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| President Moon Jae-in speaks to North Korea's special envoy Kim Yo-jong during her visit to Korea for the PyeongChang Olympic opening ceremony. / Yonhap |
By Oh Young-jin
How could South Koreans ooh and aah in appreciation of every smile or grimace made by Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, during her recent visit for the opening ceremony of the PyeongChang Olympics?
Rather, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's "ungentlemanly" behavior toward Kim and her entourage looked normal. Pence came late for the pre-opening reception and declined to recognize the important guest from the North.
In a show of defiance, Pence also met North Korean defectors to talk about the brutality of the North Korean regime and visited the site where the ROK Navy frigate Cheonan was displayed ruptured in half by a North Korean torpedo attack. In the May 20, 2010, attack, 40 ROK sailors were killed and six are still listed as missing.
The North has terrorized the South with its growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and ever-sophisticated long-range missiles, provoking the United States into an internecine war that will most likely destroy the two Koreas, not the U.S.
The young dictator hired agents to kill his elder brother by smearing military-grade chemical toxin on his face in daylight and had his uncle killed by anti-aircraft guns. They were among Kim's acts in a purge targeting his political enemies.
His grandfather, Kim Il-sung, founder of the "communist" state, led an invasion of the South in what became the 1950-1953 Korean War. Millions of people were killed during the three-war war. The Korean Peninsula remains a tinder box that can easily ignite with millions of soldiers ready to give their all and destroy the other side.
So why are South Koreans treating such an unforgivable foe with respect and adulation?
It would be hard to blame anybody for thinking that southerners are either suffering from a collective case of severe amnesia or that they are good Samaritans.
In reality, we are neither.
Rather, the southerners could not be more realistic because they know any conflict with the North, would be a catastrophe.
So with keeping the peace the ticket to survival, it is only natural to do whatever it may take to keep the peace. President Moon Jae-in is doing just that.
This explains why he met Kim four times and gave her the red carpet treatment during her short stay _ he was trying to influence her brother into behaving better.
True, there are detractors Koreans who feel the same way as U.S. President Donald Trump once did _ anything less than maximum pressure spells cowardly appeasement.
They may speak strongly against the North, but in their hearts they know the alternative to peace is unthinkable and they may secretly wish their get-tough suggestions will never be tested.
It may seem that Koreans have a split personality _ one for the northerners and one against them.
But it all comes down to South Koreans' welfare and interest, which is normal.
It is also part of Koreans' built-in self-protective system that has successfully kept the southerners from going mad, living next door to the North, a bellicose country whose primary purpose for the past seven decades has been to conquer the South.
During that time, there have been too many close calls to count including threats such as one to turn Seoul into a sea of fire. The city of more than 10 million is within striking distance of the North's massive array of artillery.
True, there may be some leftover brotherly love between the two Koreas, but that amounts to little for now. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that if the two see a common goal that is big enough for them to overcome their differences, they could coalesce into one organic entity. But that possibility appears very distant.
The southerners' basic survival instinct could lead to more disagreements with the U.S., which is bound to see the North from its own point of interest.
Those ROK-U.S. disagreements could worsen after the Olympics, when the U.S. is set to put pressure back on the North as any normal country would do with its foe.
When the South refuses to see the US government's point of view on the North, Americans should remind themselves that South Korea's survival at stake.
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