Won-Joon Choe on the Korean Bomb

I had a long post ready to go on OFK reader and contributor Won-Joon Choe’s new piece in the Christian Science Monitor (with co-author Jack Kim), but Blogger ate the entire entry, and I don’t have the time to rebuild it. It deals mainly with their thoughts on why South Korea doesn’t really mind the idea of a nuclear North Korea–its faith in reunification and belief that even a North Korean nuke is a Korean nuke. They lay responsibility for this on the South Korean government’s propaganda offensive, which has persuaded many people that North Korea is really benign. So far, I’m on board.

Where I disagree is with the idea that there’s some sinister reasoning behind this, or for that matter, much of any of the haze that’s being shotgunned around in the Blue House these days. Choe and Kim see this as connected to South Korea’s own nuclear ambitions. I’m not persuaded on that part. I’m a fan of Occam’s Razor, which means that I tend to see Roh and his cabinet in simpler terms–as inexperienced, unqualified people who tend to decide things emotionally, not rationally.

I do agree with where they go in the end, however:

This means, in the first place, Seoul’s propaganda that North Korea is benign must be countered. The South Korean public must be made to see North Korea for what it is: an evil, totalitarian regime that murders its own people and even today threatens to communize the South.

Second, South Korea must be reminded of the grave costs of pursuing the nuclear option for itself. In fact, the Bush administration lost a golden opportunity to do so when it failed to refer South Korea to the UN Security Council when the “rogue” nuclear experiments were exposed last summer. That failure revealed that the Bush administration was suffering from a fantasy of its own that the leftist government in Seoul would reciprocate Washington’s goodwill with a more cooperative approach regarding North Korea.

Read the whole thing; it’s certainly a great discussion piece.