Seoul (AsiaNews) - "For now, there will not be any war. Pyongyang knows that an act of war would, one way or another, end its existence," a Catholic source that works with North Korea, anonymous for security reason, told AsiaNews.
The end of North Korea would mean a unified Korea, something "no one wants. China does not want it because it is afraid of being swamped by millions of people unwilling to give up the Communist ideology. The United States does not want it because it would lose a huge market for its weapons. Japan does not want it because it is afraid of a fierce competitor."
However, " the same players are responsible for the status quo," the source said. "After the Korean War, they have come to realise the enormous benefits from the division. China owns most of the North Korean economy, and the northern part of the country is almost a Chinese province. Whereas Washington has been able to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers here, and make it a strategic outpost of enormous importance for its hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region."
Over the past week, the tone of North Korea's threats and war rhetoric has reached a fevered pitch. Yesterday the government in Pyongyang announced that it had given the go-ahead to a nuclear attack against the United States. This morning, it moved a nuclear rocket to its east coast, possibly aimed at the United States. For its part, Washington has announced the deployment of an anti-missile system in its bases on Guam.
The winds of war blowing these days between North and South, the source explained, "have scared even ordinary South Koreans who are not easily intimidated. They are used to the Kim regime shooting its mouth off, but now the anguish is palpable in the streets. The new dictator, Kim Jong-un, is not well known as his father or grandfather, and the internal situation in that country is so desperate that no one would be surprised to see them [North Korea's rulers] prefer suicide by war to a slow death by starvation. "
A priest in Seoul confirms the fears. The internal situation alone, he said, "could lead to a decision to go to war. Kim Jong-un is young and does not have full control of the military, whilst ordinary people are starving and camps are filling up more and more. The dictator does not want to lose power and could decide that it is better to die in war than fall to a coup, whether military or civilian."
