Night thoughts on Rose of Sharon
My friend Dr. David Pence believes that a "big need" exists deftly to initiate this discussion
Rose of Sharon is the woman who ends John Steinbeck's novel [Grapes of Wrath] by nursing a poor man after her new-born child died at birth. Rose of Sharon is also the Korean national flower and the title of an immensely popular novel by Kim Chin-Myung written in 1994. That bit of popular culture tells us a lot about "nuclear Korea" and the many continued ties of South Korea and the North. Don't tell the Europeans, but national memory and identity toghether with religion are the most powerful basis of group loyalty.My friend's analysis seem to me to be worthy of discussion. In the meantime, we should factor into the Rose of Sharon analysis the revelation that North Korea appears to be engaged in eugenic murder. Joshua Stanton writes at One Free Korea:The novel explains what many South Koreans feel about a nuclear North Korea. "That bomb is not aimed at us." In fact, it is "our bomb" against two very big whales that swim about us---China and Japan. Regional nuclear weapons are not aimed across the seas at the United States. They are employed in regional theatres to establish regional hegemony. Iraq and Iran would aim weapons at Israel. Korea (if united) would aim weapons at China and Japan and North Korea (as a protectorate of China) at Japan alone.
Nationalism is real and often we can learn about it better in novels than from foreign policy experts trying to "move beyound the anachronistic traditions of religion and nation."
Since I’ve begun blogging about North Korea, one of my core philosophies is that nukes, diplomacy, and human rights aren’t logically separable. That’s because you deal with governments that possess a basic regard for human life differently from those that lack one. Governments in the first category share our desire to preserve life by avoiding war. Governments in the second category seek only to preserve and expand their own power; their motivations are like our own. This distinction has been lost on plenty of people who mirror-image the North Koreans as fundamentally reasonable.I am certain that the distinction has not been lost on my friend, but the same observation may perhaps be extended to those who "mirror-image" the North Koreans as fundamentally nationalistic. My friend seeks to initiate discussion, and the subject unfortuntately remains timely.
