From wharms@soback.kornet.nm.kr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 01:02:55 -0900
From: Bill Harms 
To: moogoonghwa@UCSD.EDU
Subject: Not so quiet on the domestic front

This incident continues create a stir in the South.

-----------------------SNIP----------------------

S. Korea Helpless to Stem North's Provocations

96-09-21 17:13:52 Korea Times

While President Kim Young-sam is reawakening the nation to the danger North
Korea poses to national security, his rival Kim Dae-jung, president of the
National Congress for New Politics, has ``dared'' to speak up in favor of
the ``improvement'' in relations between Washington and Pyongyang. 

In a seminar Friday, he said the two countries should amend their ties and
this in turn, according to him, will help realize national reunification. 

These remarks of the NCNP leader are drawing public attention as they were
made at the very time the people's anti-Pyongyang sentiments are running
high due to the infiltration of armed North Korean agents. 

Looking back on a series of North Korea's provocations, one could not but
doubt the courage of the people in power in the South. 

The reactions never went beyond the realm of rhetoric or asking the United
Nations to apply sanctions. 

North Korea has committed, on numerous occasions, such transgressions. 

In 1969, 33 commandos made their way to Seoul to assassinate the then
president Park Chung-hee. They were stopped at the doorstep to the
presidential mansion, Chong Wa Dae. 

All of them, except one, were shot dead. 

In 1983 Pyongyang dispatched a ``hit squad'' to Rangoon, Burma, for an
attempt on the life of former president Chun Doo-hwan. They did carry out
their bombing of the Aung San Mausoleum but failed to kill Chun as he was a
few seconds behind schedule. 

In the explosion, 14 ranking South Korean government officials including
four Cabinet members perished. To these acts, South Korea's response was
short of any comparable action. 

North Korea's barbarism does not end there. 

It was in December, 1987, when North Korean agents blew up a civilian Korean
airliner over Rangoon while it was en route to Seoul from the Middle East,
killing all 260 on board. 

That cruel and provocative action was aimed at disrupting the South's
preparations for the 1988 Olympics. 

As expected, Seoul's response was what can best be described as tepid. 

Now, President Kim, after providing the North with rice and a commitment to
help build two light-water reactors, is now raising his voice against the
North. But no one places much stock in his words, judging from the past
records. 

In a practical sense, South Korea can in no way return the North Korean
salvo in kind if it is not prepared to go to war. Even if it is, South Korea
will find its hands tied by the United States. 

Besides this, policy-makers have on and off declared that the prevention of
war on the Korean peninsula should be given top priority. 

And the North will continue to play on these war fears, U.S. constraints,
and pro-North Korean forces, whose existence was well demonstrated through
the nine days of rioting in and around Yonsei University. 

------------------------COMMENT---------------------------









moogoonghwa@ucsd.edu
Back to: Moogoonghwa