Have you heard of the Cuban missile crisis? The threat from the USSR was real, and right there on the US border. These situations, and the resultant scare mongering for political gain, are highly comparable.
This is country with compulsory military service, where young people patrol a very dangerous border where infiltrators operate, plant land-mines, etc. Shootings aren't uncommon.
Had a coworker whose best friend got lost on night patrol. Another unit killed him when he didn't come up with the password of the day quick enough. The coworkers comment? "He screwed up."
That sounds unreasonable. Sentries that are that trigger happy don't understand that they are more or less sacrificial and will cause more harm then they can ever prevent.
Probably has something to do with the fact that Seoul is like 50 kilometers from the border, and has enough rockets pointed at them to cause unprecedented carnage. HIMARS can launch precision strikes at that range, but DPRK doesn't need precision, and has clearly committed to quantity. And they're not exactly peaceful about it: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-fires-multipl...
There's no pro north Korean elements in the opposition. This is using a very real foreign adversary as a boogeyman to demonize political opponents. That's exactly what "red scare stuff" was back then in the United States, and that's exactly how it's being used right now by the president of Korea.
This is kind of what I was wondering as somebody who's 99% clueless about Korean politics.
Yoon Suk Yeol claimed he is protecting the country from "shameless pro-North Korean anti-state forces."
Now...
I do not doubt that NK has spies in SK, possibly some in government. I am sure there are some in SK who are happy to get a paycheck from NK to share some info. It's what any oppositional nation state would be trying to achieve.
But as far as literal "pro-North Korean" forces in SK, that seems close to literally impossible to me.
I cannot imagine any significant number of South Koreans looking at North Korea and thinking ooooh yes that is what I want.
My partner is Korean and admittedly on the liberal end of the spectrum, but according to my partner he's pretty analogous to right wing neofascist scaremongerers in the west, whom you're possibly more familiar with. The "they're poisoning our blood" and "country-x for the country-x-men" types which seem to have proliferated over the past decade.
Ten to fifteen years ago a Korean opposition assemblyman was tried for being part of a conspiracy with plans to bomb train stations in the event of a conflict with North Korea. He was aquitted on the argument that he was ordered to by the opposition leaders. So the largest opposition party was found to be pro-communist and forced to be dissolved.
Not that this justifies any of the recent coup, but actual communist conspiracies were still happening in recent memory.
