Posts (page 2)
I came across an article in the International Herald Tribune a couple of days ago that does an excellent job summing up South Korean views on the importance of the NK nuclear test and what the hot topics are here on the peninsula a year ahead of next year's presidential elections - economy first, nuke stuff later.
"SEOUL: Bruised by South Korea's cutthroat politics, bewildered by voters' rapidly changing concerns and battered mercilessly in the polls, President Roh Moo Hyun is limping toward the last year of his term.
But it is not Roh's engagement of North Korea, or even its recent nuclear test, that has saddled him with a current approval rating of 11 percent.
...
Indeed, even as the North Korean crisis keeps widening the gap between Seoul and Washington, it is nothing like a hot-button issue here among voters. North Korea's nuclear test last month has, if anything, reconfirmed the national consensus that South Korea has no choice but to keep its policy of engaging North Korea."
More at IHT 'Roh Loses Support' Article
The Axis of Evil World Tour book is a step closer to coming out – I now have a tentative cover design and layout. To read some of what’s inside the book please head to:
Thanks!
Ever since the North’s nuclear test last month, and in the run-up to the holidays, people at home have been asking about what the mood is like here on the peninsula. Is it more dangerous now? What do the South Koreans think?
Is it more dangerous now?
Nope, not if you’re living in Seoul, or anywhere else close to the North’s border. Whether I’m sitting here and get killed by an artillery shell, or a nuke, the result is the same – I’m dead. So, for anyone living in the area, in range of North Korean artillery for decades, the North’s development of a nuke changes little.
What was the reaction among South Koreans?
I first heard of the explosion the afternoon it happened, during a break between classes. When I returned to class I asked my students, 1st to 4th year female students at the university in Seoul where I teach, if they had heard the news. Most had not and, when I explained what had happened, I was met with cheers and applause. Some of the students were literally ecstatic that the North had developed a nuclear weapon, “Because their power is our power.” Friends and co-workers reported similar reactions.
While these feelings are most common among the young and the left-wing, they are in no way a small minority. A sizeable segment of the South Korean population is honestly happy the North has tested an atomic bomb. The idea the North would ever do anything to hurt them is deemed crazy and war-like, the events of 1950-53 notwithstanding. In my class I told my students to go talk to their grandparents before getting too excited, then got back to the lesson.
In the end, the reaction to the nuclear test here in ranged from joy and happiness at one end, through a vast lack of concern across the middle, to a few demonstrations and some anger from the old and the right-wing. In the space of a few weeks, if not a few days, it seems everything here on the peninsula returned to normal. People that like the North still do – the SK government has kept up the Kaesong and Kuemgang projects. People that dislike the North still do, only with maybe a little more energy than before.
If there is such a thing as yawning at a nuclear test, that’s what’s happened.
