OMNI
NORTH KOREA ANTHOLOGY #8,
October 12, 2024
Threatening War, Seeking Peace
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice.
(#1 July
19, 2012; #2 April 13, 2012; #3, Jan. 19, 2016; #4, Feb. 10, 2016; #5, March
12, 2016; #6, July 9, 2017; #7, October 29, 2017).
What’s at stake: “Throughout [post-WWII] there was a huge
invisible lacuna in the official imagination: thinking about how to make
peace. That is what a Cold War is about;
even though we are at peace we do not think about preserving peace, but about
making war. Perhaps it is easier,
because making war depends precisely on technical skills with material objects,
whereas making peace means dealing with fellow human beings. Not so easy. Not as satisfying, if domination is the
objective.” Diana Johnstone in From Mad to Madness:
Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning by Paul H. Johnstone (pp. 29-30).
THREATENING WAR, DEMONIZINGTHE ENEMY
[See OMNI’s anthologies on the Ukraine War v. Putin.]
The Way Arms Races Happen and WWIII Might: Expanding
Brinkmanship
IGNORANCE AND BIGOTRY SUSTAINING HOSTILITIES
[I have fallen behind in reporting on NK, whose official designation as
an enemy nation by the US threatens the planet. Will one of you take my place? Someone who wants to advocate for peace with
NK and to ban nuclear weapons. I have lots of excellent articles for #9. Or
choose the topic you are most interested in—Israel/Palestine, climate chaos, US
fascism, overpopulation, etc? --Dick]
NK ANTHOLOGY
#1: http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2012/07/omni-north-korea-newsletter-1.html
NK #2: http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2012/04/omni-north-korea-newsletter-2.html
NK #8:
2024
Gerald Sloan. “Joint
Military Maneuvers.”
Dae-Han Song. “Peace in Korea and
Northeast Asia Now!” https://monthlyreview.org/2024/07/01/power-concedes-nothing-without-a-demand-peace-in-korea-and-northeast-asia-now/
2022
Kim Tong-Hyung. NK Nuclear Weapons Development,
Testing.
Jeremy Kuzmarov. “A Swiss Businessman”
Seeing NK from Inside.
UFPJ. Urgent Call for Peace Treaty to
End Korean War.
2017
Three
Examples Mainstream Media (MM)/ADG REPORTING on NK. ZOOMinKorea.
Trump Admin.’s THAAD a Preemptive First Strike Weapon v. ABM Treaty.
Bruce Cumings. Recounts NK History and
US Provocations.
Mehdi Hasan. “Why Do North Koreans Hate
Us?” Memory!
Ann Wright. Visit to NK with Code Pink.
2016
US Military-Industrial-Nuclear Complex plus US Provocations.
SOURCES
[Only one of these sources can be
labeled “mainstream media,” and that one was selected to illustrate how mm
misreport NK. This list illustrates one
aspect of what my annotated bibliographies titled “control of information in
the US”: JRB, Control of Information in the U.S. and Control of the
Media in the U.S.]
Felix Abt
CovertAction Magazine
The Intercept
Korea Peace Now
mronline.org
Monthly Review
NADG
The Nation
Nukewatch Quarterly
Gerald Sloan
Space Alert!
UFPJ
Women Cross DMZ
Ann Wright
ZOOMinKorea
Contents NK Anthology #7
TEXTS NORTH KOREA
ANTHOLOGY #8
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US NUCLEAR WAR
PREPARATION: From North Korea’s Nuclear Mouse 2016 to NK’s Ballistic Missiles
"JOINT
MILITARY MANUEVERS"
By Gerald Sloan (2017)
Our muscle-flexing with South Korea
is like jabbing a stick in an anthill
then killing the terrified insects.
North Korea has not forgotten
our bombing their dams (a war crime)
in the early ‘fifties, then gleefully
celebrating as their rice paddies
washed away, their primary food
supply. We desperately must justify
our obscenely bloated war machinery.
2024
“Power
Concedes Nothing Without a Demand: Peace in Korea and Northeast Asia Now!” by Dae-Han Song. Monthly Review (July-August
2024). (Jul 01, 2024). https://monthlyreview.org/2024/07/01/power-concedes-nothing-without-a-demand-peace-in-korea-and-northeast-asia-now/
Topics: Geography History Imperialism Inequality Movements Places: Americas Asia korean-peninsula United States
[This major scholarly article (over 500 Notes),
that attempts to understand NK as their leaders understand it, might seem
baffling to US readers, accustomed as we
are to a demonized NK. Anyone growing up
in the US anti-communist propaganda regime will find section after section of
the article a shock their inculcated system of assumptions regarding that
nuclear nation. –Dick]
On September 9, 1945, US service men looked upon the lowering of
the Japanese flag and then saluted the hoisting up of the US flag in its stead
in Seoul, South Korea in front of what used to be the office of the Japanese
governor-general. This marked the beginning of the US military occupation of
what would become South Korea, despite the Korean Peninsula having been a
non-combatant. Image credit: Oh Seok-min, "U.S. military releases photos of colonial Japan's surrender
ceremony in 1945," Yonhap News Agency, September 9, 2020.
Dae-Han Song is
the head of the Contents Team for the Seoul-based International Strategy Center
and a member of the No Cold War collective.
In
his New Year’s address on January 15, 2024, North Korean Workers’ Party
Chairman Kim Jong-un proposed removing from North Korea’s socialist
constitution the notions of South and North Koreans as compatriots and the
pursuit of peaceful reunification.1 Furthermore,
he argued that North Korea’s education should teach students that South Korea
is the North’s main enemy state.2 While
denying that this was an announcement for reunification through preemptive
attack, Kim stated that if war broke out, North Korea would occupy, subjugate,
and reclaim South Korea.3 This
speech severed ties with the more than thirty years of peaceful reunification
pursued by North Korea’s two previous leaders.
