Fisking the Appeasers in Seoul

Rebecca MacKinnon at NKZone notes that the appeasers in Seoul are mobilizing against the North Korean Freedom Act. Reading this kind of nationalist pablum–and it really boils down to “Americans are incapable of real compassion for North Koreans, but let’s not give more than lip service to the concept, either”–makes the sarin seep from my pores. I lashed:

**************
Yu and Jeong [the appeasers] maliciously question our concern for the North Korean people because the concept of compassion transcending race or nation is incomprehensible to them. This much is evident to any soldier who has served in South Korea. So Miss Yu–if your nation really cares about the people of North Korea, why don’t you even mention what’s happening to them? Why does your government pooh-pooh reports that they are dying in death camps and gas chambers without even asking North Korea to permit an investigation of the facts? Why does your government veto UN resolutions that might give their pain a moment of ease? Why do you silence and turn away defectors? Why do two million murdered mean so little, when two who died accidentally mean so much? If you are really concerned about the North Korean people, why can’t we see any sign of it? In short, why do you expect us to join in the silence that your children will never forgive?

The North Korean Freedom Act is our way of demanding our “independence” from South Korea. South Korea can form its own policies, we can form ours. Hopefully, our policy will include more concern about the suffering of North Korea than Seoul’s has shown. South Korea’s delusional behavior and ugly spate of hate crimes against our soldiers has liberated us from our desire to subsidize that rich, spoiled, and morally cowardly nation with 37,000 of our troops and $15 billion of our dollars each year. The corporate welfare for Hyundai is about to end. After we protected South Korea’s safety for so many years, their government uses our soldiers to hold us hostage to morally reprehensible and diplomatically impotent policies that endanger our national security. The North Korean Freedom Act could save millions of lives in both North Korea and America by cutting the umbilical Gordian knot that binds us to those failed policies.