|
That's a common viewpoint:
If East and West Germany united, why not North and South Korea?
First, both countries were well off both economically and socially. Second, the people of the two Germanies wanted the two countries to unite.
Third, when the two united in 1989, the Russian government was under Mikhail Gorbachev(?), who was very liberal and started free trade and slowly changed the USSR into a democracy, which was later run under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin.
Unfortunately, those wonderful circumstances don't hold true in Korea. We have the world's most heavily guarded border. The people of South Korea seem to have an air of indifference about uniting. They just don't care about it. Also, with Bush, a hinderance to N/S Korea talks, in place as prez of the US, the North Korean government is even more unhappy.
I think we can all agree on this:
If Clinton, who became congenial towards the North Koreans and helped them, could only help so far to help the two Koreas unite, what can Bush do... look at what he's done: he called them an axis of evil, he also implied in countless post-9/11 speeches that North Korea was a terrorist nation and branded them liars.
Goes to show how much power the US has in these affairs (since they have military presence in S. Korea, and the ROK isn't about to give them up so easily)
|
04-14-2002 06:59 PM
