Academic

SAVING FACE IN KOREA: Austin Bay writes: The Korean War started with an explosive communist attack?

By Ed Driscoll

SAVING FACE IN KOREA: Austin Bay writes:

The Korean War started with an explosive communist attack that raised the specter of global nuclear war. Now it appears it may end with a communist implosion, one that risks igniting a brief but terrible nuclear conflict in East Asia, should North Korea hit Seoul or Tokyo with a nuke.

Seoul’s suburbs lie within range of North Korean artillery. A North Korean fighter-bomber, heading south from communist airspace, will reach Seoul in minutes. South Korea’s Samsung Corp. is one of the largest private employers in the Texas county in which I live. This means Pyongyang doesn’t need nukes to attack Texas’ economy, a fact of life among the 21st century’s economically, politically and technologically linked.

Global linkage and Pyongyang’s nuclear quest explain the caution stirring this strange twilight of an old war — caution expressed in Washington, caution followed to the point of kowtow by a South Korean government that hoped the Cheonan suffered a tragic accident.

Read the whole thing.

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Full post as published by Instapundit.com on May 21, 2010 (boomark / email).