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On July 5, South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings against the Ministry of National Defense for proceeding with construction of a naval base on Jeju Island without an environmental impact assessment (EIA). It also ruled that the governor of Jeju had the authority to change the designation of absolute preservation areas. This ruling wasn’t just a major blow to residents of Gangjeong village where the navy base is being built but also to the many voiceless marine organisms. As you read this, massive caissons the size of four-story buildings are about to drop on soft coral reefs, forever destroying local marine ecosystems home to several endangered species. Although the villagers’ hopes of winning in a retrial in Seoul’s High Court are slim, they have a golden opportunity to influence the court of public opinion by garnering the support of thousands of environmentalists worldwide. This upcoming September the world’s largest and most important environmental conservation event, the World Conservation Congress (WCC), will take place at Jungmun Resort, just four miles from Gangjeong. Yet the organizers of the Congress, the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), have cowered before the Lee Myung Bak administration, conceding in an official statement that the government “has a responsibility for its own national security, particularly given geopolitical sensitivities in its region.” Not only have national security interests blinded South Korea’s justice system, they appear to have silenced the world’s largest and oldest environmental organization from taking a more principled stand to protect nature and traditional livelihoods. Destroying Environments and Livelihoods Jeju Island is 80 miles off the coast of the Korean peninsula. A New Seven Wonders of Nature, Jeju Island is home to the greatest number of UNESCO geoparks in the world, as well as several UNESCO world heritage sites and biosphere reserves, including Beom Islet (Tiger Isle), only a mile from where the naval base is being constructed. Gangjeong itself is a 450-year-old village on the southern coast of the island. Lava rock walls line the streets of this farming community where tangerine groves, apricot orchards, and fig trees grow abundantly. Along Gangjeong’s coastline—where fresh spring water meets the sea—is a contiguous lava rock affectionately called Gureombi. This rare marine ecosystem—the only rocky wetland on Jeju Island—is home to several endangered species and soft coral reefs. Of the 132 coral species in Korea, 92 species are found in Jeju, and 66 in this area. These waters have provided a meaningful livelihood for generations of fishermen and Jeju’s famous women sea divers, haenyo. In 2004, the ROK Ministry of Environment and Culture designated the area, including Tiger Isle, a protected area and several species Nature Monuments. In 2006, the area around Tiger Isle became a Marine Provincial Park, an absolute preservation area in which nothing could be built or developed, including a navy base. In 2006, Gangjeong was designated as an “Ecological Excellent Village”, in 2007 the Absolute Coastal Retention Area, and in 2008 a Natural Park. Despite all these government designations and protected status, Gangjeong became the site the Navy and the government selected for the naval base, which will berth up to 20 warships with Aegis Missile Defense capability. Contrary to South Korean government propaganda that villagers supported the construction of the base, in an April 2007 referendum, 94 percent voted against the base. Since then, villagers have used every democratic means—from direct nonviolent action to filing lawsuits—to stop construction, only to be beaten, fined and jailed. In March, military contractors Samsung and Daelim began blasting the lava rock coastline and dredging the ocean floor. Incomplete Environmental Impact Assessment In 2009, the Mayor of Gangjeong and 437 villagers sued the Minister of Defense for granting permission to begin the naval base construction before the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was completed. The lower courts agreed, voiding the construction plans. The Navy appealed, but even while the case was still being considered, the military began base construction in March 2010. After a suit by villagers, the Navy finally conducted an EIA, an incomplete one. The Korean Federation of Environmental Movements informed the Navy that several endangered species failed to make it into the report, including the narrow-mouth toad (Kaloula borealis), the red-foot crab (Sesarma intermedium), and Jeju fresh water shrimp (Caridina denticulate keunbaei). In response, the government agreed to transport these species to a new habitat. According to the Navy FAQ page, 322 crabs were transplanted to three different locales, 5,300 freshwater shrimp were transplanted to a creek, and 900 narrow-mouth toads moved to a park in Jeju City. “My feeling from what I have read is that they did not mark the animals, and relocating 900 endangered frogs, for example, would be time consuming and more expensive,” says a leading environmental scientist who asked to remain anonymous. “I am almost certain they did not do that but I could be wrong.” The Conservation Buck Stops With Militarism As the world’s environmentalists convene at the Jungmun resort minutes away from Gangjeong, villagers are hopeful that the collective power of the world’s leading conservationists can halt the base construction. Yet the IUCN, the organizers of the World Conservation Congress, has so far sheepishly toed the government line. In response to criticism that it is holding the WCC on Jeju Island despite the ecological destruction caused by its host government, the IUCN responded in its official statement, “We trust that the Korean government has complied with all relevant domestic laws in planning and developing this port.” For one, trusting doesn’t seem to be a very rigorous process for the world’s largest and oldest environmental organization. The IUCN should practice what it preaches—taking positions based on a thorough scientific review and remaining neutral until all the facts are gathered. Yet this statement blindly endorses the South Korean government’s propaganda. For example, the IUCN statement calls the naval base a civilian “port,” which villagers have argued is a Navy tactic to garner acceptance of the base. John Kidd, director of global communications for the IUCN, clarified that, “In selecting a Congress host country, IUCN reviews the overall environmental track record of a country and not specific issues or areas.” But South Korean environmental organizations disagree. In an open letter to the IUCN, 55 leading environmental NGOs in South Korea write, “the Congress gravely neglects or misrepresents environmental and social conflicts in the host country.” It goes on to explain why: “Because the Congress is financed by the Lee Myung-Bak administration and sponsored by industrial conglomerates, there is growing public concern that the WCC is promoting policies of the Lee administration without examining whether they are truly designed to preserve the environment.” In another open letter to the IUCN (disclosure: one of us helped co-author), several prominent environmental, NGO and academic leaders from around the world call upon the IUCN to relocate its meeting to another site that aligns with the organization’s mission. “Holding a conference in the face of such nearby, ongoing devastation, would destroy the credibility of IUCN, and be an eternal embarrassment for all participants at the meeting.” It calls on the IUCN to call upon the government to stop the base construction or move its Congress to another site more aligned with its mission. In the official statement about the naval base, the “IUCN stands ready to offer technical assistance to the Korean government to help ensure the development is as environmentally sustainable as possible.” Kidd further clarified that, “IUCN has published guidelines on military developments, for example peacetime defence planning and military installations in protected areas such as national parks and world Heritage sites.” In other words, IUCN offers best environmental management practices for the world’s most toxic, polluting and undemocratic institutions: the military. Instead, the IUCN should challenge the base and relocate its upcoming congress as a protest against the base construction. Military Arms Race The Jeju naval base has a specific purpose in the East Asia arms race and securing South Korean and US overseas interests. Launched in February 2010, the South Korean Maritime Task Flotilla 7 consists of two AEGIS-equipped destroyers and six smaller multipurpose destroyers. This new task flotilla is part of South Korea’s ambition, strongly supported and encouraged by the United States, to build a blue water fleet to become a regional and global military and economic powerhouse. Once the Gangjeong naval base is complete, the flotilla will be headquartered there. A key task for the flotilla is to protect South Korean trade routes in an increasingly tense and unsustainable East Asian race for access to the world’s natural resources. South Korea’s trade-reliant economy is highly vulnerable—it imports 95 percent of its energy and industrial raw materials from overseas, and 99.7 percent of Korea’s trade is conducted via sea routes. South Korea is already one of the most energy intensive economies in the OECD, and the government has decided to sustain its economic growth by heavily investing in securing overseas oil fields, mines, and food resources. Gangjeong’s location provides a strategic vantage point for U.S. and South Korean naval interventions in the East and South China Sea, two geopolitical hotspots because of its economic importance as sea trade routes in the volatile resource race in East Asia. The Korea Herald, in a pro-base editorial on July 8, wrote that “the base has become strategically much more important than in 2005. Tensions are rising in Northeast Asia as major players are eager to beef up their sea power amid growing competition over maritime territory and natural resources in deep water.” Thus a key peacetime activity of the Gangjeong based fleet will be to provide military support for Korea’s overseas resource extraction activities. The naval base therefore not only destroys local ecosystems and livelihoods in Gangjeong. It is a strategic piece in the environmentally destructive global race for resources that creates military tensions and conflicts around the world. The World Conservation Congress provides a critical opportunity for Gangjeong villagers to garner the solidarity of the world’s leading environmental actors. It also presents a chance for the IUCN and its membership to challenge and confront militarism in its efforts to protect and conserve nature. *Christine Ahn is the Executive Director of the Korea Policy Institute and an advisor to the Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island. Anders Riel Müller is a Research Fellow with the Korea Policy Institute and with the Institute for Food and Development Policy.

On September 2, Dr. Imok Cha, a 51-year old San Francisco-based pathologist boarded a plane headed to Jeju Island, South Korea, where she was to present new findings at the World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s oldest and largest environmental organization. Dr. Cha was a registered participant at the IUCN Congress, which is being held at Jeju’s Jungmun resort from September 6 to 15. Approximately 8,000 conservationists are gathered there to discuss the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. Yet just four miles away from where they meet, an environmental holocaust is taking place in Gangjeong village, where the construction of a 120-acre naval base is threatening a 400-year-old farming and fishing village, one of the earth’s most spectacular soft coral reefs, and coastal habitats for several endangered species. But Dr. Cha’s journey to the IUCN was cut short at Incheon International Airport where, much to her surprise, immigration officers apprehended and detained her, forced her to give finger and foot prints, and then promptly put her on the next plane back to the United States. The South Korean government’s justification was that Dr. Cha had protested against the naval base in Washington, DC, which she hadn’t — and even if she had, how can civil disobedience justify deportation? The real reason they were preventing Dr. Cha from entering Korea was what she was carrying in her bag: findings from an independent environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the naval base construction that contradicted the ROK Navy’s EIA, which ignored three critically endangered species and impacts on rare coral reefs. The independent EIA was conducted by a team of environmental scientists to assess the veracity of the Navy’s EIA. One biologist with Endangered Species International assessed how three endangered species—the estuary crab, freshwater shrimp, and boreal digging frog—were faring since their relocation. In the case of the endangered frog, the biologist found that “most of adult frogs have been probably killed or some will try to come back to the navy site to breed again but will find themselves lost and nowhere else to go.” He wrote from Jeju, “They let them be crushed and killed.” Another team comprised of local, national, and international coral experts conducted several dives near the proposed base site, which is approximately 0.15 miles from the Tiger Isle UNESCO Biosphere Reserve buffer zone. Contrary to the Navy’s assessment, they concluded, “Construction of the Gangjeong naval base will cause immediate death to thousands of endangered coral species by being crushed or smothered with sedimentation.” Dr. Cha isn’t the only one being blocked from participating in the IUCN Congress. The IUCN, the world’s largest conservation organization, has succumbed to the South Korean government’s mandate to quell social unrest and resistance to the base by excluding voices of dissent at the summit. The IUCN had promised Gangjeong villagers an informational booth, but just last week, IUCN Global Director Enrique J. Lahmann sent a denial email with no explanation. This was soon followed by an official IUCN statement that said, “IUCN has consistently supported the application of the Gangjeong Village Committee to have an exhibition stand at the Congress. Unfortunately our recommendation was not endorsed by our on-site partners.” One listed partner is Samsung, one of the very corporations contracted by the government to build the military base. The Korean government has banned demonstrations within a mile of the convention, ensuring that any critical dissent against the base is kept out. The Jeju naval base will not only devastate ecosystems and sustainable livelihoods in Gangjeong. It will also play a central role in the militarized race for natural resources in the Asia-Pacific. The Jeju naval base will stage the South Korean Maritime Task Flotilla 7, which includes AEGIS-equipped destroyers connected to the U.S. missile defense system. Seoul argues that the flotilla is needed to protect its trade routes in an increasingly tense region where countries are vying for access to natural resources in the South China Sea. South Korea, among the most energy intensive economies in the OECD, is highly trade-reliant—95 percent of its energy and industrial raw materials are imported from overseas. Because of the ongoing Korean War and division of the peninsula, 99.7 percent of South Korea’s trade is conducted via sea routes. Anders Riel Müller of the Institute for Food and Development Policy says, “the government has decided to sustain its economic growth by heavily investing in securing overseas oil fields, mines, and food resources.” Instead of seeking more sustainable alternatives, such as investing in renewable energy or a domestic agricultural system, Seoul has chosen a militarized path—a very costly one, not just in terms of the drain it will put on dwindling public coffers, but also on its relatively young and fragile democracy. Not only have the government and police arrested and beaten Gangjeong villagers trying to protect their treasured natural resources, the Lee Myung-bak administration has decided it will do anything to prevent any voice of dissent from stopping this naval base, including deporting concerned internationals like Dr. Cha. She is now the 19th foreigner to be denied entry over the naval base, including three American veterans who served in Korea, and most recently three Okinawans on their way to the IUCN summit. The challenges facing all of us—climate change, rising food prices, and declining sources of fossil energy—urgently demand cooperation among nations. Unless we learn to share the world’s natural resources and develop sustainable alternatives, governments will be perpetually preparing for war to secure access to finite natural resources. At stake are not just the loss of endangered species or traditional livelihoods in Gangjeong, but also the severe violation of our human rights. Security interests may have blinded the South Korean government, but they should not silence the IUCN from taking a more principled stand to protect nature, traditional livelihoods, and free speech. *Christine Ahn is the Executive Director of the Korea Policy Institute and an advisory board member to the Global Campaign to Save Jeju Island.

