Published on November 8, 2019. From Edward Luttwak’s essay in the monthly magazine Hanada’s special feature “Moon Jae-in’s Total Collapse.” The article analyzes North Korea’s nuclear weapons, Korean unification and denuclearization, the danger posed to Japan by China’s expanding influence over the peninsula, and South Korean anti-Japanese sentiment through comparison with Dutch anti-German sentiment after World War II.

November 8, 2019.
If the entire Korean Peninsula is placed under Chinese control, it will become a great disaster for Japan… Japan will fall into a state in which a gun is pressed against its temple.
The following is from an essay by Edward Luttwak, which opens the special feature titled “Moon Jae-in’s Total Collapse” in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Hanada.
South Korea, learn the truth of history.
The four choices for the Korean Peninsula.
Before discussing the historical issues between Japan and South Korea, I would like to begin with the reality that North Korea is believed finally to have succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear warheads and completed nuclear missiles.
With this, Japan’s crisis has entered a stage from which there is no turning back.
Let us confirm how complex and serious the issue of nuclear armament on the Korean Peninsula is from Japan’s standpoint.
The reality that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons must be extremely unpleasant for Japan.
On the other hand, however, what we must recognize is that North Korea’s nuclear weapons guarantee its independence from China and its survival.
Thinking in that way, the task presented by the harsh reality today is “what Japanese people want the Korean Peninsula to become in the future.”
There are four choices for the future of the Korean Peninsula, and they can be depicted in a matrix like the figure（p. 37）.
The left-right axis is “nuclear possession” and “non-nuclear possession”（denuclearization）, and the upper-lower axis is “unified Korea” and “divided Korea.”
At present, the Korean Peninsula is divided, and only the North is in a state of “nuclear possession”（upper left）.
If we wish to realize “divided Korea” and “denuclearization,” North Korea will be completely absorbed by China and become a colony（upper right）.
However, since North Korea’s nuclear weapons guarantee its independence from China and its survival, the possibility that North Korea will give them up is extremely low.
Returning to the past state of denuclearization while remaining a divided state is realistically difficult.
If it were to “unify” while possessing nuclear weapons, Japan would be forced to confront and face a nuclear-armed unified state on the peninsula（lower left）.
This would become an even more dangerous hostile state than North Korea, and it would be the worst situation for Japan.
There is also the option of a “denuclearized” “unified Korea”（lower right）.
That is the direction desired by the United States and China, but in that case, unless U.S. forces remain stationed there, there is a high probability that unified Korea will be absorbed by China.
If South Korea is annexed by China, I do not know what will happen to the historical issues with Japan.
The only thing I want to say here is that if the entire Korean Peninsula is placed under Chinese control, it will become a great disaster for Japan.
Japan will fall into a state in which a gun is pressed against its temple.
Unless unified Korea possesses nuclear weapons, it will be difficult for it to survive as a state.
That is because, if the Demilitarized Zone（DMZ）collapses, the unified Korean side will have no reason to plead with America to keep U.S. forces there.
Therefore, the combination of “unified Korea” and “non-nuclear possession” is basically highly likely to be placed under Chinese influence.
The three choices other than maintaining the status quo（upper left）are all undesirable for Japan.
Among the four, the least “bad” of all the worst options is to maintain the current situation on the Korean Peninsula.
I once proposed that Japan should possess the capability to carry out a preemptive strike against North Korea.
However, now that the North has completed nuclear missiles, the only realistic option Japan can take is to maintain a divided Korea.
Now that we have come this far, Japanese diplomacy has no choice but to become flexible and passive.
This is my analysis.
The Japan-South Korea clash is South Korea’s problem.
The basis of South Korea’s behavior lies in switching the object of its subordination.
They were subordinate to Japan, then subordinate to America.
And now they are trying to become subordinate to China.
As all of you in Japan, who have watched South Korea’s methods up close, already understand, Japan-South Korea relations are not a diplomatic issue and cannot be resolved through bilateral negotiations.
This is South Korea’s own problem.
I think this becomes easier to understand if we compare it with the historical problems Germany faced in Europe.
By the end of the Second World War, Germany had killed more than twenty million Russians.
Even ten years after the end of the war in 1945, anti-German sentiment in Russia was still intense.
Now, more than seventy years later, all anti-German sentiment has disappeared in Russia.
South Koreans’ resentment toward Japan still remains even after seventy-four years.
Why on earth is this so?
To understand it, it will probably be necessary to compare it with the relationship between Germany and the Netherlands.
The number of Dutch people killed by Germany during the war was very small compared with the number of Russians.
Of course, during the final six months before the war ended, the Netherlands suffered, but that was because food was running out.
Even though almost no Dutch people were killed, it took far longer for them to dissolve their hatred of Germans than it did for Russians.
The biggest reason is that Russians fought Germany, whereas the Dutch did not.
Germans killed Russians, and Russians also killed many Germans.
And after the war, both sides came to say, “Let us stop fighting now.”
