STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

North and South Korea Enter their Ritual of Mutual Deprecation, Once Again!
It’s been a while since we have heard from either Koreas. However, the Swiss-Boarding school educated leader of NK, Kim Jung Un, has found the time and need to address the problem of the enduring silence on the DMZ border. He has just announced to his people and to the world that he has placed his rundown military on full alert; presumably ready for war with SK. For the most part, everyone in South Korea, especially in the wealthy, beautiful city of Seoul have been ignoring his words.

What could possibly be wrong with these young South Koreans who have one of the lowest unemployment rates in Asia?

Are they spoiled?

Are they ignorant of the threat?
Or are they just inured to the boisterous flatulence proclaimed by Kim Jung Un, a contemporary of theirs who had more of a privileged upbringing than anyone in South or North Korea? Most of you know the answer by now.

No one takes Kim Jung Un seriously, not even his own people. They too have become used to the yearly ritual of threats and ultimatums thrown at the South Korean government for one or another reason. Why does Kim Jung Un continue this useless yearly rituals? One reason is that his grandfather, Kim IL Sung and his father, Kim Jung In, had made this a practice in order to keep their people under a presumed threat of war and terror. Most of the North Koreans know that there will be no war for the simple reason that they also know that no one can or will win a war between North and South Korea. So the North Korean people acted accordingly, making believe that they have been insulted by the propaganda statements of South Korea and then warning the world of imminent war.

The only country that must worry about North Korea is not South Korea or the USA.

It’s China. 

Since WWII, North Korea has been a client state of China. Nothing gets done domestically or externally without China having blessed that particular action. Occasionally the Chinese operatives will deny this, like the time they had personally told me that they have ‘no control over North Korea’ and, then they dismissed that notion outright.

The reality of the North-South Korean problem is basic. Contrary to the American critics untutored in psychology, who have claimed that the Kim Jung Un or NK in general ‘are crazies’, the truth is far simpler. There has been no insanity demonstrated in the actions of the North Korean leaders over the past half-a-century. What we see is the helpless outcry and acting-out behavior of a country mired in poverty and repression. Unlike SK, where the youth indulges in the excesses of capitalism, NK people can barely live through a day’s work without some financial hardship.

NK is not only a failed state, it is also a geopolitical entity that serves the purpose of legitimizing our naval presence in the South China Sea as well as allowing over thirty thousand American soldiers to remain in Seoul as a ‘trip wire’ to possible war. Yes, ‘possible war’. Not actual war; because if one looked at the map of SK, one can clearly see how close Seoul is to the DMZ. This makes it almost impossible for both American and South Korean troops to amass a sufficiently large enough force structure to deter the theoretical might of 2.2 million North Korean troops only a few miles from the heart of SK.

The nonsensical ritual of deprecation continues between both sides as if there were two babies spitting at each other in two aligned cribs. SK raises its country’s flag to seven feet on the DMZ. Next NK has to raise it to seven feet one inch in order to instigate a rivalry of sorts which leads to nothing more than a fruitless round of negotiations.Old habits die hard.  Neither side wants to concede defeat in this constant antagonism.
One day when North Korea has been able to improve its’ GDP after having worked with South Korean factories in the south of NK, they will finally realize that there is  difference in their respective cultures divided now by an artificial financial barrier of the ‘have nots’ and ‘haves’. The dirty secret is that SK uses North Korean labor as a cheap working force in their respective factories located on the border of the DMZ. When NK attains a more impressive economy and the financial discrepancy is not that large, then NK and SK will be one again.

At this point in time, SK feels a bit like West Germany before East Germany, the crippled state, was integrated into WG. SK cannot afford that type of integration now. It would drain the SK economy and possibly implode both states financially. So the merger has to accrue over time as one entity become worthy of an acquisition.

These two entities are like two companies that want to seek a merger at the appropriate time in the fiscal cycle.

Who will be the intervening bankers to arrange this merger?
You guessed right!
America, China, and a few other states that could benefit from this new financial giant called, “KOREA!”

It might do the leaders of both countries well to remember the words of the great Greek philosopher, Heraclitus:

“There is nothing permanent except change.”