Who will defend South Korea? And why?

Even as President Lee’s government stokes fears of another North Korean attack, we’re seeing a steady stream of reporting that he may drop his demand that North Korea apologize for the attacks of 2010 before there would be any direct bilateral talks. So far, Lee has thrown cold water on those reports, all of them anonymous and all of them seemingly indicative of some internal debate in the ROK government. Here’s the latest such report.

That this should be a matter of debate is hard for me to fathom — and I hope you’ll forgive the choice of that word. If the premeditated murders of 46 South Korean sailors, four of its civilians, and a village don’t even rate a simple apology, it’s hard to see why any young South Korean would put his life on the line to be the next sacrifice. Yes, soldiers implicitly accept the risk of the sacrifice of their lives, but that is not a forfeiture of their honor, or the value of their humanity. And for all the talk about his supposed hard-line positions, one precondition President Lee has never quite attached to Kim Jong Il’s money supply is the return of several hundred South Korean POW’s the North has been holding since 1953. In some ways, much too little has changed since the shameful days of Roh Moo Hyun.

All of this sends a powerful, if indirect, message about the value South Korea attaches to the lives of the young men who defend it. It might just be that a few of those young men have gotten that message:

In a sign that the country might be failing to instill patriotism into the minds of young people, about 44%, or 892 students, said they would “flee the country” if a war with North Korea broke out. Only 15% said they would “join the war or help the country in other ways.

Funny, their World Cup cheering section sure sounded brave.

Perhaps I’m making this more complicated than it really is. Maybe 44% of young Koreans are just cowards, typical shallow kids, or — God forbid — hippies. I doubt that many of them have given the matter serious thought. I suppose it’s ultimately up to the people of South Korea to elect a government worth dying to defend, and then deciding to put their lives on the line to defend it. Most of this is a matter for the Korean people to settle for themselves, but then you wonder: if they could run, where do you suppose they would run? And why do young South Koreans assume they would be able to run? Who do they assume will be guarding their backs as they board the planes they assume will fly, from airports they assume won’t be under fire? Do they assume that their inalienable right to spend “their” war guess-where will be defended by other Koreans of lower class and status? Or is the assumption that the Americans will bear this burden? Does it serve America’s interests, or South Korea’s, that so many Koreans harbor such false hopes and assumptions, and fail to understand that it is they who must preserve what distinguishes their lives from the wretchedness of Chongjin? My standing to object to these assumptions begins when the Second Infantry Division fights to hold Munsan while the flower of Korea’s youth flees to Irvine. As a practical matter, of course, that isn’t going to happen, but it’s worth asking why so many young Koreans expect it to.

The problem I continue to see with too many young South Koreans is that they’ve built dependency on America into their calculations about national and personal survival. Perhaps some know that one infantry brigade isn’t enough to stop the North Korean army, and that large-scale reinforcements are by no means assured in this political climate, but I doubt it. I suspect that the very visibility of our military presence in Korea reinforces Korea’s sense of dependency more than it reinforces South Korea’s defense. For all of the nationalism Korea has exhibited in recent years, it still suffers from an insufficiency of self-confident independence (in fact, I doubt that these things are unrelated). To change this attitude, South Korea will have to invest in a modern, professional army in which its people can invest their sense of security and their national pride. But the temptation to appease North Korea remains an impediment to this, because at the core of a professional army is a culture of respect for every young man and woman who serves in its ranks. In a professional army, the life of every young soldier must be considered priceless, and the taking of each life is a potential casus belli.