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CounterPunch
November
5, 2002
Throwing Stones
Bush and Northern Korea
by RON JACOBS
The United States has no legitimate business threatening
northern Korea. The Pyongyang government may represent a threat
to Washington's plans, but for Bush and his crew to provoke war
is irresponsible and wrong. Since the fall of the Stalinist bureaucracies
in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe over a decade ago,
northern Korea has been left holding the bag. During the cold
war, Korea's southern half sold itself to the highest bidder
(not without plenty of internal opposition) as the north solidified
its ideological and economic ties to its allies in the ongoing
struggle against Japan and the U.S.. Since those allies disappeared
from the globe, the Pyongyang government has found itself the
target of stepped up attacks. Unfortunately, as testimony from
non-governmental workers and others has revealed, it has often
done so at the expense of the civilian population
Although the United States maintains
one of its largest foreign contingents in Korea's southern half
and stockpiles thousands of weapons (some nuclear) there, it
claims northern Korea's nuclear development and export of weapons
to various countries is a threat. This claim is made by a government
who has looked the other way countless times when its allies
(Israel, for one) are proven to be building nuclear weapons.
It is made by a government which makes and sells more weapons
of mass destruction than all the rest of the countries in the
world. Admittedly, further weapons proliferation is not favorable
to world peace, but for Washington to cry foul and demand a halt
to Pyongyang's research rings quite hollow. After all, it was
Washington's political and military manipulations after the Second
World War that created two Koreas in the first place. Much to
the anger and dismay of the majority of the Korean people.
How did the division occur, anyhow? Near
the end of the Second World War, right before the U.S. dropped
the bomb on Japan, the Soviet Union moved into northern Korea
to fight the occupying Japanese troops. Within weeks of Japan's
surrender, democratic groups of Korean peasants, merchants, and
workers formed local governing organizations and begin to organize
a national assembly. The U.S. and U.S.S.R., meanwhile, chose
to maintain a "temporary" occupation of the country
with the 38th parallel as the dividing line. This occupation
was to end after the Koreans established their own government,
and Korea was to reunite. However, after the United States realized
that the makeup of any Korean?organized government would be anti?colonial,
it reneged on its promise.
Within weeks of the election of a popular
national assembly, the Soviet Union began to withdraw its forces.
The U.S., however, increased its military strength and coordinated
security with the remnants of the hated Japanese army. At the
same time, Synghman Rhee, an ultra?right Korean politician who
was living in America, was flown back to Korea (with the assistance
of the US intelligence community). He immediately began to liquidate
the popular movement in southern Korea and, with the complete
support of the U.S. military, refused to acknowledge the existence
of the newly elected national assembly. In the weeks following
his installment as ruler of southern Korea, over 100,000 Korean
citizens were murdered and disappeared. The United States military
provided the names of many of the victims.
After realizing that the United States
had no plans to withdraw its troops, the Soviet Union put its
withdrawal on hold and asked for assistance from the People's
Republic of China. In the days and weeks that passed, military
units from the south persistently forayed into the northern half
of Korea, testing its defenses. Eventually, although the exact
details remain unclear, northern Korean and Chinese troops attacked.
On June 25, 1950, the U.S. responded, using the authority of
the U.N. Security Council, and the Korean war began. Three years
and one month later an armistice was signed between the warring
sides. The toll in lives was: 52, 246 US soldiers, an estimated
4 million Koreans on both sides of the parallel (mostly civilians),
1 million Chinese soldiers, and another 4000 soldiers from armies
that allied themselves with the United States.
The Situation Today In October 2000,
the United States and northern Korea signed a bilateral agreement
that read, in part: "Recognizing the changed circumstances
on the Korean Peninsula created by the historic June 15, 2000
inter-Korean summit, the United States and the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea have decided to take steps to fundamentally
improve their bilateral relations in the interests of enhancing
peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region.
The two sides agreed there are a variety
of available means, including Four Party talks, to reduce tension
on the Korean Peninsula and formally end the Korean War by replacing
the 1953 Armistice Agreement with permanent peace arrangements."
