Referendum

I don’t really have much to add to this, because I’ve thought a referendum on the alliance was needed since I was serving in Korea myself. While there, I could see the tension between Koreans’ desire to keep the alliance’s benefits and their contempt for the soldiers and the country who bore its burden.

My small quibble with Kim Dae Joong is that “wartime control” is only the first of many dominos, and phrasing the question that way benefits those who see this as an issue of national pride. Korea needs a national debate on the difference between independence and interdependence, the cost of building a whole new duplicative force structure, and the extent to which it really trusts to good intentions of China and North Korea. So far, those issues have been obscured behind emotion. It’s time to force some deeper thinking. It’s time to ask Roh and his administration to lay their strategic cards on the table.