Brad De Long wrote:
> To speak of North Korea's regime as if it has some merit--as if the best solution isn't its immediate collapse and absorption by South Korea--is to say that the abolition of private enterprise and the bourgeoisie is a benefit so overwhelming as to more than offset the
absence of elections, the restrictions on speech, the material poverty, and so on.
Jesus, what a stupid and arrogant thing to say. Brad DeLong follows a long line of US policy makers who completely ignore what might be good for Koreans in favor of US ideological goals. Believe it or not, Brad, there are many Koreans in the south who believe North Korea has a right to exist and don't want it to collapse immediately and simply be absorbed into the South - a situation that would be impossible for financially strapped SK to handle in any case. That is why the Kim Dae Jung gov't has agreed to a 'sunshine' policy designed to help NK economically and gradually link Northern and Southern institutitions. Many Koreans in the south believe NK is a legitimate government because they recognize that its founders fought the Japanese colonialists while the founders of SK were collaborators with Japan. In recent years there have been a series of very interesting S-N exchanges, including a friendly soccer match between the respective labor federations (which ended in a tie af! ! ter the north, which was leading by 6 goals at the half, decided to slow their game down, according to a SK trade unionist who was there). If you follow your logic to its extreme, you'll end up in the John McCain camp, calling for pre-emptive strikes and another 'rollback' policy against the north - something even very conservative SKoreans don't want. Think about Korean interests for once. The US hasn't done that since 1945. Tim Shorrock