In October, my mom is scheduled to visit our extended family in Seoul. I had initially planned to go with her but after a prolonged debate, we decided we would only get her tickets for now and I would book my tickets closer to the date depending on how the situation with North Korea was unfolding. Given that North Korea has been a rogue state for decades, many people (including many South Koreans it seems) are looking at the latest round of provocations by North Korea and the US’ response with a bit of a resigned ‘what’s new’? It’s exhausting to continually try to assess the probability of an event that is not by nature a recurring event -i.e., it’s not a coin toss or a dice roll that we can do several times and observe the probability of one possible outcome. If a war unfolds with North Korea involved, it’s pretty much going to be game-over for South Korea, no repeat rolls possible.

I’m not a foreign policy expert nor a historian, but as a Korean-American with some personal connections to and a continuing interest in North Korea, I worry that the recent developments means the world has entered a significantly different and more dangerous phase with regards to North Korea:

1. North Korea has tested nuclear weapons, apparently successfully (in 2009 and 2013)
2. North Korea has made rapid gains in developing a capability to deliver long-range missiles and if they continue to work on this, it seems very possible that they will eventually be able to deliver a missile to the continental US. As of July 2017, they exhibited that they can fire a long-range missile potentially capable of reaching Alaska (though apparently loading a nuclear bomb onto the missile would be another technological step the North Koreans would still have to master)
3. President Trump is now directs the US military and its nuclear weapons and his values and approach to governing I find often unpredictable and unwise (to put it mildly)

Basically, the logic that I’m afraid of is this: when North Korea was only capable of destroying South Korea and maybe Japan, the US could say that it would protect South Korea in the event of a North Korean attack. However, if it becomes evident that North Korea can also bring a nuclear attack on the continental US, would the US stand by or strike the first attack even if it means the destruction of 20 million South Koreans? Recent utterances by Trump like “if thousands die, they’re going to die over there — they’re not going to die here” brings little comfort. President Trump should also know though, that if conflict did break out on the Korean peninsula, the casualties would be in the hundreds of thousands, or in the millions given that 20 million South Koreans live in Seoul which is merely 35 miles from the North Korean border.

If North Korea was a rational actor, they should dramatically slow down their testing of intercontinental missiles. As long as they have the capability to enact devastating destruction on their neighbors that are allied with the US, they are not in danger of being invaded. But as soon as they have the capability to strike the US, they are changing the calculus for the US towards having a reason to attack first with no significant gains for North Korea in return. I hope they get this.

I know it’s no use now to lay blame, but let me do it anyway. Even though generally I am against war, I remember being flabbergasted when we invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003 on some very thin shreds of possible evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, while North Korea was openly yelling at the world saying “we are developing nuclear weapons!!” (cue political cartoon here) Clearly, the US and the world was in a much better position to halt the program then, and the advantages of that phase are long gone now. So while I pray that war never breaks out on the Korean peninsula, the responsibility for where we are now rests with Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump as well as their contemporaries in other powerful countries like China and Russia. And of course, the largest chunk of responsibility lies with the insane, corrupt, self-serving dictators of North Korea. We knew that North Korea was headed in this direction for the last 15 years but we just watched the train coming towards us in slow-motion. I pray that we can find our way to avert disaster for the South Korean people.