HR 1464 (“The North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011”) has passed the House.[i] Exploiting the rhetoric of humanitarian rescue, the bill identifies North Korean hunger as the problem and proposes U.S. adoption of North Korean children as the solution, making the figure of the hungry North Korean orphan a matter of U.S. legislative concern. Yet this bill recklessly turns on the fiction of the “North Korean refugee orphan,” construing the latter as a child without nationality, in order to authorize the acceleration of U.S. adoption procedures through “alternative mechanisms.” Although the bill purports to help “thousands of North Korean children [who] do not have families and are threatened with starvation and disease if they remain in North Korea or as stateless refugees in surrounding countries,”[ii] its truth can be found in its preamble, which supposes that “thousands of United States citizens would welcome the opportunity to adopt North Korean orphans living outside North Korea.” Suturing its loose definitional categories together, this legislation seeks to establish, as a precedent, the category of “statelessness” as a flexible definitional vehicle by way of which inter-country adoption can be expedited and international laws meant to safeguard the rights of children and families circumvented. Aimed not at resolving North Korean hunger, much less the well-being of the children whom it willfully misrepresents, this bill lays the task of “identify[ing] other nations in which large numbers of stateless, orphaned children are living who might be helped by international adoption” at the doorstep of the State Department. Cannily leveraged by its advocates, the affective appeal of the figure of the “North Korean refugee orphan” has enabled this bill to gain political traction. In a YouTube PSA for Topple Hunger in North Korea (THiNK), a public outreach initiative of the Korean American Coalition (KAC) aimed at mobilizing constituent endorsement of the bill, Sandra Oh, of Grey’s Anatomy fame, delivers a message stark in its apparent moral rectitude. According to Oh, the children whom this bill means to serve are “orphans [who] have escaped and are living in foreign lands, alone and without families.” Directing viewers to sign a petition to their Congressional representatives on the THiNK website, Oh adds: “They [‘North Korean refugee orphans’] need us. This bill would allow us to adopt them.” Although Oh, the most famous of the bill’s celebrity supporters, has never studied the legislation or its misleading claims, her video appeal has boosted support for the bill.[iii] When her PSA first launched last November, only a few thousand people had signed the petition. DC insiders predicted that it, like its predecessors, would not survive the doldrums of subcommittee referral. Yet by July, the petition had garnered over 60,000 signatures. Now, the bill has passed the House, and its sponsors aim to push it through the Senate before the pre-election session is over. Modeled on a failed series of North Korean human rights bills that stretch back to 2003, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011 proceeds from an outdated portrait of on-the-ground conditions and distorted premises. Empirically speaking, the bill misrepresents the reality of the children whom it purports to help. As a placeholder for children who are, by and large, not North Korean, not refugees, and not orphans, the “North Korean refugee orphan” is a dangerous fiction whose elastic license with the truth imperils the welfare of the children this legislation stands to impact. The bill’s alarmist image of “thousands of North Korean children [who] are threatened with starvation or disease” does not, in point of fact, correspond to the reality of the children who—albeit often poor and sometimes in the care of a grandparent—actually have families, have household registration papers, attend schools, are relatively well-nourished, and are Chinese citizens. Strategically loose on the supply-side details, this bill risks instrumentally construing these children as adoptable when, in fact, they are not. Far from ensuring the best interests of the child, as specified by international protocols, including the Hague Adoption Convention to which the United States is signatory, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act, if passed, will give legitimacy to practices that shift U.S. adoption policy toward child-laundering. I. The Pitch Backed by an assortment of strange bedfellows—including actor Sandra Oh, Korean War adoptee Sam Han, Korean War veteran Charles Rangel, North Korean human rights groups, anti-communist Korean immigrant churches, a head of a Cold War defense organization that bring defectors to Washington, DC, to name a few—the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011 has enabled varying agendas to converge in a shared fiction of humanitarian rescue. The story that its supporters collectively tell is gripping. In its general contours, it goes like this: Children, North Korean orphans, who have escaped a dark place of hunger, death, and repression are at risk of being trafficked in third countries into slavery or the sex trade. Their parents are dead, and there is no one to look after them. Expedited adoption into American families who are ready and waiting is their only hope. Painting a hellish picture electrified by luridly imagined details in his YouTube PSA for THiNK, Francis Chan, evangelical minister and bestselling author, describes the children whom this bill will rescue as utterly destitute—entirely “on [their] own.” Having, according to Chan, witnessed their parents die of starvation or tuberculosis in North Korea, “these kids are climbing over mountains in their bare feet. They’re crawling through jungles. Some of them are swimming through a freezing cold river while soldiers are shooting at them.” The clincher: “once they finally make it to safety to Mongolia, or Vietnam, or Cambodia, people there don’t want you [sic].” What awaits these children in these interim countries is yet more horror—trafficking, Chan claims, into slavery or the sex trade. The bill’s purpose is simply to enable these children to “live a halfway normal childhood.”[iv] Although the image of the destitute North Korean child wandering alone in strange lands may serve as potent propaganda for the bill, this dire portrait is complicated by the fact that the children whom this legislation primarily targets are Chinese citizens who have families. This factual underside to the story of the “North Korean refugee orphan” is nowhere accounted for in the dramatic, heartwrenching narrative spun by Sandra Oh, Francis Chan, and others. As with many issues that fall under the rubric of “North Korean human rights,” North Korea might serve as the bogeyman for this bill, but the story itself unfurls in China, involves Chinese subjects, and risks infringing on Chinese sovereignty. II. The Chinese Complication The North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011 may describe North Korean hunger as an urgent problem, which ethically requires an immediate response, yet this static language is copied almost verbatim from the North Korea Freedom Act of 2003. Explicit measures to facilitate the adoption of North Korean children into American families were introduced by Sam Brownback and Mary Landrieu, both staunch adoption advocates, into the 2003 bill, which offered a grim prognosis of North Korean children orphaned by famine: “thousands of North Korean orphans languish in orphanages with little hope of being adopted and are threatened with starvation and disease if they remain in North Korea.” In adapting this language, however, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011 fails to account for major changes that have occurred not only in North Korea but also in China, the main destination for North Korean border-crossers, over the past decade. Neither, for that matter, does the current legislation acknowledge that the “North Korean orphan”—anachronistic language retained from the 2003 bill—designates the China-born, mixed-ethnic offspring of Chinese fathers and North Korean mothers. If the details of the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act of 2011 are fuzzy on the supply side, they are clear on the demand side. Consistent in all variations of U.S. North Korean adoption legislation, the 2003 North Korean Freedom Act, HR 4896, and HR 1464, is the certitude that “thousands of United States citizens would welcome the opportunity to adopt North Korean orphans.” Aimed at “legaliz[ing] adoption for North Korean stateless children,” to borrow the slogan of a Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) advocacy campaign on this issue, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act is not—its humanitarian framing notwithstanding—a human rights bill. Its purpose, as the THiNK website acknowledges, is to “reduce the waiting time for families seeking to adopt.” Yet, as a top official of a major international adoption agency pithily stated to me about this bill, demand-side desire “is not what adoption is for. It flies in the face of the Hague [Adoption Convention],” which aims to “prevent the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children” through the mechanism of inter-country adoption. Indeed, the striking absence of support from the mainstream adoption industry and the international humanitarian community implies substantive problems with this legislation. Central to the safeguarding of the rights of the child is the prioritization of what the Hague refers to as “appropriate measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of origin.” The question of origins is key to unraveling the fiction of the “North Korean refugee orphan.” For one, no serious backer of this bill assumes that the primary target of this bill are the unaccompanied kkotjebi, North Korean children who crossed the North Korea-China border at the height of the famine of the 1990s and are now young adults, much less that the U.S. State Department will have to elaborate inter-country adoption protocols with North Korea. In its 2011 annual report, LiNK, a North Korean human rights advocacy group that runs “safe houses” along the North Korea-China border, concedes the Chinese birth and mixed ethnic heritage of the children whom the legislation has in mind: Along the China-North Korea border, there are estimated to be up to 10,000 stateless children. These are children who are born to North Korean women and Chinese men—estimates suggest that over 80% of these women are trafficked or sold as brides. China does not recognize these children due to the illegal status of their mothers. Given this status, these children are considered “stateless” and are unable to attend school or even have basic rights.[v] Yet, this is where things get slippery. To be born to undocumented North Korean migrant mothers, or so the bill’s backers claim, is to be effectively stateless. More than equate statelessness with “malnutrition, abuse, exploitation, [and] lack of education,” as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a major House supporter of the bill, has done in remarks to Radio Free Asia, the backers of this legislation make the dangerous mistake of conflating it with adoptability. If, until a few years ago, a North Korean migrant mother’s undocumented status served as a barrier to her child’s household registration, or hukou—rendering her child effectively stateless—there is no such barrier today. This removal of obstacles to education and other social services fundamentally transforms the conditions of social possibility for the now school-aged, mixed-ethnic children in Yanbian, the province in China where the majority of them live. Three months ago, an underground South Korean missionary operating in Tumen confirmed to me that there was no “goa munje” (“orphan problem”) comparable to that which existed a decade ago. A Yanji municipal social welfare officer with the People’s Policy Bureau stated that the government now furnishes monthly stipends to the families of “parentless” children, including those with just one parent. An underground aid worker who oversees social services aimed at but not exclusive to mixed-ethnic children, including after-school programs where they learn life skills, corroborated this officer’s account. Of the roughly 3,500 children in the programs that this aid worker manages, all have what he called “hojeok” (hukou in Chinese). In fact, in recent years, provincial and local authorities have permitted Chinese fathers to register their mixed-ethnic children without reporting on the mothers’ status, thus granting these children the prerogatives of Chinese citizenship. III. The South Korean Snag Unfortunately, North Korean women trafficked into marriages with Chinese men have not had a corresponding positive transformation of their status. If they remain in China, they, given their undocumented status, do not face easy prospects. In his survey-based research on “North Korean” children in China, Courtland Robinson found that the only stakeholding demographic that substantially wished to resettle, specifically to South Korea, were North Korean mothers of mixed-ethnic children. Granted, a sizable number of women expressed aversion at the prospect of relocation: “I do not want to go to South Korea even if we had the option to go there, because I have heard terrible things. The cost of living…is extremely high so I do not know that life in South Korea would be better for my son.” Others, though, wished to resettle. As one mother stated, “I am not living my life freely because I am North Korean, so I think it would be best for us [mother and child] to go to South Korea.” Yet, in the severing of families across national borders is the making of a Solomonic dilemma. A Korean-language article published last week in Voice of America, the global media organ of the U.S. government, describes the South Korean government as willing to establish a pilot program, in cooperation with the U.S. government, which would enable Americans to adopt North Korean children who are currently refugees in South Korea. The danger is that the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act instrumentalizes South Korean nationality laws, which recognize a North Korean mother upon her arrival in the South as a South Korean citizen who possesses the right to relinquish her child—while insufficiently accounting for the likely Chinese nationality of the mixed-ethnic child in question. The Hague Convention specifies that determination by “the competent authorities of the State of origin” of the child’s status is a prerequisite for inter-country adoption. It is far from clear that South Korea is “the relevant territorial unit,” as opposed to China, the state of origin, when it comes to U.S. inter-country adoption of mixed-ethnic children who have relocated to South Korea. Thus, to launder, through South Korean channels, a “North Korean refugee orphan” who is, in point of fact, a Chinese subject by virtue of birth and parentage is to invite an Elian Gonzalez-like tug-of-war between China and the United States. IV. The North Korean Footnote Hunger, specifically North Korean hunger, is critical to the story of the “North Korean refugee orphan” but only insofar as adoption displaces a more obvious, more immediate—and one could argue, more assuredly humanitarian—solution, namely, food aid. Premised on hunger in North Korea as trigger for North Korean migration to China, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act is tellingly backed by politicians and interest groups that have not only opposed food aid or medical assistance to North Korea but also argued for fortified sanctions against North Korea—policies that exacerbate North Korea’s food insecurity. The THiNK website is instructive. Although it indicates that “60% of North Korean children experience malnutrition which can lead to illness, stunting [sic] growth, or death,” it pushes narrowly for adoption as the solution to North Korean hunger. KAC clarifies on its THiNK site: “KAC will NOT be sending money/food/clothing or any other aid to North Korea. KAC wants to be very clear: KAC’s mission is not to provide any support or assistance to North Korea.” It is hard to escape the conclusion that North Korean hunger matters to advocates of U.S. North Korean adoption laws only so far as it directly or indirectly produces orphans. Ironically, the ethical charge behind the story of the “North Korean refugee orphan” stems from the assumption that North Korea, as Francis Chan alleges in his THiNK PSA, did nothing “to keep you [sic] alive.” Two years ago, however, Kim Jong Il’s government reached out to the United States through back-channel negotiations requesting food aid for what surely would be, and indeed was, a rough year ahead. The United States laid down two essential conditions: issue a formal bilateral request for aid and give unprecedented access to teams conducting food assessment surveys. North Korea complied on both fronts, and in early 2011, teams from the U.S. government, the UN, the US NGOs, and the EU all conducted studies throughout the country. Photos from their visits to babies’ homes and children’s homes showed clear signs of child hunger—yellowing hair, listlessness, and wasting. Yet Ed Royce, the Republican congressman from Fullerton, California, who introduced the North Korean Refugee Act, also moved to introduce a House amendment to an agricultural appropriations bill that would ban food aid to North Korea. These two legislative measures, one aimed at blocking food aid and the other authorizing U.S. adoption of “North Korean refugee orphans,” are the face and obverse of a single policy. In theory, the North Korean Refugee Adoption Act offers an alternative humanitarian response to the problem of North Korean hunger: namely, adoption. Cynically marshaling, however, the rhetoric of child rescue while sanctioning practices that not only intensify North Korea’s food insecurity but also insufficiently safeguard the welfare and interests of the China-born, mixed-ethnic child in question, this legislation seeks to save the individual child while neglecting the people. This makes for a pyrrhic policy of the worst kind. [i] The He-Shan World Fund of the Tides Foundation supported research conducted by Jennifer Kwon-Dobbs and the author of post-famine child welfare on both sides of the North Korea-China border. Any error in this article is the author’s alone. [ii] HR 1464, The North Korea Refugee Adoption Act of 2011. [iii] Author conversation with Sandra Oh. February 20, 2012. [iv] “Francis Chan on the N. Korea Refugee Orphan Adoption Bill.” [v] Liberty in North Korea, 2011 Annual Report, 23. *Christine Hong is an assistant professor of critical Pacific Rim studies at UC Santa Cruz and a fellow with the Korea Policy Institute.

