This just in

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

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200207/200207020020.html

The South supposedly admits in a Japanese newspaper that IT messed up and
had an accident.

Tell me if I'm reading this incorrectly.


-----Original Message-----
From: Will's Netpath <will@netpath.net>
To: korean-war-l@raven.cc.ku.edu <korean-war-l@raven.cc.ku.edu>
Date: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 1:09 PM
Subject: Fw: Good reasoning about Saturday's skirmish


>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.
>>
>>
>>
>