Is Korea the Next Vietnam?
Weinrod, W. Bruce
Center, in a soon-to-be-published article on "The Constitution and the Moral Order" for the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. Bennett eloquently points out that the litigious tendencies of...
...air power to any North Korean assault, including the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons if necessary...
...By contrast, the only colonialism the South Koreans have suffered has been Japanese...
...In fact, the one "liberation" that South Koreans remember is the American ouster of the Japanese in 1945...
...and in February 1975, the government released 148 prisoners who had been arrested in 1974 for opposing the government...
...But the parallels should not be drawn too closely...
...could use its Japanese bases for defending South Korea...
...At least partly because of its growing economic strength, South Korea itself is significantly better off internationally than was South Vietnam...
...For instance, in August 1974, Park abrogated earlier proclaimed strict Emergency Decrees after pressure from the U.S...
...Moreover, unlike Vietnam, there are well-defined lines of battle in Korea...
...The North, in other words, is a very model of totalitarianism...
...The North has deployed over 60 % of its military strength near the DMZ, which is only 25 miles from Seoul...
...Japan, which hardly bestirred itself about the fate of South Vietnam, has by word and deed indicated its backing for the U.S...
...Moreover, South Korea is open to Western political influences on questions of democracy and human rights...
...North Korea has completely extinguished privatism...
...strategic defense perimeter...
...and a mutual defense pact, which binds the United States to assist South Korea in fighting external aggression, remains in full effect...
...Yet just as the French military was paralyzed in 1940 by its obsession with defending the Maginot Line, so the critics of our Korean commitments make a dangerous mistake by being so obsessed with our failures in Vietnam...
...The U.S...
...they are vividly aware that Europeans and Americans are not the only people with a drive tO dominate...
...At the DMZ dividing the two Koreas one feels an explosive tension, and the smoldering hostility of the North Korean soldiers almost makes one believe that the last battle of the Korean War was fought only an hour ago...
...South Korea's growing trade with Western Europe and especially with Middle Eastern nations (including over $1 billion in already committed construction contracts) have solidified a perception of South Korea as a permanent and legitimate actor in international politics...
...With its political stability and absence of terrorism, South Korea has not only developed its infrastructure, but has burst into the ranks of the world's semi-industrialized nations...
...What is more, the North Koreans clearly intend to extend their police state to the South...
...By contrast, the W. Bruce Weinrod has recently visited Sout/, Korea, 18 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 American commitment to defend South Korea appears to have a fairly high degree of support from our allies...
...a phase in which no friend or ally of the United States could be certain of our support, especially if its domestic procedures or actions do not meet absolutist standards of civil liberties...
...There are rumblings of conflict along Korea's demilitarized zone, and Americans are talking about "another Vietnam...
...Thus, any future Korean conflict would most probably not have the perceived ambiguities that so perplexed many American liberals concerning Vietnam...
...For instance, citizens are forbidden by law from criticizing the government in conversation with foreigners, and it is a crime to advocate repeal of the constitution, or to broadcast or publish any news report of opposition to the constitution...
...Should the United States abandon South Korea, then we will have truly entered a new phase in the history of our foreign policy...
...Further, it is generally acknowledged that the government keeps a very close watch on the universities, churches, and other independent institutions...
...Perhaps a new generation of leaders will be prepared to negotiate a German-type settlement, or even peaceful reunification--although much will depend upon their perception of the strength and will of the United States, and of the potential support from China and the Soviet Union...
...Bennett recommends a return to the values expressed in such documents as Tbe Federalist, and his words are well taken in this era when nearly every social ill, real or imagined, seems to find its way to the courthouse door...
...As Robert A. Scalapino and C.-S...
...commitment to the defense of South Korea is clearly spelled out in a mutual defense treaty, overwhelmingly ratified by the Senate in 1952...
...Under constant fire from revolutionary terrorist tactics, the people of South Vietnam were never able to achieve a cohesive national identity...
...The government's authoritarianism could cause problems in the future, especially in view of the fact that the current South Korean political structure contains no mechanism for the peaceful transition of power...
...So long as Kim II-Sung remains in power in North Korea, it is totally unrealistic to expect the North to abandon its goal of forcibly reunifying the Korean Peninsula under totalitarian Communism...
...South Korea experienced the brutalities of Communist rule first-hand during the Korean War, so not even the harshest critics of the Park government accept the North Korean claim of being "liberators" of the South...
...Our current trust in law to perform the tasks of moral and spiritual development and responsibility-tasks once assigned to family and church and, yes, to individuals themselves --thus reflects, to use the words of the late and highly respected Judge Learned Hand, "a sign of a community unsure of itself and seeking protection against its own misgivings...
...North Korea' s public belligerency continues apace...
...After the fall of Indochina, North Korea's Kim II-Sung visited Peking and Moscow to seek support for a renewed invasion of the South--underscoring the seriousness of such threats...
...South Koreans have a clear sense of national unity, which has been reinforced by the experience of the North Korean invasion, and by the continuing threat of a new one...
...The recent murder of two American servicemen in the Korean Demilitarized Zone has focused public attention on the American presence in South Korea...
...There is an active opposition party and a quasi-free market economy, and, although the press is watched and occasionally censored, it remains in private hands...
...Finally, there was always a certain air of ambiguity about the origins and dimensions of our commitment in Vietnam...
...North Vietnamese pretensions of "liberating" the South therefore contained at least a modicum of credibility for many Vietnamese, as General Ky recently noted...