Marking the 59th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement, a ceasefire signed by all major parties to the Korean War (except South Korea), the 7/27 candlelight rally in Seoul at the end of July brought the ongoing reality of the Korean War to light. The organizers behind this year’s 7/27 rally highlighted the militarized implications—in a word, the peacelessness—of the armistice regime, now 59 years old. Envisaged as an interim measure, the July 27, 1953 Armistice Agreement stipulated that within three months of its signing, “a political conference of a higher level of both sides” be convened “to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, [and] the peaceful settlement of the Korean question.” But with no final settlement ever reached, the Armistice Agreement has yet to deliver on its promissory note, and the Korean peninsula remains technically at war. As the longest war in U.S. history—predating America’s ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan by over half a century—the Korean War points to permanent conflict as the discomfiting, long-run truth of U.S. interventionism. The latest flashpoint in the ongoing war is Jeju, an island off the Korean peninsula’s southern coast where villagers are resisting the construction of an intrusive naval base in the village of Gangjeong. Centering their message on the undemocratic nature of the project, the rally participants proclaimed solidarity with the Gangjeong villagers. Reproducing a view of Gureombi, the smooth volcanic rock formation that stretches along the Gangjeong coastline, the banner behind the rally stage evoked an ocean panorama once seen daily by village residents but now obscured behind high construction fences. The lettering on the banner read: “Stay strong, Gangjeong! Let’s secure peace!” Seated near the rally stage was a familiar face at such peace gatherings: Kang Jeong-Koo, a longtime activist-scholar and a steadfast champion of peace. This year may signal the 59th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice Agreement, yet according to South Korean peace activists like Kang, it signals the last year of war on the Korean peninsula. I spoke with Kang recently at the Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK) headquarters in Seoul. For “peace-loving and peace-making organizations,” he said, “the 60th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement” next year will mark “the inaugural year of peace”—much as the 60th birthday, according to Korean custom, is “a milestone that signals the commencement of a new life.” Addressing the U.S. military “pivot” to the region, the nearly 30,000 U.S. forces still stationed below the 38th parallel, and the struggle of Gangjeong villagers against the construction of the naval base, Kang outlined the prospects for Korean peace when war remains the volatile substrate of U.S.-North Korea and intra-Korea relations. Could you say a few words about SPARK—its history, goals, and motivating vision? SPARK was established in 1994. Many Koreans believed that it was high time for us to end the division of Korea, to realize a reunited state, and to get foreign troops out of the Korean peninsula. Never in our history have foreign troops been stationed in the Korean peninsula for as long as U.S. troops have been here—over 65 years. China, during the Tang dynasty, stayed only nine and a half years. During the colonial period, the Japanese military was here for almost forty years. In 1958, the Chinese army withdrew from North Korea. By contrast, that same year, the United States deployed up to 1,300 nuclear bombs here in South Korea, only removing its nuclear arsenal from South Korea in 1991. If we think the South Korean people panicked when North Korea had five or six nuclear bombs, how did the North Korean people feel from 1958 through 1991? There are voices within the U.S. national security establishment who assert that at various historical moments the United States has wanted to withdraw its troops but that South Korea urged them to remain. What is your response to this claim? Who are these experts? When they speak of the Korean people, they mean the ruling groups of South Korea. When South Koreans are surveyed, more than 65 percent want U.S. troops to withdraw from our country. But these ruling groups—political, economic, cultural—are positioned in a relation of virtual serfdom to the United States. In U.S. policy circles, Obama’s stance toward North Korea is often referred to as “strategic patience.” Many people understand this to mean that he has done very little. Can you elaborate on U.S. military strategy toward North Korea? It is not true that Obama has done very little toward North Korea. During the last stage of the Bush administration, President Bush announced a U.S. commitment to realizing a peace agreement between the U.S. and North Korea. The task for the Obama administration was to continue that policy by making progress toward a real peace agreement between the two countries, but Obama failed to move forward on negotiating a peace agreement. In 2004, the Bush administration proposed Conceptual Plan [CONPLAN] 5029 to the Roh Moo-hyun regime. This provocative plan was aimed at “responding” to crises in North Korea, including internal regime change, an internal coup, export of WMD, South Koreans held hostage in North Korean territory, a massive exodus of refugees from North Korea, and even large natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. In the event of such crises, the United States envisioned sending U.S. and South Korean special forces to North Korea to quash the Korean People’s Army and to capture Pyongyang. In short, this was a plan for regime change. Under the Obama administration, the United States has put this plan into practice in war exercises like Ulchi Freedom Guardian. In light of this, who can say that the Obama administration has done little toward North Korea? In March of 2010, the Cheonan incident occurred. The Lee Myung-bak regime followed with sanctions against North Korea and the United States intensified its coalition war exercises with South Korea. That year, the United States held more than 10 times the usual number of coalition war exercises with South Korea. Moreover, the United States used the incident to justify conducting joint war exercises with Japan, the Philippines, Australia, and India. In this transitional period in which the election of the Democratic Party in Japan challenged U.S. domination, the United States was able to reverse the trend in the wake of the Cheonan incident. In the past year, we have heard announcements by Obama and key members of his administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta among them, of a U.S. “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. What dangers does the concentration of U.S. military resources and forces in the Asia-Pacific pose to the people of the region? To reverse its loss of power, the United States has targeted global weak points: the divided Korean peninsula and the Middle East. From the perspective of U.S. foreign policy, conflict in the divided Korean peninsula offers an opportunity for staging a power transition within the arena of global politics. From the perspective of U.S. strategic interests in the region, Korea can serve as a facilitator or a delayer, a weakener or a strengthener. In the greater Asia-Pacific region, we’re seeing the United States attempt to preserve its hegemony by using the resources of allied countries. This reminds me of the Libyan war. In the initial stage of the Libyan crisis, the United States intervened but then withdrew. It did not wish to waste its money. Instead, it wanted France, England, and Italy to underwrite the costs of the intervention. The exact same policy applies to South Korea, Japan, India, and Australia. Say more. How is the policy the same? Because of its own economic problems, the United States wants Korea, Japan, Australia, and India to encircle China with their money, not U.S. money. How does the Gangjeong naval base down in Jeju fit within such a scheme? The naval base at Gangjeong is not against North Korea. If the strategic purpose of the base were truly to check North Korea, the naval base should be located near North Korea. But Jeju is located in the southern part of South Korea. There is no other reason for this base other than to surround and encircle China. And it doesn’t matter that the naval base is, in name, South Korean. The United States, according to its Status of Forces Agreement and its Mutual Defense Treaty with South Korea, can use at whim and at will any South Korean base. The Korean people know that the naval base at Gangjeong is not for the South Korean Navy but for the U.S. Navy. Look at the Pyongtaek base. Pyongtaek is the nearest U.S. military installation to Beijing and Shanghai. It is only one or two hours away by civilian airplane. Firing a missile would take no time at all. So the U.S. military installations that are the closest to China are the Pyongtaek and Gangjeong bases, which the United States wishes to be built at Korean expense. The same is true of Japan, Australia, Singapore, and India. Would you describe this as a neo-Cold War policy toward China? Yes. Can you address the perils of peace advocacy in the current moment? Statistics on the National Security Law indicate that red-baiting and anti-North Korea rhetoric sharply intensified under the Lee Myung-bak regime. In 2010, under Lee, more than 140 Koreans were investigated and prosecuted, whereas in 2006 and 2007 under the Roh Moo-hyun regime, only 35 and 39 Koreans respectively were prosecuted in alleged violation of the National Security Law. As a representative of SPARK, I was interrogated and investigated simply because SPARK sent a letter calling upon the United Nations Security Council to discuss the Cheonan incident with fairness and objectivity. Moreover, our office was raided this year and the Korean CIA, or the National Intelligence Service as it is now called, interrogated some leading members of our organization for allegedly praising and sympathizing with North Korea. There is no doubt that the authorities targeted SPARK, one of the organizations at the forefront of the resistance, to discourage and suppress strong protest against the construction of the naval base at Gangjeong in Jeju. All those who have been investigated and indicted are peace and reunification organizations, like SPARK, and the activists and advocates from these organizations. So far, approximately 300 residents of Gangjeong involved in the resistance to the construction of the naval base have been detained at least once; four of them have been given suspended sentences and four are still in jail. Fines of approximately $400,000 have been levied upon them. The situation has been far worse in the case of non-village peace activists and advocates. In the United States, the Korean War—often called the “Forgotten War”—is almost invisible as a political issue. People don’t know that the war isn’t over, and they’re consequently apathetic. Why should the Korean War be brought to an end? It is high time for the United States to end the Korean War by reaching a peace agreement. Only such an agreement can bring peace and denuclearization to the Korean peninsula. The stationing of U.S. troops on our soil and South Korea’s military alliance with the United States have proved to be the most formidable obstacles to the struggle for peace. It’s for this reason that anti-Americanism class=”bold”understood critically as a people’s struggle for the withdrawal of U.S. troops class=”bold”increases as each day passes. Our country is a sovereign country. We do not want to remain in a subservient or sub-imperial relationship to U.S. military empire. It is both foreseeable and inevitable that in the near future, our people’s power will make it impossible for U.S. troops to remain on our soil. Switching gears, I’d like to ask you to place the issue of North Korean human rights into historical and geopolitical perspective. As you know, the media depicts—and the world largely perceives—North Korea in pathological terms. They see it as a dangerous security threat, a weapons producer and an abuser of human rights. The U.S. North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 was not a law for human rights, but a call for regime change. This legislation, and U.S.-based North Korean human rights advocacy more generally, tellingly neglects the fundamental right to life and peace. In the case of North Korea, we should ask: who is the main violator of the North Korean people’s right to life and peace? By threatening war, the United States endangers the North Korean people’s right to live a life free from war. Next year marks over six decades of unending war on the Korean peninsula. Many progressive South Korean organizations, however, refer to 2013 as “the first year of peace” on the Korean peninsula. What does this mean and how can it be realized? In Korea, the 60th birthday has traditionally been characterized as a milestone that signals the commencement of a new life-one that is qualitatively different from that of the previous 60 years. Life expectancy in the old days was often far shorter than 60 years. Likewise, peace-loving and peace-making organizations are determined to mark next year—the 60th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement—as the inaugural year of peace, and to realize a peace agreement that has been overdue these past six decades. We will arouse public opinion, call upon the main parties to the Armistice, conduct and perform campaigns, mass marches, demonstrations, candlelight rallies, and so forth. For almost six decades, peace has been deferred because of U.S. imperialism. Isn’t it now high time for us to conclude peace through our own efforts? *Christine Hong is an assistant professor of critical Pacific Rim studies at UC Santa Cruz and a fellow with the Korea Policy Institute.

35 years ago, I was born in the middle of one of the most significant developmental projects the world has ever seen. Although I did not realize it at the time, I would witness the relatively quick transformation of South Korea from a poor agricultural society devastated by war to one of the wealthiest economies. I was born in rural Korea, and the benefits of the “development miracle” had not trickled down to our household. Money and food were scarce. Due to economic hardship, I was placed temporarily in an orphanage. However, when my father showed up to claim me back, I had been adopted to a family in a far-off country. My father had no way to get in touch with me and I was too young to tell anyone that I was not an orphan who needed another family. I was not the only one who experienced this sort of displacement. Around 200,000 children from Korea were adopted to families overseas, most of them during the 1970s and ’80s. So, at the age of three, I was forced along with thousands of children to do my part for the Korean development miracle. In order to be a suitable item for adoption my name was changed and my family history erased. Arriving in a foreign land, I had to forget my language, learn a new language, get used to a new diet completely unfamiliar to me, and forget about my life back in Korea. On the surface, I was a success. Within six months I spoke my new language fluently, and very shortly after, I had no tangible memories of Korea whatsoever. Yet the pain lingered all those years. What happened to my family in Korea? Why I was I adopted? My adopted parents having no basis for understanding what I was going through just told me “Korea is a very poor country. Your family was probably poor, and the only reason they gave you up for adoption was probably because they only wanted the best for you”. So the years went on and I continued to accept this story, but the questions and the feeling of loss and pain never went away. I went through more than 12 years of birth search before I found my family. Since then I have been in Korea almost every year to visit family and familiarize myself with Korean society. In getting to know my family’s history, and in digging into Korean economic history, I started to question the conventional narrative of a poor country which had no option than sending children overseas for better lives. Rather, my understanding of overseas adoption has now come to the point where I see adoption as a political choice to address the social problems that proceeded from rapid economic transformation. The fact that the highest numbers of overseas adoption did not occur when Korea was among the poorest countries of the world, but rather during the time of radical and accelerated economic transformation is a factor that deserves further scrutiny. By 1980, when I was sent overseas for adoption, Korea no longer belonged to the poorest countries in the world. By then, overseas adoption had become a very effective tool for population control and limiting social welfare expenses by the government. For my adoption, South Korea received several thousand dollars in good hard foreign currency. Foreign currency was tightly controlled by the state, because in order to industrialize, the government borrowed money from overseas and the loans had to be paid back in U.S. dollars. Thus every dollar earned was vital to the continued ability to industrialize. It is estimated that overseas adoption contributed between $20 and $40 million in hard currency every year in the 1970s and ’80s. At that time, if any Korean company exported even $1 million in goods, they were acknowledged by the government. Also, by sending children of marginalized groups overseas for adoption, the government saved money on social welfare that could instead be reinvested in economic development. Where does this understanding of Korean adoption history lead me to? It leads me to the conviction that adoptees contributed to the economic miracle and therefore we have a place in the history of Korean development and a right and an obligation to be critical of it. Our labor as adoptees contributed to the economy in line with farmers and workers in Korea who toiled in factories and the fields. Or the nurses, miners, farmers, soldiers and construction workers sent overseas to serve the Korean nation’s development agenda. I have now visited Korea many times and I have spoken to many Koreans during these visits. Some Koreans I talk to feel sad for me, but very few truly understand my interpretation of modern history. “You also benefited from your adoption,” they say, “and you don’t know what life was like back then.” True, I do not know what life was like back then in Korea, because I had no other option other than to forget. I did benefit materially from my adoption, but it does not diminish my role in the Korean development project. Many people in Korea also benefited from economic growth, but many also lost. It is the same with adoptees. Some of us were lucky to grow up in good families, but some grew up in hardship. Others dismiss me as Western and elitist when I offer critique of Korean society. They see my critique as one of an outsider. But adoptees were and are to this day contributing to the Korean economy. We are not outsiders. Not only did we earn U.S. dollars and saved the government on social welfare spending through adoption. We continue to contribute to Korean society economically through our multiple trips back to visit our places of birth. We spend our money earned overseas in Korean hotels, restaurants, and so on. Some adoptees decide to return to Korea to live either for a period of time or permanently and they contribute to Korean society as workers, teachers, and professionals in different sectors. Many adoptees first come to visit Korea through government supported “cultural trips.” We are presented with beautified and idealized images of Korean traditions, culture and economic success. We visit temples, palaces and shopping malls. We are told about the difficult past and the glorious present. We are put in high-end hotels and treated to lavish dinners. Representatives from government and adoption agencies greet us and tell us how proud they are of us and sometimes they ask us to once again help Korea by becoming “good ambassadors.” We should be proud of being “global Koreans” and “bridge builders” that can help Korea even more. This kind of “appreciation” can seem flattering, but the palaces, luxury hotels and shopping malls do not fit well with where many of us came from: Marginalized families whose struggles have been silenced by shame, guilt and a lack of political voice. We are not invited to his part of Korea on homeland tours. Imagine if these government tours showed our real history? Then they would take us to orphanages, factory floors, single mothers, and dilapidated neighborhoods and villages. In this way for many of us, our history is still hidden from us. Things have changed much since we were born. Korea has become richer, partly due to our contribution, but today’s Korea remains rife with economic inequalities, social stigmatization, and racism. Many of the structural injustices that led to our adoptions, are still alive and well in South Korea. Single women are still encouraged to give up their children for adoption and live in shame and silence. Migrant workers who come to this country to work and support their families back home are treated with disrespect and racism. Mixed race children are being treated as second-class citizens. The rich are getting richer and the majority is getting poorer. In fact, South Korea has one of the highest levels of income inequality among all OECD countries and the lowest spending on social welfare. I no longer accept people’s claim that I am an outsider. We were one of many groups who had to sacrifice in the name of industrialization, and we were certainly too young to realize our sacrifice, or to make ourselves heard, but we have grown up and we have a voice now. For a long time, I was focused mostly on adoption issues, but adoption justice is not an isolated struggle. It is connected to all the other struggles of marginalized groups in this country. As an adoptee, who now has a better understanding of how my adoption history relates to Korean development, my duty to Korea is to get involved with progressive movements working for a more just and equitable society. Many adoptees are doing the same. They are actively engaged in different kinds of political activism such as supporting single mothers, migrant workers, and adoptee justice. Hopefully adoptees will continue their involvement with other groups working for justice and equality in Korea. But it is a two-way exchange. Progressive Koreans also have to recognize our place in Korean society and history. We may be outsiders in terms of language and culture, but our place in history as laborers for Korean development should be acknowledged. Hopefully this can lead to new alliances, new networks of solidarity and ultimately a more just society for all. *Anders Riel Müller is a Ph.D. fellow in International Development Studies at Roskilde University in Denmark and the Danish Institute for International Studies. His dissertation work focuses on South Korea’s modern development from the perspective of the agricultural sector. He is a research fellow with Food First and Korea Policy Institute and an advisor to the Nordic Center for Renewable Energy. Prior to his Ph.D., Anders worked for almost a decade on rural development, renewable energy and climate change issues and co-founded two non-profit organizations. He currently splits his life between Denmark and Korea.

