Analysis
If War Breaks out in Korea, Don’t Blame the North

Anybody who is concerned about peace in the Asia Pacific can only hope that the Korean people will defy the warmongering of the U.S. and carry on the reunification of the Korean peninsula. They will gain the respect and support of the peoples of Asia.

By Edwin Licaros
Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS)
Posted by Bulatlat.com

One can be excused for thinking that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is the aggressor in the current standoff with the United States. The few reports that claim to give an accurate account of the conflict are drowning in a flood of grotesque information about a belligerent “hermit kingdom” under the dictatorship of a man who only has Saddam Hussein as a peer.

Ironically, some “pacifists” are already pointing out Washington’s inconsistency in its policy to both “troublemakers,” conveniently providing the U.S. with an excuse for more warmongering. Yet anybody with some background about the Korean Peninsula knows it is actually Washington that is instigating war.

The news about North Korea the past few months may have been confusing, but when it is analyzed in context it shows how the DPRK is pursuing a rational, peace-loving policy in the interest of the Korean people while it has to face the irresponsible bullying of a superpower that has much more military power at its disposal and, more importantly, whose interests are inimical to peace in this part of the world.

Korea moving toward reunification

Until September of last year, the Korean peninsula was slowly moving toward reunification and normalization of the DPRK’s relations with neighboring countries. On Sept. 17, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi made a historic one-day visit to Pyongyang, the DPRK capital. On that historic day, he apologized for the “tremendous damage and suffering inflicted on the people of Korea” during the colonial area (1910-1945). North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, from his side, stunned the world with a dramatic apology for the abductions of 13 Japanese, including a 13-year old schoolgirl, between 1977 and 1982 and for the dispatch of spy ships in Japanese waters.

After the visits of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and U.S. State Secretary Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang in June and October 2000, the Koizumi visit was the third highlight in a series of events that seemed to be leading to the eventual peaceful reunification of Korea. One day later South and North Korean soldiers began removing landmines in the buffer zone that separates the two Koreas ahead of work to reconnect their railway networks. A few weeks later athletes from North and South marched behind the “One Korea Flag” at the Asian Games in Pusan.

The acts the DPRK owned up to at this occasion may be deplorable. But then, the history and current situation of this country is out of the ordinary. During the 1930s and 1940s Japan abducted hundreds of thousands of young Korean men for forced labor and young women for prostitution. The U.S. occupation after the 1945 capitulation of Japan and the succeeding Korean War (1950-1953) left four million dead and much of the civilian infrastructure destroyed.

Theoretically, the South is still at war with its Northern neighbor, as it never signed the armistice. Moreover, it hosts 37,000 U.S. troops and has put its military under a joint command headed by an American general. The U.S. forces in Korea make nothing of bloody repression as they supported the military dictatorship for decades and allowed forces of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in 1980 to slaughter 2,000 civilians in the Kwangju massacre. In South Korea, hundreds of prisoners are held under the National Security Law that provides prison terms for those who praise and benefit the DPRK or have unauthorized contacts with North Koreans.

U.S. violations of the Agreed Framework

The détente in the relations between the DPRK and the South was the result of a 1994 agreement with the U.S. known as the “Agreed Framework.” The origin of this agreement, as they were later revealed in a 1998 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists¹, is noteworthy to say the least. Then President Clinton’s Defense Secretary, William Perry, admitted that the Pentagon already had a detailed plan to attack the Yongbyon nuclear plant, which the U.S. suspected to be used for military means, and invade the North.

Based on Perry’s estimates, the U.S. attacks would result in tens of thousands of Korean military deaths and millions of refugees. Former President Jimmy Carter was so alarmed that he decided to travel to Pyongyang in his personal capacity to meet President Kim Il Sung. Carter’s intervention, documented by CNN, revealed North Korea’s eagerness to reach a negotiated settlement of the conflict, embarrassing Clinton and Perry. The Pentagon’s justification for war was proven fallacious and Clinton couldn’t but consent to peaceful negotiations.

The negotiations led, after less than a month of talks, to the signing of the Agreed Framework on Oct. 21, 1994 in Geneva. The agreement bound the DPRK to freeze its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which would be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In return the U.S. would organize an international consortium to finance and build light water reactors with a total generating capacity of approximately 2,000 MW(e) by a target date of 2003. While these reactors were under construction, the U.S. would supply North Korea with half a million tons of heavy oil to compensate for the country’s energy needs while it had to forego its own nuclear program. Washington consented to this agreement because it was convinced that North Korea would collapse soon anyway.

