The Korean situation

For those of you up for a five-minute lesson on Korea, here it is.

1. North and South Korea formed at the end of WWII when the Soviet army met the US at the 38th parallel which is now the border between North and South Korea. South Korea is an ally of the US, a capitalist nation, and somewhat a democracy. It is far more prosperous than North Korea.

2. North Korea is the most frightening, most Stalinist nation on earth. In the last ten years somewhere around a million people have died of starvation. Formerly ruled by Kim Il Sung, it is now run by the dictator Kim Jong Il, his son, who overseas a terrifying police state in which there are informers and spies everywhere and any kind of dissent is swiftly dealt with. There are a lot of rumors swirling about him, and the story from Washington is that he is irrational and dangerous. Nonetheless when Madeline Allbright met him, he did not appear to be so, and judging from their shrewd movements in using the threat of a nuclear North Korea to blackmail the west, I'm not sure how much I believe the party line. The Chinese are interested in propping up this regime because if it topples refugees will flood China.

3. Most of the money is spent on the military, which is a formidable force of around 800,000 men, some 4,000 tanks, 800 aircraft and other weapons, much of which sits directly on the 38th parallel within range of Seoul. The North Korean military has enough artillery in range of Seoul to level the entire city. The South Korean military is vastly outclassed by the North Koreans.

4. The US has a contingent of some 28,000 troops sitting near the DMZ of the 38th parallel, the largest contingent outside of Iraq. Due to the mountainous terrain of Korea, it is unlikely that the US would defeat the Koreans as easily as the Iraqi army was defeated.

5. George Bush moved away from diplomatic solutions after the Clinton administration attempted many such overtures and labeled N. Korea as part of an "axis of evil". During Bush's presidence the N. Koreans have developed a nuclear weapon, developed a delivery system which can probably reach the west coast of the US, and now tested a nuclear weapon. Sources say that they probably have enough plutonium to build up to eleven weapons.

6. The US has already fought a war on the Korean peninsula in which some 40,000 Americans lost their lives and which nearly involved the single greatest defeat in American history. After an initial attack by N. Korea, the US drove the Northern forces all the way to the Yalu river, at which time China intervened on behalf of the North Koreans. The 38th parallel remains the border between these two nations, with families cut in two who have never seen each other.

7. It is estimated that an attack on N. Korea by the US would cause the deaths of upwards of ten million people.