Get Real.
Someone at the Chosun Ilbo is having a Hankyoreh moment today. Get a load of this screed and its loading of words like “hard-liners” and “belligerent” to describe the provocative suggestion that if North Korea continues to build and export nuclear materials, we might . . . report them to the United Nations! The article goes so far as to suggest all that activity is for home construction. It could all be true, I suppose, but then someone has to explain why North Korea is doing its best to encourage everyone’s fears.
So why exactly, is Seoul in utter denial? On its editorial page, the Chosun tries to explain everyone, including itself, presumably:
But no sense of crisis can be felt in South Korea. A strange silence prevails. If the North tests a nuclear weapon, the damage will be felt instantly here. Some forecast that Seoul share prices will plummet by 50 percent. Few doubt that a nuclear test would result in confrontation between the United States and North Korea, and that the entire Korean Peninsula would face horrendous confusion and crisis.
No, it is rather as if people are either optimistic from wishful thinking or have despaired because they don’t know what on earth is going on. There may even be a misplaced nationalism at play that sees nothing wrong with North Korea having the bomb. After more than a decade of the nuclear dispute, it is also possible that people feel that one crisis is much like another.
You can read more signs of the atmosphere of pervasive denial here. I cap this all off with my favorite quote this week:
“I think the rumors of a June crisis are being spread by Japan’s conservative media,” said Moon Chung-in, chairman of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asia Policy Initiative. “A nuclear test is North Korea’s last trump card, so it wouldn’t play it lightly, and I think it’s unlikely that the North would export nuclear materials to a third country.
Ummm, HEL-LO?
On another level, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Why don’t the South Koreans just pay off the U.N. like the Iraqis did? Their bag-man is still running loose, and we certainly know that Hyundai has experience in such matters.