The U.S. supplied the heavy oil although deliveries were erratic and often arrived when the worst of the winter weather was over. The real problem was not with the oil deliveries, that were supposed to be an interim measure anyway, but with the light water reactors. Although they should have already been in operation in 2003, the first concrete was poured only last year. It is common knowledge now that they cannot become operational within this decade.

The Agreed Framework also bound both countries to “move to full normalization of political and economic relations” eventually resulting in bilateral relations at the ambassadorial level.” Both parties also agreed to “work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.” This section of the agreement stipulated that the U.S. would “provide formal assurances to the DPRK against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the U.S.” Obviously, the U.S. never took these provisions seriously.

In the Pentagon’s policy documents North Korea figures prominently among the potential targets for war, including attacks with nuclear weapons. In June 1998, four years after the U.S. promised “formal assurances against the use of nuclear weapons,” US warplanes simulated a long-range mission to drop nuclear bombs on North Korea. According to Wing Commander Randall K. Bigum: “We simulated fighting a war in Korea, using a Korean scenario. (…) The scenario simulated a decision by the National Command Authority about considering using nuclear weapons.” ²

More recently, a leaked version of the Bush administration’s classified 2001 Nuclear Posture Review lists the DPRK among seven countries against which the U.S. should be prepared to use nuclear weapons. Discussing “requirements for nuclear strike capabilities,” the report categorizes North Korea as “among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies.” A North Korean attack on South Korea is one of the three specific “nuclear strike” contingencies the review discusses.

Also President Bush’s State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002 cannot be mistaken for a message that is intended to build confidence in a peace process. The President singled out the DPRK along with Iraq and Iran as belonging to his ludicrous concept of an “axis of evil,” accusing North Korea of “arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction.” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency already warned that this warmongering might endanger the 1994 Agreed Framework in a March 13 statement from a foreign ministry spokesman saying, “Now that nuclear lunatics are in office in the White House, we are compelled to examine all agreements with the U.S.”

Undermining the reunification of Korea

In October last year, while the peace process between the DPRK and its neighbors South Korea and Japan was gaining momentum, the U.S. sent Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to Pyongyang. North Korean delegates were shocked to be told during the Oct. 3-5 meetings that Kelly had no intention to discuss a resumption of the dialogue. On the contrary, relying on Kelly’s own account of his visit, he immediately told Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan “that the U.S. now had a precondition to further engagement – that the DPRK’s uranium enrichment program be dismantled immediately.” ³

The dialogue between the DPRK and the Bush administration was in a deadlock before it even began, as Kelly demanded North Korea to end a program it didn’t have. The North Korean delegation denied the existence of an uranium enrichment program and conveyed their preference for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, asking the U.S. to cease its threats. When, the following day, Kelly remained adamant about Washington’s precondition for talks, First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju answered him that the DPRK was entitled to have nuclear weapons to ensure its security if the U.S. continued threatening it.

Almost two weeks later, on Oct. 16, the U.S. suddenly proclaimed that the DPRK had admitted to conducting a secret nuclear weapons program during Kelly’s visit in Pyongyang. Although the DPRK has consistently denied it and that the U.S. has never given any evidence, the mainstream media have parroted the story of North Korea’s “admission” as if it was a fact. Nobody even questioned why Washington needed 12 days to come forward with this story. Apparently it took State Department some time going through the minutes of the meetings before somebody came up with the idea to twist Kang’s words into an “admission.”

The DPRK from its side repeated that it has the right to develop nuclear weapons. This statement is even within the bounds of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that stipulates in article X that “each party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” Despite the new hang-ups in its relations with the U.S., North Korea showed its continuing commitment to a further normalization of the relations with its neighbors when it allowed five of the Japanese that had been abducted 25 years ago to visit Japan.

The intentions of the Bush administration were clear. It wanted to do away with the 1994 Agreed Framework so that it would be freed from its obligations toward the DPRK. Kelly never made a secret of his opposition to the agreement stating that “we are not advocating a return to the status quo ante.” In other words, what Washington wants is a return to the situation before the negotiations that lead to the Agreed Framework, when the U.S. was on the brink of war with the DPRK.