Since the early 1990s, North Korea has sought
the normalization of relations with the United States and peaceful
reunification with South Korea. During that time, inter-Korean relations ebbed
and flowed. But North Korea’s changed inter-Korean policy moves away from
peaceful reunification and toward war in the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast
Asia.
If we are to chart our way back to peace, we must understand the
motivations that led to such a shift and the historical and geopolitical
processes that have led us to our current moment: the failed peace negotiations with the United States, the
historical and social limits of South Korean politics, and the intensifying
polarization of Northeast Asia due to U.S. military escalation.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass famously said that “power
concedes nothing without a demand.”4 Peace
movements must organize around a common set of demands against war: opposing
the U.S. military escalation that is dividing the region into camps; overcoming
the structural limitations of South Korea that keeps it dependent upon the
United States; and coalescing frontline struggles within South Korea and the
region into a common struggle against U.S. military escalations.
Kim
Jong-un’s New Year’s Address
The 2024 New Year’s speech triggered alarm, including among longtime North Korea experts Robert Carlin and
Siegfried Hecker, who penned an article, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing For War?”5 In his
speech, Kim had shifted toward open hostility by recommending the state remove
language asserting that South and North Koreans are “80 million compatriots,”
as well as the phrase “independence, peaceful reunification and great national
unity” from North Korea’s socialist constitution. Instead, he recommended
instilling the “firm idea that ROK [the Republic of Korea] is their [North
Korean people’s] primary enemy state and invariable principal enemy.”6
The tone was a marked shift from the approach taken by the state
over the past three decades. For reunification, Kim envisioned “completely
occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annex [sic] it as a part of the territory of our Republic in
case of [sic] a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula.” While
severing fraternal relations, he clarified that the goal is not a “preemptive
attack for realizing unilateral ‘reunification by force of arms.’” In effect,
while he did not rule out reunification through war, he was also not proposing
it. This sentiment of breaking ties but not declaring war is buttressed by the
fact, often left out in the media, that over two-thirds of the speech focused
on building up North Korea’s economy, as the “supreme task…is to stabilize and
improve the people’s living as early as possible.” These are hardly the words
of someone mobilizing for impending war.7
Yet, this shift in North Korea’s policy is also not simply a
codification of the current status quo. If war is not around the corner, it is
on the horizon. As Professor Jung-chul Lee of Seoul National University points
out, we cannot really know the full meaning of these declarations given the
current state of the world, the region, and the hardline administration of
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.8 Conflict
erupting between China, the United States, and Taiwan could destabilize the
Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, as the United States is bogged down in regional
wars and conflicts—particularly in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing attacks against
Gaza—miscalculations or escalating responses by Yoon and Kim have the potential
to ignite war in the region.
Extricating ourselves from the current situation must start with
understanding the motivations behind the speech. Kim’s remarks at the December 27, 2023, Ninth Plenary of the
Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea provides some context
for understanding them. Kim stated that South Korea’s status as a “colonial
pawn of the United States” makes it an inappropriate counterpart to discuss
“reunification.”9 Furthermore,
he stated that, regardless of which party is in power, South Korea’s policy of
reunification has always been one of reunification through absorption and the
collapse of North Korea.10 If
these are the stated causes for North Korea’s shift in policy, we must look at
how we got to this point. To understand, we must look back to the causes and
dynamics that brought us to the situation today.
North
Korea-U.S. Negotiations Collapse Again
The collapsed Hanoi Summit in 2019 marks a decisive point in shifting North Korea’s strategy. The
summit was one of a long string of failed peace negotiations with the United
States that started with the thawing of the Cold War in the 1980s as North
Korea shifted its U.S. policy from confrontation to engagement. Revisiting the
ebbs and flows of the negotiation process reveals that North Korea earnestly
pursued peace with a vacillating United States, whose geopolitical stratagems
and imperialist ideology not only sapped its commitment to the process, but
often also actively derailed it. The book Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea’s
Nuclear Program by
Hecker, nuclear scientist, former Director of the Los
Alamos National Laboratory, and a longtime expert on North Korea’s nuclear
weapons, offers valuable insights into the historical context of and
motivations behind the negotiation process.
One of the most important elements in comprehending the
negotiation process is understanding North Korea’s paradoxical pursuit of
peace with the United States through nuclear bombs. This shift was
precipitated by the thawing of the Cold War, which risked leaving North Korea
isolated: China normalized relations with the United States and then—despite
North Korea’s strong opposition—with South Korea.11 In 1988,
North Korean leadership presented a plan for peaceful unification that included
a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, disarmament, and peace between North and
South Korea. In exchange for respecting its autonomy, North Korea would “let
bygones be bygones” and “continue to work towards improving relations” with the
United States.12 North
Korea’s shift in its U.S. policy from confrontation to engagement was a
significant change given North Korea’s animosity toward the primary role of the
United States in dividing the Korean Peninsula, as well as its near carpet
bombing of North Korea.13 Furthermore,
by 1992, the North was even secretly willing to accept “continuing US military
presence on the Peninsula as a hedge against expanded, potentially hostile,
Chinese or Russian influence.”14 Much
like North Korea had played the Soviet Union and China against each other, in
the post-Cold War era, when ideological bonds were weakened, North Korea was
hoping to do the same with the United States as a new balancing force.15
North Korea’s approach was to normalize relations with the
United States from a position of strength and not of weakness. Thus, it pursued
a dual-track strategy of diplomacy and nuclear weapons “to hedge against
failure in one track or the other.”16 When
diplomacy failed or stalled, North Korea would switch to developing its nuclear
weapons. Its survival would be ensured, whether through peace or a nuclear
deterrent. Furthermore, the nuclear track could pressure the United States to
return to the diplomatic track.17 As
longtime North Korea experts Carlin and John Lewis observed, the best way for
the United States to denuclearize North Korea would have been to “make room for
the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] in an American vision of the
future of Northeast Asia.”18 One
such close moment was the October 2000 joint communiqué to fundamentally
improve relations that emerged from U.S. President Bill Clinton’s 1994
Agreed Framework.19
Clinton’s
“Grand Bargain”
In 1994, the Korean Peninsula was one decision away from
being engulfed in a catastrophic war. Faced with the possibility that North
Korea was extracting fissile material from its spent nuclear rods to produce
plutonium bombs, Clinton contemplated the possibility of a preemptive
strike against North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The latter would have
triggered a North Korean attack upon South Korea; the ensuing conflict was
expected to kill one million people.20 Former
president Jimmy Carter’s visit with Chairman Kim Il-sung averted
catastrophe and opened negotiations to the 1994 Agreed Framework. This “grand
bargain” would normalize diplomatic and economic relations through the phased
dismantling of the Yongbyon reactor and its replacement with two light-water
nuclear ones.21 Heavy
fuel oil would be provided during the transition.