Unfortunately, neither northern Korea
or the United States appears to have kept either end of the bargain.
Most of this is due to the regime change in Washington. Despite
the fundamentally imperialist nature of Bill Clinton's foreign
policy, his administration had made genuine steps towards resolving
the decades-old dispute on the Korean peninsula and there was
a real hope among the Korean people on both sides of the 38th
parallel that a lasting peace would come to their land. Indeed,
the most optimistic among them began to make plans for the eventual
reunification of the country. Then GW Bush moved into the White
House and brought with him a number of men and women who had
no interest in continuing the Clinton policy of containment or,
god forbid, negotiating a lasting peace.
The return to an antagonistic relationship
was met by dismay in both Korean capitols. After southern Korea's
president Kim Dae Jung's visit to Washington in March 2001 where
he met with GW and a number of his henchmen, it was clear that
the Clinton policy of rapprochement was dead. According to news
reports, the meeting began on a sour note when Bush noted his
dismay over Kim's signature on a letter opposing the "Star
Wars" missile defense system promoted by Bush and his defense
industry cabinet and advisory staff. One of the targets of this
so-called missile shield would be northern Korea. After this
beginning, Kim knew there was little point to bring up his agenda,
which included:
- Signing a joint peace declaration with
the North.
- Formally ending hostilities a half-century
after the end of their civil war.
- Possibly supplying electricity to the
energy-poor North.
- Promoting a return visit to Seoul this
spring by the North's leader, Kim Jong-il.
Since that meeting, things have only
worsened, with GW's recent comments including northern Korea
in a new "axis of evil" beginning the latest downward
spiral in the relationship between DC and Pyongyang. The hardliners
in Washington refuse to even talk about peace, preferring to
take a page out of cold war architect John Foster Dulles' script
from the 1950s (written primarily by the defense industry) and
revive a decades-old war that most Americans and Koreans would
rather forget. Northern Korea, seeing minimal prospects of achieving
its desire for a lasting peace and eventual reunification through
conversations with Seoul (conversations which need U.S. support,
which is not forthcoming), seems to be returning to its previous
hardline position, as evidenced by their revelations about their
involvement in a previously dormant nuclear weapons development
plan. Unfortunately for its population, this means more starvation
and poverty, since what little money the government has will
go towards maintaining and enhancing its military capabilities.
As for the people of southern Korea and
the rest of the region, it means a life where the fear of all-out
war underlies every transaction, thanks to GW and his gang of
international outlaws and Pyongyang's understandable distrust
about US motives in the region. After all, they reason, why shouldn't
they develop nuclear weapons? The US continues to do so with
no intention of stopping and it is the US who is threatening
their existence. For the rest of the world, the reasoning on
both sides only enhances the fear of nuclear war. Perhaps the
only bright spot in the entire scenario is the suggestion that
Pyongyang's actions are a negotiating ploy whose intended audience
are the people of Korea (on both sides of the DMZ), most of whom
long for reunification and peace for all Koreans.
What are the alternatives? First and
foremost, the United States should re-open the three-way conversation
between the United States and both Koreas that was begun by the
Clinton administration. Washington should recognize the northern
Korean government as a responsible member of the international
community and lift the economic sanctions against them. Lifting
the sanctions would do more towards alleviating the suffering
of the northern Korean people more than any other possible action.
The people of this country, besides seeing much of their economic
production being used to service the military, have also seen
their countryside devastated by drought. It is this drought,
more than any other factor, which has caused the scenes of suffering
that the US news bureaus love to show us as examples of how Stalinist-type
bureaucracies fail their populations. Of course, no government
can prevent drought, not even capitalist ones, although the average
US television viewer would never know that from these news reports.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the United States needs
to let the people of the Korean peninsula decide their own fate-a
fate which most certainly involves the eventual reunification
of their country.
Ron Jacobs
lives in Burlington, VT. He can be reached at: rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu
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