| South Korean and United States foreign policy is now reunification with North Korea, a switch from decades of "Sunshine Policy" under which relationships with NK did improve. This is contextualized by a number of current events including the rise of China and revisionism of Russia, the fight over the Arctic, America's huge losses in cyberwarfare, the US's push for an Asian NATO, and Japan's reinterpretation of their Constitution to allow for anticipatory military strikes (even on behalf of allies) - basically the US's Pivot to Asia. Policy and strategy thinktanks are discussing with NGOs and CSOs how to develop insurgencies in NK and how to inform and convince the youth and unengaged in SK to care about reunification. The US and international allies plan to target specific people (guards, officials) on human rights violations, rather than engaging the country diplomatically, in the hopes that an international criminal court approach can get officials and government employees to resist or be reluctant to take orders from higher up the chain. The US will be discussing the evolution of NK with Russia, who they believe will now be assisting NK at a faster clip with missile development. An interesting note here is that every year has seen increasing activities from the US inside of NK. This past year CIA and State Department involvement in the development of The Interview (as leaked by the SONY emails, both by the SONY hackers #GOP and by Wikileaks) reveal how tensions are building between the countries, and how cyberwarfare is a highly asymmetric type of warfare. We can expect to see a great deal more about North Korea, and need to hope that, as larger powers attempt to conquer NK and strip its government, that this can be done as peacefully as possible and without triggering all of the Cold War tripwires breeding in the world today. |
I immediately thought on reading this line of how NK is the last stranglehold where U.S. Commerce has not infiltrated. In fact, much of the talk of opening NK up is entirely orchestrated towards bringing in 'capitalism', not democracy. Democracy is the excuse we seem to be persuaded by. It is the "magazine" cover that corporate America likes to parade.
And this sickens me. Why? Because people are much less willing to give up their lives for corporate freedom than they are for a democratic leadership. And yet so many of our soldiers have died for this very pretense.