What’s happening between the U.S. and North Korea to produce such headlines in recent days as “Korean Tensions Escalate,” and “North Korea Threatens U.S.”?
The New York Times reported, “This week, North Korea’s young leader, Kim Jung-un, ordered his underlings to prepare for a missile attack on the United States. He appeared at a command center in front of a wall map with the bold, unlikely title, ‘Plans to Attack the Mainland U.S.’ Earlier in the month, his generals boasted of developing a ‘Korean-style’ nuclear warhead that could be fitted atop a long-range missile.”
The U.S. is well aware North Korea’s statements are not backed up by sufficient military power to implement its rhetorical threats, but appears to be escalating tensions all the same. South Korean President Park Geun-hye also realizes the threats are rhetorical but declared: “We should make a strong and immediate retaliation without any other political considerations if [the North] stages any provocation against our people.”
Pyongyang obviously has another objective in mind. I’ll have to go back a bit to explain the situation.
Since the end of the Korean War 60 years ago, the Worker’s Party government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has repeatedly put forward virtually the same four proposals to the United States. They are:
1. A peace treaty to end the Korean War. 2. The reunification of Korea, which has been “temporarily” divided into North and South since 1945. 3. An end to the U.S. occupation of South Korea and a discontinuation of annual month-long U.S-South Korean war games. 4. Bilateral talks between Washington and Pyongyang to end tensions on the Korean peninsula.
The U.S. and its South Korean protectorate have rejected each proposal over the years. As a consequence, the peninsula has remained extremely unstable since the 1950s. It has now reached the point where Washington has used this year’s war games, which began in early March, as a vehicle for staging a mock nuclear attack on North Korea by flying two nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth bombers over the region March 28. Three days later, the White House ordered F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets to South Korea, a further escalation of tensions.
Here is what is behind the four proposals.
1. The U.S. refuses to sign a peace treaty to end the Korean War. It has only agreed to an armistice. An armistice is a temporary cessation of fighting by mutual consent. The armistice signed July 27, 1953 was supposed to transform into a peace treaty when “a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” The lack of a treaty means war could resume at any moment. North Korea does not want a war with the U.S., history’s most powerful military state. It wants a peace treaty and diplomatic recognition from Washington.
2. Two Koreas exist as the product of an agreement between the USSR (which bordered Korea and helped to liberate the northern part of country from Japan in World War II) and the U.S., which occupied the southern half. Although socialism prevailed in the north and capitalism in the south, it was not to be a permanent split. The two big powers were to withdraw after a couple of years, allowing the country to reunify. Russia did so; the U.S. didn’t. Then came the devastating three-year war in 1950. Since then, North Korea has made several different proposals to end the separation that has lasted since 1945. The most recent proposal, I believe, is “one country two systems.” This means that while both halves unify, the south remains capitalist and the north remains socialist. It will be difficult but not impossible. Washington does not want this. It seeks the whole peninsula, bringing its military apparatus directly to the border with China, and Russia as well.
3. Washington has kept between 25,000 and over 40,000 troops in South Korea since the end of the war. They remain — along with America’s fleets, nuclear bomber bases and troop installations in close proximity to the peninsula — a reminder of two things. One is that “We can crush the north.” The other is “We own South Korea.” Pyongyang sees it that way — all the more so since President Obama decided to “pivot” to Asia. While the pivot contains an economic and trade aspect, its primary purpose is to increase America’s already substantial military power in the region in order to intensify the threat to China, but next door North Korea is well within this dangerous periphery.
4. The Korean War was basically a conflict between the DPRK and the U.S. That is, while a number of U.N. countries fought in the war, the U.S. was in charge, dominated the fighting against North Korea, and was responsible for the deaths of millions of Koreans north of the 38th parallel dividing line. It is entirely logical that Pyongyang seeks talks directly with Washington to resolve differences and reach a peaceful settlement leading toward a treaty. The U.S. has consistently refused.
These four points are not new. They were put forward in the 1950s. I visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a journalist for the (U.S.) Guardian newspaper three times during the 1970s for a total of eight weeks. Time after time, in discussions with officials, I was asked about a peace treaty, reunification, withdrawal of U.S. troops from the south, and face-to-face talks. The situation is the same today. The U.S. won’t budge.
Why not? Washington wants to get rid of the communist regime before allowing peace to prevail on the peninsula. No “one state, two systems” for Uncle Sam, by jingo! He wants one state that pledges allegiance to — guess who? In the interim, the existence of a “bellicose” North Korea justifies Washington’s surrounding the north with a veritable ring of firepower. A “dangerous” DPRK is also useful in keeping Tokyo well within the U.S. orbit and in providing another excuse for once-pacifist Japan to boost its already formidable arsenal.
