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Are you sure that's a worst case scenario? Pyongyang has clearly decided to get their troops current live combat experience and is soliciting military assistanc

by etiam 2y ago

Are you sure that's a worst case scenario? Pyongyang has clearly decided to get their troops current live combat experience and is soliciting military assistance from a larger aggressive dictatorship, which is however very busy elsewhere right now. That reason would be awful, and most likely the consequences too, but it's not readily obvious to me that the timing would be.

blitzar 2y ago
The South marching north would force China into the conflict and the West would very tentitatively stand by while South Koreans were being fed into a meat grinder. Should South Korea manage to unify North & South it would bankrupt them. The North marching South would get little to no support from their allies and would be repelled rapidly before returning to the current status quo. So yes, I am sure. Neither sides allies have any desire to be the agressor. Not to mention that simply starting a war to cling on to power might be the stupidest reason there is to start a war.
- derefr 2y ago
  > Should South Korea manage to unify North & South it would bankrupt them. What if they didn't do that (at first), but instead (as an intermediate step) annexed the north as a colony with its own economy but South Korean governorship; and then opened said colony to worldwide foreign aid? This would be very similar to the short-term arrangement negotiated between West Germany and East Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall. For analogous reasons, West Germany didn't want to immediately absorb/unify with East Germany; instead, they held political and military stewardship over East Germany until it could be built back up.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    There are all kinds of stories we can come up with to get countries out of economic trouble that's basically fictional to begin with, as long as enough other states agree to believe the new stories. The actual value held by a country is the people, natural resources, and real capital. The money part's just for book-keeping, in the end.
  - philistine 2y ago
    East Germany was a tenth the economic strength of West Germany. North Korea is a hundredth the strength of South Korea, and not because South Korea is far more advanced than West Germany. It's one of the richest country in the world, right next to one of the poorest. Unification in any sense at this point is suicide by the South. The misery inflicted upon the southern Koreans will be immeasurable if both countries are unified. The leaders of both Koreas know this.
    - derefr 2y ago
      Isn’t the answer, then, to just give North Korea 10x as long as a “managed” colony before unification? --- Or, alternately, given that literally everything in NK would need to be rebuilt at some point... rather than "swallowing the elephant whole", they could take incremental bites: annex a few miles of North Korea into themselves; revitalize/gentrify that part; repeat. Slowly, over 50 years. (How? At the end of the war, they'd do a census, figuring out where every NK citizen lived as of the end of the war. Then, for each annexation, anyone already living in the annexed area as of the end of the war, would automatically become a South Korean citizen. Anyone who moved to the area after the end of the war would not, and would instead be required to vacate northward, with the SK government compensating them for the [very low value of the] home they're being displaced from, per eminent domain.) Of course, any NK citizen would be free to apply at any time for a South Korean visa — just like a citizen of any other country can. They wouldn't be especially prioritized. And an NK citizen would also be equally free to apply for a visa to move to literally anywhere else — possibly as a refugee. SK would probably encourage this and even assist with it.
      - blitzar 2y ago
        I am unsure of the ethics of conquering a state that is in the state of North Korea and then forcing the people (who are brothers and sisters of the South) to continue to live like that for a generation while their conquerers live (relatively speaking) like kings across the road.
        derefr 2y ago
- etiam 2y ago
  I mostly agree with what you say, but I'm concerned about the middle point. By a curious geographical coincidence, neither North Korea nor North China nor North Post-USSR are known for their independent reality-based reporting and I take it as a given that North Korea would never start a war of aggression. If the North should ever march South (again) it will of course be as a completely righteous response against intolerable provocation and aggression from its eternal enemy, as confirmed by media duly approved by Moscow and Beijing. They're looking more ready and eager to do that by the month, and with the present Global political situation, the respect for current status quo seems to be at a low.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    China barely tolerates North Korea as it is and would certainly not approve (and possibly would not tolerate) any actual aggression from North to South. If you perceive the respect (NK has) for current status quo is at a low then it is most likely that NK desperately needs food or fuel for the coming winter, for every other player in the world/region the desire for the status quo is at an all time high.

