North & South Korea conflict

[neil]

News reports about North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un are saying that he's no longer seeking reunification & I'm thinking that this may be good news for the US presence in South Korea, because if South Korea also takes the same position of no longer also seeking reunification, the two sides can declare their conflict resolved, sign peace treaties with each other, and we (the US) can pack up and leave.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Kim is invested in presenting a narrative of war to his people in order to justify his repression and starvation of his people.

[Anomalocaris]

News reports about North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un are saying that he's no longer seeking reunification & I'm thinking that this may be good news for the US presence in South Korea, because if South Korea also takes the same position of no longer also seeking reunification, the two sides can declare their conflict resolved, sign peace treaties with each other, and we (the US) can pack up and leave.

Unification on north Korea’s terms has been farther out of its reach than the moon for North Korea since the end of the Vietnam war.    Every instance of tension raising North Korea has undertaken since then, whether under the pretext of unification or some other,  has been for a different real objective.     So I don’t see this announcement as having any significance as a signal for any real course change.

The U.S. is not there because there is a danger than North Korea could actually take out South Korea.    The U.S. force is there to ensure the U.S. has a presence in that part of the world, influence in internal South Korean politics and most importantly the close U.S. Japanese alliance does not drive south Korea towards China in regional geostrategic outlook.    If the U.S. is not there in each country, the possibility of armed stand off between South Korea and Japan, or even open conflict, over territorial dispute between the two countries is not insignificant, and if that were to happen South Korea would jump straight into China’s arms for support and China would readily exploit the opportunity to take Japan down a notch or two by coordinating with South Korea and grab some islands that are the core of China’s own territorial dispute with Japan.

China would love to grab these islands, just north of Taiwan, because holding them would outflank Taiwan’s defenses, and block any support for Taiwan from the direction of Japan in the case of armed conflict over Taiwan.

[brewer]

Kim is invested in presenting a narrative of war to his people in order to justify his repression and starvation of his people.

1984.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Kim is invested in presenting a narrative of war to his people in order to justify his repression and starvation of his people.

1984.

Exactly.

[Anomalocaris]

Kim is invested in presenting a narrative of war to his people in order to justify his repression and starvation of his people.

1984.

In his narrative the U.S. has assumed the bigger role and the south Korea’s role has diminished because otherwise his ICBMs would be hard to justify for a country whose GDP is like 5 ICBMS.   Also depicting the U.S. as the main adversary implies North Korea has risen in the world.

[Rev. Rye]

Also worth noting, America has even more soldiers in Germany than in South Korea, despite there being no good reason to do so in decades.

[Belacqua]

[...] the two sides can declare their conflict resolved, sign peace treaties with each other, and we (the US) can pack up and leave.

I wish everybody could sign peace treaties. It looks as though Kim's announcement is for more hostility, though, rather than less. He has announced that reunification is impossible because the two countries are in a hostile face-off which shows no sign of ending. He's given up (publicly) on peace because of decades-long hostility from the US. Recent research concludes that the US killed 20% of North Korea's population during the war, so there's no reason for anyone to take America's threats as idle. 

In recent years the US has been making more and more belligerent moves against China. And we know that in order to weaken a major enemy, the US is perfectly willing to devastate a smaller country in a proxy war. It's clear that Ukraine has been destroyed, with millions killed, maimed, or permanently emigrated. 20% of the country has been permanently lost to the Russians and the rest is largely sold off to foreign investors. In addition, the US shows that it has no regard for human life; it is currently supporting an ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

Recent history shows that if a foreign leader gives up his weapons of mass destruction the US then has him assassinated and his country is put into chaos. Viz. Libya and Iraq. So Kim has no good reason to look peaceful. If America packed up and left he could ramp it down, but as long as the US remains the main threat of war worldwide, his course of building strength is reasonable. Unfortunate, but not crazy.

The people of North and South Korea have no animosity. As with Taiwan, if the US stopped using these places as tokens in their quest for hegemony, everybody could calm down. 

As the US loses credibility in the world, and as its economic clout dissolves, the real threat is that it will start new wars rather than accept diminished power. Kim's best option is probably to wave a big stick and otherwise do nothing -- as the petrodollar continues to dissolve, as Russia and China continue to gain popularity in Africa and Asia, and as the BRICS nations grow, US hegemony will fade away. Then peaceful resolutions will be more possible.

[Fake Messiah]

The people of North and South Korea have no animosity. As with Taiwan, if the US stopped using these places as tokens in their quest for hegemony, everybody could calm down. 

As the US loses credibility in the world, and as its economic clout dissolves, the real threat is that it will start new wars rather than accept diminished power. Kim's best option is probably to wave a big stick and otherwise do nothing -- as the petrodollar continues to dissolve, as Russia and China continue to gain popularity in Africa and Asia, and as the BRICS nations grow, US hegemony will fade away. Then peaceful resolutions will be more possible.

So the US is the villain in the world that started all of the wars and is responsible for every genocide while North Korea, China, and Russia are all trying to create peace. That is some textbook Vatnik propaganda.

The problem in Korea is dictators for life. The start of the Korean War had nothing to do with the US, but when dictator Kim ordered his army to invade the South. They soon took almost the entire peninsula, but the U.S. and the UN pushed back almost to the Chinese border. The US war operation in Korea was a great success.

Also, NK dictators are cruel to their own people (forced labor, starvation, eradication of journalism and art) and that is why nobody wants to live under a dictator be it Kim, Putin, or Xi.

[no one]

How come the ghosts of dictators past never show up to show the dictators of the present the evil of their ways?