r/politics • u/Effective_Salad_8381 • 22h ago

Soft Paywall JD Vance Mocked for Embarrassing WWII History Mistake

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vance-mocked-for-embarrassing-wwii-history-mistake/
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u/Alive_kiwi_7001 21h ago

South Korea is one example. SK has de facto ceded territory though it still claims the rest of Korea (with little prospect of it happening while the Kim dynasty stays in power).

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u/Xivannn 21h ago

That was for where the lines were, as far as I know, whereas Ukraine is asked to recognize land as Russian that Russia has never controlled and fall back to the new recognized line - for just a ceasefire.

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u/hunter15991 Illinois 20h ago

That was for where the lines were

Not entirely.

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u/Xivannn 20h ago

I meant front lines, as in troops of each side. The 38th parallel line was where the control zones were divided after WW2 and Japanese occupation. After that first North and their allies crossed the line and invaded South, then South and their allies got ground and later crossed the line North, until in the end they ended up where the DMZ is.

To form the DMZ, both sides agreed to retreat 2 kilometers to form that 4 kilometer wide neutral zone, so you could kind of count that as ceding land for a ceasefire. It's not too analogous for what is asked from Ukraine, though.

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u/hunter15991 Illinois 20h ago

I meant front lines

Ah, fair enough.

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u/bootlegvader 15h ago

Would SK even want to unite with NK in the future even after the fall of the Kim dynasty? I would have to imagine trying bring NK up to the rest of SK would crash its economy.

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u/Cleev 13h ago

It's been a while since I asked anyone's opinion, but ~20 or so years ago, I had the opportunity to ask a few South Korean people about exactly this. A Germany style reunification was exactly what South Koreans didn't want. Not just because it would tank the economy, but because it would mean a population of refugees roughly half the size of South Korea would need education, job training, medical care, etc.

Think about it. If ~165 million under-educated and malnourished people showed up in the U.S., most with few if any modern job skills, we'd be fucked. Not only would it cost hundreds of billions of dollars (if not trillions) to house, feed, and educated them, it would overwhelm the infrastructure we have in place do those things for decades. Need a doctor? Take a number, the next available appointment is in March of 2027. Need food or housing assistance? Sorry, those programs ran out of funding in the first quarter of the year. Want to go to college? Maybe in a decade or so, every penny of educational funding has been earmarked for adult education and job training for the next 10 years.

In short, a Korean unification would cripple South Korea, and not just economically.