Fw: Good reasoning about Saturday's skirmish

["Will's Netpath" <will@netpath.net>]

This is from my general Korea discussion list, concerning Saturday's
attacks.   It makes sense to me.
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Pratt <andrewpratt@ircltd.com>
To: moogoonghwa@ucsd.edu <moogoonghwa@ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 5:09 AM
Subject: Good reasoning about Saturday's skirmish


>From today's KH:
>
>The same old North Korea
>
>While the World Cup games were being played here and in Japan, many people
>in the South were anxious to find out whether North Koreans were watching
>on
>television and how they were reacting to the results, especially the
>matches
>involving the South Korean team.
>
>That was why some South Koreans were deeply disappointed by an initial
>report that the communist regime in Pyongyang left the spot for South Korea
>in the list of the 16 teams that had won the preliminary round blank and
>that it didn't even say where the World Cup was being held.
>
>Then, another report came from the North that Pyongyang told its people
>that
>South Korea had beaten Italy in a quarterfinal match. South Korea's media,
>including the state-run Korea Broadcasting System (KBS), got excited about
>it and reported the news. But unwittingly, perhaps, they also relayed North
>Korea's official commentary that said that South Korea won a match in the
>World Cup for the first time in its history.
>
>Now, we all know that South Korea's victory over Italy was not the first
>win
>in this year's World Cup. By the time it beat Italy, it had won matches
>against Poland and Portugal and tied with the United States. But Pyongyang
>ignored those remarkable feats. Instead, it suddenly broadcast the South
>Korean match against Italy with the commentary on the South's failure to
>win
>a game in all previous World Cups.
>
>Although no South Korean newspapers or TV network publicly wondered why,
>North Korea's shallow intention was glaringly apparent to those who try and
>think a little deeper than what appears on the surface.
>
>We all remember North Korea beat Italy in the 1966 World Cup in England.
>North Korea no doubt wanted to remind the world, especially the people in
>the South, of that fact, and that South Korea, which had not won a single
>World Cup match, managed to beat Italy only now. In other words, "We've
>done
>better than South Korea!" was obviously the message the inferiority
>complex-stricken North Korean leaders wanted to convey to their own people,
>and maybe they even hoped to create an impression of a superior North Korea
>in the outside world.
>
>Then on June 25, North Korea televised an edited tape of the June 21 match
>between the United States and Germany. North Korea obviously gave a time
>lapse of up to several days before televising selected World Cup matches.
>But it is too naive to assume that it was purely coincidental for the North
>Korean leaders to select June 25, the 52nd anniversary of the outbreak of
>the Korean War, to air the match in which the United States was beaten. The
>Americans are, of course, North Korea's archenemy who had helped the
>"fascists and imperialist running dogs" in the South to beat the attempt by
>the North to communize the country by force more than half a century ago.
>
>We all know that North Korean leaders are nothing if not consummate and
>tricky politicians, extremely well versed in the use of propaganda. They
>carefully choose some World Cup matches and televised them not for the
>enjoyment of the public but to reap maximum propaganda effects.
>
>Last Thursday, it was reported that a number of Pyongyang residents who
>watched the semifinal match between South Korea and Germany on television
>"had shown a sad reaction" over South Korea's defeat. Quoting a foreign
>diplomat in Pyongyang, the report said, however, that a majority of North
>Koreans could neither watch the closed-circuit television broadcast from
>Thailand nor find out the result of the match.
>
>There was no way, of course, for ordinary North Korean citizens, especially
>those outside Pyongyang, to know how the success of the South Korean
>national team in the Cup had sent the entire country into the state of
>extreme excitement. All they know probably is the fact that it took 36 more
>years for their brothers and sisters in the South to match the North Korean
>feat of beating Italy in a World Cup game.
>
>In a development that some believe was not unrelated to the successful
>hosting by the South of the World Cup, North Korea deliberately provoked a
>naval clash in the West Sea on Saturday, the last day of the festive event.
>Four South Korean sailors were killed, 19 others were wounded and one is
>missing.
>
>The clash came as a great shock to most people in the South who were
>practically delirious with patriotism and nationalistic fervor during the
>World Cup. But when you really think about it, it was not an entirely
>unexpected incident. If there is a permanent thing in this world as
>constant
>as the sun rising from the east every morning, it is North Korea's
>belligerent and hostile attitude toward South Korea. It must have been hard
>for the leaders in Pyongyang to keep watching the national team of rival
>South Korea continue to advance into the semifinals of the World Cup. They
>had to pour cold water on the state of euphoria in the South.
>
>
>