~~~~~

North Korea ... Now what?

I was stationed in South Korea, in Ui Jung Bu, which is midway between Seoul and the North Korean border. This was back in 82-83, about midway between the previous shooting war and today. Even then, there was a sort of tension in the air, like smell of ozone after a close lightning strike (although it might have been the fertilizer they used on the rice fields). The South Koreans are some of the sweetest people on Earth. As you walk the streets, you notice that everything is separated by masonry walls 6 feet, or so, high, forming a labyrinth of little compounds where people live together. You also notice the bullet and artillery shell holes in the walls and in the sides of older buildings, still there as a reminder of something really bad that happened.

My friends and I spent a lot of time seeking out the treasures of Korea, namely the mountain temples and places where Americans simply did not go, and where the people had never met an American. I met a girl on the street in Pusan, at the southern end of the country. She came up to me and told me she had never met an American before and would I mind having coffee and English conversation. That was very cool. Her name was Kum Sun Lee and we were friends for the rest of my tour.

There's a place called Freedom Bridge up near the border. I guess after the war, it was where the POWs crossed on their way home. It's a steel tressle bridge over a river and it's riddled with bullet holes even though it's been painted over many times. Right next to it are the remains of a bridge that was bombed back to stumps of concrete sticking out of the water. There's a little museum near the bridge and we stopped there on our way to the border one day. While we sat on a bench, an old woman came up to me and started to wipe my boots with a rag. There was a younger man with her, perhaps her son. She didn't speak English but he did. I asked him why she was doing that (it was a little awkward) and he simply said she remembered the Americans during the war.

I was a Forward Air Controller (FAC) in the Air Force. My job was to call in close air support, or "air strikes" as they are commonly called. We all had forward observation locations (FOL sites) assigned to us and these were usually sites along the border, the frontier between South and North, along the demilitarized zone (DMZ). I don't know why they call it "demilitarized" because it is most definitely militarized. My spot was at a ground surveillance radar site on the top of a hill overlooking the actual border and North Korea itself. Should the war ever start up again (it never officially ended, just a cease-fire), the entire military was to head south to surround Seoul with the exception of the guys in my unit and a few others. Our job was to head north until we either ran into the North Korean army or made it to our FOL site. Then, call in air strikes until we were overrun or killed, I guess. We practiced this a lot, except for the last part.

At the time, North Korea was run by Kim Il Sung, the "Great Leader" as he was called. The South was run by a military dictator. I can't remember his name but his goons were everywhere. They looked like little Asian Gestapo guys but they were generally pretty cool.

The South Korean army is made up of some of the toughest people you will ever encounter in your life. We did a lot of work with the 22nd ROK Marines (Brave Tiger), the division of Korean Marines known to strike terror in the hearts of the Viet Cong. Even if there was one ROK attached to a patrol of Americans in Vietnam, the VC would high-tail it out of the way. These guys were mostly all advanced black belts (not the fake kind you can earn in a year, the real thing) and when they worked out as a unit, they sparred. Very impressive. Again, some of the nicest, generous and gentle people I've ever met, but I wouldn't want to fight against them.

The South Koreans know the stakes and they know that it's their home that is threatened by what is perhaps the most hostile regime since Stalin, after whom the northerm regime is modeled. War in that part of the world is especially brutal because of the ridiculous terrain and deadly cold winters.

Now, North Korea is beating the drum louder than ever. The Great Leader has long since been replaced by his son, child-like but even more brutal than his dad and not to be taken lightly. The population of the north is so completely brainwashed that they truly believe that they live in paradise (the kind with bodies in the street and nothing to eat) and that the Americans are bloodthirsty barbarians who want to deprive them of what little they have. Of course, they're not altogether wrong because we seem to think economic sanctions would be helpful. But now they've basically validated what we already knew. They've got nukes. How nice.

There's not a whole lot of technology in between detonating a fission device (which they have) and sticking one on top of a ballistic missle (which they also have) and pointing it basically at anyone. Even if it's just pointing straight up, it's a real big problem and guess who gets to deal with it? Yep, the same bungling idiots who have us all tied up in Iraq, allowed American citizens to become refugees in their own country, and can't even pronounce the word nuclear.

They've already made a tough situation even more difficult with a bit of a credibility problem. When the 6-party talks failed, Bush said, quite emphatically (in that "dead or alive" style he has) that we would not tolerate nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. Then, when Kim fired a rocket, Bush talked tough again but did nothing. Now they test a nuke and Bush says we better not catch them giving the technology to Iran or anyone else. What if they do? What are we gonna do about it? We haven't done anything so far and each time we don't do anything, it makes it all that much harder the next time. Also, the more opportunities you miss, the less options you have the next time. Pretty soon, the only option you have is violence. Can you imagine a war with North Korea? Just think about that for a minute. Is it even sane that some consider it an option?

North Korea would most certainly come out swinging. They've got a million and a half of those soldiers you see goose-stepping fiercely in Pyongyang parade videos and there's no way we could hold them back from the only thing they can do, and that's to charge into South Korea. And the last time we got into it with them, China got involved and I don't recall that we'd had a beef with China before that. The point is, the Korean part of the world is not the middle east, which is basically a continent-sized desert. North Korea is immediately adjacent to China, Japan, South Korea, with Russia not too far away. A conflagration in that part of the world would change the world as we know it and people would die in very large numbers.

I don't think anyone has a clue what to do. The Adminstration? They don't know what to do. You can tell they don't. Nobody does. Gotta go. Adult Swim is on in a minute.