Korea Herald Ed: Which Side Is Roh On?

Sometimes, the ideological chasm between Seoul’s generations make you think America is positively single-minded.

Nice to see Koreans defending the values our soldiers fought to protect like they actually mean it. Nice to see real common ground with a few Koreans. Too bad the people who share that common ground with us have a demographic half-life of ten years.

The only way to keep Seoul from becoming Kim Il-Sung City is to capture the imagination of the younger generations with an anti-Communist alternative–that old “political struggle” business again. Mao, a genius at acquiring power (and a failure at wielding it) indisputably had much to teach us about underground political organization, and we learn today that the North Koreans surely haven’t forgotten it. Yes, while South Korea has halted its covert ops in the North, the North’s political juggernaut in the South rolls onward to new levels in its evolution toward becoming the next shadow government.

On this score, we Americans indisputably have no clue. Our idea of political struggle is for the ambassador to have his bodyguard drive his bullet-proof limousine to his address before the Royal Asiatic Society.

At this rate, the embassy really shouldn’t put off that budget request to upgrade the helipad on the rooftop.

A better way, you ask? One that springs to my mind is the genesis of a North Korean resistance movement that inspires the national pride of all Koreans. South Koreans could organize, primarily through their churches, to aid and supply this resistance movement. Talk about galvanizing the ties between North and South before unification.