Bruce Cumings Provides Context to North / South Korea Tensions

This is a clip from Thursday, 27 May episode of Democracy Now; where Professor Cumings gives some context missing in the MSM accounts of the tensions in Korean peninsula.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• north korea
• south korea
• cheonan
• china

[HappyTeacherESQ]

just read 'the korean war' by cumings---tremendous book!

[Iamsongforthee]

@ymirfrostgiant NK resists opening-up because it wants to perpetuate its totalitarian regime. That's the reason why it cannot but have nukes. Cumings considers NK a victim. That's why I believe he's foolishy and prepostrous. Cheers.

[ymirfrostgiant]

@Iamsongforthee I'm not sure where you read that interpretation in Cummings's talk, I didn't hear it at least. But if you say that rapprochement with Korea and developing/opening up relations helps to deligitimize the regime, isn't this what we should be doing? And if you want to reduce the chances of military crises the N.Korean regime can exploit, then conciliatory policies that reduce military confrontation should be especially prioritized, right? That makes sense to me.

[achangsts]

46 or however-many dead sailors and this guy says it's been "blown out of proportion"?? dumbass..

[FireGuyX]

@Iamsongforthee Bruce is 100% right, this is just a crisis that has been ongoing since the 1950s. Even libertarians such as Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard believe the Korean War is unnecessary and we should no longer be there. The only way for Korea to ever be in peace and to reunite is when we end the military occupation in Korea. If you don't know this, we subsidize South Korea's defense at the cost of $13 billion dollars.

[Iamsongforthee]

Cumings is not only naive and gullible but intellectually dishonest to create a false image of N.K as a victim. The Kim regime needs military crises, not least nukes, to perpetuate its totalitarian rule. They know only too well that an opening-up and reform shall entail popular revolt and deligitimization. Cumings asserts that the Kim regime is willing to give up nukes simply because he trusts Kim Jong-il, the worst communist dictator in world history.

[ChaostheClown]

@frontier1701 it's just too fun to give up! xD

*sarcasm*

[ChaostheClown]

@lisajason111 Indeed, twas us not long after WWII who decided we were gonna split em up to prevent "the spread of communism" n stuff like that. We set up an army-run gov't for awhile. I'm a little rusty on it, but you should be able to look up this stuff if you wanna know more.

[carlfinkle]

Take a close look at that torpedo it has to much corrosion to be a new torpedo looks to me like a bay of Tonken incident

[ZerozPk]

Lol I didn't expect him saying shit :P