"G. Rush" <g01drush@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:2gKG9.11838$31.3609@nwrddc03.gnilink.net...
>
>
>         Korea has been divided for fifty years. Nearly 100% of modern
Korean
> nationhood. Don't you think that it's a long time for a country to be
> divided and be dependent on foreign protection.

The duration of the division is a testament to the wiliness of the North
Koreans and the fact that this situation is not about these two small
countries but about the larger contest between competing ideologies and the
powers that back them.  As for the foreign (i.e. US) protection, do you
realize that most of Western Europe also depends to some extent on the US
for protection?

>
>         Well if Korea could beat the thugs in the first place, they
wouldn't
> require help. And yet fifty years later the problem of thugs still exist.

No question that South Korea would defeat North Korea in war.  What most
non-Koreans simply cannot understand is that the primary objective of every
Korean in the world is to see a peaceful reunification.  North and South are
one people divided by ideology.  Just as in the American Civil War, the
final objective is to restore a divided nation and not to punish or destroy
an enemy.


> > If US forces were to leave, Koreans would not beg to have them return.
>         US would not beg Koreans to let them stay either. The main point
of
> US presence is deter Kim Jongil from launching an attack against South
> Korea.

That is not the main point of the US presence in South Korea.  It is an
important point, but only to the extent that war would severely disrupt the
American economy and catastrophically destabilize the politico-economic
balance of East Asia.