Living with Crazy Neighbors

South Koreans were attacked by their fellow Koreans in the North so often and almost routinely that they seem to have become insensitive and immune to the continuing aggression from the North.

Maybe, we in the South are such a nice and tolerant people who love our cousins in the North so much that we forgive them generously, instead of reacting to their attacks with corresponding intensity, every time they perpetrate their fratricidal crime against us.

Or maybe we are really scared stiff of the North Koreans who are threatening to reduced us and our country to ashes with their nuclear bombs and other terrible weapons of mass destruction.

Although we don’t admit publicly but deep down, we all realize that our armed forces are no match to their counterparts in the North and therefore could not defend our country by ourselves alone. We are such a meek and gutless people, in other words, that we could not muster a measure of courage to stand up against the crazy and despicable tyrant and his loyal followers in Pyongyang and teach them an unforgettable lesson that we, unlike their own cowed and trembling people, would not put up with their cruel and inhuman behavior.

Whatever the reason, we have shown an amazing, almost infinite, degree of patience and stoic tolerance toward the North Koreans who have attacked our nation and killed hundreds of innocent people since the War ended in truce in 1953.

As the North Korean launched their attacks with impunity, even with contempt, South Koreans, for their part, have developed the pattern of their meek reaction, which seems to have become routine as well.

In the latest attack, the North Koreans shelled a South Korean island in the West Sea, just south of the Northern Limit Line, killing two marines and two civilians and injuring 18 on Nov. 23.

Pundits and scholars in South Korea, the United States and other Western countries tried, as usual, to figure out why Kim Jong-il and his lackeys were behaving the way they did. But there cannot be any clear and rational explanation because these are acts of irrational people.

It is easy to believe that the North Korean leaders are a bunch of crazed men and women; what I don’t understand is, there are equally crazy people amid us in the South, who are blindly following the cruel dictator in Pyongyang. These are leftist politicians, unionists, radical teachers and students who are sympathetic to and supportive of Kim Jong-il and his regime.

I wouldn’t go so far as to describe them as “enemies within,” but they represent, without doubt, a dangerous element in our society which could play a dangerous and extremely damaging role, if another all-out war breaks out in Korea.

After a North Korean submarine was found to have fired a torpedo and sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors last March, Pyongyang denied the responsibility for the attack, despite the findings of an international investigation. That was not all. Resorting to its favoring game of turning the table on the victims, it outrageously claimed that the sinking was the work of the South Korean government.

These North Korean claims were parroted by the afore-mentioned people in the South who follow the Dear Leader blindly with what appears to be unswerving loyalty.

But who in their right mind with a modicum of intelligence would believe that the administration of their elected president is such a rotten, inhuman government that it could think of, let alone carry out, such a horrible crime against its own people?

In the wake of the latest attack, these people and others as well as China, North Korea’s only ally, are urging the rest of the world, as usual, to talk to the North Koreans to defuse the tension and negotiate a peaceful resolutions of “Korean problems.”

But haven’t we had enough talks in the past half a century? What had we gotten out of those talks? What have we achieved in our talks with those crazy people except to let them make a number of nuclear bombs and continue their attacks against the South?

Talking with insane people to work out a sensible solution is a senseless thing to do. It is an exercise in futility at best.

There is a saying in Korea that the best and only way to treat a mad dog is a good thrashing with a stick. Those insane people in the North need a good beating. For they, like mad dogs, fear and understand only the brutal and merciless force.

To be sure, we may have to pay a considerable price, including the loss of lives, in order to put an end to this senseless life-and-death game that North Korea is forcing us to play. But we must act, sooner rather than later, if we are to keep our hard-earned freedom and advancing economy.
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