Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowperson
The night the Berlin Wall fell, stunned, rag-tag, East Germans staggered unbelieving through the glittering, neon-strewn and flush retail districts of West Berlin, past endless stores aglitter and stuffed with jewellry, clothing and technology . . . . . .
. . . . . and then they got angry as it started to occur to them how much they had been led down the proverbial garden path . . . .
A decade later, the Germans were still paying the bill of trying to normalize the East into a modern economy and Germany was called "the sick man of Europe." More than 20 years later, that's obviously started to change and Germany is the strong man of Europe again . . . .
The economic burden on South Korea should the North actually die a natural death would be something staggering as well.
The night the Berlin Wall was breached:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...660190,00.html
Cowperson |
There's lots of really interesting things that happened when the walls fell, and the same thing will happen when the Korea's reunify, however reunification will only ever happen if china is removed from the equation, and the Army and Intelligent services are pacified, and the dynasty ends.
While the North Korean army is awesome in size, they're not a technology based army, and while their troops are the best fed in the country, they are still behind the South Korean army in terms of the individual Soldiers capability.
The NK special forces are vaunted, but that's because the Kim's were in love with the concept of infiltration, but I think that they would rank far behind the rest of the modern world in effectiveness and training.
The average NK soldier is encouraged not to be creative and to blindly follow his orders, the dicipline and training are incredibly brutal, and while the Force Multiplyer is expected to be between 3 and 5 to 1 in terms of killed to kill, I read that the NK kill multiplier has dropped to bellow 1 to 1, but that's what happens when you have disposible troops.
Going back to the drop of the wall, you have to remember that I was in the Military before the wall fell, I saw the Fulda Gap, which was expected to be the first point of contact between Soviet and American armor and infantry, and we all throught the Russians would be 10 feet tall and their tanks indestructible and there would be a fighting retreat all the way to the Atlantic. Years later I got to take a look at the incredibly cramped T-72 tank with the fuel line ringing the turret, the incredibly clumsy auto loader, and the terrible optices and aiming system, and I looked at a BMP (I think it was a BMP, it could have been a BRMD) and the exit door for the troops contained the diesal fuel tank and realized how wrong we had been about the Soviets for years.