The New York Review of Books: South Korea’s Real Fear

So, many South Koreans have shrugged. As has long been true, the 10 million residents of greater Seoul are essentially human shields: any attack on Pyongyang by the US would be followed by a barrage of traditional artillery from the DMZ on the South Korean capital, and hundreds of thousands would be killed. But in recent months, the primary worry in South Korea has not been its bizarre and militaristic neighbor to the north; most Koreans are by now long used to living within close firing range of Pyongyang and do not think it will attack unless provoked. What really worries them is that the new US president doesn’t know all this—and is too contemptuous of the State Department to be instructed.

In fact, South Koreans did lose a measure of their calm in the weeks after Trump was inaugurated. In the past, the US has tended to observe a cautious policy toward North Korea. For example, during an earlier nuclear crisis in 1994, it was the threat of a retaliatory attack on the south that convinced Bill Clinton not to use force and to pursue negotiations instead. More recently, while Barack Obama’s policy of “strategic patience” was recognized long ago as a non-policy, a way of kicking the can down the road, it wasn’t reckless—and everyone assumed that the can would be picked up by a president like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney. When Trump announced that all options were on the table, including military action, South Koreans hoped it was bluster, an opening gambit for dealing with Pyongyang. But they couldn’t be sure. Some foreign residents of Seoul even packed evacuation bags and carried them around at all times, in case war broke out. [...]

Indeed, some analysts believe Pyongyang’s long-term strategy is to wait for a US administration that isn’t fully committed to defending South Korea, and then start a second Korean War to accomplish what the first failed to do: make Korea a united, communist nation. It’s an aspiration that has survived seventy-two years and two generational shifts in the world’s only communist dynasty. It’s also an aspiration that has few echoes south of the DMZ. Many South Koreans, while also hoping to reunite their nation, fear that even a peaceful unification with the north could be such a financial drain that it would make them poor again.

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