The U.S.-South Korean military alliance is undergoing a profound transformation. At the 44th Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), held in Washington, DC in October 2012, South Korea and the United States laid much of the foundation for future developments. In recent years, U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak set aside diplomatic initiatives with North Korea, and increasingly emphasized intimidation through military might. That tendency was reinforced in the SCM. The 2012 SCM followed in the immediate wake of the decision by the United States to grant South Korea an exemption under the Missile Technology Control Regime, allowing Seoul to build ballistic missiles that can strike any part of North Korea. One of the main topics discussed at the SCM was the transition of wartime operational control (OPCON) from the U.S. to South Korea. Currently, in the event of war South Korean troops would operate under U.S. command. The transfer to South Korea of control over its own armed forces during wartime is scheduled to occur in 2015, and in the SCM both sides laid plans for joint biannual meetings to evaluate progress toward that goal.1 Never a popular concept in the U.S. military or among conservative forces in South Korea, it remains to be seen how much autonomy the South Korean military will eventually be granted, once details of the plan have been finalized. The structure of the new combined command system has yet to be devised, but one security analyst points out that “the U.S. has major crucial military assets including intelligence-gathering capabilities, while Seoul still lacks a full range of assets. Under these circumstances, although Seoul will formally maintain the command authority, it will actually be limited, or the U.S. may continue to exert its military leadership. After all, the U.S. military has never been under the control of any foreign commanders in any major wars.”2 At the SCM, the United States proposed that South Korea delay talks on the new combined command until after the new South Korean administration takes office in February 2013.3 That suggestion may have been prompted by an indication by a New Frontier Party official that an electoral win by conservative forces could result in the OPCON transfer being renegotiated, or in essence, terminated.4 If a former commander of the U.S. 7th Air Force in Korea is to be believed, the new combined command will differ little from the current arrangement. “The air component will be the only capability that remains separate,” explains retired Lt. General Stephen G. Wood. “It will continue to be run as it is today — by a U.S. commander. However, the U.S. commander will work very closely with the combatant commander, who will likely be a South Korean senior army officer.”5 Supplanting Diplomacy with Deterrence The salient outcome of the 2012 SCM is a more militarized approach to security. Four years ago, there was a noticeable nod to diplomacy in the 2008 SCM Joint Communiqué, in which the Six Party Talks were referred to as having “contributed to peace and stability.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and South Korean Minister of Defense Lee Sang-hee “shared the view that inter-Korean dialogue should resume expeditiously in order to address pending issues of mutual concern.”6 Such language is entirely absent in the 2012 SCM Joint Communiqué, which reflects the hardline position of Obama and Lee towards North Korea. The watchword now is “deterrence,” and the relationship with North Korea is seen solely in terms of military confrontation. At the 2012 SCM, the United States committed to “strengthen extended deterrence…using the full range of military capabilities, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional strike, and missile defense capabilities.” Both sides adopted the concept of “tailored deterrence,”7 which the South Korean military regards as the most important development to come out of the SCM. According to an official in South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense, “The tailored deterrence strategy is a concept which ultimately means that North Korea’s nuclear, chemical, biological weapons, ballistic missiles, mobile vehicle launchers (known as TELs) will be struck during contingencies using ROK [Republic of Korea] and U.S. conventional forces, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella and precision guided weapons, and our command and control equipment, and this strategy will be applied in both peacetime and wartime.”8 It is those last four words that are particularly troubling. The extended deterrence plan envisions first strike military force against North Korea in certain scenarios, even when both Koreas are at peace. This policy seriously misjudges the North Koreans, who are unlikely to acquiesce in bombardment without fighting back, and risks lighting a conflagration. In order to perfect the plan, the United States and South Korea will hold annual exercises to simulate the implementation of tailored deterrence. One of the more notable aspects of the plan is that it calls for joint U.S. and South Korean military operations against North Korea in a wide variety of situations. Even minor incidents could involve the United States. Triggering Military Action North Korean threats are defined in four categories: full-scale conventional war, local provocations, asymmetrical, and “new” types. Under tailored deterrence, each threat will receive a specific military response appropriate to its level. For example, an operation by a North Korean submarine would be targeted by anti-submarine torpedoes and ship-to-surface missiles. The tailored deterrence strategy is expected to be fully mapped out by 2014.9 One unpredictable aspect of seeing every problem in terms of a military solution is that events are not entirely under South Korean and American control. North Korea would be an actor, too, and its response could in turn trigger more widespread attacks by South Korean and U.S. forces, which in turn might bring a more robust North Korean reaction. A minor incident could set off a chain reaction that would lead to a more serious armed conflict than anticipated. Consider the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan. South Korea and the United States accused North Korea of deliberately torpedoing the Cheonan, yet the preponderance of evidence points to an accidental sinking due to hitting a South Korean mine as a more probable cause.10 Had tailored deterrence been in place at the time, any North Korean submarine that was at sea at the time would have been targeted and sunk, and submarine bases may have been bombed as well. Instead of a tragedy in which 46 sailors lost their lives due to an unfortunate accident, many thousands could have been willfully killed. As a key component in the tailored defense plan, South Korea and the United States agreed to cooperate in establishing what they termed a “kill chain,” which is to be an integrated system for tracking and striking North Korean missile sites.11 According to American and South Korean officials, the kill chain will enable them to destroy North Korean missile sites within 30 minutes of detection. The kill chain is in essence a preemptive attack, destroying North Korean missiles before they can be launched. If either the United States or South Korea decides that North Korean missiles may be fired, a strike is launched. The concept presupposes that North Korean intent can be determined with absolute assurance based on the disposition of its missiles. It could even conceivably happen that actual North Korean intent would not matter much to the United States or South Korea if they felt intent on inflicting punishment over some issue. South Korea and the United States want to move forward quickly, and the SCM called for the kill chain system to be implemented by 2015.12 The kill chain envisions the capability of not only hitting North Korean missiles that are perceived to have been deployed in a threatening manner. Strikes could potentially be launched before North Korean missiles are even deployed in the first place. South Korea plans to purchase 60 advanced warplanes, most likely from the United States. According to Lt. General Jan-Marc Jouas, Deputy Commander of the United Nations Command Korea, the F-22 and F-35 warplanes under consideration have “an inherent ISR [Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance] capability that we can exploit. And as our sensors join together to form a common picture, hopefully that would integrate with the ground and naval components’ capabilities, so that we can rapidly target the developing threats before they are in position to employ.”13 The kill chain is intended to operate as a partnership, relying on U.S. satellites and drones to detect North Korean missiles on mobile launch pads, after which South Korean missiles and warplanes would strike the missiles on their launch systems.14 The advanced warplanes that South Korea intends to purchase will, according to the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, allow it “to acquire the capabilities required to covertly infiltrate into North Korean territory and to carry out precision strikes in order to neutralize the enemy’s key nuclear facilities during contingencies.” South Korea is further beefing up its arsenal through the planned purchase of air-to-surface missiles capable of penetrating North Korean underground facilities. There is also a naval base undergoing construction on Jeju Island, which the Ministry argues “will support the strengthening of maritime control and protect sea routes.”15 Advocates for Aggression The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is ranked by the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania as the number one think tank in the category of security and international affairs, and among the top ten think tanks “with the greatest impact on public policy (global),” based on input from more than one thousand experts and officials.16 According to the CSIS, the organization “provides strategic insights and bipartisan solutions to decision makers in government,” and others. Policies advocated by the CSIS tend to find receptive ears in Washington. In 2011, the CSIS published a report in which it espoused a more aggressive approach to North Korea. It is interesting to note how closely the Center’s proposals align with the policies agreed upon at the 2012 SCM. The CSIS argued that South Korean and American military responses to North Korea should be coordinated. “Because South Korea’s tepid response to North Korean provocations can aggravate a situation, if not lead to further provocation,” the CSIS stated, “South Korea and the United States should take strong punitive measures against the North.” The report envisions two levels of response: 1) deterrence — “repelling North Korea’s attack,” and 2) punishment — “striking some of North Korea’s key military targets and destroying the enemy’s will to fight, even at the risk of escalating the conflict.” The report admits that the punishment scenario “could quickly escalate the conflict and trigger all-out war, depending on North Korea’s reaction.”17 But not to worry, in answer to that concern it is recommended that the new combined command classify red lines of North Korean behavior in various categories, beyond which the appropriate military action should be taken. The report points out that the South Korean response to the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island “failed to deliver a satisfactory outcome.” Instead, more desirable results could be achieved “through inflicting significant damage on the North, utilizing the superior combined forces of the Republic of Korea and the United States.” Such a response would also offer the advantage of helping to “limit China’s diplomatic influence in the affairs of the Korean peninsula.”18 China, next-door neighbor to the Korean Peninsula, is regarded as lacking any legitimate basis for diplomatic influence, whereas the United States, some 6,000 miles away, has the natural right to hold diplomatic and military sway over the region. At the 2012 SCM, the two sides determined that plans would be completed within a few months on developing a counter-provocation plan aimed at North Korea. “We are currently discussing with the U.S. on the details of what kind of U.S. forces will be employed and when these forces will be employed during a North Korean provocation,” reported a South Korean Ministry of National Defense official.19 At the press conference that followed the end of the 2012 SCM, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned that “the kind of behavior that we’ve seen in the past [from North Korea] is not the kind of behavior that we will tolerate in the present or in the future.” South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan Jin noted that the United States had committed to “rapidly providing overwhelming reinforcement in the event of contingencies.”20 Military Alliance Goes Global On a wider scale, South Korea’s military is steadily being integrated into U.S. and NATO geopolitical and military initiatives. According to U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the defense alliance with South Korea “is growing into a much broader and more comprehensive global alliance.”21 Recently, NATO and South Korea agreed to develop an individual partnership and cooperation program. “We have been increasing cooperation with South Korea over the last years,” announced NATO official Dick Brengelmann. “We want to make sure that we have the same level of interoperability with all partners in the future.” South Korea currently has soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and Somalia in support of NATO operations, and Brengelmann is “optimistic that more can be done in the future.”22 At the 2012 SCM, the United States and South Korea signed an agreement on “military space cooperation,” which U.S. military officials deem an important component in their Asia-Pacific regional plans.23 There will be an exchange of personnel in support of the program, including the sending of South Korean officers to attend training at the U.S. Air Force Space Command.24 Some military experts have pointed out that the agreement on military space cooperation could be intended to support wider aims in Asia. “It is too much expectation if you believe that the U.S. would work out its military strategy to only defend South Korea,” observed Lee Choon-kun, a security analyst at the Korea Economic Research Institute. “The U.S. is projecting a global power with a global strategy.”25 The United States is strongly interested in having South Korea join its missile defense system, and this was a topic of extensive discussion at the SCM. South Korean military officials insist that their missile defense plans are separate from the U.S. system, but American officials are persistent. There have long been bilateral discussions on South Korean cooperation, and fairly recently South Korea signed a Terms of Reference and Agreement with the United States that gave the go-ahead on a ballistic missile defense program analysis.26 While the South Korean and U.S. missile defense systems “are clearly different,” an official in South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense recently commented, “there could be some areas where South Korea contributes in a limited way to the U.S.-led missile defense system.”27 The Pentagon commissioned a study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies that was submitted to Congress, in which the introduction of U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot PAC-3 missile systems into South Korea was recommended. The United States has already installed an X-Band radar system in Japan, capable of operating in coordination with THAAD launchers.28 According to Pentagon officials, the Obama Administration regards its expansion of missile defense into Asia as a counter to both North Korea and China.29 Perhaps not coincidentally, South Korea plans to replace its Patriot PAC-2 missiles with the PAC-3 model. The accuracy of the PAC-3 is reported to be more than twice as high as its predecessor. More importantly, the PAC-2 is unsuited for integration into the U.S. anti-missile system, designed as it was to shoot down warplanes and helicopters, whereas the PAC-3 has the capability of hitting ballistic missiles. The PAC-3, however, is not very effective against aircraft and air-to-surface and cruise missiles.30 If South Korea feels more threatened by North Korean ballistic missiles than it does from low-flying missiles and aircraft, then the upgrade makes sense in terms of self-defense. But if that is not the case, then integration into the U.S. missile defense system would appear to be the driving motivation for the decision to convert to the PAC-3. At the 2012 SCM, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan Jin promised American military officials that there would be a “push” to build the PAC-3 system. Military officials intend for the PAC-3 and kill chain systems to be established in close coordination with each other.31 Are American military officials so adamant about South Korea building a PAC-3 system solely to defend against missiles from the North? Or, more likely, is the PAC-3 so important to them because of its potential utility in the U.S. missile defense system? For its part, the United States plans to modify the role of the U.S. 8th Army, stationed in South Korea. By 2017, the 8th Army will be made a field army, meaning that it can command other U.S. and multinational forces. Although its main focus will continue to be on the Korean Peninsula, its new role will become regional, allowing it to send soldiers from South Korea to any part of the globe.32 South Korea can serve as a launching pad for intervention by U.S. forces into other nations. Clearly, the South Korean strategic mission is becoming ever more intertwined with that of the United States, raising the prospect of greater involvement in U.S./NATO wars and interventions. American officials will not relent in their attempts to impel South Korea to join the U.S. missile defense system. In doing so, South Korea would thereby support the encirclement and containment of China, potentially straining relations between the two nations. More worrisome is the complete rejection of diplomacy as an appropriate mode of inter-Korean relations. By adopting a policy of military confrontation with the North, the United States and South Korea are significantly increasing the prospect for armed conflict, whether limited or not, and it is only the Korean people, north and south, who would pay the price if plans go awry. The militaristic policies emanating from the 2012 SCM are set in motion, and it will be difficult to reverse course. It is to be hoped that the new South Korean president has the inclination and the ability to do so, placing the needs of the Korean people ahead of those who serve corporate-military interests. *Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit. Kim Eun-jung, “S. Korea, U.S. Reaffirm 2015 Deadline for Wartime Operation Control Transition,” Yonhap, October 23, 2012. Song Sang-ho, “Seoul May Find Military Command Limited as U.S. Holds Key Assets,” Korea Herald, October 25, 2012. “US Requests Delay in Talks on New Joint Military Command,” Dong-A Ilbo, November 8, 2012. Lee Tae-hoon, “ROK to Take Back Wartime Control in 2015 as Planned,” Korea Times, October 24, 2012. “South Korean Defense Re-considered: Preparing for 2015,” Second Line of Defense, August 28, 2012. Joint Communiqué: the 40th U.S.-ROK Security Consultative Meeting, October 17, 2008. Joint Communiqué: the 44th U.S.-ROK Security Consultative Meeting, October 24, 2012. Kim Bum Ryun, “Establish a Comprehensive Strategic Alliance in Preparation of NK Threats,” ROK Ministry of National Defense, October 26, 2012. “Security Consultative Meeting,” Korean Broadcasting System, October 28, 2012. http://www.globalresearch.ca/rising-tensions-on-the-korean-peninsula-the-sinking-of-the-cheonan-reviewing-the-evidence/20367 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cheonan-incident-pretext-for-threatening-north-korea/22274 “Kim Jong-un a Loose Cannon, Says USFK Chief,” Chosun Ilbo, October 25, 2012. “New Command Structure,” Korea Times, October 25, 2012. “Meeting the Korean Defense Challenge: the View from the 7th Air Force,” Second Line of Defense, August 3, 2012. Italic emphasis in quotation is mine. Kim Hee-jin and Jeong Yong-soo, “Korea, U.S. Agree on More Missile Defense,” JoongAng Ilbo, October 26, 2012. Kim Byung Ryoon, “Acquisition of Capabilities in Preparation of North Korean Threats and OPCON Transfer,” ROK Ministry of National Defense, November 15, 2012. “2011 Global Go To Think Tank Index Rankings”

North Korea announced yesterday that it had successfully placed a satellite into orbit atop its three-stage Unha rocket. “The launch of the second version of our Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite from the Sohae Space Centre … on December 12 was successful,” North Korea’s news agency, KCNA, reported. “The satellite has entered the orbit as planned,” it added. Efforts to launch a satellite last April failed when the rocket exploded moments after lift-off. This time, however, both South Korea and Japan confirmed that all three stages from today’s launch separated successfully, and a U.S. military official acknowledged that “[i]nitial indications are that the missile deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit.” The timing of the launch coincides with the one-year anniversary of the death of North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, who passed away on December 17, 2011. The launch also falls within the centennial of the birth of North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung, and is expected to help consolidate the rule of the new leader, Kim Jong Un. But the launch may also be in response partly to an agreement by the United States last month which allows South Korea to build ballistic missiles with a range of 800 meters, allowing it to target all of North Korea’s territory. South Korean armed forces, which fall under U.S. military command, were formerly limited to missiles with a range of 300 meters. Moreover, North and South Korea are both engaged in developing satellite launch capability, with South Korea announcing postponement of its third attempt last month, after two previous failures. While North Korea claims its intentions have been to place a satellite in orbit, other countries allege that its space program is a thinly veiled attempt to develop long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads as far as the shores of the United States. The Six Party denuclearization talks between North Korea, South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, and Russia broke down five years ago when the outgoing Bush administration demanded intrusive inspections of North Korea’s nuclear facilities, which North Korea considered a violation of its sovereignty, and when the incoming administration of South Korean President Lee Myung Bak cut off aid to North Korea in an effort to pressure it into giving up its nuclear weapons. Although an international response to North Korea’s launch yesterday has yet to take shape, approaches to restraining North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons generally divide along neo-Cold War lines with the United States, South Korea, and Japan typically seeking punitive sanctions against North Korea, and China urging reconciliation. The United States, which maintains sophisticated satellite surveillance of North Korea, called today’s launch “highly provocative,” Japan called it “extremely regrettable,” and South Korea convened an emergency security meeting in Seoul. While urging North Korea to “suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program,” China also called for “the resumption of the long stalled six party talks.” It advised that “[i]n international relations, as in life, the best way to make an enemy of a country is to treat it like one.” As China’s official news agency, Xinhua stated, “This rule of thumb is also true with making friends.” Underlying regional responses to North Korea’s successful launch is the irresolution of the Korean War. North Korea remains locked in the oldest adversarial relationship of the Cold War with the U.S. and its allies. Nearly 60 years old, the 1953 armistice agreement has yet to be replaced with a peace treaty. Although it has regularly pressed the United States for a peace treaty to end the Korean War, North Korea has resisted demands by the U.S. and South Korea to disarm unilaterally in the absence of formal agreements to guarantee its security, and it continues to develop nuclear weapons, justifying them as a defensive measure. South Korea and Japan remain under the nuclear umbrella of the U.S, and the region continues to be one of the most heavily militarized in the world. *Paul Liem is Board Chairperson of the Korea Policy Institute.

