Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Kim Jong-un of North Korea have written a new chapter of peace prospects on Korean peninsula as they pledge to work together for reaching “a final peace” agreement of ‘no nuclear arms’.
With the emergence of this new thaw in the relations between the two, a significant lesson has been added to the realm of ‘International Relations’. Also, the clouds of imminent ‘Nuclear War’ that were hovering over the Korean peninsula have been cleared for now.
Just very recently, the tension between the two had escalated to the point, where the two nations positioned its ‘war machinery’ upfront in view of a possible strike coming from anywhere and hitting any place, anytime.
The Korean Conflict is not the only conflict in the world to watch out for the ‘Global Diplomats’ but almost every state –195 of them– in the world have their own conflicts, either intra-state or inter-state, to deal with.
The place, Kashmir, I belong to, is also entangled in conflict that interests the two nuclear-armed states – India and Pakistan. Both the countries have solemnly pledged to be part of the conflict and, by default, have also determined their positions as far as the resolution of the same is concerned. However, the brunt of the conflict is always bored by the local population here while as the two nuclear powers have tactfully and tacitly delayed the resolution.
India, Pakistan–have been squarely controlling and shaping this conflict, right from its inception, for their own gains and have forgotten about the dangerous and threatening implications for the local populace. Literary, the people of the state, besides being at the receiving end of the conflict, have no direct control over the same.
Unlike South and North Korea, the India-Pakistan animosity is not, primarily, the kind of ‘with each other’— as it is predominantly projected everywhere—but the same is entirely because of the ‘other’ (read Kashmir). One more aspect of this animosity that tells the difference between Korean conflict and that of India and Pakistan is that the former is ‘likely’ to impact none but the parties themselves, whereas the latter impacts everyone else but not the two states at least.
Conflict isn’t the only thing that is common betweenthe two states (India and Pakistan) and two Koreas but they have some other interesting similarities too: Like South Korea and North Korea, India and Pakistan were once one country, one nation; the people of which share a common cultural history and have also pursued a common political agenda against the foreign rule. Furthermore, it was the divisive policy that led to the partition of both Korea and India.
What is it that is still holding the two states from striking a final peace deal with each other, one can question?
Well, here comes the right question pertaining to‘Kashmir issue’— which continues to remain unsolved at the cost of Indo-Pak relations: Is it the ‘other’ that is keeping these relations unreconciled? And I reiterate that the animositybetween Indo-Pak relations is not the kind of ‘with each other’. Period.
