Word: seoul
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...anyone in South Korea is living in the shadow of the North Korean Bomb, it is the people of Ilsan, a town of 500,000 situated north of Seoul just a few kilometers from the gash of barbed wire and land mines that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1953. From a local lookout point, the town's residents can peer across a stretch of river at the scrubby, brown hills of North Korea, knowing that hidden from view are bunkers, artillery and rockets that could turn their town into rubble in an hour. But for people like...
...gloom hasn't yet filtered down to ordinary South Koreans. And the startling disconnect between official views of the danger that Kim Jong Il's despotic government poses to the world and the sanguine attitudes of South Korean citizens is making it desperately hard for diplomats from Washington and Seoul to forge a common strategy for defusing the crisis. After years of regarding North Koreans as bitter enemies, the prosperous, democratic South now holds a benign view of the hunger-wracked police state. To southerners, North Koreans may be brothers from another planet (as the International Crisis Group...
...statement might seem startling to outsiders, but it's the consensus in places like Ilsan. Seoul was keenly aware of the threat from the North's Korean People's Army when the South created the town from scratch in the 1980s. Lying across one of the main invasion routes to Seoul, the area was the scene of frequent skirmishes during the Korean War. Planners carefully spaced Ilsan's new high-rises to slow any onslaught from enemy tanks and troops. In those days, the town's proximity to North Korea made it an unpopular place to live. Today, property prices...
...These sentiments are reflected in the strain between Washington and Seoul over how to deal with Pyongyang. For decades, South Korea and the U.S. both treated North Korea as the enemy. But in 1997, with the election of pro-democracy activist Kim Dae Jung as President, Seoul changed course. The South's leaders realized that if Kim Jong Il's government collapsed and the North unraveled, the burden of feeding millions of starving North Koreans and rehabilitating the North's crippled economy could devastate South Korea's own economy for years to come. Seoul started to send aid across...
...most serious rift between Seoul and Washington arose late last year over contingency planning on what the U.S. and South Korea should do if the North Korean government starts to fall apart or a disgruntled North military officer stages a coup. Under current guidelines, a U.S. general would lead American and South Korean forces in any shooting war with the North, as long as the allies agree that the situation warrants military action. But under what circumstances would troops be called in? Worried that signs of instability in the North might mean nuclear weapons were falling into unknown hands, Washington...