Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2009

Keep an eye on N. Korea

There are some crazy folks in old North Korea, and we sure better keep a close eye on the happenings over there.

About 30,000 Americans are stationed in South Korea. Even if South Korea and Japan were not important allies and anchors of stability in Asia, 30,000 Americans at risk and poised to make a statement warrant our paying attention.

My family and I were in South Korea from June 1998 to June 2000. That tour was my only assignment in South Korea and certainly opened my eyes to the interesting characters living to the north.

Periodically, we’d learn of a North Korean special forces team being inserted via a small submarine. There I sat in a foreign country with my family and our closest neighboring country was ostensibly at peace with us — or at least had a truce — and that same neighbor was sending their soldiers into the country where I was living in order to perform reconnaissance or commit some form of mischief. Most Americans never have to worry about hostile enemy soldiers threatening their families.

What would the good people of Georgia think if Tennessee sent armed soldiers south to stir up trouble? Between the border disputes and water wars, our state government hasn’t always been on the best of terms with our neighbors, but at least we aren’t shooting at each other.

The Crab War always comes to mind. I doubt many of you heard about it, but in the summer of 1999 North Korean fishing vessels crossed into South Korean water in the South China Sea. The North Koreans brought along some navy help.

The South Korean navy took exception to this intrusion into their water. A couple of ships bumped into one another and folks started shooting. A North Korean ship went down and people became real tense up and down the peninsula. You can imagine how happy I was at that point!

A few months after the Crab War, all my family members received chemical protective masks. Man, now we were getting serious. Imagine the fun teaching my almost 12-year-old twin daughters to yell “Gas! Gas!” and seal their protective masks in a few seconds. They did well, but dear old Dad was less than thrilled.

All this is relative right now because the people running North Korea are trouble.

Kim Jong-Il acts like a petulant bully. His people are brainwashed so that even with many of them starving, they apparently believe their government is righteous and the rest of the world is a decadent mess. Kim has been rumored to have had a stroke, so there’s no telling who really is making decisions.

We cannot let this lunacy continue because a bully will try to grab more and push around the rest of the world unless someone smacks him real hard.

However, smacking a nation that has nuclear weapons is a little different than taking a stick to a playground tormentor.

The principle is the same but planning to control the reaction is a bit more demanding. I wish I had an easy answer for this mess, but I don’t.

President Barack Obama has a challenge with this problem. We and our allies have done little more than tread water there since 1953. This is the result of never finishing a war.

John M. House is a retired Army colonel who lives in Midland, Ga. His e-mail is housearmylife@aol.com.