It is not surprising that the U.S. also decided to stop the shipments of oil to North Korea – the last provision of the Agreed Framework it was still formally complying to. The State Department definitely knew that halting the deliveries of heavy fuel oil at the onset of winter would harm the people of North Korea tremendously. The country is already suffering an energy shortage and has almost no reserves. Without the light water reactors it had been promised under the Agreed Framework there is no possibility for North Korea to produce the energy it needs. Not only the power supply will be affected but, more disturbingly, also the distribution of food.

After the U.S. announced it would halt the delivery of oil, the situation was simply untenable for North Korea and the DPRK was left with no other option but to reactivate its graphite-moderated nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Now that the U.S. had already violated every provision of the Agreed Framework there were no reasons for Pyongyang to honor the agreement any further. A few days before Christmas it removed the monitoring devices from the Yongbyon nuclear facilities and started repairs.

The IAEA, the United Nations agency tasked to monitor the NPT, issued an unusually hostile resolution against the DPRK after its two inspectors were expelled from the DPRK on New Year’s Eve. It even issued an ultimatum for the DPRK to scrap its “nuclear program.” This prompted North Korea to announce its withdrawal from the NPT last Jan. 10, invoking the Treaty’s Article X. In the same statement, however, the official Korean Central News Agency announced: “We have no intention to produce nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity.”

U.S. motives for war in Korea

What is the motive of the U.S.’s warmongering on the Korean peninsula? A 1998 report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based foreign policy think tank, puts it bluntly: “Reunification threatens vital U.S. interests in Korea.” The CSIS explains that “(…) the emergence of a reunified Korea might prompt the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the ROK and mean the end of the special security role and influence of the United States in East Asia. Second, a reunified Korea may mean the loss of the Republic of Korea as the sixth largest importer of U.S. arms (…).” ⁴

Erstwhile Secretary of State and foreign policy guru Henry Kissinger echoes similar sentiments in a 2001 Washington Post article: “Were tensions to ease dramatically, the presence of American troops could become highly controversial within South Korea. In turn, if these forces were removed, the future of American bases in Japan would become problematic. And if American troops left the rim of Asia, an entirely new security and, above all, political situation would arise all over the continent. Were this to happen, even a positive evolution on the Korean peninsula could lead to a quest for autonomous defense policies in Seoul and Tokyo and to a growth of nationalism in Japan, China and Korea.” ⁵

These words cannot be misunderstood: If you want peace in Korea, don’t count on the U.S. Apparently, this realization is gaining influence among the people of Korea, even in the South. Particularly since a U.S. military tank crushed two South Korean schoolgirls to death July last year and a military court predictably acquitted the two soldiers involved, anti-U.S. protests have escalated. As the victory of Roh Moo-Hyun, who adheres to the reunification policies of his predecessor, in last December’s presidential elections demonstrated, the people of South Korea support the reunification of Korea and are opposed to the U.S.’s warmongering. The U.S. last ditch effort to sway the election in favor of its own candidate, the interception of a North Korean ship that was on its way to deliver a legitimate shipment of missiles to Yemen, eventually backfired and only provided the Korean public more proof of the U.S. belligerence.

In a recent opinion poll conducted by Korea Gallup for the Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea's three major newspapers, more than 53 percent of South Koreans surveyed said they disliked the U.S., up from 15 percent in 1994. Significantly, 75 percent of those in their 20s expressed dislike for the U.S., much more than among the older generations. ⁶

Anybody who is concerned about peace in the Asia Pacific can only hope that the Korean people will defy the warmongering of the U.S. and carry on the reunification of the Korean peninsula. They will gain the respect and support of the peoples of Asia.

1. “Jimmy Carter Makes a Deal” Leon V. Sigal, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 1998

2. “Preemptive Posturing” Hans M. Kristensen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2002

3. “U.S.-East Asia Policy: Three Aspects” James A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, Remarks at the Woodrow Wilson Center, December 11, 2002

4. “Great Power Interests in Korean Reunification” The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), October 1998

5. “A Road Through Seoul” Henry Kissinger, The Washington Post, March 6, 2001; Page A23

6. “Anti-U.S. Sentiment Deepens in S. Korea” Peter S. Goodman and Joohee Cho, The Washington Post, January 8, 2003.

CAIS/Bulatlat.com 

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