Tim Shorrock thinks that the U.S. did a very bad thing in preventing the unification of Korea under Kim Il Sung in the second half of the 1940s. I don't. And because I don't, I asked what seems to me to be a reasonable question:
>Surely U.S. forces are worth maintaining in South Korea as long as
>North Korea is ruled by, in Eric Hobsbawm's phrase, "totalitarian
>megalomaniacs"?
The first answer I got was to be called a:
>"fool... knows nothing of history... sheer arrogance of US
>intellectuals... despise...
>
>Tim Shorrock
(Let's leave to one side the point that Eric Hobsbawm is not a U.S. intellectual).
And when I argued that one shouldn't talk about "Koreans, North and South," working hard to end 50 years of hostility because:
>Koreans in the South are working hard to end the nearly 50 years of
>hostility. Many Koreans in the North would like to work hard to end
>the nearly 50 years of hostility. But if they say that perhaps the
>social, economic, and political system established by Kim Il Sung is
>not utopia, their life expectancy is low...
.
I was answered by:
>This is unbelievable drivel & not even worth crafting a reply to...
>
>Brad DeLong's hysterical ravings about North Korea...
>
>DeLong's dehumanization and demonization of North Korea...
I don't know why Tim Shorrock thinks that Korea would have been better off had it been unified and ruled by Kim Il Sung since the late 1940s. I don't know why any inquiry into the character of North Korea's regime is met not by discussion of the North Korean regime--and what should be done about it, by who, and on what time scale--but by dismissal: to ask about the character of North Korea's regime is to demonize the North Korean people, is to be "hysterical," is to "know nothing of history," is to be "arrogant."
Brad DeLong