I lived in Beijing for a while and I can’t say I agree with this. For sure, China is an enormous country with much cultural surface area, so I could be wrong.
But this does not strike me as an obvious conclusion.
USA afraid of communisms spread. Sends MacArthur to Korea. He crushes the Korean communists. USA believes it to be a clean sweep. Mao surprise s USA with massive army encirclement of USA forces. USA forced to flee south and hold the line that became demarcation between north and south.
There is a 0% chance China would allow the USA to take NK.
They also love provoking Japan. Their entire origin story is about fighting against the Japanese in the 30s.
If NK actually launches an attack on a "western" country, full war will begin. If China decides to get involved, that's really on them. I wish it were otherwise, but that's how it is.
It is not stale in their psyche.
Yet I don't think anyone here is interested in war with Germany.
Also, have you noticed how in the US there arent really any “Saving Private Ryan”s about the Korean War?
Agreed. This, however, was not the substance of my comment.
The US would not tolerate an attack on Israel/Taiwan/others. That doesn’t mean that if China attacked Taiwan, the average American would feel like they had been attacked.
But, I think the Canada invasion analogy is also even too weak; Canada doesn’t exist because of the USA like NK does because of the CCP.