On December 19, South Korean citizens will go to the polls to elect their next president. Like the United States, South Korea is suffering from economic stagnation, and similar to the U.S. presidential debates, the economy is overshadowing national security and other critical issues. Official campaigning for South Korea’s presidential election began on November 27, and the two leading candidates have actively put forth their policy platforms and political visions. Missing from the discussions, however, are concrete policy plans to address North-South relations and wider East Asian stability. While both candidates have addressed the contentious Northern Limit Line (NLL), their coverage has been restricted to political attacks on the current Lee Myung-Bak administration, rather than offering real solutions to prevent clashes in the West Sea or a new North Korea policy. The conservative New Frontier Party candidate Park Geun-hye has spoken about trust-building with North Korea, yet her stated policy remains very similar to the no-engagement stance taken by the current Lee Myung-bak administration. The liberal Democratic Unity Party candidate, Moon Jae-in, on the other hand, has spoken extensively about the need to return to a pro-engagement Sunshine Policy, favoring North-South co-existence and cooperation. While this policy direction is, on the surface, a refreshing change from Lee Myung-bak’s, it overlooks the significant flaws of the Sunshine Policy, prioritizing regional capitalist development while leaving political and security issues under U.S. control. The policies proposed by both presidential hopefuls are fundamentally inadequate. The underlying political and security issues — such as increasing U.S. military power in the region and North Korea’s nuclear program — must be addressed before real and lasting changes in North-South relations can take place. Anything but Lee It is widely recognized that President Lee’s North Korea policy, known as “3000 Plan for Denuclearization and Opening of North Korea,” has failed to address North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Instead, his approach has simply put North-South relations on a downhill trajectory. Even a recent South Korean government think tank report referred to Lee’s policy as having “done nothing more than provide grounds for South Korea’s ridicule.”1 Park Geun-hye, the presidential candidate of Lee Myung-bak’s own New Frontier Party, has made a concerted effort to distance herself from the North Korea policies of President Lee and the two preceding liberal administrations. “All past North Korea policies, whether based on hard principles or tolerance,” Park says, “have failed to bring about meaningful change in North Korean society.”2 The Democratic Unity Party presidential nominee Moon Jae-in is even harsher in his criticism of Lee’s North Korea policies: “President Lee has retarded South-North relations through his lack of response to North Korea.”3 Park Geun-hye: More of the Same To improve North-South  relations and unification efforts,  Park Geun-hye proposes a  “revival   and  development  of  the   ‘Ethnic-National   Community   Unification   Proposal'” ( 4 This reunification proposal calls for mutual trust through reconciliation, cooperation and political integration based on the principle of ‘first peace, then peaceful unification.’ With elements similar to the process proposed by the Sunshine Policy (discussed below), Park’s initiative differs in its emphasis on mistrust and animosity between South and North Korea, which makes Park’s policy less of a departure from Lee Myung-bak’s, but rather an extension of it. Park’s National Community Unification Proposal seeks to imitate Europe’s integration process in the aftermath of World War II. Specifically, Park’s Seoul Process mimics the Helsinki Process, set in motion by the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which aimed to bring an end to the Cold War and establish a new order in Europe. The theory behind the Helsinki Process was that cooperation in the areas of culture and economics would lead to political integration. This theory held that increased technical cooperation would allow for a new authority or system to govern exchanges, enabling more diverse areas of engagement to take root. The actual experience of European integration was very different, however, which raises several questions about the feasibility of Park’s unification proposal for Korea. The first question is whether social-cultural and economic integration necessarily lead to political integration. In the 1950s, transnational cooperation regimes such as the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Nuclear Energy Agency were established — important cornerstones to building a European community. These economic and technical exchanges, however, did not automatically extend to cooperation in politics and security, largely due to the Cold War and issues surrounding national security. Europe’s political integration was less the result of economic, social-cultural and technical cooperation, and more due to agreements between countries that addressed specific foreign policy and security issues. In the case of Europe, while cooperation in these areas was important, it was not strong enough to reduce the countervailing individual national political and security interests. A separate process was in fact needed. The same may be said for the Korean Peninsula, where cooperation around culture and economics has failed to create the preconditions for political reconciliation. Furthermore, Park’s National Community Unification Proposal fails to delineate the conditions necessary to transition from the stage of reconciliation and compromise to a North-South coalition or national unification. Secondly, how is the ‘national community’ ( Lastly, Park has repeatedly emphasized the importance of a trust-building process with North Korea. From her perspective, a trust-based relationship must be grounded in an adherence to international standards and to promises North Korea has made with South Korea and the international community. In her view, no past South Korean North Korea policy — tolerant or hard line — had any success. As such, she asserts the need for a trust-building process wherein these promises are reaffirmed and put into practice before any meaningful change can occur. For example, Park believes that, “firm trust between South and North must be established before economic cooperation is strengthened” and has pledged “not to request additional funding in this area other than for humanitarian aid.”5 In other words, a Park administration will not engage with North Korea unless Pyongyang fulfills conditions imposed by the United States, such as dismantling its nuclear weapons and missile programs. It also means that South Korea will not engage North Korea unless Seoul receives an apology from Pyongyang for the Cheonan and Yeonpyeongdo incidents. This stance willfully disregards Washington’s own failure to keep its promises to North Korea in the area of security assurances. Park’s position maintains the status quo; it does not seek a new relationship with North Korea. Her approach denies North Korea the opportunity to change its approach and ignores Pyongyang’s concerns about the threats posed by the U.S.-South Korea military alliance. Moon Jae-in: All About Economics “Peace is nothing other than the economy” is the Moon Jae-In’s slogan for addressing North-South relations. The Democratic Unity Party presidential candidate sees North-South relations as being closely tied to South Korean economic interests. Moon often refers to the Inter-Korean Economic Union, originally proposed by Roh Moo-Hyun, and pledges to sign an Inter-Korean Comprehensive Economic Agreement that promotes safe investment and free trade between North and South Korea. He wants to transform the Korean peninsula into a common market with a “population of 80,000,000 and a national per capita income of USD $30,000.”6 To achieve this economic union, Moon says will he implement a five-year plan of the most effective economic activities stipulated in the 2007 October 4 Declaration, signed between Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Jong-il during the second inter-Korea summit. Moon’s plan includes the creation of a Korean Peninsula Infrastructure Development Organization to attract foreign investment. It also includes the formation of an East Sea Rim economic zone that runs from Busan to Ulsan, Pohang, Samcheok, Donghae, through North Korea’s eastern seaboard of Rajin-Sonbong, and onto Russia and China. He wants to develop a West Sea Rim economic zone spanning from Jeju Island through the Jeolla region, the Chungjeong region, Incheon, Gyeonggi, Haeju, Nampo, Hwanggeumpyeong and Sinuiju and eastern China. Moon views these economic zones as the foundation for a “Northeast Asia Cooperation Growth Belt” — a massive market with a population of 600 million. Yet his plan fails to outline the future stability of North-South economic cooperation. While Moon proposes to establish an Inter-Korean Economic Agreement, even he admits that the failure of North-South economic cooperation is not for lack of institutions and structures, but rather due to a volatile political situation. Moon believes the implementation of several progressive provisions found within the October Declaration is all that is needed, but his plan fails to address how inter-Korea economic cooperation will become viable. Moon’s vision of a Northeast Asia Cooperation Growth Belt is only possible if a stable economic relationship with North Korea is first established. At the very least, foreign investors would need a guarantee that they could reliably conduct business with North Korea, specifically companies and financial institutions. This is impossible without lifting the battery of international economic sanctions imposed on North Korea. Lastly, Moon fails to address the question of whether the infrastructure investment in North Korea is even possible. Moon says he will establish a Korean Peninsula Infrastructure Development Organization to attract foreign investment, yet such investment in infrastructure requires considerable capital, upon which returns take a long time to appear. It is unlikely that investors will be eager to funnel capital into a country when transactions could be cut off at any time. In a meeting with Jang Seong-taek, Chief of the North Korean Workers Party’s Central Administrative Department, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao stated that in order to revive its economy, North Korea would need to make systemic changes, such as revising laws and applying market principles to real estate and taxation. Unless these conditions are met, it is unlikely that foreign investors will find North Korea an attractive foreign investment. Limits of the Sunshine Policy Moon’s North Korea policy follows the same logic of the Sunshine Policy promoted by the late former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung. The Sunshine Policy, for all of its contributions to promoting peaceful relations and reconciliation, however, has major shortcomings and requires a different approach to bring about lasting change on the Korean Peninsula. As a presidential candidate in 1995, Kim Dae-jung put forth a unification proposal in three stages: 1) South-North union, 2) federal unification and, 3) complete unification. The first two stages were to be achieved through economic integration, and the third stage, economic integration, would be expanded to political integration, also made in Park Geun-hye’s unification proposal. The Sunshine Policy, however, at least identified the conditions needed to qualitatively transform the two Koreas from cultural-economic integration to political. These conditions involved North Korea’s liberalization, including the introduction of a market economy, a multi-party system and free elections. In other words, Kim Dae-jung’s policy introduced a process to induce North Korea’s economic liberalization and political reform, including free trade between the two Koreas, where North Korea would shift to a labor-intensive, low value-added manufacturing base and export processing zone, and be incorporated as a subordinate partner of the South Korean economy. In accordance with this vision, Kim Dae-jung and his successor Roh Moo-hyun pursued inter-Korea economic cooperation. While South Korea handled economic relations, the United States managed political dealings with North Korea and military issues pertinent to the Korean Peninsula. The outcome was that the implementation of the Sunshine Policy became completely tied to the Clinton administration’s Perry Process, which sought, but did not achieve, to ultimately eradicate North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Under the Perry Process, the United States actively supported North-South economic exchange and the reunion of separated families, but refused to deal with the question of improving North-South relations through U.S.-North Korea negotiations. The issues raised by North Korea since the 1980s — areas central to improving tensions on the Korean Peninsula — were seen to fall outside the scope of North-South relations and left entirely to fall under U.S. jurisdiction. These issues included the withdrawal of U.S. military forces (particularly nuclear weapons), North-South arms reductions, and a system for guaranteeing peace on the Peninsula (a non-aggression pact between South and North Korea, a peace treaty between the United States and North Korea). Improvements in North-South relations became completely separate from U.S.-North Korea negotiations. In contrast to Lee Myung-bak’s closed-door policies, the Sunshine Policy expanded dialogue and exchange to provide a relative sense of security. It also brought about new tensions to inter-Korea relations by pushing the economic re-organization of North Korean society under the leadership of South Korean capital on the one hand, and strengthening the U.S.-South Korea military alliance on the other. In other words, a green light was offered, approving U.S. hegemony over the Korean Peninsula and the entire East Asian region. At the same, while seeking a path towards North Korea’s economic integration, the Sunshine Policy was in fact completely inadequate and unable to eliminate the fundamental reasons for continued instability on the Korean Peninsula.7 Improving North-South relations is important and requires solutions to the political problems that inhibit a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. Without addressing the issue that the United States exercises ultimate control over South Korea’s military and has significant influence over its political matters, progress in inter-Korean cooperation and exchange can at any moment be quashed by U.S. interests. The Crux of the Problem The two leading South Korean presidential candidates have failed to address the heart of tensions on the Korean peninsula. These include U.S. policy regarding the Korean peninsula and North Korea’s economic troubles. Pyongyang is ultimately looking for a security guarantee. Without an end to Washington’s policy and threat of a pre-emptive strike, advances in inter-Korea economic cooperation remain fragile. No proposal for unification is viable unless it contains a solution to these fundamental political problems. Second, North Korea justifies its nuclear weapons program as a means of self-defense in the face of a U.S. military threat and South Korea’s superior conventional weapons arsenal. These critical security issues must be addressed: the presence of 37,500 U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula, South Korea’s coverage under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and the joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises and offensive operation plans. Further, a plan for North-South (or South/U.S. and North/China) mutual arms reductions must be put into place if progress in the area of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is to be made. A solution to the North Korea nuclear problem is sorely needed. North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons threatens the equilibrium in East Asia. Furthermore, the United States has responded to North Korea’s alleged sinking of the Cheonan in 2010 and the attack on Yeonpyeong Island in 2011 by carrying out military exercises with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier dispatched to waters near the Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s military provocations have brought about more aggressive U.S. military interventions, which naturally troubles China. North Korea has upped the ante. It changed its Constitution to designate itself as a nuclear state, publicized its uranium enrichment facilities, and continues its nuclear weapons program. As North Korea becomes a nuclear power, the possibility of a regional conflict involving the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and North Korea becomes greater. The Obama administration’s ‘Asia pivot’, which includes significant U.S. military deployment to the region, is increasing tensions with China, while Beijing is using its influence over North Korea as a means to reduce Washington’s influence and strengthen its own position. Less powerful countries that hope to see an end to U.S. hegemony are strengthening their relationships with China. The United States, which hopes to maintain control in East Asia, will likely respond to this aggressively, leading to increased tensions in the region with negative consequences for the Korean Peninsula. Unfortunately, neither of the two leading South Korean presidential candidates has seriously addressed these critical issues, which threaten peace and stability for the Korean people and the region. While much hinges upon who is elected on December 19, it will take a peoples’ movement—in the United States and Korea—to offer alternatives and build a transnational struggled to find lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. *Suyeol is a Policy Director and the Anti-war Team Leader for People’s Solidarity for Social Progress (PSSP) in South Korea. Sin Beom-cheol, “The Prospect for North Korean Politics after the Dismissal of Lee Yeong-ho and Policy Implications,” Analysis of Main International Issues, Institute for Foreign Relations and Security, October 2012. “[Elections Pledge] Opening a new Era for the Korean Peninsula through Trust-based Foreign Relations,” Park Geun-hye Official Election Website. “Moon Jae-in, ‘The North Korea Nuclear Problem was caught in a Viscous Cycle during the Lee Myung-bak Administration,” Yonhap News, 26 October 2012. Pak Jong-cheol, et. al., “A New Approach to and Direction for the National Community Unification Proposal,” Korean Institute for National Unification, 2010. National Elections Commission, “Policy and Election Pledges.” “The Door to Peace and Harmonious Coexistence,” Moon Jae-in Official Elections Website.