North Korea froze operation of its graphite-moderated reactors,
accepted the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring, and
cooperated in the safe storage of its spent fuel. In 1998, U.S. officials
stated to Congress their satisfaction with North Korea’s fulfillment of the
agreement.22 The
United States, however, offered neither “formal assurances, against the threat
or use of nuclear weapons” nor delivered on the construction of its light-water
reactors.23 As
early as December 1996, a Republican-dominated Congress blocked the Clinton
administration from meeting its obligations; Congress was waiting for North
Korea to collapse.24 It was
likely during this time, in the late 1990s, when the United States appeared
split on fulfilling its obligations, that North Korea started its uranium
enrichment insurance policy: a second, more technologically sophisticated (but
easier to conceal and expand) path toward a nuclear bomb. In 1998, with the
Agreed Framework “moribund,” North Korea launched a missile over Japan.25 Despite
the provocations (or, more likely, because of them), the United States and
North Korea salvaged the Agreed Framework and achieved the October 2000 joint
communiqué to “build a new relationship free from past enmity.” When Clinton
left office, North Korea was “at the bottom of the list of future security
problems for the United States.”26
George
W. Bush: Neocon Regime Change. . . .
Obama’s
Strategic Neglect. . . .
Neocons
Derail Trump’s RapprochemenT. . . .
Bi-Partisan
Pax Americana
Neoconservatives, including Robert
Joseph and Bolton, have done the most to derail negotiations with North
Korea. Many of these neoconservatives were associated with the Project for
the New American Century, the founding principles of which espouse
“American military preeminence” to consolidate its “global leadership” in the
post-Cold War moment so that it can “maintain American security and advance
American interests” through a “foreign policy that boldly and purposefully
promotes American principles abroad.”49 Given
its impetus to challenge not just the “regime hostile to our interests” and to
U.S. “values,” neoconservative policy was, from the outset, incompatible with
North Korea’s dual-track approach for co-existence on an equal footing. Even as
denuclearization took place, Bush accused North Korean leadership of being
tyrants and dictators. For an ideology that aggressively, albeit selectively,
and militarily pushes and enforces U.S. values, such labels are more than
words; they are the future justifications for war and intervention.50
Yet, it was not simply the neoconservatives that impeded
negotiations with North Korea; liberal hawks also did. Even as the
Clinton administration engaged with North Korea, it labeled the country one of
the “backlash states” that “threaten the democratic order being created around
them.”51 Liberal
hawks, including under the Obama and Joe Biden administrations, might differ on
the means, but the Democratic Party and its foreign policy advisors are
part of the same military-industrial complex and foreign policy network
that extends the Monroe Doctrine of U.S. domination globally.52
The Center for a New American Security, a think tank
replete with officials from the Clinton, Obama, and current Biden
administrations, not only receives funding from major weapons manufacturers, it
also reflects much of the same rhetoric as the Project for the New American
Century.53 In the
center’s first report, The Inheritance and the Way
Forward, written by Michèle Flournoy (Obama’s Under Secretary of
Defense for Policy) and Kurt Campbell (architect of Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” and
Biden’s Deputy Secretary of State), affirms the same commitment to the United
States being “the preeminent leader in the international community” so that it
can “protect or advance our interests in a globalized world,” even as it
restrains the more aggressive impulses of the neoconservatives.54
If North Korea viewed denuclearization as part
of a larger normalization process with the United States, the United States,
even in the most fruitful years under the Clinton administration, viewed
negotiations not as a way to establish peace with North Korea, but as a way of
disarming it. It is worth pointing out that while the world needs
denuclearization, in practice, this has simply meant preventing small countries
from going nuclear, while the nuclear powers, including the only country to use
nuclear bombs twice, keep their vast arsenal.
Furthermore, any observer of U.S. foreign policy can infer that
while friends can become foes, foes rarely become friends—unless they agree to
house the U.S. military. After all, despite (or perhaps because of) having
given up its nuclear weapons in 2003, Libya was attacked eight years later by
NATO.55 Today,
the Biden administration contains the same liberal hawks, notably Antony
Blinken and Campbell, who were a part of Obama’s failed “strategic patience.” .
. . . MORE
Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand
If the South Korean movements for peace can be
classified as either those pursuing peace or those pursuing reunification, then
each has approached the problem of peace too generally (peace in broad strokes)
or too locally (peace focused on the inter-Korean process). Today, both
approaches need to come together into a coherent movement that encompasses
broader universal demands to build solidarity across the region, as well as
being informed by the specific geopolitical realities confronting Koreans.
Revisiting North Korea’s assessment of the
situation provides a start for re-engagement with North Korea in a peace-based
process. If North Korea has rejected peaceful reunification with a South Korea
that is under the heavy influence of the United States and is seeking
reunification based on absorption and designating North Korea the main enemy,
then the key for improving conditions is a South Korea that has restored its
self-determination, one that seeks peaceful engagement respectful of North
Korea’s system and does not push a hostile policy. There must be, in effect, a
South Korea with the independence and willingness to engage meaningfully with
the North.
