Word: koreans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Earlier this month, like many times in the past, the spoiled child did that again, and we should not have been surprised. Up to 180 North Korean soldiers entered the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 2.5-mile stretch separating the two countries, where they set up mortars and aimed machine guns at its southern rival. Needless to say, the actions defy the 43-year-old truce forged after the 1950-53 Korean War, which permits no more than 35 soldiers per side to enter this Joint Security Area at any one time...
Technically, because a permanent peace treaty has never been signed, South Korea is still at war with North Korea, and whether relative peace can come about only depends on how its northern neighbor chooses to restrain itself. For the past decades, the Korean peninsula has never ceased to resemble a barrel of gunpowder which could blow up any time. Bordering upon each other are the two countries, both claiming to be the true representative of the Korean people, between whom there exists the widest and oddest gap imaginable given a homogeneous race and an identical language...
...successful free market economy and a democratic system guaranteeing people's rights and involvement in politics. Above all, shall we remember, this gap has been created in a mere span of 40 years, even less than one generation's lifetime! And yet, the dark shadow of a second Korean War, a disaster which could possibly wipe out the gap by just destroying everything, is always hanging over the peninsula like the sword of Damocles...
...told the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to stop fighting and to negotiate with the Nationalists on how to divide China into two parts, the CCP turned a deaf ear and continued the civil war until it drove its rival totally out of the mainland. Therefore, in the Korean situation, due to the fact that it obviously involves the most unpredictable leadership of the contemporary age, it is really hard to say whether, in a severe crisis, North Korea would still keep the ties with China intact and be content with its current status as a little brother...
...maintain its military presence in Asia. The U.S. Pacific Command comprises 200 ships, 2,000 aircraft and 300,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, of whom 100,000 are "forward deployed" in South Korea, Japan and at sea. As long as there is a danger of war on the Korean peninsula, a drawdown of U.S. forces is unlikely; in the meantime, they help stabilize the entire region. The presence of 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan, for example, reassures not only Tokyo, which is carefully monitoring its great neighbor's rise to power, but even China, which along with other...