A rude awakening on N. Korea as actual threat

By Park Si-soo

Staff reporter

Having shown a surprisingly nonchalant response to provocative actions by North Korea in the past, a growing number of South Koreans are beginning to see the Communist state as a real threat to peace.

The apparent change came after the Seoul government officially blamed Pyongyang, Thursday, for the sinking of a South Korean warship near the disputed western sea border on March 26, killing 46 crewmembers.

President Lee Myung-bak vowed "stern countermeasures" against the North. On the heels of the announcement, North Korea described Seoul's claim as a "fabrication" and warned of "full-scale war" if new sanctions are imposed accordingly.

"If such a warning was made in another situation, I might have treated it as just empty words. But now I take it seriously," Park Bi-ho, a 31-year-old Internet engineer in Seoul, said after reading news reports about the North's warning. "Following the warship incident, I increasingly feel that North Korea is an actual threat to the country."

Citing recent news reports suggesting the waning clout of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and subsequently increasing political tension there, Park said, "I don't rule out the possibility of the outbreak of war between the two Koreas."

Lee Kyung-hee, a 31-year-old office worker in Seoul, also expressed concern over the outbreak of war. "I am scared that a second Korean War might happen," Lee said.

Fears growing

In fact, the outbreak has been a constant possibility since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a ceasefire, not a permanent peace treaty.

Yet, the memory of gunfire exchanges and devastated territory during the war is long gone for most South Koreans, particularly the younger generations, due to few major inter-Korean clashes over the past five decades, analysts say.

Even when small-scale yet bloody clashes took place in 1999 and 2002 between South and North patrol boats that claimed dozens of lives, most South Koreans maintained the attitude it was none of their business.

In an extreme case, the whole world was shocked when Pyeongyang conducted an unexpected underground nuclear bomb test in 2006, while South Korea was immune from the shockwave. A news report described the atmosphere of the country as "unusually calm" with no sign of a buying spree of necessities in preparation for probable conflict.

In April last year, the North launched several middle-range missiles into the West Sea in an attempt to raise tensions, but the South Korean stock index showed a moderate rise the next day.

"Long-lasting peace has made people numb to North Korean threats," said Choi Myung-sang, a former Air Force general and currently a professor at Inha University in Incheon. "It seems that people don't believe the verbal provocations of the North could bring about a physical attack."

Such an unchallenged insensibility to North Korean threats has led to younger generations having the wrong idea of who the most dangerous state or "main enemy" of South Korea is, Choi said.

In 2008, as many as 34 percent of the freshmen at the Korea Military Academy selected the United States as Seoul's "main enemy" in a survey conducted by the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA).

Even worse, one third of primary school students said in the same year that South Korea was to blame for the Korean War, according to a survey by a civic group.

"The latest incident is heart-wrenching. But we should take it as an opportunity to normalize people's awareness of the North, which is a constant and actual threat to peace," the professor said.