Yet, neither these nor the necessary broader
regional peace can be achieved by standing on the sidelines of history. If
South Korea is to play its role in bringing peace to Korea and the region, then
its peace movements need to come together to pressure its government to rise up
to the task. Discussion, debate, and mutual dialogue must allow us to come up
with a common banner for peace, justice, and people’s well-being. In that
spirit, I present the following demands to catalyze conversation:
1.
Peace in the Korean Peninsula. The tensions and instability of the unfinished Korean
War have plagued the lives of Koreans and their neighbors. Peace in the Korean
Peninsula must be achieved not by pressuring and isolating North Korea, which
not only violates its sovereign right to exist, but also justifies and fuels
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. The only path to peace in the
Korean Peninsula is through the normalization of relations that guarantee North
Korea’s security. At its core, the United States must be pressured to normalize
diplomatic and economic relations with North Korea.
2.
Peace in the Taiwan Strait. A historical and legal basis exists in which Taiwan is
part of China as one country. Nonetheless, Taiwan’s period of political
separation from the People’s Republic of China has resulted in the creation of
its own institutions. It is also clear that Taiwan, situated barely one hundred
miles from mainland China, is a red line for China in terms of its security
concerns. Their differences must be resolved peacefully lest we have a war that
would be catastrophic not just for China, Taiwan, and the United States, but
also for the Korean Peninsula and for Japan, which would likely be dragged into
it.71
3.
Northeast Asia Peace Community. While peace in the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan
Strait are key components for peace in Northeast Asia, peace in Northeast Asia
is also key for peace in the Korean Peninsula. The division of the region into
two separate camps strains regional stability and lays the tinder for open
conflagration.
4.
Fight social problems and
climate change, not war. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan
are all experiencing various levels of social problems, from low birth rates to
an aging population. Furthermore, the world is faced with the climate crisis.
Military spending diverts resources and energy that should be going to improve
people’s livelihoods, as well as both mitigating and adapting to a world being
reshaped by a rapidly changing climate.
How do these translate into demands?
1.
We must oppose the joint U.S.
Forces Korea (USFK) and South Korean war games that escalate inter-Korean
tensions. While labeled as routine,
these exercises mobilize hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their
accompanying weaponry, including nuclear capable aircraft to practice the
leadership decapitation, nuclear strike, and full-scale invasion of North Korea
near its own waters.
In a moment of unintended empathy, military strategists pointed out
the dangerous nature of war games aimed at China that might serve as cover for
an actual invasion of Taiwan.72 Likewise,
the U.S.-South Korea large-scale military exercises disrupt North Korea’s
economy by forcing it to mobilize its full military in response. Some of the
greatest overtures the United States has made include pausing these war games.
When George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Trump paused the USFK and South Korean war
exercises, North Korea responded with diplomatic overtures. Pausing the
military exercises to decrease tensions does little to threaten USFK and South
Korean war readiness. Furthermore, we must pause all the other war games that
are escalating tensions in the region and the world such as the Rim of the
Pacific Exercise, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise.
2.
We must recover wartime
operational control. Currently, the United States
Forces Korea holds operational control over both its own military and that of
South Korea during wartime.73 Regaining
the authority to control its own troops during war would give South Korea
greater independence and leeway on whether or not to participate in the
U.S.-South Korea joint war games.
3.
We must dismantle security
agreements like the American-Japanese-Korean trilateral pact, which trigger
mirror accords between China, Russia, and North Korea. If the war in Ukraine was ultimately triggered
by de facto NATO expansion to Russia’s borders, then
the splitting of the region across the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula
lays the conditions for regional conflict. We should also dispel all illusions
that a multinational integrated missile defense system will make us impregnable
to missiles. As the U.S. military understands it, the only “deterrent” is not a
shield, but the threat of a counterforce (first strike), or, in the case of
second strike capability, a massive nuclear counterattack. Interceptor missiles
are useful in the first case, not the second. Much like the catastrophic impact
of a levee that collapses under the growing weight of rising waters, this
strategy works until mutual assured destruction is actually triggered.
4.
We must support each other’s
struggles in the region. Such solidarity should not
simply be centered on the struggle of one’s country, but on the larger struggle
for peace in the region. It is easy to become absorbed in the immediate demands
and fruits from one’s own struggle. Yet, peace in the region is interconnected
and requires long-term vision and investment in strengthening our solidarity.
This means actively participating in the struggles for peace across Northeast
Asia, such as the annual May peace march in Okinawa, or other special
anniversaries and occasions in the region, such as the anniversary of the June
15 Inter-Korean Summit.
5.
We must support struggles on
the frontlines. While often war and
militarization might appear to be abstract and distant issues, they are very
concrete and immediate for those living in sites of struggle, such as near
bases in Okinawa, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense installation in
Soseong-ri in South Korea, or the Naval Base on Jeju Island. Many of these
struggles might have started from an immediate impact on people’s daily lives.
Yet, they offer political exposure that transforms people into peace activists.
We are in perilous times. Our ability to find
common ground, understanding, and agreement on tactical and strategic
objectives will be crucial for achieving peace in the region, improving
people’s lives, and addressing the planetary crisis.
Notes
(Substantiation for all claims and comments)https://monthlyreview.org/2024/07/01/power-concedes-nothing-without-a-demand-peace-in-korea-and-northeast-asia-now/
2022
[I add an occasional report from the ADG to remind us how the US
mainstream media functions as an extension of US foreign policy.]
KIM TONG-HYUNG. “ N.
Korea: Nuclear strike is on table.”
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (1 May 2022).
.
. .Kim’s threat to use his nuclear
forces to protect his country’s ambiguously defined “fundamental interests”
possibly portends an escalatory nuclear doctrine that could pose greater
concern for South Korea, Japan and the United States, experts say.