With Obama’s reelection in November, we avoided the worst possible outcome, a catastrophic return to the neoconservative unilateralist militarism of the Bush II years. There will be change in the composition of the cabinet, but as President Obama signaled with his first post-election visit being to Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia, the militarist and economic “Pivot” to Asia and the Pacific will remain Washington’s highest foreign policy priority. The immediate dangers of this approach were all too visible in September and October when, encouraged by increased U.S. military commitment, Tokyo’s right-wing governor, Shintaro Ishihara, sparked the Diaoyu/Senkaku island crisis that brought Japan and China to the brink of war, and he is no friend to Korea. To understand the Obama Pivot, it may be helpful to know what senior Obama officials understood their inheritance from the Bush administration to be and how they have sought to build on that legacy. Jeffrey Bader, who served as Obama’s senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council, recently published a self-serving memoir.1 He reminds us that, from 2000 onward, President George W. Bush and company, promising to “diversify” U.S. Asia-Pacific military bases, reduced their concentration in Northeast Asia in order to distribute them more widely along China’s periphery. Yet, with the September 11 Al Qaeda attacks, Bush and Cheney turned their focus away from containing China to their wars in Central Asia and the Middle East. Their goal was not only to prevent future terrorist attacks, but also to reconsolidate U.S. dominance in these oil-rich regions as they imposed what Cheney termed “the arrangement [for] the 21st century.”2 Although the Bush administration extended its so-called “war on terror” to Indonesia, the Philippines, and southern Thailand, it otherwise largely neglected Asia and the Pacific. This opened the way for growing Chinese influence, including the acceleration of the integration of ASEAN and other Asian nations into China’s surging economic orbit. Obama’s Asia policies have been largely designed to compensate for China’s rise. Bader enumerates the Administration’s priorities as follows: “Devote a higher priority to the Asia-Pacific Region. React in a balanced way to the rise of China. Strengthen alliances and develop new partnerships. Expand the overall U.S. presence in the Western Pacific and maintain its forward regional deployment…and join regional institutions,” which is to say return to a multilateral, rather than unilateral, enforcement of Empire.3 With the Pivot, the Obama administration has signaled its determination to reinforce its overwhelming military superiority in order “to beat back any Chinese bid for hegemony in the Asia-Pacific,” even at the expense of risking a new Cold War. As General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it, “the U.S. military may be obliged to overtly confront China just as it faced down the Soviet Union.”4 As we enter this era of Asia-Pacific arms races, which include Japan and Korea as well as the great powers, none of the players seeks war, although tensions in the South China Sea could certainly spin out of control — especially between China and Vietnam. Instead, in the tradition of strategic theater, there is shadow play as new alliances are created, new bases built, new weapons deployed, new joint military exercises performed, and new military doctrines announced, all with the goal of demonstrating overwhelming power and the ability to inflict unacceptable damage in order to assert regional dominance. With its deepening military alliances, expansion and diversification of military bases, and negotiations for new free trade agreements, the United States is reinforcing what Chinese leaders see as a “Great Wall in reverse,” “with the equivalent of guard towers stretching from Japan to Australia, all potentially blocking China’s access to the larger ocean.”5 Chinese leaders have also expressed their concern about Washington’s new air-sea battle doctrine which, recognizing the futility of another major land war in Asia, is rooted in threats to devastate China from the sea and skies. RATIONALES AND STRATEGY It is worth recalling that this is not the first time that the United States has “pivoted” to Asia and the Pacific. In the 1850s, shortly before U.S. warships first called at Korean ports, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward argued that if the United States were to replace Britain as the world’s dominant power, it would first have to dominate Asia. With the Pacific island “stepping-stones” to Asia already controlled by European colonial powers, Seward settled for purchasing Alaska from Russia to provide a northern bridge to Asia. By the 1890s, Washington had finally assembled the navy needed to challenge Britain’s mastery of the seas. Meanwhile, amidst an economic depression and related domestic turmoil across the United States, policymakers saw access to the Chinese market as the way to put the unemployed to work and thus create “social peace,” while increasing corporate profits and establishing the United States as a global power. The still unexplained turn-of-the-century sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor provided an excuse for the United States to declare war on Spain, seize the Philippines and Guam (as well as Puerto Rico and Cuba), and annex Hawaii to secure the refueling stations needed to reach China. With Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the Pacific became an “American Lake.” Hundreds of new U.S. military bases were established in Korea, Japan, Australia, the Marshall Islands, and other Pacific nations to reinforce those in the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii, which were greatly expanded. Together these bases “contained” Beijing and Moscow throughout the Cold War and served as launching pads for the Korean and Vietnam wars as well as for U.S. military interventions and political subversion stretching from the Philippines and Indonesia to the Persian Gulf. Central to U.S. post-Cold War strategy has been the analysis of Joseph Nye, President Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of Defense and a primary architect of U.S. Asia-Pacific policy since the end of the Cold War. Nye has long warned about the potential dangers of rivalry between rising and declining powers. Twice during the 20th century, he argues, the United States and Britain failed to integrate Germany and Japan into their world order, resulting in two catastrophic world wars. To avoid an apocalyptic repeat of this history, Nye has urged the United States to adopt policies that simultaneously engage and contain China, even as the word “containment,” with its Cold War echoes, is studiously avoided in official discourse in order not to crystallize antagonistic U.S.-Chinese relations. Then, months before the Pivot was launched, in words reminiscent of the “Mafia” theory of international relations6 and the ambitions that launched U.S. global empire in the 1890s, Nye wrote that “Asia will return to its historic status, with more than half of the world’s population and half of the world’s economic output. America must be present there. Markets and economic power rest on political frameworks, and American military power provides that framework.“7 Consistent with Nye’s framework and the realities of U.S.-Chinese competitive interdependence, the Obama administration concluded from the beginning that through its engagement of China, the Middle Kingdom can be led to play a more “constructive role than it would by sitting outside of that system.”8 The Obama administration has repeated that “a thriving China is good for America”9 and has pursued engagement via various diplomatic channels, but it is hedging its bets. Obama’s goal is not to repeat the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Yet, with imperial arrogance, the United States is ignoring the devastating consequences of the “forward-deployed” U.S. military in Korea, Okinawa, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific. As Bader reports, the Obama administration resolved not to err on the side of “a policy of indulgence and accommodation of assertive Chinese conduct…[that] could embolden bad behavior and frighten U.S. allies and partners” in Tokyo, Seoul, and Southeast Asia.10 Thus, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Pivot as the major transformation in U.S. foreign and military policies, she insisted that “[o]ne of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade” would be “to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise — in the Asia-Pacific region.” The increased engagement, she wrote, would be underwritten in part by “forging a broad-based military presence.”11 Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon published its new “strategic guidance,” reinforcing the Pivot away from Iraq and Central Asia and naming the Asia-Pacific region and the Persian Gulf as the Washington’s two geostrategic priorities. To emphasize these ostensibly new commitments (recall that the first state visit arranged by the Obama administration was that of Indian Prime Minister Singh, signaling the commitment to surround and isolate China), Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and President Barack Obama made high-profile visits to allied Asian and Pacific nations. Following the APEC summit in Hawaii, President Obama told members of Australia’s Parliament that “[a]s a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future.” He further stated that U.S. Asia-Pacific forward deployments would be “more broadly distributed…more flexible — with new capabilities to ensure that our forces can operate freely.”12 Thus, we have the revitalization of military alliances with South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand, which serve as “the fulcrum for our strategic turn to the Asia-Pacific.” Having adopted an air-sea battle doctrine, the Pentagon has committed to deploying 60 percent of its nuclear-armed and high-tech navy to the Asia-Pacific. This includes “six aircraft carriers and a majority of the Navy’s cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines, [and] an accelerated pace of naval exercises and port calls in the Pacific.”13 And, as Koreans know all too well, in order to reinforce the northeast keystone of U.S. Asia-Pacific power, it has pressed Korea and Japan to transcend the deep wounds of history and continuing territorial disputes to formalize and deepen their military cooperation. Recognizing that relying on military power alone is not a winning strategy, especially given the influences of economic power, the Obama administration has also pressed South Korea to go beyond the U.S.-ROK Free Trade Agreement with negotiations for a “Trans-Pacific Partnership.” The goal is to create the world’s largest and most demanding free-trade area in ways that deepen the economic integration of the United States and its Asia-Pacific allies while simultaneously reducing their economic dependence on China. Hardly defenseless, China has responded with a campaign to create a 16-nation East Asia free trade bloc.14 It should also be noted that despite its denials, consistent with the precedents of tensions between rising and declining powers, there are many in the U.S. establishment who view the U.S.-Chinese strategic competition as a zero-sum game. Yet, the reality is that given its need for regional peace to ensure continued economic growth, and thus political stability, it is China more than the United States whose policies are more rooted in classical deterrence theory. Consistent with its tradition of tributary empire, it is aggressively expanding into the disputed the South China Sea. And, like Japan, South Korea and India, it is modernizing its navy. It is also developing missiles designed to sink inherently offensive U.S. aircraft carriers, and its space and cyberspace capabilities are of increasing concern to the U.S. national security elite. The realpolitik U.S. analyst Robert D. Kaplan explains why: “China is a rising and still immature power, obsessed with the territorial humiliations it suffered in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [It] is developing asymmetric and anti-access niche capabilities designed to deny the U.S. Navy easy entry into the East China Sea and other coastal waters…. China is not remotely capable of directly challenging the United States militarily. The aim…is dissuasion…that the U.S. Navy will in the future think twice as it expands, and three times about getting between the First Island Chain and the Chinese coast.”15 IMPACTS In addition to increasing the risks of war, the Pivot and the expansions of U.S., allied, and Chinese military power have come at a price for the region’s people. The extension of U.S. wartime control of the ROK military in Korea has meant the continued undermining of Korea’s sovereignty, The World Heritage Site of Jeju Island, along with its communities, is being assaulted in order to take the U.S. naval challenge closer to China’s coast. The massive, ostensibly Korean naval base being built there is to “accommodate submarines and up to 20 warships, including U.S. Aegis-equipped destroyers and their missile defense systems.”16 And the United States is pressing Korea to deepen the alliance with Japan, even as Tokyo’s rising political leaders, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, notoriously continue to deny its history of war crimes and state responsibility for the sexual slavery of “comfort women,” and continue to certify school books that minimize the impacts of Japan’s Fifteen Year War of aggression. There is also the matter of the U.S. imperious response to China at the height of the Yeonpyeong Island crisis a year and a half ago. Following China’s warning that the United States not conduct military exercises with the USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea, which serves as the gateway to Beijing, the United States did just that. As former U.S. ambassador to China R. Stapleton Roy put it, “We poked China in the eye because we could.”17 In Japan, the Pivot has meant reaffirming the nuclear alliance, reinforcing U.S. military power in Okinawa and across Japan, and expanded joint intelligence operations targeted against China and North Korea. It is also worth remembering Prime Minister Hatoyama’s commitments to winning the withdrawal of all U.S. Marines from Okinawa, achieving a more “balanced” foreign policy “less dependent” on the United States, ending U.S. first strike nuclear policies, and realizing a vision of an East Asia community excluding the United States. He failed to develop the political and diplomatic strategies needed to implement these changes, making possible the Obama administration’s contributions to his downfall.18 Looking to Southeast Asia, the Obama administration has transformed competition for hegemony over the oil- and mineral-rich and geostrategically vital South China Sea into what many analysts in the United States see as the most dangerous tinder box for the coming decade, or longer. By responding to China’s increasingly militarized claims to nearly all of the disputed territorial waters — across which 40 percent of the world’s commerce and most importantly the Middle East oil essential to East Asia’s economies passes — and by declaring that (U.S.-enforced) free navigation is a U.S. strategic priority, it has undermined ASEAN-Chinese conflict resolution diplomacy. Reinforcing Philippine claims to the “West Philippine Sea,” the Pentagon has increased weapons sales to Manila, has accelerated joint military exercises, and is exploring the return of military bases. The Pivot also entails strengthening U.S. military relationships with Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Vietnam, with the latter engaging in joint military exercises. Hanoi, under its “friends with all nations” policy, is also providing access for United States and allied navies at Cam Rahn Bay. Further west, President Obama’s visit and Washington’s renewed ties and military-to-military contacts with Myanmar threaten to restrict China’s access to the Indian Ocean and thus jeopardizes related economic development plans for south central China. Completing China’s encirclement, the Obama administration has established a new Indian Ocean base in Darwin, Australia, has pursued a tacit alliance with India, is expanding its “partnerships” with New Zealand and Mongolia, and has extracted an agreement to keep a yet-to-be-determined number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan through 2024. Closer to home, the Chamorro people are being clobbered as Guam is being transformed into a primary military hub, and Hawaii is to host nearly 3,000 more Marines, Osprey warplanes, and further base expansions. TOWARD COMMON AND HUMAN SECURITY We are responsible not only to identify injustice, dangers and their sources, but also to overcome them. The concepts and strategies that can lead to state-oriented common and more fundamental human security in Northeast Asia will be born and nurtured by Korean and other regional nations’ political cultures. What follows are thoughts from the far side of the Pacific that may contribute to your thinking. First, as much as I cannot abide injustice and preparations for war, I have moved to embrace some elements of so-called realpolitik if the carnage of war, or worse, is to be avoided. This leads me to suggest that we should think about the possibilities of Common security, seeking win-win rather than zero-sum resolutions to the region’s conflicts. Common security, initiated by Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, provided the paradigm that facilitated the end of the Cold War in Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even as it cannot serve as the ultimate foundation for human and people’s security, it recognizes that nations as well as individuals respond to fear, that when one side augments its military arsenal and actions to respond to perceived threats from the other, that this will be seen as a threat by the other side, resulting in the enemy augmenting its arsenal and actions in a defensive but frightening response. This leads to a mutually reinforcing and spiraling arms race, not unlike what we now have in Asia and the Pacific, not only between the United States and China, but also including Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and a host of other Asia-Pacific nations. Common security’s response is hard-headed negotiations in which each side names its fears and arrives at diplomatic solutions which address the anxieties of all involved. Common security is inconsistent with the pursuit of empire, which ultimately can be overcome only by people’s will and as a result of contradictions including, in the case of the United States’ misplaced priorities, imperial over-reach. In East Asia, while not ignoring the painful legacies of history, common security could put people’s needs ahead of nationalism, exploring ways to develop the region’s resources and trade relations in ways that serve all the peoples and nations of the region. An East Asian common security framework, built in part on the foundation of the Six-Party Talks, would require new rounds of negotiations focused on Taiwan and Korea to ensure that the currents toward peaceful resolution of these conflicts have the support, time, and diplomatic space needed to mature into fulfillment. A related common security approach would be for the region’s nations to explore what lessons can be taken from the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. The patient and difficult diplomacy that created the treaty resulted in significant reductions of non-nuclear forces across the European continent, leading to reduced tensions and to today’s environment in which fears of a U.S./NATO vs. Russia war are no longer taken seriously. If it is found that Europe’s experience with negotiated and trust-building conventional reductions has applications here in Asia, it is a path that could be explored. It may be helpful to know that the Chinese Arms Control and Disarmament Association, has held workshops about reducing production and sales of conventional weapons. While some Chinese scholars are open to the idea, they stress that given the imbalance of terror (the U.S. nuclear triad, China’s encirclement by offensive U.S. military bases, the nuclear-capable Seventh Fleet, stealth fighters and bombers, and U.S. dominance in space), any agreement would likely necessitate drastic cuts by Western states before China might be able to reciprocate.19 Third, we know that there is no need to wait for research, workshops, and negotiations to create what people need for security. Steadfast and courageous protestors on Jeju Island are pointing the way. Across the sea, Okinawan struggles for the withdrawal of U.S. bases have become the central contradiction in the U.S.-Japan alliance. And the growing solidarity between anti-bases struggles in Korea, the Philippines, Guam and other Asia-Pacific nations, are the most powerful force in overcoming the “abuses and usurpations” inherent to these foreign military occupations. Along these lines, it is critically important that we, on both sides of the Asia-Pacific region, teach how the U.S. Mutual Security and Military Cooperation treaties with Korea and Japan, the Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines and other arrangements reminiscent of the unequal treaties of the 19th century undermine the security and negatively impact people’s lives. Fourth, in the 1990s, when the Clinton administration became preoccupied with China’s rise and initiated Washington’s post-Cold War containment strategy I asked an extraordinary Asia scholar how war could be prevented. His answer was wise, simple and direct: build webs of human relations across nations that make the idea of going to war impossible. In this regard, the growing ties between and among Korean and other Asia-Pacific peace movements, organizations, and activists should be celebrated and built upon. In terms of solidarity, the newly created U.S. Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific should be noted. It brings together leading U.S. peace movement figures, Asian Americans (especially Korean Americans), religious leaders and engaged scholars with the goal of providing vision, resources, and initiatives to help build a U.S. peace movement capable of challenging the Pivot and U.S. Asia-Pacific militarization in its comprehensive contexts. We are building strategies focusing on solidarity, policy changes, networking, and education. We have called for 2013, the 60th anniversary of the Korean armistice agreement, to be marked as “The Year of Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific.” The path to common and human security is long. We make our road by walking it. *Dr. Joseph Gerson is Director of Programs for the American Friends Service Committee’s Northeast Region. His work focuses on education and organizing for peaceful and just alternatives to U.S.-led militarization of the Asia-Pacific region, opposition to foreign military bases, and for the abolition of nuclear weapons. He is co-convener the Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific. He has been active in justice and peace movements since the mid-1960s, having served on the staffs of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam, War Resisters’ International, and the AFSC. He is co-founded United for Peace & Justice, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, and the 2010 NPT Review International Planning Committee. He also serves of the International Coordinating Committee of the No to NATO/No to War Network. His articles appear in Truthout, Common Dreams, the Huffington Post, and elsewhere. His most recent book is Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World, published in 2007 by Pluto Press. See Jeffrey Bader, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy (Brookings Institution Press, 2012). “Nicholas Lemann, “The Quiet Man,” The New Yorker, May 2, 2001. Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, 142. Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, 142. Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography (New York: Random House, 2012), 214-215. “In 1965, Professor Ello at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service taught that “the study of international relations is analogous to studying the rules of the game among Mafia families.” Author’s notes from his student days. Joseph Nye, “The Right Way to Trim,” New York Times, August 4, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/opinion/the-right-way-to-trim-military-spending.html?_r=0, emphasis added. Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, 3. Anne Lowrey. “U.S. Stresses Concessions from China,” New York Times, May 3, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/business/global/in-talks-us-highlights-economic-concessions-by-chinese.html. Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, 3. Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy, November 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Words and Deeds Show Focus Of the American Military in Asia,” New York Times, November 11, 2012; Jon Letman, “Head of the Tentacled Beast,” Foreign Policy in Focus, October 31, 2012 http://www.fpif.org/articles/hawaii_head_of_the_tentacled_beast, emphasis added. Jane Perlez. “Panetta Outlines New Weaponry for the Pacific,” New York Times, June 1, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/world/asia/leon-panetta-outlines-new-weaponry-for-pacific.html. Teddy Ng and Reuters, “China set for East Asia trade bloc talks to stymie US,” South China Morning Post, November 7, 2012, http://scmp1.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography, 216-217. Jon Lettman, “Jeju Island Base Divides Korean, International Green Groups,” Inter Press Service, August 10, 2012 http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/08/jeju-island-base-divides-korean-international-green-groups.

