As a South Korean, I don't like this news. Not because I'm against ending the war, but because I don't think there's any real chance of this happening. This is at best a distraction, and considering that there are a ton of domestic political issues Koreans are angry about right now (the president's poll rating was steadily falling for the past month or two), I have no idea who this is intended for.

The most realistic outcome would be that nothing will come out of it, and it will be used by some opposing parties to paint the government as clueless, further eroding the president's popular support.

To be fair, there are some clueless "inter-Korean peace at any cost" ideologues in the current government (and among supporters): maybe the current minister of unification, Chung Dong-young, is the best example. But I don't think President Lee himself is one of them. (He's largely pragmatic in most positions, if a bit shoot-from-the-hip type.)

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thisislife2 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Since you are a South Korean, perhaps you can give some insights on how factual is the claim that the recent attempted coup in South Korea was related to tensions (and the possibility of starting or preventing a war) with NK and that some politically active "Protestant South Koreans" converts do want to provoke a war with NK to defeat the "evil commies"? My source for the latter is this 2 year old article in the Russian media - Is North Korea about to attack the South while supplying troops for Russia? - https://www.rt.com/news/606267-speculations-north-korea-atta... ...

	▲	yongjik 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think a few things are mixed up. * First, ex-president Yoon was a drunkard idiot: he believed that he was surrounded by evil commies, who manipulated legislative election of 2024 to give the opposing Democratic (Minjoo) party a resounding victory, who would (in Yoon's mind) go on to sell the country to China. Or something like that. So he decided that the only way to "save Korea" from those evil commies is to declare martial law and purge the commies. * South Korea always had its share of evangelical protestant far right wingers, and sadly they have now become rabid supporters of Yoon (even now!) - Korea's version of MAGA. They maintain that all the delusional shit Yoon said are true, Korea is on the verge of falling to communism, and the only way to save Korea is put the commie usurper Lee into prison and reinstate Yoon as the rightful president of SK. * Yoon did try to provoke North Korea into attacking SK, presumably to use it as a pretext for his martial law, by deliberately flying drones into NK without precaution so that North Korea could find out. Recently, the court sentenced Yoon 30 years for that [1] (trying to start a war is a serious crime!), though the case is still ongoing. FWIW, North Korea didn't take the bait (thank god) - they have impeccable survival instincts. * So I think many parts of the RT article is true (I only skimmed it), though the motives might be a bit mixed up. South Korean military command does not want to start a war to defeat "evil commies": that would leave the whole peninsula in smoking ruins. We just had an idiot president who tried to take over the country in the stupidest means possible and failed. [1] https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/1263280.... (article in Korean)