You Don't Burn Down The Whole House Just To Kill One Mosquito

I found Newt Gingrich's response to the North Korean missile firing, well, quizzical to say the least.

On Fox News Sunday the ex Speaker of The United States House of Representatives seemed to be saying that we should have taken out the North Korean missile. Like I said, quizzical.

I lived and worked in South Korea for over 35 years. When I arrived in Seoul South Korea in the autumn of 1971 I found that the Korean Peninsula was the most heavily armed piece of real estate on the planet.

The two Korea's were divided by a "Demilitarized Zone" (talk about an oxymoron) when fighting stopped in 1953. By 1971 there were nearly 1million soldiers facing each other across the DMZ. There was a massive amount of heavy artillery on both sides of the divide; there still is.

The capital of South Korea, Seoul, lies just 35 miles south of the DMZ, well within range of the the North's artillery. Seoul is a large city of 10 million. The Seoul National Capital Area which includes Seoul and the major port city of Inchon has a combined population of 24.5 million making it the worlds second most populated metropolitan area.

I have seen estimates that between 5 and 8 million people in the Seoul metro area would be killed within the first 24 hours after the outbreak of war. To anyone with any common sense this is a chilling reality.

The standoff between north and south has been facilitated in part by China who props up the North Korean regime, the U.S. who provides a defense umbrella and Japan which has deep economic ties and still allows the United States to base soldiers on its territory. Each of the three have much to lose in the ghastly event that war should break out.

Today, South Korea fears greatly the collapse of the regime in Pyongyang. It is important to remember that entire families were torn apart when the DMZ was established. Mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters were separated mostly never to see each other again. Most don't know whether their relatives lived or died.

South Korea is today a booming middle class economy. Seoul has been rebuilt (beautifully) from the ashes of war and life is good.

North Korea is a basket case. Drought creates the starvation of millions of people and as advanced as the South Korean economy is that is how devastated the North Korean economy is. A nighttime satellite picture of the Korean Peninsula tells the story; the south glistens with lights, the north is virtually completely dark. The image is striking.

The South Koreans learned much when with the fall of East Germany and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly a divided German was one again with one half being wealthy and the other relatively poor. The melding of the two was a big hit to the West German economy. But what could the German's do? After all, these were brothers and sisters, mothers and children, husbands and wives who had been separated for decades. They were all German's.

The same is true of the two Korea's. Should the North Korean regime collapse there would certainly be war (between the armies) while millions of North Korean refugees would go south and others would go north seeking refuge in China. The last thing China needs is more people!

Of equal concern for the Chinese would be the presence of the American Army on their southern border as the South, with the help of the Americans would certainly defeat the North Korean Army and the north would be taken over militarily by South Korean and American forces.

It is unbelievable to me that the ex Republican Speaker of The House of Representatives would sanction a disaster now to avert one that will probably never occur due to a North Korean missile attack on the United States.

The North Korean regime is a bad one, its leader Kim Jong Il is frankly nuts. But Kim Jong Il and the leaders of the North Korean Army understand the concept of annihilation.

The Korean's have a saying "you don't burn down the whole house just to kill one mosquito", just what the reckless Mr. Gingrich seems to be advocating.