Korea

[Keith Davis]

>From Common Dreams:

e_Cadet <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#> • 2 days
ago<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#comment-850833581>

   -
   -

  South Korean companies rely heavily on the slave labor ($4 a day) at the
Kaesong industrial complex while the North enjoys the fistfuls of hard
currency for providing the slaves at the factories. It's a win-win
situation... unless you happen to be on e of those poor, malnourished North
Korean factory slaves.

Meanwhile the U.S. continues to rattle its sabres as corporate America is
willing to sacrifice millions of South Koreans (and North Koreans) if it is
profitable to do so. The official position for years in the U.S. has been
to pretend that North Korea doesn't exist by never acknowledging them
diplomatically, never entering into meaningful negotiations, strangling
them financially via sanctions and threatening them with annihilation if
they get out of line. The six-party talks were a scam in which the North
was told "do as I say unconditionally, and only then may we decide to
talk." The other parties were told to promise nothing, keep their mouths
shut and to keep their eye on the ball... namely to pressure the North into
unconditionally dismantling its nuclear program. Naturally this didn't work
which plays right into corporate America's plan to use the North Korean
non-compliance as a reason to continue spending 1 trillion dollars a year
on "defence" to counter the "threat" of North Korean nukes.

South Korea continues to overpay for stationing 28,000 U.S. troops there,
American defence contractors continue to spew out more and more WMD's to
'safeguard democracy' and the 60 year stalemate between the two Korea's
continues with no signs of a resolution in our lifetimes. Of course the
entire situation could easily be resolved by pulling U.S. troops out of
South Korea, ending sanctions, restarting talks about unification while
giving assurances that a unified Korea would respect the North Korean
leaders for stepping aside and allowing a functioning democracy to replace
the current regime. Reunification would mean that South Korea could then
build a railroad through the North all the way to Europe drastically
reducing the time and money to export their goods abroad. Billions would be
saved as the newly unified Korea could begin to dismantle its bloated
militaries. Investment from the South would pour into the North as the
tight housing market and lack of industrial spaces would be addressed via
unification. The South Korean "Chaebol" of its main corporate entities
(Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Daewoo and SK Telecom) would expand its workforce
overnight with plans already in place to build new housing and
infrastructure across the North in case of unification.

The losers here are U.S. defence contractors and corporations that directly
compete with the South Koreans. Is it any surprise then that this scenario
is rejected out right by the U.S?

 23  <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#>
•
Reply <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#>
•
Share ›

-- 
www.innergroovemusic.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130405/41039a2e/attachment.html>