By Deauwand Myers
Now that Korea's presidential election is over, Korea's relationship with the North will be analyzed anew.
In evaluating the North, some perspective on how it came to be, and its deep animosity towards the West, and the United States in particular, should be explored.
Most Americans, indeed, most Westerners, know precious little about the aptly titled "Forgotten War." What little they do know are the broadest of strokes: over 3 million dead; a bifurcation of North and South Korea; decades of hostility; and an uneasy armistice between the two Koreas.
The Korean War is far more complex than that. After War World II, the Soviet Union and the US split Korea into spheres of influence, as was done with East and West Germany. The opposing ideologies of the US and the USSR, culminating into the Cold War, lead to there ever being a North and South Korea.
Korea's first president, American-backed President Syngman Rhee, was a rightist politician who brutally suppressed leftists and advocates of rapprochement with North Korea. This spurred the puppet regime of Kim Il-sung to unilaterally attack the South.
The onslaught thereafter is well documented, at least the outlines. But as with World War II, America fails to fully account for the brutality by which it attacked the North. About 20 percent of North Koreans, mostly citizens, were incinerated by constant and indiscriminate bombings led by America and its allies. More bombs were detonated over North Korea by America than in all of Japan and Germany during World War II.
This level of civilian death would be considered a war crime had the US lost. But America is the so-called indispensible nation, so, just as American war atrocities during WWII are glossed over, or even hidden, from public record (and scrutiny), the same can be said about the Korean War.
Unlike America, North Koreans are keenly aware of the brutality and carnage wrought upon them by America and its allies during the Korean War. This, along with the normal and constant brainwashing, indoctrination, and deification of the Kim family and the North Korean state by the DPRK's propaganda apparatus, makes for a toxic mix wherein the North and America know little about each other.
All of this is critical to understand, because without this knowledge, Korea, the North, and America are doomed to perpetual distrust and eventual military conflict.
The aforementioned brutality of the Korean War, and the decades of hostilities and famine and abject poverty do not, in any way, exculpate the evil of the Kim Regime.
Make no mistake, Kim Jong-Un and his father and grandfather, are and were brutal, amoral, cruel, and venal dictators of the highest order. While Mr. Kim gets fatter by the day, most of his population, as in earlier times, suffers in poverty so stark that malnutrition and starvation is still a common form of death in the DPRK.
Further, as I've written before, North Korea sees nuclear armament as its only card to play. The very survival of its government depends on possible nuclear conflict erupting if Korea and America ever militarily engage.
Dialogue is a tactic, not a means to an end. The DPRK will never give up nuclear weapons. As such, morally, geopolitically, can the West, and the international community at large, live with allowing North Korea to exist in perpetuity, with its bleak human rights record, gulags, summary executions, torture, and abject poverty, coupled with its nuclear proliferation to anyone willing to risk secret associations with it (take Syria, for example)?
It should be noted that North Korea began its nuclear weapons program in earnest in the 1980s. U.S. President Reagan, supposedly the great communicator and defeater of communism, allowed a rogue regime to acquire, in short order, rudimentary nuclear weapons technology.
The proceeding American presidential administrations, of both major political parties, have more or less watched as the DPRK becomes ever more sophisticated in its development of said arsenal. Eventually, the North will be able to deliver nuclear-tipped missiles to Korea, Japan, and yes, America.
The question, then, is: how crazy is Mr. Kim and crew? Like Iran, surely, it understands any actual use of a nuclear weapon against America or its allies will mean its complete and immutable destruction.
Should we base foreign policy on whether or not dictators are sane, or just sick?
Most probably, a war of some consequence, and then the removal of the Kim Regime, may be the only way to end the DPRK. We've waited for an orderly collapse of said regime for at least a generation; no such luck. All the while, North Korean nuclear scientists have been feverishly working on a credible and reliable nuclear deterrent.
Unfortunately, for all of us, President Trump is in office.