The U.S.-South Korea war games in March were preceded in February U.S.-Japanese war games named “Iron Fist.” In both cases, Washington implicitly demonstrated it would stand with Seoul or Tokyo and against Pyongyang or Beijing if push came to shove. The U.S.-Japanese effort was aimed at capturing an imaginary island — a direct military warning to China, which claims possession to the Senkaku Islands, as does Japan.
According to a Feb. 15 article from Foreign Policy in Focus by Christine Hong and Hyun Le: “Framing of North Korea as the region’s foremost security threat obscures the disingenuous nature of U.S. President Barack Obama’s policy in the region, specifically the identity between what his advisers dub ‘strategic patience,’ on the one hand, and his forward-deployed military posture and alliance with regional hawks on the other. Examining Obama’s aggressive North Korea policy and its consequences is crucial to understanding why demonstrations of military might — of politics by other means, to borrow from Carl von Clausewitz — are the only avenues of communication North Korea appears to have with the United States at this juncture.”
Brian Becker, leader of the antiwar ANSWER Coalition leader, noted March 31: “The Pentagon and the South Korean military today — and throughout the past year — have been staging massive war games that simulate the invasion and bombing of North Korea. Few people in the United States know the real situation. The work of the war propaganda machine is designed to make sure that the American people do not join together to demand an end to the dangerous and threatening actions of the Pentagon on the Korean Peninsula.
“The propaganda campaign is in full swing now as the Pentagon climbs the escalation ladder in the most militarized part of the planet. North Korea is depicted as the provocateur and aggressor whenever it asserts that they have the right and capability to defend their country. Even as the Pentagon simulates the nuclear destruction of a country that it had already tried to bomb into the Stone Age, the corporate-owned media characterizes this extremely provocative act as a sign of resolve and a measure of self-defense.”
And from Stratfor, the commercial intelligence group that is often in the know: “Much of North Korea’s behavior can be considered rhetorical, but it is nonetheless unclear how far Pyongyang is willing to go if it still cannot force negotiations through belligerence.” The objective of initiating negotiations with the U.S. is here taken for granted.
Pyongyang’s “bellicosity” is almost entirely verbal — several decibels too loud for many ears, perhaps — but North Korea is a small country in difficult circumstances that well remembers the extraordinary brutality Washington visited up the territory in the 1950s. Millions of Koreans died. The U.S. carpet bombings were criminal. North Korea is determined to go down fighting if it happens again, but hopes their preparedness will avoid war and lead to talks and a treaty.
Their large and well-trained army is for defense. The purpose of the rockets they are building and their talk about nuclear weapons is principally to scare away the wolf at the door.
In the short run, the recent inflammatory rhetoric from Kim Jong-un is in direct response to this year’s month-long U.S.-South Korea war games, which he interprets as a possible prelude for another war. Kim’s longer run purpose is to create a sufficiently worrisome crisis that the U.S. finally agrees to bilateral talks leading to a peace treaty, an end to Washington’s sanctions, the normalization of trade relations, and removal of foreign troops from the south. Some form of reunification could come later in talks between north and south.
The present confrontations will simmer down with the end of this year’s provocative war games. The Obama Administration has no intention to create the conditions leading to a peace treaty — especially now that White House attention seems riveted on East Asia where it perceives an eventual risk to its global geopolitical supremacy.
A flaming load of gobshite. What about the North invading the South unilaterally back in 1950? Communism was in a crusade mode as much as jihadists are leading their “crusade” right now. The difference between North Korea and other (more or less) communist states is that the former is still stuck in the Cold War in crusade mode while the others are already following the market of economics to bring a new form of prosperity.
If the DPRK doesn’t want to join the 21st Century, that’s their problem. However they better not push their luck the same way Serbia ended up acting as the last obstacle to full European peace back in the 1990s… because we all know how badly things ended for Milosevic’s regime.
What about how the US worked closely with the Japanese to “create a government in harmony with U.S. policies” in the south, as the State Department directed General John R. Hodge? Or how they shut down newspapers that published material sympathetic to the political opposition? Or how the U.S. not only retained but expanded the National Police, which had been the force employed by the Japanese to terrorize, torture, and murder the population into submission, keeping on the members who were complicit in this criminal activity by serving the occupiers and forbidding anyone who had been a member of the anti-Japanese resistance to join the constabulatory force?
One could argue that the north was in effect launching an armed resistance against a foreign occupation and its puppet regime in the south. As Mr. Smith points out, the Russians ended their occupation; the U.S. didn’t. As historian Max Hastings has written, “The U.S. military government in Korea–like its counterparts in other areas of the world at this period–dismissed the possibility that its own manipulation of conservative forces in a society was comparable, morally and politically, with the Soviets’ sponsorship of Communist groups in their own zone.”