North
Korea has conducted 13 rounds of weapons launches so far this year, including
its first full-range test of an ICBM since 2017, while Kim exploits a favorable
environment to push forward its weapons program as the U.N. Security Council
remains divided and effectively paralyzed over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
There
are also signs that North Korea is rebuilding tunnels at a nuclear testing
ground that was last active in 2017. Some experts say the North may try to
conduct a new test sometime between the inauguration of South Korean
President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol on May 10 and his planned summit with President
Joe Biden on May 21 to maximize its political effect.
U.S.
State Department deputy spokesperson Jalina Porter said the United States was
aware of reports that North Korea could be preparing to conduct a nuclear test,
which she said would be deeply destabilizing for the region and undermine the
global nonproliferation regime. [Be
informed about Obama $trillion redesigning US nuclear arsenal. –D]
“We
urge the DPRK to refrain from further destabilizing activity and instead engage
in serious and sustained dialogue,” she said, referring to North Korea by its
formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
WHAT’RE WE GOING TO DO WITHOUT A DEMON TO HATE?
Jeremy Kuzmarov.
“Contrary to
Relentless Media Demonization, A Swiss Businessman Who Worked in North Korea
For Seven Years Found Much To Like About the Country.” CovertAction Magazine. May 05, 2022
1:44 pm.
In November 2018, The New York Times ran
a front-page article titled
“In North Korea, Missile Bases Suggest a Great Deception.”
Co-authored by Pulitzer-winning correspondent David E. Sanger,
the article cited satellite imagery and a report by the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS) to argue that North Korea was continuing to
secretly develop missiles in violation of the June 2018 Singapore agreement between
Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump.
However, the prominently embedded satellite photo was actually
dated March 2018—three months before Kim and Trump met in Singapore—and the
missile bases presented as damning evidence of Kim’s duplicity had been known
to South Korea for at least two years.
The Times’s deception is part of a larger media
propaganda campaign against North Korea that has helped condition the U.S.
public to accept draconian U.S. sanctions policies, the spending of billions of
dollars per year beefing up the South Korean military, and the $7.1 billion
Pacific Deterrence Initiative that includes a major naval build-up in the South
China Sea.
PEACE
“Tell Congress: It’s Time for Peace with
North Korea.” UFPJ (June 2022).
Tensions between the U.S. and the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or “North Korea”) are on the rise
again. In recent weeks, North Korea has conducted missile tests, and the U.S.
and South Korea have responded with missile of tests of their own. Moreover, a
recent outbreak of COVID-19 in North Korea threatens a population that is
already experiencing shortages of food and basic supplies. Today it’s as urgent
as ever for the U.S. to work
toward a peace treaty to formally end the
Korean War. A peace agreement would be a crucial step toward nuclear
disarmament, and without it renewed military conflict could erupt at any
moment. It would also help reunite thousands of families who have been
separated for over 70 years. Call on Congress today to take action.
2017
Social Media and
Public Ignorance 2017
ADG.
“Civility, Please.” [Don’t be
too critical.] “Last year, a Pew Research Center study found that 62 percent of
Americans get their news from social media.
If the digital landscape has become a place of extremism and propaganda,
fake news, trolls and beheadings, what hope is there that people will be
properly informed?” The Baltimore Sun in NADG, “Civility, Please.” [ A treasured subject for the US propaganda
system is the evil of NK (one of the “nexus of evil”) versus virtuous, exceptional
US. Despite all of the evidence
available through my seven anthologies on Korea and other sources that seek to
see the world as other see it, and thereby to change our manner of thinking, our
government continues its pro-war disinformation campaign filtered down to the
public through the mainstream media and social media. Why not?
The campaign is successful. The
US is not a dictatorship because its leaders see that’s not necessary. –Dick]
Two Mor4e
Examples of Mainstream Media (MM)/ADG REPORTING OF TRUMP Bellicosity
Trump Damages the Stock Market with his
Incendiary Threats.
Jay and Crutsinger (AP). “Stocks Up After N. Korea Cool-off.” NADG
(8-15-17). The market “’reacted
negatively to…Trump’s somewhat [?] incendiary comments about ‘fire and fury,’”
but then “’the administration sort of walked back Trump’s comments.’” Kim Jong Il may be crazy [untrue), but Trump
provokes him with bellicose nuclear brinkmanship [true].
Dan Thomasson. “Trump Puts the World at Risk.” NADG (8-15-17). Kim Jong Un is “a madman [false] with
homicidal tendencies” and “pure military insanity,” but President Trump
“provoked North Korean leadership into threats” of nuclear bombing Guam [true]. [Mainstream US media establishing a balance
between Jong-Un and Trump.] [See
Cumings below esp.]
Controversial
deployment of the U.S.’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD)
anti-missile system: SURROUNDING RUSSIA AND CHINA, South
Korean Resistance
“THAAD Will Not Protect South Korea.”
[Trump Admin.]
Published
on March 29, 2017 by ZoominKorea (also published in Space Alert)
https://koreaexpose.com/thaad-missile-defense-no-help-korea/
Elderly
women held up signs reading “Illegal THAAD, back to the U.S!” as they
marched, leaning on walking frames for support.
Soseong-ri,
their small village in South Korea, has become the center of a fight that
could lay the groundwork for U.S.-Korean relations under Seoul’s next
government. On Mar. 18, 5,000 people from across South Korea gathered in the village to protest the controversial deployment of the U.S.’s Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system. In July 2016, the US and South Korean
governments announced plans to deploy the THAAD system in Seongju County, North
Gyeongsang Province. But due to staunch opposition from local residents,
the location was revised to a nearby golf course owned by the South
Korean corporation Lotte, nestled between Soseong-ri in Seongju County and the
city of Gimcheon. Since Lotte
handed its land over to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense on
Feb. 27, Soseong-ri, just three kilometers from the golf course, has become the
front line in the fight against the missile system. The deployment has already
begun and the South’s defense ministry will soon transfer the land to
United States Forces Korea (USFK). Residents of Seongju and nearby Gimcheon
have vowed to reverse the deployment. A “Peace Walk” in opposition to THAAD took place near the
former Lotte Skyhill Seongju Country Club, the missile deployment site, on Mar.
