lives.
After all, a nation cannot remain half slave and half free, and the danger of doing so only increases with each year that the political and economic contrasts between the two halves of the Korean peninsula increase. If the Kim dynasty were a more “normal” dictatorship, one that is focused on raising the standard of living of the people while intent on restraining some of their liberties, the hitherto policy of choice by Pyongyang’s neighbors of deferring Korean unification may be more defendable. But because the Kim regime is abnormal like no other in the history of humankind, intent as it is on preserving itself through cultish control and the militarization of resources while its people starve to death, continuing to support the status quo in the Korean peninsula raises serious long-term questions of both practical and moral nature.
To what extent the Kim regime may negotiate in good faith in future disarmament talks or relax its totalitarian control of its population in the face of such a sustained two-pronged attack remains to be seen. But the sooner and more palpable a threat the cash-strapped regime is exposed to, and the more information about the outside world the downtrodden North Korean people are exposed to, the sooner that eventuality will be upon us. And we can be certain that the continued failure to exploit North Korea’s systemic contradictions will only abet the Kim regime and enable it to extend its growing security threat to regions beyond its immediate environment.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, a war in which this nation’s sons and daughters, as it is inscribed on a plaque in the Korean War Veterans Memorial, “answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met.” The North Korean regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and extreme repression of its own people is virtually coeval with the entire history of the North Korean nation.
In an Orwellian world, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” In the North Korean world, the past 60 years of de facto peace is war, a life of servitude to the state is freedom, and national strength is rooted in ignorance of the outside world. Today, as North Korea threatens the peace and security of the region yet again, we would do well to remember the noble resolve of those who fought back the North Korean invasion in 1950-53 and the precious gift they left behind: an extended period of peace and the foundation for building a free and prosperous South Korea. Those courageous soldiers have taught us above all that deterrence is peace, freedom is not free, and that to remember the past is a mark of national character and strength.
The great and noble efforts of Americans in the Korean War, the legacy of a 60-year friendship between the U.S. and South Korea, and U.S. strategic interests in Northeast Asia should no longer be sacrificed on the altar of diplomatic concessions and illusory peace. Now is rather the