As much as the Soviets swallowed the entire Eastern Europe to create governments in harmony with their own policies and then Mao’s China having their views on the Korean region too, so what? Things were extreme in the 1950s, but it was a total war of ideologies and no one wanted to falter at all with the possible disastruous consequences if they did.
Kim Il-Sung became a puppet of the Soviets from the moment he was captured and enlisted in the Red Army in the 1940s. Things in the Soviet Union only started to look different after Stalin died. So, don’t spout that load of hogwash about morality considering how the record for the last 60 years proved people right about North Korea being stuck in the past while South Korea found a way to change from a dictatorship to a democracy on their own terms.
Personally, i think you’d get punched in the face if you dare speaking in favor of North Korea in front of the locals in South Korea and Japan who spent decades building economic success and modern societies. It’s also not a stroke of luck that the Soviet lost control of Eastern Europe in the 1980s. No one wants to live nor revert into your beloved Stalinian regimes.
Wow really? Glossing over North Korea’s gross human rights violations. Importantly, the drills between the South and the U.S. are a yearly event so even little Kim’s father quit his bluster soon after the drills ended.
If you think North Korea’s human rights violations render any fact provided by Mr. Smith irrelevant or his analysis invalid, please do explain.
When comparing the DPRK to the ROK, one only has to view a satellite view of both countries. The north is dark; the south is alive with light and prosperity. The north has come to a bitter end via bitter means. The south, like many other countries, has resorted to sub rosa practices at times, but has wound up with a prosperous, free country.
(As a sidelight, that “prosperous, free country” thing is what we are throwing away–with great vigor–under the policies of the current administration.)
Yes. I’m not sure how that is relevant to what I said, though.
You’re forgetting that part where the North Koreans invaded South Korea with Soviet-made weaponry.
You’re also forgetting that part where the South Koreans were pushed back to the Pusan Perimeter because the North Koreans had massive amounts of Soviet T-34-85s tanks and modern (for that time) mechanized forces, whereas the South Koreans had none.
If you’re going to talk about the Korean conflict, you should try to do some actual research if you want to be taken seriously.
See my reply to Danny. In addition, recall that the Russians had favored withdrawal of all occupying forces and leaving Korea’s destiny to Koreans, which the U.S. rejected in order to install a ruthless dictatorship of its own under its puppet regime in the south and its unpopular leader, Syngman Rhee. There were frequent clashes along the 38th parallel for which the south was equally responsible. For example, one of the most serious incidents occurred in May 1949, when southern forces invaded a couple miles into northern territory, attacking local villages. Also, with regard to Danny’s comment that “Communism was in a crusade mode as much as jihadists are leading their “crusade” right now”, again turning to Hastings, “Diplomatic historians have convincingly shown that in 1945-46, contrary to American belief at the time, South Korea did not form part of the Soviet expansion plan.”
What a piece of sh..t of an article. Mr. Smith you should be ashamed of writing this garbage. You are a hypocrite and ignorant.
Its like reading a youtube comment made by a nutjob.
If you have an argument, you are welcome to make it. Comments consisting solely of personal attacks will be treated as spam, as per FPJ’s commenting policy.
I must express extreme skepticism at the author’s statements and would appreciate clarification from either the author, or one who is replying alot like Jeremy R. Hammond.
1) What are the terms of this ‘peace treaty’ that Kim demands, or is it just a general call for ‘peace’? Rhetoric with no action, per North Korean style.
2) Yes I’m sure the Kims would greatly desire reunification of the Korean peninsula… under their ultimate divine rule. I struggle to take this seriously as a valid point. Is this one of the terms of their peace treaty? Why would any South Korean government agree to this, let alone the US?
A single state also implies a single ‘supreme’ authority, are you trying to tell me that Kim does not want to be that authority? If so provide a credible source.
3) The US is not ‘occupying’ South Korea, seeing as the South Korean government operates independently of US military or civilian interference beyond the standard (well unless you are a conspiracy buff).
The US military is there under agreement with and invitation from the South Korean government, and the reason should honestly be obvious, being one of the main subjects of the article after all.
As for a discontinuation of annual war games, that is not for North Korea to demand.
4) Since when does the US being the main contributor to the defence of South Korea 60 years ago mean that the US should decide the terms of peace without South Korea’s informed consent? That would be accepting your claims of South Korea being an ‘occupied’ government, which I already disputed.
The US is an important party but South Korea is for obvious reasons equally and probably more important.
