Even after North Korea invaded the South in 1950, sparking the Korean War, followed by decades of tensions marked by skirmishes, missile tests, nuclear detonations, artillery attacks and the sinking of a navy vessel, the authorities in Seoul have often been less strident about the North Korean threat than their allies like Japan and the US, a response that, at first glance, may seem counterintuitive.
Two phenomena could account for this reaction: cultural proximity — South Koreans often refer to North Koreans as “wayward cousins” involved in a family dispute — and the fact that South Korea would suffer the brunt of an attack by the North. As such, the leadership in Seoul has often gone to great lengths to avoid unnecessarily alienating Pyongyang.
In many ways, Taipei under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) appears to have reached similar conclusions with regards to China. Amid a growing sense of alarm among regional powers at an increasingly assertive Chinese military, one of the few countries that has downplayed the threat is Taiwan. There is no small irony in this, given that Taiwan, despite supposedly warming ties with Beijing, remains the primary, albeit not the only, target of China’s rapidly growing and modernizing military.
As with Seoul vis-a-vis North Korea, Taipei has emphasized the need for dialogue, while Ma, who never misses an opportunity to remind Taiwanese of their “Chinese heritage” and the “Chinese nation,” also seems to regard Chinese as “wayward cousins” in an unresolved family feud. Ma’s tendency to look at Chinese as a misled family member, rather than the “other,” could help explain what comes across as his failure to fully account for the magnitude of the Chinese threat, or at least shed some light on his often fuzzy definition of Taiwan and Taiwanese, as is often the case with the two Koreas.
Where the Ma administration departs from its South Korean counterpart, however, is that while Seoul emphasizes the need for dialogue with Pyongyang, it also continues to invest in its military and to prepare for worst-case scenarios; Ma, for his part, emphasizes the former, but is starving the latter. South Korea’s military budget for 2009 was about US$27 billion, or 2.8 percent of its GDP and nearly three times that of Taiwan, which, by some accounts, has set aside even less than the reported 2.5 percent of GDP for defense this year.
Furthermore, while South Korea has encouraged cultural and business exchanges as a means to foster reconciliation, successive administrations have never wavered in their efforts to make sure the armed forces are well trained and prepared to meet the challenge of an attack by the North. Even when the exercises were called “provocative” and risked angering Pyongyang and Beijing, South Korea did what it must to ensure preparedness and demonstrate a strong national will.
Conversely, Taipei’s policy under Ma — who could be said to have launched his own version of former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine policy” — has been to emphasize carrots with fewer and fewer sticks, to such an extent that Taiwan’s deterrent capability is now increasingly coming into question.
South Korea’s approach to conflict in the Korean Peninsula is to keep its options open: It does not, wisely, shut the door on dialogue, but it remains cognizant of the unpredictability of human behavior and the possibility of things taking a turn for the worse. Taiwan, which unlike South Korea is now facing a first-rate military, appears to be closing the door on preparedness and assuming that the currently friendly atmosphere will remain consistent, which is far from certain.
Perhaps Ma should be reminded that wayward cousins can hurt you just as badly as a perfect stranger.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday last week held a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. The issue of the retention or abolition of the death penalty often involves the conceptual aspects of social values and even religious philosophies. As it is written in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, the government’s policy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods, and it is impossible to be perfect. Today’s controversy over the retention or abolition of the death penalty can be viewed in the same way. UNACCEPTABLE Viewing the