I disagree with Colonel Chamberlain’s presumption that this kind of unification would result in a benign ending. Barring an East German style implosion or a DPRK invasion, a negotiated ” fusion ” unification of the two Koreas could leave a single, united, illiberal, authoritarian and militantly nationalistic state with nuclear arms that provokes Japan into full-scale rearmament – forcing China, then India and Pakistan into a dangerous arms race. Kim Jong-Il is not going to negotiate himself out of existence or for a Pinochet style retirement – he will insist on an equal, if not domineering role in a united Korea.

For Seoul to accomodate Pyongyang’s paranoid demands and force this brand of unification on older South Koreans it will perforce have to restrict civil liberties and clamp down on opposition, as it did to earlier, anti-communist opponents of Kim Dae Jung’s ” Sunshine policy ” fantasy.

CIA and DIA analysts need to take a harder look at the committment to democratic rule in South Korea among South Korean elites – particularly left politicians and their financial backers.

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  1. Dave Schuler:

    This post is a duplicate of the preceding post.

  2. mark:

    Blogger went haywire on me last night, ate my other posts entirely and duplicated this one. Not sure why but it froze up my coomputer to boot. Perhaps it was my machine but I’m dubious.

    I need to start writing in Word and pasting here instead of jumping into Blogger directly, I lost a good hour’s worth of material :o(

  3. Dave Schuler:

    I think the explosion was a nuclear test.Very, very unlikely. Seismographic readings weren’t large enough for a nuclear test. Krypton 85 emissions would certainly have been detected had it been a nuclear test. They weren’t.

    In all probability this was a SCUD testing or fuel storage accident. I similarly believe that the explosion earlier this year was a SCUD fuel transport accident.

    This comment is duplicated on the post below.

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