...For there are a number of important respects in which South Korea differs critically from South Vietnam...
...Bennett eloquently points out that the litigious tendencies of modern America, and our increasing reliance on law and court to do the work of leading us to a better world, represent an abrupt departure from the vision our Founding Fathers had for the Republic...
...Whatever one may have thought of our Vietnam policy (and I happened to think South Vietnam worthy of our support), such questions are surely in order...
...Therefore, the real issue in the debate over Korea becomes, not whether this or that specific modification of our military support level should be made, but whether the United States should lessen or end its steadfast support for South Korea without any quidpro quo from North Korea or the Communist world, or before the South has had the chance to achieve economic and military selfsufficiency--a goal it can definitely achieve...
...Of course, there is a steady source of employment for attorneys in today's litigious trends, and I suppose that in protesting it I am somehow biting the hand that happens to feed me...
...Over that same period exports have increased in value from a paltry $1.3 million to an impressive $4.7 billion...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 19...
...The view that a future Korean conflict will be conventional in nature is confurmed by the complete ineffectiveness of North Korean terrorist infiltrators in the South, as well as by the current American battle plan, which calls for a swift and overwhelming response by U.S...
...The third difference is that South Vietnam was unable even to achieve its modest economic goal of developing light industry-largely because of the Communists' destructive tactics...
...The recent discovery of what appears to be commercially exploitable oil may significantly lessen South Korea's dependence on imported oil...
...In contrast, South Korea contains a racially homogeneous, culturally unified people, with a high level of education...
...In view of Pyongyang's orientation toward the Soviet Union and the spreading Russian influence in Indochina, these reports take on added credibility...
...But until the current generation of leaders leaves the scene, over 400,000 North Korean troops will remain poised near the border, ready to strike at any sign of weakness...
...Over a quarter of a century after the bloody Korean War, the United States still maintains a garrison there of over 40,000 battle-ready troops...
...Korean policy...
...role in South Korea...
...Bruce Weinrod Is Korea the Next Vietnam...
...The Founders, he notes, were firm in their belief that the strength of this nation would rest not on its governmental institutions-including its legal institutions--but on the moral virtue of the citizenry...
...In Vietnam, first of all, the Communists were able to capitalize on a residue of anti-Western feeling engendered by French colonial rule...
...These suggestions are invariably accompanied by analogies between Korea and Vietnam, as when columnist Clayton Fritchey asked whether the public wants to "risk another 500,000 casualties and another $150 billion in trying to salvage still another military government...
...North Korea, by contrast, is a rigid, closed society, with no institutional barriers between the individual and the state, and no chance of any humanizing influences from the West...
...In particular, the Japanese defense minister recently declared that the U.S...
...An emphasis on heavy industries, such as technologically advanced steel mills, shipyards, and petrochemical plants, combined with numerous light industries, such as electronic components and textiles, has enabled South Korea to raise its annual per capita income from $81 in 1962 to over $500 in 1975...
...Yet an authoritarian regime is not the same thing as a totalitarian regime, and one of the major failures of many critics of our Korean policy is their inability to distinguish between the two...
...As the recent murders indicate, a fragile armistice is all that separates the two sides...
...it is interesting to note that, unlike many other U.S...
...But I would greatly prefer to be less sure that there will always be work for lawyers, and to be more confident that Congress, the courts, and my fellow citizens recognize that law provides feeble answers at best to our deepest concerns...
...IV...
...defense outposts, American bases can be found right in the heart of the nation's capital, Seoul...
...Such an eventuality may be inevitable given present intellectual and political trends within the United States, but it holds ominous implications for the future strength of Western civilization in a hostile world...
...North Korean jet bombers could hit the capital, a city of 6 million, in less than two minutes after takeoff...
...South Korea maintains freedom of religion, of travel, of work, and of association...
...Lee noted in their authoritative study, Communism in Korea (University of California Press, 1972), "there are few more rigorous police states in the contemporary world...travel, communications, political activities of all kinds, even thought, are controlled by the state to the maximum possible extent...
...Reacting strongly to apparent excesses of the Park Chung Hee government during several crackdowns against dissidents, a number of American journalists and professors have called for a complete pullout from South Korea, while in Congress it has been suggested that the United States should reduce its aid or its number of troops...
...However, there has been a gradual but noticeable erosion of support for the U.S...
...Fourth, in attempting to defend South Vietnam, the United States received only pro forma support--if that--from its allies (one notable exception being South Korea...
...Second, as a nation emerging from a semi-feudal past, South Vietnam contained a wide variety of unassimilated racial, cultural, and religious groups...
...There is no question that the Park government is authoritarian...
...imperialism and Japanese militarism...
...Reflecting a threedecade-old bipartisan consensus, both the Nixon and Ford foreign policies have included South Korea within the U.S...
...The South Koreans are acutely aware of their vulnerability to a Northern blitzkrieg, and their concern has been heightened by the recent discovery of huge North Korean tunnels under the DMZ, the purpose of which was most probably not the facilitation of cultural interchanges...
...Also of more than passing interest are recent persistent reports that the Communist Chinese are privately urging the United States to remain in South Korea...
...Along with a continuing buildup along the DMZ, the North's official pronouncements are filled with outrageously dogmatic statements such as the vow to "smash the military fascist dictatorship of the puppet clique--the faithful dual stooges of U.S...
...Aside from the fear of a Vietnam-like war, the critics of our Korean commitments seem most concerned about our supporting what they consider a repressive regime...
Vol. 10 • December 1976 • No. 3