18.
Missile Defense Is No Defense
[the THAAD
deployment in Seongju will not protect South Korean citizens and is not
intended to; see below for explanation
--D]
THAAD, made by
the U.S. weapons firm Lockheed Martin, stands for Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense. It consists of a radar, used to surveil the missile activity of
so-called enemy countries and detect incoming missiles, and interceptor
missiles, which — in theory — can be launched to shoot down incoming missiles
in mid-air.
The
THAAD deployment in South Korea is supposed to counter threats from the North,
but it is not unique. The U.S. has missile defense systems installed all over
the world, mainly in Eastern Europe and Asia, and it is clear from their
locations that their deployments are aimed at creating a network surrounding
China and Russia.
[ANALOGY,
MISSILE DEFENSE, AND /PREEMPTIVE FIRST STRIKE ADVANTAGE]
If two adversarial countries have nuclear weapons, neither will attack the
other, because it fears retaliation in the form of a nuclear counter-attack.
Picture two people holding guns to each others’ heads. If one shoots first, the
other will shoot back, and vice versa. The result is a perpetual
standoff. This is known as mutually assured destruction, and proved an
effective form of deterrence between the Soviet Union and the United States during
the Cold War. But to return to our
analogy: If one gunman renders the other unable to fire, nothing deters him
from pulling the trigger of his own gun. This is the ultimate aim of missile
defense — to gain first strike advantage by removing the enemy’s ability
to retaliate.
[US/SU
ABM TREATY AND PRES. BUSH REPUDIATION OF IT, THREATENING NUCLEAR WAR]
U.S. missile defense systems are dangerous precisely because they enable a
preemptive nuclear strike. This is why some argue that such systems are,
in fact, offensive. It is also why, in 1972, the US and the Soviet
Union signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), which
limited the development of missile defense systems by both countries. But in
2002, after thirty years of relative stability guaranteed by mutually assured
destruction, former U.S. President George W Bush walked away from the ABM
Treaty. Ray McGovern, a former
CIA analyst turned antiwar activist who was present at the signing of the ABM
Treaty, said: When president Bush came
into office, he said, ‘I’m getting out of the ABM Treaty.’ That was a key
moment in the strategic equation, because the ABM Treaty was the main source of
strategic stability. China, Russia and
North Korea have all declared a policy of no first use, i.e. they will not use
their nuclear weapons offensively, but the US has not done the same and
reserves the right of preemptive strike.
No Protection for South Korea
According to JJ
Suh, professor of Politics and International Affairs at International
Christian University in Japan, the aim of the THAAD
deployment in Seongju is
not to protect South Korean citizens at all: “This system is
designed to work at higher altitudes, higher than 45 kilometers. But most North
Korean missiles [that would be used against South Korea] are short-range
missiles that would fly below 45 kilometers.”
The THAAD system, Suh said, serves U.S. strategic interests in the region: It
can be… deployed against intermediate-range missiles from North Korea targeting
Okinawa… or Guam. And so, it’s more plausible that the U.S. military wants to
deploy the THAAD system in South Korea to protect [U.S.] soldiers and military
assets in the region, rather than South Koreans in South Korea.
The
THAAD radar, if stationed in South Korea, would also significantly expand the
U.S.’s field of vision for spying on Chinese missile activity. For
this reason, China has been staunchly opposed to the system’s deployment
in South Korea.
[SK
A PAWN FOR US GLOBAL AMBITIONS]
But the South Korean people may pay a steep price for hosting THAAD, warned
missile defense expert and MIT professor Ted Postol. The system, he says, “will
put South Korea in the path of a potential conflict between the U.S.
and China. In the event of a confrontation between these two superpowers,
China’s first target for a nuclear strike could be the THAAD radar in Seongju”.
. . . MORE [a major article: THAAD is
unproven, extremely expensive, extremely dangerous to S. Korea, and extremely
unstabilizing globally] https://koreaexpose.com/thaad-missile-defense-no-help-korea/
Bruce Cumings .
“This
Is What’s Really Behind North Korea’s Nuclear
Provocations.” The Nation(MARCH 23, 2017).
It’s easy to
dismiss Kim Jong-un as a madman [as do the writers in the ADG above]. But
there’s a long history of US aggression against the North, which we forget at
our peril.
https://www.thenation.com/article/this-is-whats-really-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-provocations/
[The
eminent author of half a dozen books on NK—see below--explains US
provocations of NK. -D]
Donald Trump
was having dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
on February 11 when a message arrived mid-meal, courtesy of Pyongyang: North
Korea had just tested a new, solid-fuel, intermediate-range ballistic missile,
fired from a mobile—and therefore hard-to-detect—launcher. The president pulled
out his 1990s flip-phone and discussed this event in front of the various
people sitting within earshot. One of these diners, Richard DeAgazio, was
suitably agog at the import of this weighty scene, posting the following
comment on his Facebook page: “HOLY MOLY!!! It was fascinating to watch the
flurry of activity at dinner when the news came that North Korea had launched a
missile in the direction of Japan.”
Actually,
this missile was aimed directly at Mar-a-Lago, figuratively speaking. It was a
pointed nod to history that no American media outlet grasped: “Prime
Minister Shinzo,” as Trump called him, is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a
former Japanese prime minister whom Abe reveres. Nobusuke was deemed a “Class
A” war criminal by the US occupation authorities after World War II, and he ran
munitions manufacturing in Manchuria in the 1930s, when Gen. Hideki Tojo was
provost marshal there. Kim Il-sung, whom grandson Kim Jong-un likewise reveres,
was fighting the Japanese at the same time and in the same place.
