stuff I've read in the past year or so (and a few more I googled and liked) on ROK and DPRK, with little to no added commentary hehe:

http://www.e-ir.info/?p=3491 - great
http://koreanunification.net/
http://www.wmdinsights.com/I22/I22_EA3_DPRKDenuclearization.htm
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/93-612f.htm - really useful, even though it is about US policy; it covers a lot of ROK's preferences and determinants
http://www.korea-dpr.com/reunification.htm - Kek, DPRK policy on ROK :D

foreignpolicy.com has a lot of great commentary and articles basically friggin everything, which means ROK and DPRK are included :)

We lived in Korea for a few years a while back (1987-1990, geez) - I can ask my dad what his thoughts are on the situation and what it was like then. Also I really enjoyed this article regarding the current hostilities today, and I think you will too: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AN1FV20101124?pageNumber=1

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I was hoping I'd hear from you! Yeah, I'd be interested in what your dad has to say too. Time to read some links.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I think I was underestimating the power of NK's military (see comments below). Seoul is being held hostage. I get it now.

Also, korea-dpr.com takes me back to the 1990s. Of course the communists would reject the bourgeois flashiness of Web 2.0... plus it frees up money in the budget for the bourgeois flashiness of the mass games.

[happyinmotion.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Unfortunately, Seoul is within 30 miles of the border. NK apparently has enough artillery and rockets dug in to deliver hundreds of thousands of shells within an hour. That's going to make a mess.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

That's my impression, too: any full scale war between the two Koreas today would almost inevitably result in the near-total destruction of South Korea's most vibrant city, which would be horrifying both in terms of civilian deaths and impact on the Korean economy.

The North Korea situation is less of an international relations puzzle as it is a 60 year, multi-million person hostage situation.

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

What's somewhat aggravating is that Seoul was flattened once already in the last war, but they decided to rebuild it in the exact same spot, within spitting distance of the border.

Of course even if Seoul wasn't being effectively held hostage i don't think South Korea really _wants_ North Korea at this point given the shape it's in. Taking charge of it would probably kill their economy, unless they kept it at arms length as some kind of puppet state.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

The whole rebuilding-cities-where-they-fell thing is strong in the human psyche... probably a side effect of some genetically beneficial resilience. There was a This American Life podcast about that recently, where they brought up the case of a town in Pennsylvania built on a coal mine. The mine caught fire, and most residents refused to evacuate over the next several years even though the mine fire opened up burning fissures in the city streets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

Not that it would matter where they put it, since North Korea routinely launches test missiles over Japan, just to show that they can do it. If they get really mad, they could cause huge trouble in Tokyo and Beijing, not just South Korea.

And actually, the WikiLeaks thing today mentioned that Iran got some of their medium-range missiles (1200 miles range, I believe) from North Korea.

Also, there might be good reason for the site of Seoul - and also, no matter how flattened a city gets in the war, it's likely to have lots of useful infrastructure around, even if it's just already-flat ground, rather than trying to clear the natural slope of any other terrain.

Apparently, the risk of suddenly having to take over North Korea is one of the major things preventing the South from attacking, even beyond the deterrent capacity targeted at Seoul.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

OK, that explains South Korea's willingness to be pushed around and not aggravate North Korea too much. Chances are the weapons aimed at Seoul are scattered over a large area and partially hidden underground in secret locations. North Korea is probably close to impossible for spy networks to penetrate. So the only way to save Seoul in a war would be to immediately rain broad destruction over a significant section North Korea near Seoul in the hope of wiping out as much artillery as possible. Perhaps this is a case for battlefield nuclear weapons, though if the winds are going the wrong direction the fallout from these weapons could end up falling on Seoul. Anti-missile missiles could help with some of the incoming rockets, but chances are we don't have anything good enough (high powered battlefield lasers etc) to stop the artillery.

Come to think of it, IIRC North Korea has medium range missiles as well, and if they have primitive nuclear weapons they could launch from anywhere in North Korea and wipe out Seoul. That's depressing.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, IIRC North Korea has medium range missiles as well, and if they have primitive nuclear weapons they could launch from anywhere in North Korea and wipe out Seoul. That's depressing.

But also worth factoring in is the fact that the longer they wait, the more powerful the nuclear weapons North Korea is actively working on will get.

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

maybe i just have a tendency to think farther outside the box than most, but it makes much more sense to me to mass-poison military rations and water in north korea (strictly military though, not civilian) with a quick-acting and non-spreadable biological. then go in, take out l'il kim while everyone else supposed to be fighting has dystentary or something, and use what recon/spy people we and our allies likely already have in place in north korea to disarm anything of higher caliber, like nukes.

i realize it's a lot less like playing risk and a lot more like playing a really dirty shell game with fecal matter in the boonies, but i think it might be just as effective with fewer risks to the greater populace on both sides if executed properly.

[proctologiste.livejournal.com]

North Korea has the largest military in the world (in terms of soldier numbers). It also officially follows the policy of "Sangun" or "army first". Meaning a HUGE portion of the population is conscripted into the military, and all the rest get draft on demand.

In North Korea there's basically no difference between military and civilian.

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

which makes it far more dangerous as a military state, which still needs to be taken out by, but in a much more quiet way than with all guns blazing.

[proctologiste.livejournal.com]

For now, just a slight correction, probably an oversight/typo but in case it isn't:

We didn't lack Farsi speakers in Iraq. The primary language there is "Arabic". More specifically, Modern Standard Arabic is what's taught to American military translators of which there's a shortage, but on top of that, as you leave the cities MSA speakers drop off. Instead, local "dialects" (languages, really) dominate.

Farsi speakers are needed in Afghanistan though (iirc it's actually the widest spoken language there, it's usually called Dari there) in addition to Pashtu speakers. Of the latter there is a *dire* lack.

Another random note of interest: "Farsi" is the Arabic pronunciation (though it's used in some of Iran as well), Parsi or just Persian is what I consider more appropriate (this is more my opinion that a fact, Parsi and Farsi are both found in Iran, though I believe the former is more common).

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the correction.

[mongo42.livejournal.com]

Although the NK amy is very large, I think the biggest risk to invading is probably China. They prop up the North Koreans; what would they do? Would they intervene on the North Koreans' behalf? And would Western powers then start helping South Korea? That's how World Wars get started.