University of Chicago history professor Bruce Cumings has written about the politics of both Koreas for over 25 years, most recently in North Korea: Another Country and Inventing the Axis of Evil. He has been outspoken on the need for normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations and a diplomatic solution to the nuclear stand off. Cumings’ work has also been critical of U.S. support for previous South Korean dictators, such as Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan, who came to power through military coups and used torture and assassination to silence critics and repress labor movements. In this interview he gives a perspective on North Korea not often heard in mainstream news coverage and describes his own experiences under South Korean dictatorships.

FZ: While there has been a panicky tone to the U.S. media coverage of the North Korean nuclear test, I was surprised to hear from a friend who is living in Seoul that the reaction among South Koreans seems to be pretty casual. She said she would hardly know the test had occurred if it weren’t for CNN and the Armed Forces Radio Network. I wondered if you had any comments as to why South Koreans might not be as shocked or worried about the test as the U.S. seems to be?

BC: South Koreans have lived under the threat of North Korean invasion since about 1946 and with the possibility of weapons of mass destruction since the early 1960s. North Korea is widely known to have a large stock of chemical and possibly biological weapons and, of course, now it claims to have an atomic bomb.

Quite apart from the nuclear problem, North Korean missiles can hit anywhere in South Korea, including one of the many nuclear reactors that South Korea uses for electric generation and absolutely devastate the entire country. Furthermore, North Korea has several thousand artillery guns buried in the mountains north of Seoul that can wipe out the entire city and turn it into a sea of fire.

So when you know these things and you live with them then the fact that North Korea is going to get a nuclear weapon doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to you.

In addition there are many Korean nationalists of all stripes: left, right and middle, who think, “Well, sooner or later we’re going to unify with North Korea and guess what? We’ll be a nuclear power. The Japanese won’t be able to push us around and neither will China or the U.S,” and so on and so forth. It’s not surprising that South Korea would feel much less threatened than CNN pundits seem to feel about the North Korean nuclear program.