The French were late, but still, in some form, they resisted Germany.
The Belgian method of resistance was skillful, and they destroyed the order Germany had created.
Denmark resisted at the national level, and it was very effective.
Norway had resistance fighters, and they firmly attacked the Germans who came to occupy it.
However, the Dutch were cowards and did not resist.
Dutch society submitted to Germany, and collaboration with Germany was carried out on a large scale.
For example, Germany relied on the Dutch police to arrest Jews inside the Netherlands.
Young Dutch people continued to have anti-German feelings after the war precisely because their fathers had been cowards.
My own childhood experience also supports this.
After the war, in the 1960s, my parents took me by car on a trip to the Dutch coast.
At the entrances of the guesthouses found here and there, signs saying “No Germans” were invariably posted.
Around the same time, I was also taken to the coast of the Dalmatian region of Yugoslavia.
At that time, our family lived in Italy, so we could travel far by car.
During the Second World War, this region was the site of fierce battles between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Germany, and there were many war dead, but the Yugoslav people warmly welcomed travelers from Germany.
The reason is that Germans killed Yugoslavs, and the Yugoslav side also killed many Germans.
They were never cowards; they rose up and fought.
No one had to be ashamed of their fathers, and they could have pride in them.
That is precisely why, after the war, they could become friendly toward Germans.
The structure of the South Korean trauma.
Based on all this, let us consider the Korean problem.
There are many propaganda films made in South Korea and North Korea.
They all follow the same pattern: brave Korean soldiers and South Korean soldiers repel lawless and brutal Japanese troops.
However, on the Korean Peninsula until 1945, in fact, almost nothing that could be called a resistance movement occurred.
Koreans were generally submissive.
Rather, many people, in an attitude going beyond submission, voluntarily cooperated with Japan and actively volunteered for the Japanese Army.
The number reached 800,000, and among them was former President Park Chung-hee, the father of former President Park Geun-hye.
He used the Japanese name “Takagi,” and with a blood oath written in his own blood, he applied for and entered the military academy of Manchukuo at the time, and then the Imperial Japanese Army Academy.
It is said that his grades were extremely excellent.
I met him a few months before he was assassinated.
In 1979, at a dinner with me, he spoke about his dream when he was young.
It was to receive a decoration from the Japanese Army and retire as a colonel（in reality, he retired as a lieutenant）.
Let us move the discussion to South Korea in 2019.
South Koreans are still suffering from the psychological trauma that their fathers and grandfathers were cowards and servile.
This is the same as the case of the Dutch.
The circumstances are different from those of Russians and Yugoslavs, and also from those of the Belgians, who resisted quietly but powerfully.
To add a note about Belgian resistance, they certainly fought Germany very little in combat, but their obstruction and sabotage against Germany were perfect.
After the Germans occupied the Netherlands and Belgium, they ordered the local police, “Arrest the Jews and put them on trains bound for the camps.”
Belgium was occupied by a German invasion immediately after the outbreak of the First World War.
The same happened in the next war, the Second World War.
Thanks to that, Belgian grandmothers acquired the ability to make forged documents that would not be detected.
They learned “how to deceive Germans.”
Belgium is a very small country, and it does not have the geographical environment of the mountains of Yugoslavia, where people could hide and continue resistance activities.
Even so, they resisted very effectively.
They cunningly did only one thing: “not obey what Germany said.”
In Belgium, there were not only Jews who had fled from Germany, but also many non-Jewish Germans who opposed the Nazis.
Anti-Nazi Germans fled to the Netherlands and Belgium under the Hitler regime, and Belgium protected them.
This is only one of many examples of quiet resistance by Belgium.
The Belgian government did not say “no” to Germany, but it never did what Germany wanted.
However, the Netherlands cooperated with Germany, arrested the fugitives, and handed them over.
They were sent to concentration camps, and the people who had fled to the Netherlands all died.
The Netherlands behaved as if it were Germany’s servant.
That is exactly why, after the war, it continued to hate Germans for a long time.
The message of the Dutch government to its people after 1945 was coated over with two lies.
First, despite the fact that there had been almost no resistance movement against Germany during the war, it exaggerated the story and pretended that there had been large-scale resistance.
Second, it claimed that collaboration with Germany existed in individual cases, but that there was no fact of government-wide collaboration.
That this is a complete lie can be well understood if one considers the fact that Anne Frank was arrested.
Even though her family fled and hid their whereabouts, someone told the Dutch authorities where they were.
This shows that there was a large-scale organization of collaboration with Germany within Dutch society.
And this produced a major political byproduct.
The Netherlands refused to allow Germany to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization（NATO）.
NATO needed Germany.
That was because West Germany at the time was located on the Western front line, bordering socialist East Germany.
However, driven by its own anti-German sentiment, the Netherlands campaigned to block Germany’s accession to NATO.
Just like South Koreans, the anti-German sentiment of the Dutch was maintained over many years.
This article continues.