A planned visit to South Korea. What does North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island mean? rev 1

Dec.23.10 - Part 1, draft

I plan on visiting South Korea for a month or so in the new year, contingent on my schedule for 2011. I find news of North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island to be quite shocking and the numerous number of protests that followed the provocative act.  After North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong Island, this was then followed by a number of demonstrations that were either targeted against North Korea or South Korea's response for being too forceful.I would like to get a first hand impression of how things are/ in South Korea in late spring of the new year.

The United States finally sent the U.S.S. George Washington to the Yellow Sea in live fire exercises. This was not followed by another North Korean response by North Korea's military, but rather hideous claims by North Korea re-inviting inspectors to suspected sites in North Korea's nuclear weapons program and of the existence of a nuclear weapons program not unlike that of Pakistan or Iran (parallel uranium enrichment program).

I lived in South Korea in 2001 - 2005 and I cannot imagine how South Korea could be now. The years I was there were memorable for its livid Anti-American protests.

I had earlier thought that in the wake of the deployment of the USS George Washington that another North Korean act of aggression in the 2010 calendar year to just not be possible out of North Korea's fear over a China angry that there happened to be a U.S. nuclear powered aircraft carrier off  the waters that surround Beijing and Shanghai. Furthermore, the sinking of the ROKN Cheonan brought forward a (weakly worded) UNSC statement and large joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea in both the waters west and east off the Korean peninsula.

However, this was then followed in November with a North Korean attack on South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island, which happens to be located in the Yellow Sea. North Korea then announced that the country welcomes back inspectors to suspected sites for its nuclear weapons program and also happily announced an existence of a parallel, uranium enrichment program. 

This finally brought the USS George Washington off the waters of the heart of China and an easy way to bring forward thoughts that criticize China -- such as the AEI's proclamation of concern for North Korean aggression.

To finally bring the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea as well as provide the AEI or organizations that lack any genuine interest over North Korea to use the country as a convenient method to attack China -- by attacking North Korea, the attacker could bring to attention how useless and ineffective Chinese leadership in the region is. Almost as in a textbook example, China protects North Korea out of concern for her provinces that border North Korea and North Korea responds by selling out China in order to gain a security guarantee from a power that rivals China. 

With a transition in North Korea leadership still in progress and this being situated next to promises by South Korea's Lee Myung Bak Administration for a more forceful response to future North Korean acts of provocation, it might be too early to say these events will be followed by a long period of silence. This should in no way lead to absolute fabrication of heightened tensions resulting from President Lee Myung Bak's policy toward North Korea being too aggressive towards fascist North Korea.

This is a political environment that I'd like to see first hand.