Chung Dong-Young: Imagine . . . .

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
Nothing to kill or die for
A brotherhood of man

Can anyone name one place where there there was not a substantial difference in standards of living between different socioecomic classes? I can’t, but Chung Dong Young can imagine it:

Former unification minister and Uri Party chairman contender Chung Dong-young said at a press conference yesterday that if the strength of the army was reduced to 300,000, about half its current size, before the year 2015, the financial resources to settle the social and economic divide could be raised.

Get it? South Korea wants to cut is military to save money in its budget for other priorities, while the United States taxpayers are lavishing $12 billion on defending South Korea every year, on people who mostly despise us for doing it. And it gets worse:

Mr. Chung said, “When a peace regime is set up, the national defense reform plan
must be reconsidered.” Mr. Chung was speaking about the National Defense Reform
Plan 2020, announced by the Defense Ministry last year. The plan aims to cut the
current 680,000-strong military force down to 500,000, accompanied by expanding its power with state-of-the-art technology.

It looks like a steady move toward a coalition with the North, and guess who will end up running the show after the first group of “reactionaries” are “splittists” would be purged, say, in 2010. I’m betting on the ones with the really good secret police and the labor camp space. Up to this point, I’ve favored removing only the ground component of the USFK, but I’d urge withdrawing the entire USFK and unilaterally abrogating the Mutual Defense Pact if Chung gets elected. There is simply no way that American service members can be safe in Korea with our flanks and rear protected by forces led by this guy.

The good news: Chung’s running for president, and we’re about to see just what the voters think about that. The best outcome is that Chung gets trounced in the election. The worst outcome is that some left-of-center government wins and lets Chung come within 500 feet of the Blue House, as part of some coalition compromise.