Because of campuswide interest in the tenuous relationship between North Korea and the United States, students gathered for a forum Monday night concerning the relationship between the two countries.
The forum, sponsored by the Campus Y and the Carolina Asian Center, attracted a standing room only crowd of about 75 people.
Many students are concerned about the possibility of war with North Korea, which recently has restarted a nuclear reactor and withdrawn from the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The move makes the issue a topic that needs to be addressed on campus, said Campus Y Director Virginia Carson.
"I think, first off, the level of knowledge and understanding in terms of North Korea is low," she said. "I don't know much about North Korea, what their issues are, what they hope to accomplish, what the U.S. has done up to now ... and we have, on this campus, people who can explain this."
Professor Sung Gul Hong, a public administration specialist from Seoul, South Korea; Professor Steven Levine, director of the Carolina Asian Center; and Professor James White from the Department of Political Science spoke and answered questions about North Korea.
White said North Korea's policy amounts to blackmail because its government aims to threaten the United States in hopes of spurring President Bush to give much-needed aid to North Korea.
He said he doubts that North Korea deliberately will begin a war, although he said its government might go to other great lengths to intimidate the United States.
"The danger is not that they're going to use (nuclear weapons)," White said. "They don't want war. They know they won't win. They're in such dire straits ... they might sell nukes to the highest bidder."
Despite the dangers posed by North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Il, Levine said it is unlikely the United States will provoke war because it lacks support from other nations and because it already is preoccupied with the threat of nuclear weapons in Iraq.