by etiam 2y ago

blitzar 2y ago

The South marching north would force China into the conflict and the West would very tentitatively stand by while South Koreans were being fed into a meat grinder. Should South Korea manage to unify North & South it would bankrupt them. The North marching South would get little to no support from their allies and would be repelled rapidly before returning to the current status quo. So yes, I am sure. Neither sides allies have any desire to be the agressor. Not to mention that simply starting a war to cling on to power might be the stupidest reason there is to start a war.

derefr 2y ago
> Should South Korea manage to unify North & South it would bankrupt them. What if they didn't do that (at first), but instead (as an intermediate step) annexed the north as a colony with its own economy but South Korean governorship; and then opened said colony to worldwide foreign aid? This would be very similar to the short-term arrangement negotiated between West Germany and East Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall. For analogous reasons, West Germany didn't want to immediately absorb/unify with East Germany; instead, they held political and military stewardship over East Germany until it could be built back up.
- vundercind 2y ago
  There are all kinds of stories we can come up with to get countries out of economic trouble that's basically fictional to begin with, as long as enough other states agree to believe the new stories. The actual value held by a country is the people, natural resources, and real capital. The money part's just for book-keeping, in the end.
- philistine 2y ago
  East Germany was a tenth the economic strength of West Germany. North Korea is a hundredth the strength of South Korea, and not because South Korea is far more advanced than West Germany. It's one of the richest country in the world, right next to one of the poorest. Unification in any sense at this point is suicide by the South. The misery inflicted upon the southern Koreans will be immeasurable if both countries are unified. The leaders of both Koreas know this.
  - derefr 2y ago
    Isn’t the answer, then, to just give North Korea 10x as long as a “managed” colony before unification? --- Or, alternately, given that literally everything in NK would need to be rebuilt at some point... rather than "swallowing the elephant whole", they could take incremental bites: annex a few miles of North Korea into themselves; revitalize/gentrify that part; repeat. Slowly, over 50 years. (How? At the end of the war, they'd do a census, figuring out where every NK citizen lived as of the end of the war. Then, for each annexation, anyone already living in the annexed area as of the end of the war, would automatically become a South Korean citizen. Anyone who moved to the area after the end of the war would not, and would instead be required to vacate northward, with the SK government compensating them for the [very low value of the] home they're being displaced from, per eminent domain.) Of course, any NK citizen would be free to apply at any time for a South Korean visa — just like a citizen of any other country can. They wouldn't be especially prioritized. And an NK citizen would also be equally free to apply for a visa to move to literally anywhere else — possibly as a refugee. SK would probably encourage this and even assist with it.
    - blitzar 2y ago
      I am unsure of the ethics of conquering a state that is in the state of North Korea and then forcing the people (who are brothers and sisters of the South) to continue to live like that for a generation while their conquerers live (relatively speaking) like kings across the road.
      - derefr 2y ago
etiam 2y ago
I mostly agree with what you say, but I'm concerned about the middle point. By a curious geographical coincidence, neither North Korea nor North China nor North Post-USSR are known for their independent reality-based reporting and I take it as a given that North Korea would never start a war of aggression. If the North should ever march South (again) it will of course be as a completely righteous response against intolerable provocation and aggression from its eternal enemy, as confirmed by media duly approved by Moscow and Beijing. They're looking more ready and eager to do that by the month, and with the present Global political situation, the respect for current status quo seems to be at a low.
- blitzar 2y ago
  China barely tolerates North Korea as it is and would certainly not approve (and possibly would not tolerate) any actual aggression from North to South. If you perceive the respect (NK has) for current status quo is at a low then it is most likely that NK desperately needs food or fuel for the coming winter, for every other player in the world/region the desire for the status quo is at an all time high.