ABSTRACT
The Korean peninsula south of China has a total population of c. 72 million, of which some 25 million live in the North, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a state labelled by US President George W. Bush as being part of the ‘axis of evil’ (the others were Iran, Syria and, until recently, Iraq and Libya). The division of Korea into two states has, in effect, been the work of the USSR and the USA, both of which occupied the respective territories north and south of the 38th parallel (388N) after the defeat of Japan. Before the Second Word War the peninsula was mainly coveted and occupied by Japan, which also transferred settler population there. The Soviets established a communist regime in the North and then withdrew their forces, focusing on their own immediate post-war problems. However, the North Koreans advanced well into the territories south of the 38th parallel, a fact that led the Americans under General Douglas MacArthur, the US Commander-in-Chief in the Far East, to launch an offensive pushing back the communists. The American advance was stopped by Chinese intervention. The Chinese helped push back the Americans, and even occupied Seoul, but finally a separation line was established along the 38th parallel. Today, North Korea has developed into a military power, with a very large standing army. This occurred and occurs at the expense of living standards, social welfare and economic development. The South, the Republic of Korea, in essence is an American-Japanese protectorate, which lives under the constant fear of an attack, particularly a nuclear one, from the North. The situation in this strategic part of East Asia is particularly precarious, as any advance of either the USA or Japan will not be left without response and fierce retaliation from North Korea and the People’s Republic of China, and vice versa. One of the reasons, in fact, that the USA did not attack pre-emptively or preventively North Korea, but preferred to topple Saddam in Iraq, was precisely the fact that North Korea had a credible deterrence as a nuclear power, and could also be assisted, as in the past, by another and far more populous nuclear power, China.