Also please note that North Korea was responsible for the death of many many South Korean civilians during its hostile invasion of South Korea. To my knowledge at no point during the Korean war did the Kim dynasty attempt to surrender, so its death toll is the poisoned fruit of its attempt at conquest. Do note this is only five years after the end of WW2, carpet bombing was the standard, precision bombing was unthinkable.
I look forward to a reply clarifying the 4 points addressed.
I believe Mr. Smith was quite clear with regard to your question (1) so will defer to his article. As for question (2), I would also defer to the author as I am not as familiar. As for (3), if this is a reply to me, I was speaking historically; and, yes, the U.S. did occupy Korea. And as you point out, it still maintains a military presence on Korean soil. As for (4), your question seems directed neither at the author nor me (since neither of us suggested such).
The US has military bases in The Philippines, Japan, Okinawa, Germany, Turkey, Great Britain, Iceland, etc. Your pronouncement that South Korea is “occupied” is believable by only those who are completely detached from reality.
Your comments reveal you as an apologist for totalitarianism and other forms of “Big Government” oppression, repression, suppression, and ruthless, dictatorial conduct.
The “demands” made by North Korea are unacceptable, since acceding to them would put South Korea in a subservient position to the North and not in any way provide relief to the North Korean populace from their imprisonment under despotic communist rule.
Please reread what I said.
The article is astonishing in its bias and its telling of half-truths. Mr. Hammond’s dogged defense is clever but evasive.
In his last comment, Mr. Hammond says he will defer to the article for an explanation of the peace treaty Horth Korea seeks. Well, the article does not explain. To point 2, he says he doesn’t know, so defers to the article. Well, the article doesn’t know either, but it sounds good to defer to it as though it does. With regard to 3, the occupation of South Korea, the article did not say the US did occupy, but directly states N. Korea seeks an end to US occupation. Later, it speaks of the US owning South Korea. As for point 4, the article certainly does suggest the US should sign a peace treaty with North Korea.
Smith never gives any legitimacy at all to the South Korean government. South Korea, a modern, developed, demicratic country, an economic and cultural leader in Asia, if not the world, is not worthy of mention or consideration in this puff of propaganda.
Some of us of an age may, from time to time, feel a bit of nostalgia for the bi-polar days of the Cold War. This article, with its snide certitude from atop a heap of misleading semi-facts, reminds us of why a return to those days is not to be wished for.
To your points: 1) The terms of any peace treaty would obviously need to be worked out between the parties. Mr. Smith’s point remains, that North Korea wants such a treaty but the U.S. rejects it. 2) I didn’t say I defer to the article, I said I defer to the author, who may or may not participate in the discussion. 3) Meaning an end to the presence of U.S. military forces on Korean soil, obviously. 4) Again, neither the author nor I suggested that “the US should decide the terms of peace without South Korea’s informed consent”. 5) Mr. Smith does not suggest the South Korean government is anything but legitimate. 6) I don’t know what a “semi-fact” is. Statements of fact are either true or false. If you think Mr. Smith has erred on any point of fact or logic, you are welcome to point it out.
Jeremy, the problem that many commentators have with the piece which I really wish you would at least acknowledge is that the North, while hoping for a peace treaty, has a pretty miserable track record of governance. While you might assert that U.S. foreign policy has been a net negative on the global stage, the U.S. military keeps a presence there at the behest of the South Korean government and not solely for its own wishes. Sure the United States has many bases and many should close the U.S. presence in South Korea is not without merit. Based on past NK behavior, the unwarranted bombing of the island that killed several and the sinking of the South Korean warship North Korea has a fairly aggressive foreign policy itself. And please with that last statement don’t argue with something about U.S. foreign policy being assertive in your response. The author would have been better situated discussing in-depth North Korea’s past behavior like the sinking of the warship, the bombing of the island and its miserable human rights record. The author either ignored these in detail or glossed over them.
Well, that goes without saying. Mr. Smith certainly didn’t suggest otherwise.
Why should I not point out, as Mr. Smith did in his article, that the U.S. has been “assertive”, i.e., aggressive in its foreign policy?
Why rehash the same information everyone already reads about constantly? Mr. Smith’s purpose was obviously to inform readers of additional context we don’t hear from the mainstream media.
Nice article, and discussions as well… . But why some guys make a stance that NK isn’t occupied? and isn’t that true, that Germany is occupied still?
if i remember well, Russia was accused as occupier of east Europe and GDR on the grounds that its army came there during WWII and did not leave afterwards (and by the way most “occupied” countries did better economically then them do now!). So now Russia left (one may say – occupation stopped!?).
But then logically both, NK and Germany are still occupied by USA, who came there on exactly same grounds as Russian did. its just a fact.