Sunday, August 22, 2004
final response from Seon Cheol
| I agree to Margaret Mead and William L. Ury’s arguments. I also think that fight is a natural condition. It is an inevitable concomitant of development of state. William L. Ury states that a win-lose mentality can wreak havoc in any domain of human life. I think he defines exactly the war. As you know, in the middle of twentieth century, Korean had experienced devastating civil war. It was the conflict of ideologies between democracy and communism. The final result was merely truce that divided our home land into two nations. This fact explains William L. Ury’s argument explicitly. If two Koreas committed to the conflict of ideology, one Korean would be the member of G-8 now. South Korea is the one of the countries that spends a lot of money for the military defense annually. If Korean spend this military expenditure toward education or public health care, Korean will be a welfare state. However, Victor Davis Hanson says that war is eternal and it is part of the human condition, and he also states that overwhelming force wins. The situation of confrontation between North and South is like Hanson’s definition.
Every year, two countries’ military conflicts happen, and South Korea spends ten percentage of whole GDP to buy missiles and other ammunitions of the U.S, and North Korean also spends about fifty percentage of its GDP. Unfortunately, North and South Korea adhere to Hanson’s argument. They are also seeking the three criteria of Aquinas in order to justify 50-year confrontation, but no one can justify war, war should be transformed into peace. When I read the article of William L. Ury, his writing explains the solution of two Korea’s problem. Each Korean should recognize that current irreconcilable situation does not benefit each other and it can make worse the future of next generation. |