My advice: invest in lead suits.
Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.
 |
In evaluating the North, some perspective on how it came to be, and its deep animosity towards the West, and the United States in particular, should be explored.
Most Americans, indeed, most Westerners, know precious little about the aptly titled "Forgotten War." What little they do know are the broadest of strokes: over 3 million dead; a bifurcation of North and South Korea; decades of hostility; and an uneasy armistice between the two Koreas.
The Korean War is far more complex than that. After War World II, the Soviet Union and the US split Korea into spheres of influence, as was done with East and West Germany. The opposing ideologies of the US and the USSR, culminating into the Cold War, lead to there ever being a North and South Korea.
Korea's first president, American-backed President Syngman Rhee, was a rightist politician who brutally suppressed leftists and advocates of rapprochement with North Korea. This spurred the puppet regime of Kim Il-sung to unilaterally attack the South.
The onslaught thereafter is well documented, at least the outlines. But as with World War II, America fails to fully account for the brutality by which it attacked the North. About 20 percent of North Koreans, mostly citizens, were incinerated by constant and indiscriminate bombings led by America and its allies. More bombs were detonated over North Korea by America than in all of Japan and Germany during World War II.
This level of civilian death would be considered a war crime had the US lost. But America is the so-called indispensible nation, so, just as American war atrocities during WWII are glossed over, or even hidden, from public record (and scrutiny), the same can be said about the Korean War.
Unlike America, North Koreans are keenly aware of the brutality and carnage wrought upon them by America and its allies during the Korean War. This, along with the normal and constant brainwashing, indoctrination, and deification of the Kim family and the North Korean state by the DPRK's propaganda apparatus, makes for a toxic mix wherein the North and America know little about each other.
All of this is critical to understand, because without this knowledge, Korea, the North, and America are doomed to perpetual distrust and eventual military conflict.
The aforementioned brutality of the Korean War, and the decades of hostilities and famine and abject poverty do not, in any way, exculpate the evil of the Kim Regime.
Make no mistake, Kim Jong-Un and his father and grandfather, are and were brutal, amoral, cruel, and venal dictators of the highest order. While Mr. Kim gets fatter by the day, most of his population, as in earlier times, suffers in poverty so stark that malnutrition and starvation is still a common form of death in the DPRK.
Further, as I've written before, North Korea sees nuclear armament as its only card to play. The very survival of its government depends on possible nuclear conflict erupting if Korea and America ever militarily engage.
Dialogue is a tactic, not a means to an end. The DPRK will never give up nuclear weapons. As such, morally, geopolitically, can the West, and the international community at large, live with allowing North Korea to exist in perpetuity, with its bleak human rights record, gulags, summary executions, torture, and abject poverty, coupled with its nuclear proliferation to anyone willing to risk secret associations with it (take Syria, for example)?
It should be noted that North Korea began its nuclear weapons program in earnest in the 1980s. U.S. President Reagan, supposedly the great communicator and defeater of communism, allowed a rogue regime to acquire, in short order, rudimentary nuclear weapons technology.
The proceeding American presidential administrations, of both major political parties, have more or less watched as the DPRK becomes ever more sophisticated in its development of said arsenal. Eventually, the North will be able to deliver nuclear-tipped missiles to Korea, Japan, and yes, America.
The question, then, is: how crazy is Mr. Kim and crew? Like Iran, surely, it understands any actual use of a nuclear weapon against America or its allies will mean its complete and immutable destruction.
Should we base foreign policy on whether or not dictators are sane, or just sick?
Most probably, a war of some consequence, and then the removal of the Kim Regime, may be the only way to end the DPRK. We've waited for an orderly collapse of said regime for at least a generation; no such luck. All the while, North Korean nuclear scientists have been feverishly working on a credible and reliable nuclear deterrent.
Unfortunately, for all of us, President Trump is in office.
My advice: invest in lead suits.
Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.