[US,
NOT NK, PROVOCATIONS] As I wrote for this magazine in January 2016, the North Koreans must
be astonished to discover that US leaders never seem to grasp the import of
their history-related provocations. Even more infuriating is
Washington’s implacable refusal ever to investigate our 72-year history of
conflict with the North; all of our media appear to live in an eternal
present, with each new crisis treated as sui generis. Visiting Seoul in March, Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson asserted that North Korea has a history of violating
one agreement after another; in fact, President Bill Clinton got it to
freeze its plutonium production for eight years (1994–2002) and, in October
2000, had indirectly worked out a deal to buy all of its medium- and long-range
missiles. Clinton also signed an agreement with Gen. Jo Myong-rok
stating that henceforth, neither country would bear “hostile intent” toward the
other.
The
Bush administration
promptly ignored both agreements and set out to destroy the 1994 freeze. Bush’s
invasion of Iraq is rightly seen as a world-historical catastrophe, but next in
line would be placing North Korea in his “axis of evil” and, in September 2002,
announcing his “preemptive” doctrine directed at Iraq and North Korea, among
others. The simple fact is that Pyongyang would have no nuclear weapons if
Clinton’s agreements had been sustained.
Now
comes Donald Trump, blasting into a Beltway milieu where, in recent
months, a bipartisan consensus has emerged based on the false assumption that
all previous attempts to rein in the North’s nuclear program have failed, so it
may be time to use force—to destroy its missiles or topple the regime. Last
September, the centrist Council on Foreign Relations issued a report
stating that “more assertive military and political actions” should be
considered, “including those that directly threaten the existence of the [North
Korean] regime.” Tillerson warned of preemptive action on his recent East Asia
trip, and a former Obama-administration official, Antony Blinken, wrote in The
New York Times that a
“priority” for the Trump administration should be working with China and South
Korea to “secure the North’s nuclear arsenal” in the event of “regime change.”
But North Korea reportedly has some 15,000 underground facilities of a
national-security nature. It is insane to imagine the Marines traipsing around
the country in such a “search and secure” operation, and yet the Bush and Obama
administrations had plans to do just that. Obama also ran a highly secret
cyber-war against the North for years, seeking to infect and disrupt its
missile program. If North Korea did that to us, it might well be considered an
act of war.
On
November 8, 2016, nearly 66 million voters for Hillary Clinton received a
lesson in Hegel’s “cunning of history.” A bigger lesson awaits Donald Trump,
should he attack North Korea. It has the fourth-largest army in the world, as
many as 200,000 highly trained special forces, 10,000 artillery pieces in the
mountains north of Seoul, mobile missiles that can hit all American military
bases in the region (there are hundreds), and nuclear weapons more than twice
as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb (according to a new estimate in a highly
detailed Times study by David Sanger and William
Broad).
Last
October, I was at a forum in Seoul with Strobe Talbott, a former deputy
secretary of state for Bill Clinton. Like everyone else, Talbott averred that
North Korea might well be the top security problem for the next president. In
my remarks, I mentioned Robert McNamara’s explanation, in Errol Morris’s
excellent documentary The Fog of War, for our defeat
in Vietnam: We never put ourselves in the shoes of the enemy and attempted to
see the world as they did. Talbott then blurted, “It’s a grotesque regime!”
There you have it: It’s our number-one problem, but so grotesque that there’s
no point trying to understand Pyongyang’s point of view (or even that it might
have some valid concerns). North Korea is the only country in the world to
have been systematically blackmailed by US nuclear weapons going back to the
1950s, when hundreds of nukes were installed in South Korea. I have written
much about this in these pages and in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Why on earth would Pyongyang not seek a nuclear deterrent? But this
crucial background doesn’t enter mainstream American discourse. History doesn’t
matter, until it does—when it rears up and smacks you in the face.
[Some
of Prof. Cumings’ books: 1981, Origins
of the Korean War; 1997, Korea’s Place in the Sun; 2003, North
Korea; 2004, Inventing the Axis of Evil; 2010, The Korean War: a History.
Mehdi Hasan.
Support Us
“Why Do North Koreans Hate Us? One
Reason — They Remember the Korean War.” The Intercept.
May 3 2017.
Americans may not remember the devastating
impact of U.S. bombing raids on civilian targets, but North Koreans cannot
forget it.
It’s a question that has bewildered Americans again and again in the wake of
9/11, in reference to the Arab and Muslim worlds. These days, however, it’s a
question increasingly asked about the reclusive North Koreans.
Let’s be clear: There is no doubt that the
citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea both fear and loathe the
United States. Paranoia, resentment, and a crude anti-Americanism have been
nurtured inside the Hermit Kingdom for decades. Children are taught to hate Americans in school while adults
mark a “Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism Month” every
year (it’s in June, in case you were wondering).
North Korean officials make wild threats against the United States while the
regime, led by the brutal and sadistic Kim Jong-un, pumps out fake news in the form of self-serving propaganda,
on an industrial scale. In the DPRK, anti-American hatred is a commodity never
in short supply.
“The hate, though,” as longtime North Korea
watcher Blaine Harden observed in the Washington Post, “is not all manufactured.” Some of it,
he wrote, “is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea
obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.”
Forgets as in the “forgotten war.” Yes, the
Korean War. Remember that? The one wedged between World War II and the Vietnam
War? The first “hot” war of the Cold War, which took place between 1950 and
1953, and which has since been conveniently airbrushed from most
discussions and debates about the “crazy” and “insane” regime in Pyongyang? Forgotten despite
the fact that this particular war isn’t even over — it was halted by an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty — and despite
the fact that the conflict saw the United States engage in numerous war crimes, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, continue to
shape the way North Koreans view the United States, even if the residents of
the United States remain blissfully ignorant of their country’s belligerent
past.
