Roots?

This is coolbert:

From that previous B.R. Myers blog entry:

"North Korea under Kim Jong Il was guided by 'a paranoid, race-based nationalism with roots in Japanese fascism.'"

That race-based nationalism comes from where exactly? Japanese fascism?

Korea was ruled for forty year period [1905-1945] by the Japanese. At least in the case of South Korea [ROK] that original Korean War era cadre of career military officers had received a degree of military training and experience under Japanese tutelage.

In particular I am thinking of President Park Chung Hee. Strong-man ruler for a period of over a decade who is recognized as the "father" of ROK industrialization and development. Park was a graduate of a Japanese military academy and during Japanese occupation was known by his Japanese name of Takagi Masao.

Park too familiar with, influenced by and a confidant [?] of the Japanese famous/infamous Colonel Tsuji? Tsuji an advocate of and the most extreme example of the type of over-zealous and fevered nationalism characterizing Japanese policy toward "others" in that time prior to Pearl Harbor.

As for North Korea [DPRK] the situation is more complicated? In the case of the DPRK it is hard to discern where exactly such a strong racial nationalistic animus toward the "other" might have come from?

Kim Il Sung for instance was a Soviet citizen, a Red Army officer who actually fought at Stalingrad commanding Korean national contingents of the Red Army. So it is thought.

[Korean troops as part of the Red Army fought at Stalingrad, as well as during the Chinese Civil War on the communist side. Those American combat units of Task Force Smith ran into the most experienced and battle tested soldiers in the world in 1950!!]

Kim Jung Il too is thought to have been a Soviet-born citizen, too young to have lived in Korea during that time of Japanese occupation.

A nation motivated by a "paranoid, race-based nationalism" hardly makes for a reliable and stable negotiating partner. Efforts to ameliorate the situation on the Korean peninsula by the normal diplomatic method of "carrot and stick" are doomed to failure given the mentality and tenor of a leadership deemed "rabid"!

How to proceed?

coolbert.