Monday 9 March 2009


WORLD AGENDA: HYSTERIA IN THE KOREAN PENINSULA

Richard Lloyd Parry

The Times, March 9, 2009

If the North Korean state media was all you had to go on, you would conclude that East Asia was right now an extremely dangerous place to be. “War exercises ... strategic bomber corps ... grave situation ... war maniacs ... we will retaliate ... prompt counter strikes” – and all this in just one dispatch from the Korean Central New Agency.

North Korea is preparing to test fire an intercontinental ballistic missile it insists is a peaceful space rocket. Japan is threatening to blast any such missile out of the sky. The United States and South Korea conduct a massive military exercise. It sounds like the countdown to an appalling confrontation, to a repeat of the 1950-53 Korean War, which killed millions and sucked in armies from across the world. So why do the people elected to worry about these things, from Barack Obama to Gordon Brown, not seem especially alarmed?

It is true that Korea has the potential, at very short notice, to descend into the nastiest war since Vietnam. A million North Korean soldiers (ill-equipped, but fanatical) face 680,000 South Koreans and 26,000 Americans (well trained and superbly armed) across a mile of landmines and barbed wire. North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, suffered a stroke last year and has still not formally named a successor. If he died suddenly, he would leave a power vacuum in a state that has already tested a nuclear device.

It is the stuff of nightmares but this is the way it has been for years. Nothing done or said in the past few weeks changes the rather simple fundamentals on the North Korean peninsula – or the one scenario that could lead to its resolution.

(…) [artículo aquí]

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