Thirty-eight years ago, just before Christmas, our lives as missionaries came to a sudden end when South Korea’s military dictator, Park Chung-hee, deported my husband, George Ogle, because he prayed in public for eight innocent men who had been falsely accused of having Communist ties, tortured to confess, and sentenced to death by secret military court. Although George had been a missionary in Korea for 20 years and all four of our children had been born there, George’s deportation served as an object lesson to President Park’s detractors that no criticism would be tolerated. As the historical record bears out, deportation was among the lighter penalties for challenging President Park’s martial rule over the South Korean people. We were nonetheless crushed. We had intended to spend the rest of our working years in Korea, a place we had come to regard as home. The course of our lives may have been altered, but the lives of the families of the eight men were changed forever. On April 9, 1975, these men were hanged without being allowed to make the appeal granted them by law, and their families were ostracized for decades. After these men were executed, it would take 32 more years of suffering, borne by their families, before a retrial cleared their names. Fortunately, in 1987, South Koreans rose up all over the country and won a historic, hard-fought victory for democracy. Personally we have been able to return to South Korea many times and have received hospitality and honors beyond anything we could ever imagine. But George and I have also had the opportunity to visit North Korea. We have friends who are among the few of the 10 million separated family members who have been reunited with relatives on the other side. We feel that the Koreans in the north and south are one people. The tragedy of the divided Korea weighs heavy on our hearts, and we daily pray that the there will be a peace agreement ending the Korean War so that the Korean people can be reconciled. Over the holiday season, we received the news that Park Geun-hye, the military dictator’s daughter, has been elected as the first woman president of South Korea in a close race against a human rights lawyer. Without question, she carries the baggage of being Park Chung-hee’s daughter. Yet there is reason to hope. The recent North Korean rocket launch played no part in the South Korean election, and Park Geun-hye has sought to distance herself from the unpopular “Get tough on North Korea” policy of the current conservative president. Moreover, Park has publicly apologized for the violence of her father’s rule, and her presidency represents an opportunity for her to reckon with his legacy. The Longest War Next year is the 60th anniversary of the armistice that ended the hot war but left the Korean peninsula technically and legally still at war. The armistice regime established an unresolved war as the basis of relations not only between North and South Korea, but also between North Korea and the United States. U.S. leaders have focused their efforts on causing economic collapse in the North, which has caused terrible suffering for the people there. If Park, by contrast, makes good on her promise to heal relations with North Korea, will she likewise be able to help U.S. policymakers understand that we must change our approach to North Korea if we wish to make any progress on issues that concern us? President George W. Bush developed a hostile policy toward North Korea at odds with that of his liberal South Korean counterparts during the Sunshine era. President Obama has toed the line of Park’s predecessor, the hardline South Korean president Lee Myung-bak. In neither instance have our leaders displayed any vision for peace, engagement, or reconciliation. Why should we be surprised, then, that North Korea has launched a satellite or that it may test nuclear weapons? Why should we think that more sanctions might deter them from moving in that direction, when we have already tried sanctions for 60 years? Does anyone think that we have a military option in one of the most militarized places in the world? Why should North Koreans trust us when we openly talk about regime change and regularly carry out military exercises right off the North Korean coast? Serious, sober discussion—and a willingness to engage across differences—is an essential first step toward peace. Are we aware that the defense spending of South Korea equals the entire GNP of North Korea? Do we remember that we have rejected North Korea’s many calls for negotiations for a peace treaty? In our condemnation of North Korea’s military priorities, do we remember that North Korea’s nuclear program began when we had nuclear weapons pointed at them and threatened to use them? Do we remember that Kim Il Sung called for a nuclear-free zone in Korea, a request we disregarded? Do we remember that we violated the terms of the 1953 Armistice Agreement by deploying nuclear weapons to South Korea? Do we remember that there were international inspectors in North Korea from the time of the 1994 accords until President George W. Bush declared North Korea part of the “Axis of Evil”? When we negotiated, North Korea worked with us. International inspectors returned to North Korea and the nuclear reactor was dismantled, but these proceedings faltered when outgoing South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in his inaugural address, announced his “Get tough on North Korea” policy. A December 13 editorial in South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper makes the obvious point that the most urgent order of business for the international community is to prevent North Korea from combining its nuclear weapons with its long-range rocket technology, adding that North Korea will continue to step up its efforts to achieve this. “By Pyongyang’s logic,” it read, “combining its nuclear weapons with its long-range rocket technology is the only way to guard its regime against external threats and increase its negotiating power, using the abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction as a bargaining chip.” Yet the Hankyoreh editorial envisions, unlike our policy-makers, a way forward, recognizing in North Korea’s actions a rationale: “a solution needs to be sought through negotiation rather than sanctions and hard-line policy alone, and that the fundamental reason North Korea tests nuclear weapons and rockets is to guarantee the stability and survival of its regime.” North Korean leaders do not want to destroy themselves by using a nuclear weapon. They want a peace treaty that takes into consideration the security and economic concerns of both Koreas. We have not yet given peace a chance, but there is still hope that the North Koreans may be willing to stop their expensive nuclear experiments if there is a genuine opportunity to negotiate a peace agreement ending the Korean War. Let us not repeat the mistakes of the past by calling their launch “bad behavior,” an infantilizing assessment that gets us nowhere. The burden of history is on Park Geun-hye, who may be the first woman president in South Korea but who remains the daughter of the dictator. The burden of history is likewise upon us. We, whose government divided Korea, who fought a bloody war on Korean soil, who propped up a series of dictators in South Korea, and who have spent untold billions of dollars on military bases and war games on the peninsula, have our own second chance—a chance at peace and co-existence. The alternative is unthinkable. We must therefore negotiate a peace agreement to end the longest war in U.S. history. We owe this not only to the Korean people but also to ourselves. *Dorothy Ogle was a United Methodist missionary in South Korea, a member of American Friend Service Committee 1984 peace delegation to North Korea, and an activist for human rights and democracy and peace and reconciliation in Korea. She is the co-author of Our Lives in Korea and Korea in Our Lives. She lives with her husband, George Ogle, in Lafayette, Colorado.

Tensions are escalating since North Korea’s launch of a satellite into orbit on December 12, 2012. Overwrought news reports termed the launch a “threat” and a “provocation,” while U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor called it “irresponsible behavior.” Punishment for North Korea was swift in coming. North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 was just one of 75 satellites that a variety of nations sent into space last year, but Pyongyang’s launch, and a failed launch earlier in the year on April 12, were the only ones singled out for condemnation.1 In Western eyes, there was something uniquely threatening about the Kwangmyongsong-3 earth observation satellite, unlike the apparently more benign five military and three spy satellites the United States launched last year. We are told that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, the official name for North Korea) used the satellite launch to test ballistic missile technology. But the North Koreans could hardly have sent their satellite into orbit by slingshot. The Kwangmyongsong-3 was equipped with a camera intended to help assess the nation’s natural resources and forest distribution and to collect crop estimates. The Western press was quick to scoff at the satellite as having no rational economic purpose. Although the satellite failed to become operable, a common enough experience for nations putting their first satellite into space, the intent was to support much-needed ecological recovery in North Korea and to aid agricultural planning. Specialists argue that the DPRK’s Unha-3 missile, used for the launch, is not a suitable candidate for delivering a nuclear warhead. According to analyst Markus Schiller of Schmucker Technologie in Germany, for North Korea to “become a player in the ICBM game, they would have to develop a different kind of missile, with higher performance. And if they do that seriously, we would have to see flight tests every other month, over several years.”2 The North Korean missile “was developed as a satellite launcher and not as a weapon,” Schiller says. “The technology was suited only for satellite launch.” Brian Weedan, a space expert at the Secure World Foundation, agrees, and points out that the missile took a sharp turn to avoid flying over Taiwan and the Philippines. “That is definitely something more associated with a space launch than with a ballistic missile launch. It’s not what you would expect to see with a missile test.”3 The Unha-3 is simply too small for the job of delivering a nuclear warhead, even assuming that the DPRK had miniaturized a nuclear bomb, an endeavor requiring significant time and effort. The North Koreans would also need to develop a long-range guidance system and a reentry vehicle capable of withstanding the heat of returning through the atmosphere. Experts consider the DPRK to be years away from achieving such steps.4 In regard to North Korea’s satellite launches, Lewis Franklin and Nick Hansen of Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation remark, “The oft-repeated phrase ‘readily convertible to an ICBM’ posed by non-technical policy experts is engineering-wise unsupportable.” They explain that while other nations have utilized ICBMs for sending satellites into space, conversion of a light missile like the Uhha-3 into an ICBM “requires considerable redesign and testing, and no country has taken this route.”5 The other aspect of the launch that the U.S found so provocative was its violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 of June 12, 2009, which enjoined the DPRK from conducting “any launch using ballistic missile technology.” That resolution was prompted by a North Korean nuclear test. Yet, when Israel, Pakistan and India — all non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — not only performed testing, but proceeded to build substantial nuclear arsenals and missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads, no action was forthcoming. This double standard has not gone unnoticed in the DPRK, which understands that the distinction between the North Korean case and that of Israel, Pakistan and India hinges on the latter three nations being U.S. allies, while for decades it has been the target of Western sanctions, threats and pressure. Interestingly enough, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapon-capable ballistic missiles at around the time of North Korea’s failed satellite launch on April 12, 2012.6 The Indian and Pakistani missiles did not carry satellites; these were purely military tests, a fact which did not perturb the Obama Administration. Criticism was reserved for North Korea alone, while in regard to India’s test, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner merely noted that the U.S. has a “very strong strategic and security partnership with India.”7 Following Pakistan’s launch, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland’s only comment was, “What’s most important is that they do seem to have taken steps to inform the Indians.”8 These mild remarks contrasted with the vociferous abuse poured upon North Korea for its non-nuclear capable missiles carrying satellites. Since the April ballistic missile launches, India and Pakistan have continued their tests, including India’s test of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile fired from underwater, part of its program to develop submarine-based nuclear missiles.9 India conducted its underwater ballistic missile test on January 27, only a few days after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea for putting a satellite into orbit. When North Korea launched its satellite, India condemned the launch as “unwarranted,” and termed it an action adversely impacting peace and stability.10 That same day, India test fired its nuclear-capable Agni-I ballistic missile, again without complaint by the U.S.11 And just days after passage of the UN Security Council resolution against the DPRK, Japan put two spy satellites into space, both aimed at North Korea.12 Not surprisingly, these missile launches evoked no complaint from U.S. officials. South Korea successfully placed its own satellite into orbit on January 30, 2013, with the complete support of the U.S., which only added to North Korea’s growing sense of irritation over the blatant double standard. The hypocrisy is quite breathtaking. The U.S. sits atop the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, possesses the largest military machine on earth, regularly invades or bombs other nations, threatens nations who refuse to bend to its will, turns a blind eye to tests of ballistic missiles by India, Pakistan and Israel, and it condemns the small nation of North Korea for engaging in “provocative” behavior by sending a peaceful satellite into space. The DPRK bears the distinction of being the only nation to have a UN Security Council resolution in effect banning it from launching a satellite. Yet, the international outer space treaty affirms that outer space “shall be the province of all mankind,” and that “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind.”13 Note the language used here: “without discrimination of any kind.” This is absolutely unambiguous. The treaty does not say “except when the powerful choose to deny this right to a small nation.” Western analysts argue that when a UN Security Council resolution contradicts international law, it is the resolution that takes precedence. That view makes a mockery of international law, which ceases to have any meaning when it can be discarded at will by imperial dictate. The UN Charter tasks the Security Council to deal with matters relating to “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression.” The DPRK Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea explains that its satellite launches for peaceful purposes “bear no relationship with the issues of international peace and security.” Moreover, the Security Council has never seen fit to take issue with such nations as the United States and Japan “that are speeding up militarization by launching innumerable spy satellites.”14 Sensing that the DPRK’s impending satellite launch would present a welcome opportunity, the U.S. started lining up support for imposing further sanctions on the DPRK well before the launch took place. Already the most heavily sanctioned nation on earth, North Korea’s economy could only suffer more damage from new sanctions. That was precisely the Obama Administration’s aim. In anticipation of North Korea’s missile launch, South Korea under the ever-hostile administration of Lee Myung-bak, worked with other nations to identify the few remaining international bank accounts held by North Korea which had not yet been closed due to U.S. pressure. The hope was that North Korea could be completely blocked from engaging in international trade. The Lee Administration, too, perceived the missile launch as an opportunity to inflict further economic damage on its neighbor to the north.15 The Chinese advocated resuming the six-party talks, which were last held in December 2008. “China really believes that we ought to re-engage with North Korea,” U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke remarked, but “we don’t believe that we should be rewarding their bad behavior by sitting down and talking with them.” U.S. diplomats adamantly ruled out talks. During negotiations in December 2012, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice bluntly told a Chinese diplomat that his nation’s resistance to additional sanctions was “ridiculous.” Rice demanded that North Korea face “consequences” for its satellite launch.16 U.S. officials are fond of saying that they will not reward the DPRK for its “bad behavior” by talking with its officials, but one cannot help but wonder: just whose behavior is bad? North Korean officials, whose nation exercised its right under international law and put a peaceful satellite into orbit, a right granted to all nations, and who want dialogue, or U.S. officials, who petulantly refuse to engage in negotiations, and who only know how to bully and intimidate? The first task was to get China onboard with the concept of imposing new sanctions on its neighbor. High-ranking U.S. and South Korean diplomats met with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing on December 17, 2012. The Chinese opposed sanctions, preferring a prudent response. “The Chinese side repeated its stance that it wants to keep peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” a South Korean diplomatic source revealed. But the U.S. had “a strong willingness” to impose sanctions. “The U.S. is also sending a message to China that it will have no choice but to beef up its military readiness against North Korea’s threats unless a resolution is adopted at the U.N. Security Council.”17 The United States had already taken a number of steps to increasingly militarize its relations with South Korea in recent months, and it is probable that the threat to expand the U.S. military presence in the region finally persuaded the Chinese to back UN sanctions, despite their inevitable destabilizing effect. A U.S. military buildup in the region would serve a double purpose, aimed not only at North Korea but surely China as well. The Chinese were also keen to avoid straining relations with the U.S, an important trading partner. Once the U.S. and South Korea won Chinese agreement for a UN Security Council resolution, the Obama Administration had a wish list of harsh measures that it wanted to implement via the resolution. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced that the Obama Administration’s plan was “to continue to increase the pressure on the North Korean regime. And we’re looking at how best to do that, both bilaterally and with our partners going forward. Until they get the message, we’re going to have to continue to further isolate this regime.” Responding to a reporter who commented that North Korea “has long wanted direct talks with the U.S.,” and asked if the U.S. would consider that or stick to the six-party format, Nuland dismissively replied, “We and our partners are not in the business of rewarding them.”18 There would be no talks of any kind. U.S. negotiators insisted that the UN Security Council pass a resolution rather than a presidential statement, so that it would carry more force. Under pressure, the Chinese relented. The specific sanctions to be imposed were another matter. There the Chinese were more successful. The U.S. wanted to maximize the damage that would be inflicted on the North Korean people. Chinese Ambassador to the UN Li Baodong said, “The initial draft prepared by the UNSC contained a number of sanctions, but China believed that such measures would not be helpful in defusing the situation and would only cause harm to the North Korean economy and the lives of its people. As a result of more than a month of protracted negotiations, these provisions were removed from the final draft of the resolution.”19 UN Security Council resolution 2087 passed unanimously on January 22, 2013, ordering the DPRK to cease launching satellites, and that “any further such activities” would result in its “determination to take significant action.” A number of measures were imposed, including travel bans and asset freezes on specified individuals involved in the DPRK’s space program and banking officials assisting in its financial dealings. Asset freezes were also slapped on the North Korean Committee for Space Technology and North Korean banks and firms involved in the space program, essentially blocking those organizations from engaging in normal international financial transactions.20 The U.S. and South Korea immediately began planning further sanctions that they could impose on a bilateral basis. The U.S. had already stopped food aid to North Korea many months beforehand. Among the alternatives the U.S. and South Korea discussed were stepping up inspections of North Korean ships and ways to hamper North Korean ships from travelling near the Korean Peninsula.21 The U.S. Treasury Department wasted little time in implementing its first set of bilateral sanctions, acting the day after passage of the UN Security Council resolution. It announced that all assets under U.S. control would be frozen held by two North Korean bankers and Hong Kong-based Leader International Trading Limited.22 South Korea had already revised its Public Order in Open Ports Act so that it required entry clearance for container ships having visited a North Korean port during the prior 180 days; an increase from the earlier 60 day limit. A South Korean official said that Seoul intended to target shipments into and out of the DPRK. “We are considering sanctions in marine transport. Now that we have already set the legal grounds, we will start talks with other countries over additional sanctions.”23 The intention is to cut maritime supply routes to North Korea. Pressure on North Korea is two-fold: economic sanctions and military presence. In the midst of UN Security Council deliberations, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called for the reorientation of NATO, to “broaden the scope of our alliance security discussions beyond European and regional issues.” The U.S. has led the expansion of NATO military operations first in its bombing operations in the Balkans, then later in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The aim is for NATO to support aggressive U.S. military operations, across all continents that adjoin Europe and the Mediterranean. “In particular,” Panetta continued, “I strongly believe that Europe should join the United States in increasing and deepening defense engagement with the Asia-Pacific region…The bottom line is that Europe should not fear our rebalance to Asia; Europe should join it.”24 However, there is one thing one can say about the North Koreans. They are never cowed by imperial bullying. Shortly before passage of the UN Security Council resolution, the DPRK sent a message to the United States, calling for negotiations to settle security concerns. That message apparently went unanswered.25 As soon as the UN resolution passed, the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK issued its response, stating that it “flatly rejects the unjust acts of the UNSC aimed at wantonly violating the sovereignty of the DPRK and depriving it of the right to launch satellites for peaceful purposes. The hostile forces are seriously mistaken if they think they can bring down the DPRK with sanctions and pressure.” The Foreign Ministry asserted that the “DPRK will continue to exercise its independent and legitimate right to launch satellites for peaceful purposes while abiding by the universally recognized international law on the use of space for peaceful purposes.” Furthermore, “the DPRK will continuously launch satellites for peaceful purposes.” Noting that U.S. hostility remains unchanged, the DPRK Foreign Ministry concluded that “the prospect for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula has become gloomier,” and so “there may be talks for peace and stability…but no talks for the denuclearization of the peninsula.” North Korea, it said, “will take steps for physical counteraction to bolster the military capabilities for self-defense, including nuclear deterrence…to cope with the evermore undisguised moves of the U.S. to apply sanctions and apply pressure against the DPRK.”26 First a peace settlement must be reached; only then can talks on denuclearization can proceed. Events on the Korean Peninsula are heading in a potentially dangerous direction. New sanctions on the DPRK and the refusal of the Obama Administration to engage in dialogue have eliminated any exit strategy. North Korea, feeling threatened, may conduct another nuclear test to further develop the best defense it has against military aggression and to assert its independence. However, South Korea promises “very grave consequences” if it follows that path.27 The U.S. has made similarly threatening statements. According to South Korean presidential national security advisor Chun Yung-woo, consequences must be imposed on the DPRK that it finds intolerable. North Korea must choose between nuclear weapons or its survival, he declared. “No other options must be allowed.”28 Ratcheting up pressure on the DPRK, the U.S. and South Korea kicked off joint naval military exercises in the East Sea on February 4, 2013, including the nuclear submarine USS San Francisco. “Through this joint military exercise, we will be able to deliver a message to North Korea that if they engage in a defiant act, it won’t be tolerated,” warned Jung Seung-jo, chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.29 North Korea has always responded in kind. When approached diplomatically, it negotiates and when threatened, it resists. Neither the U.S. nor South Korea is open to dialogue at the present time. Both are bent on exacerbating tensions. China is attempting to dissuade the DPRK from carrying out another nuclear test, aware of the dangers that U.S. and South Korean aggressive reaction could present. But even if North Korea refrains from conducting another nuclear test, it is clear that the U.S. is seeking a pretext – any pretext – to squeeze North Korea harder, and it may not take much to plunge the Korean Peninsula into a terrible crisis. *Gregory Elich is a KPI Advisor, he is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit. Notes http://www.satelliteonthenet.co.uk/index.php/2012 “Experts Say North Korea Still Years Away from Reliable Rockets,” Associated Press, December 12, 2012. Ken Dilanian, “Experts Debate North Korea’s Missile Goals and Capability,” Los Angeles Times, January 9, 2013. “Experts Say North Korea Still Years Away from Reliable Rockets,” Associated Press, December 12, 2012. Steven Haggard, “More on the Missile Test,” Peterson Institute for International Economics, March 19, 2012. Aleksandr Zakharovich Zhebin, “Pyongyang will Respond to the United Nations with a Nuclear Explosion: North Korea is Abandoning the Promises of Denuclearization,” Nezavismaya Gazeta, January 25, 2013. Heather Timmons and Jim Yardley, “Signs of an Asian Arms Buildup in India’s Missile Test,” New York Times, April 19, 2012. Sami Zubeiri, “Pakistan Tests Nuclear-Capable Ballistic Missile,” Agence France-Presse, April 25, 2012. “India Tests Underwater Ballistic Missile,” UPI, January 27, 2013. “India Terms North Korean Rocket Launch ‘Unwarranted,'” Deccan Herald, December 12, 2012. “India Successfully Test-fires Agni-I Ballistic Missile,” Press Trust of India, December 12, 2012. Stephen Clark, “Japan Launches Spy Satellites into Orbit,” Space Flight Now, January 28, 2013. http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/outerspt.html

[Originally published in Global Research, February 4, 2013] With all eyes on North Korea since its third nuclear test, remarkably little has been said about how we arrived at this crisis point. Inadequately contextualized as North Korea’s response to fortified UN sanctions, the latest nuclear test bespeaks the failure of U.S. diplomacy toward its historic enemy. The commonplace U.S. media 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. Remarkably few U.S.-based North Korea watchers have commented on the country’s increasingly martial rhetoric. Late last year, a banner on the website of North Korea’s official news organ, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), declared a period of “Nationwide Preparation for All-out Great War for National Reunification.” In October, according to the South Korean Chosun Ilbo, the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia reported that all North Korean troops had been ordered to sleep in their combat uniforms. Far from business as usual, the intensification of hawkish rhetoric and heightened combat-readiness of North Korean forces reveal strategic patience to be not only a colossal “strategic blunder,” but also a perilous pathway to war. As he enters his second term, Barack Obama must confront the role of strategic patience as a central driver of our current crisis. War Games and the Ruse of “Strategic Patience” In the year since Kim Jong Il’s death, North Korea has readied itself for a showdown. On August 17 of last year, North Korea’s newly minted leader Kim Jong Un personally visited two of North Korea’s southernmost islands along the Northern Limit Line (NLL) to give on-the-spot guidance to soldiers guarding North Korea’s front line. On Mu Island, where in late 2010 soldiers responded to a South Korean artillery drill by shelling Yeonpyeong Island, the young Kim used binoculars to peer across the NLL and instructed the soldiers to carry out a precise counter-attack should even one enemy-fired artillery shell land on North Korean soil. He instructed the People’s Army, in such an event, not only to make the West Sea their enemies’ final resting place, but also to seize the opportunity to carry out a counter-offensive war aimed at national unification. The following week, Kim affirmed his battle plan in a speech commemorating his father’s songun leadership, advocating “counter provocation with a prompt counterattack.” Far from one-sided, however, the drama unfolding on the other side of the 38th parallel attests to an underreported escalation of military force on the part of the United States and South Korea. In fact, on the very day that Kim visited Mu Island, 80,000 U.S. and South Korean troops were gearing up for the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian. For the first time in its history, this war exercise included a simulation of a pre-emptive attack by South Korean artillery units in an all-out war scenario against North Korea. Ostensibly a defensive exercise in preparation for an attack by the north, the joint U.S.-South Korea war games have taken on a decidedly offensive characteristic since Kim Jong Il’s death. What’s more, a South Korean military official discussing the exercise raised red flags by mentioning the possibility of responding to potential North Korean provocation with asymmetric retaliation, a direct violation of UN rules of engagement in warfare. The surest sign that the Korean War is not yet over, these costly and provocative annual exercises are seldom recognized in the United States as central to Obama’s foreign policy in Northeast Asia. Yet under the guise of “strategic patience,” which misleadingly suggests waiting and doing nothing, the United States has dangerously inched closer to war in Korea. In 2012, for the first time, Key Resolve Foal Eagle, the world’s largest computerized war simulation exercise, “practiced deploying more than 100,000 South Korean troops into North Korea to stabilize the country in case of regime collapse,” according to the Chosun Ilbo. Speaking to the paper, a South Korean government official described Kim Jong Il’s death as a ripe opportunity to enact a regime-collapse scenario “because the regime of new leader Kim Jong-un is still unstable.” In March 2012, combined U.S.-South Korean forces carried out the largest amphibious landing operation exercise in 20 years, involving 13 naval vessels, 52 amphibious armored vehicles, 40 fighter jets and helicopters, and 9,000 U.S. troops. The following month, South Korea’s Defense Department announced a new cruise missile capable of launching a precision strike anywhere in North Korea. While North Korea was still mourning the death of Kim Jong-Il and transitioning to the leadership of Kim Jong Un, U.S. and South Korean hawks saw a prime opportunity to intensify pressure on North Korea to bring about what many in the west had been facilitating and anticipating for the past two decades—namely, the collapse of the North Korean regime. The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the North Korean Quagmire Addressing the Australian National Assembly in November 2011, Obama confirmed a shift in U.S. geostrategic priorities: “As the world’s fastest-growing region—and home to more than half the global economy—the Asia Pacific is critical to achieving my highest priority [of] creating jobs and opportunity for the American people.” While still entangled in the Middle East, Obama promised that the United States would increase its presence and leadership role in Asia and the Pacific. This same message was reflected in the United States’ 2012 Defense Strategic Guidelines, which outlined plans for rebalancing the U.S. Navy from a 50/50 to 60/40 split between its Pacific and Atlantic fleets. As part of its “pivot” to secure key trade routes and economic advantage in the vast region, the United States has already begun to revive a network of old bases, including Australia’s Darwin base, Philippine’s Subic Bay, Vietnam’s Can Ranh Bay, and Thailand’s U-Tapao naval and air base, as well as tightening its ties with traditional allies, including South Korea and a remilitarizing Japan. In 2012, the United States and Japan announced a major agreement to deploy a second advanced missile defense radar system in Japan, and for the first time, Japan’s Self Defense Forces and the U.S. Navy carried out combined landing and island defense exercises in Guam. In Korea, although the United States disavows any interest in a controversial naval base currently under construction in Jeju, critics point out that the base is designed to accommodate Aegis destroyers that will likely become part of an integrated missile defense system under U.S. command. A June 2012 Chosun Ilbo article reported that U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK) Commander James Thurman suggested maintaining the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command even after transferring operational control to South Korea in 2015, thereby ensuring South Korea’s status as a permanent U.S. garrison. As the United States looks to Asia as its most valuable sphere of influence, North Korea serves as a convenient enemy, justifying a ratcheted-up, regional U.S. military presence. But it also represents a policy quagmire. Not only has North Korea remained in the “cold” since the Soviet bloc collapsed, but it now also possesses two means of producing nuclear weapons and possibly long-range missile delivery technology. Under Obama, the United States has dealt with other quagmires in the Middle East by toppling uncooperative regimes by force. North Korea, long the subject of regime-change fantasies, has little reason to believe that it is not in U.S. crosshairs. Dangerously Close to War USFK Commander James Thurman, formerly the Chief of Operations during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and Special Operations Commander Eric Wendt, the former deputy commanding general in Afghanistan, have brought combat knowledge gleaned from experience in the Middle East to the Korean peninsula. Mine-resistant vehicles used in Iraq and Afghanistan have now been deployed near the DMZ, still littered with mines from the Korean War. And last summer, the Pentagon publicized the completion of precision-guided super bunker busters designed to attack North Korea’s nuclear facility. The United States currently seeks to sell four Global Hawk surveillance drones to South Korea, while increasing South Korea’s ballistic range from 300 to 800 kilometers, thus enabling it to strike anywhere in North Korea. Thurman proposed maintaining the 210th Fires Brigade, the core firepower in war scenarios against North Korea, close to the DMZ rather than transfer it to Pyeongtaek as originally planned. With no formal talks with the United States for almost a year, North Korea has good reason to be on edge. In an August 2012 Foreign Ministry memo, North Korea, having reviewed its history of negotiations with the United States, concluded that it had no choice other than to buttress its nuclear program as a deterrent, not in order to trade it for aid but to counter U.S. regime-change moves. “The principle of simultaneous action steps is not workable,” it stated, nullifying the “action for action” agreement reached through Six-Party talks. Rather, U.S. renunciation of its regime-change policy was, it declared, a “prerequisite for resolving the nuclear issue.” Demonstrating that Obama’s policy of strategic patience has strained North Korea’s patience, Kim Jong Un declared on August 25: “Our patience has limits. We will not remain an onlooker to the enemies’ frantic moves for aggression, but will make every possible effort to protect the destiny of the country and the nation.” If provoked, he added, North Korea would not only defend itself, but also act decisively to reunify the entire peninsula. In the highly militarized West Sea, a site of frequent skirmishes between North and South, U.S. agitation for regime collapse and North Korea’s hardened stance may inadvertently trigger a war. As Park Geun-hye, daughter of dictator Park Chung Hee, assumes power in South Korea and Obama begins his second term, they should remember that for the 75 million Koreans on both sides of the DMZ as well as those abroad whose roots and loved ones are on the Korean peninsula, an eruption of violence could generate catastrophic consequences. When then-U.S. President Bill Clinton nearly attacked North Korea over its nuclear program in 1994, a Pentagon computer simulation projected 1 million deaths in the event of war on the peninsula. War is not an option. Year One of Peace Two decades ago, Clinton decided against attacking North Korea, and as a security assurance suspended Team Spirit, precursor to Key Resolve, in order to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Negotiations led to the freezing of North Korea’s plutonium production until George Bush reneged on U.S. agreements and denounced North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” Since then, neither Bush’s policy of aggression nor Obama’s so-called strategic patience has succeeded in halting North Korea’s nuclear program. On the contrary, Pyongyang has continued to enrich uranium and successfully launched a satellite into orbit. As Leon Sigal points out, the lesson of U.S. nuclear diplomacy with North Korea is that “in trying to stop proliferation, cooperation worked where coercion failed.” This year marks 60 years, a full life cycle in Korean tradition, since the signing of the Armistice Agreement that brought active fighting to a halt but did not end the Korean War. To mark the passing of a life cycle defined by war, Korean peace activists dubbed 2013 “Year one of peace.” As Obama enters his second term—a juncture when U.S. presidents historically “get vision” on North Korea—assessing the threat North Korea poses as a basis for U.S. policy is insufficient. “We, the people,” Obama stated in his second inaugural address, “still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.” Meaningful gestures of cooperation—including suspending provocative war games, abandoning regime collapse scenarios, and returning to the negotiation table—are thus crucial first steps in a new direction. Genuine peace, not war, is the only durable basis of U.S.-Korea relations, and peace talks to end the Korean War the only way forward. *Hyun Lee is a member of the Working Group on Peace and Demilitarization of Peace and the Asia Pacific, as well as the National Campaign to End the Korean War. She co-produces Asia Pacific Forum, a weekly radio show on culture and politics in Asia and the Asian diaspora. *Christine Hong is an assistant professor of transnational Asian American, Korean diaspora, and critical Pacific Rim studies at UC Santa Cruz. She is a steering committee member of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea, a coordinating council member of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, and a member of the executive board of the Korea Policy Institute. RECOMMENDED CITATION: Christine Hong and Hyun Lee, “Lurching Towards War: A Post-Mortem on Strategic Patience” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, February 15, 2013) #ChristineHong #HyunLee