For the record, it was the North Koreans,
and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June
1950, when they crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south. Nevertheless,
“What hardly any Americans know or remember,” University of Chicago historian
Bruce Cumings writes in his book “The Korean War: A History,”“is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for
civilian casualties.”
How many Americans, for example, are aware
of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean
peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during
the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?
How many Americans know that “over a period
of three years or so,” to quote Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of
the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of
the population”?
Twenty. Percent. For a point of comparison,
the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population.
According to LeMay, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually
burned down every town in North Korea.”
Every. Town. More than 3 million
civilians are believed to have been killed in the fighting, the vast majority
of them in the north. . . . MORE
If another Korean war, a potentially nuclear
war, is to be avoided and if, as the Czech-born novelist Milan Kundera famously
wrote, “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against
forgetting,” then ordinary Americans can no longer afford to forget the death,
destruction, and debilitating legacy of the original Korean War.
SEEKING PEACE
ANN WRIGHT'S VISIT to NK 10-23-17
IN Q&A asked about access:
Quaker’s have had a farming project in NK for some 35 years. Mennonites too.
See Korean Peace Network and
Divided Families.
Ann (our exemplary peacemaker
from Bentonville) visited NK with other Code Pink women and marched with 5000 NK women
for Peace.
Alas, although 175 nations have
diplomatic relations with NK, US does not.
3-4-23 Ann sent me this update:
Since the Trump
administration there has been essentially a US ban on US citizens travelling to
North Korea as one must get from the US State Dept a "special validation
passport" and then a North Korean visa--which they haven't been giving due
to COVID!
Lots of effort on
getting a Congressional resolution to end the Korean war.
And on July 27 a big
mobilization in Washington, DC, the 70th anniversary of the armistice of 1953.
Two websites have lots
more information:
Women Cross DMZ
https://www.womencrossdmz.org/
Korea Peace Now
https://koreapeacenow.org/
Ann Wright (author of Dissent:
Voices of Conscience
www.voicesofconscience.com)
2016
North Korea’s January 6 announcement that it conducted an H-bomb test
was both ridiculed as completely implausible and condemned as highly
“provocative.” Its February 7 satellite launch was likewise denounced as a
“cover” for long-range ballistic missile development. Without hard evidence
that North Korea has even a single nuclear weapon, official “concern” over the
North’s nuclear program needs to be manufactured if our own nuclear arsenalists
are to stay in business.
With the enormous
Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in his home state desperately searching
for an enemy, it is no surprise to hear Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn. and
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chant that he wants the US
“to take a more assertive role in addressing North Korea’s provocation.” Anna
Fifield, the Washington Post Bureau Chief in Tokyo, who should at least
pretend to be an impartial observer, wrote January 6 that the underground bomb
test was a “brazen provocation and a clear defiance of international treaties.”
Fifield later told National Public Radio that she wouldn’t want to speculate
about what motivated North Korean President Kim Jong Un, because the inside of his
head “is a scary place” [see above from ADG]. The
NPR interviewer let this unsubstantiated assertion go unchallenged, like it was
common knowledge.
North Korea is such a military, economic and political nothing, that it
is disgraceful to see the national media parrot official Pentagon and State
Department fear-mongering about Pyongyang’s supposedly terrible, belligerent, and
aggressive intentions, and pathetic to see public opinion crystalized in
unison.
When was the last time North Korea bombed, invaded, militarily
occupied, or installed puppet regimes in
other lands? Those brazenly provocative violations of international treaties
were committed by the United States. When has North Korea placed 5,000-man,
“super carriers,” (the largest ships in the world, each carrying 60 aircraft)
in the Persian Gulf and attacked Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Syria
and Afghanistan using Reaper drones and jet fighter-bombers? Oh yes; that was
the United States. (continued at http://www.nukewatchinfo.org/Quarterly/2016%20Spring/Page%205%20Spring%202016.pdf)
2012
Felix Abt was one of the first foreign entrepreneurs to work in North
Korea, and the founding president of the first foreign chamber of commerce
in North Korea, set up by a dozen resident foreign business people in 2005,
and co-founder and director of the Pyongyang Business School. He has just published a book
entitled A Land of Prison Camps, Starving Slaves and Nuclear Bombs?
An Alternative Account to the Western Media’s Blinkered North Korea
Portrayal, which debunks the media’s narrative of North Korea as a
“monolithic gulag network filled with slaves” and a “hellhole…rife with
suffering and starvation.” […] The
post “Contrary to Relentless Media
Demonization, A Swiss Businessman Who Worked in North Korea For Seven Years
Found Much To Like About the Country? first appeared first In CovertAction Magazine.
[I couldn’t find the pub. date
of the above book. His A
Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom was
published in 2012. Perhaps they are
the same book. Google Felix Abt for an annotated list of his
publications on worldwide topics.]
|
|
Contents: North Korea Anthology #7, October 29, 2017
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/10/omni-north-korea-newsletter-7-october.html
Threatening War
Dick Bennett: Headlines Threatening War: the White
House/Pentagon/Mainstream Media Complex
Jon Schwartz and Suki Kim on NK in The
Intercept
Dick Bennett:Peace Achieved 1991-2, and
Again 2016-17? Kim Il Sung/Jimmy
Carter/Kim Jong Un and Bill Clinton/Jimmy Carter/Donald Trump
Dick Bennett: Summary: BombasticTit
for Tat.
Seeking Peace
Art Hobson: Make Peace with
North Korea
Dick Bennett: See the World
as Others See It—J. William Fulbright and the Role of Empathy in Making Peace
Stop Anti-Ballistic THAAD
Innovate! Valerie Plame: Use the System to Stop War-Mongers, Buy into
Twitter
Take Action with PeaceAction
END NORTH KOREA ANTHOLOGY #8
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