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This essay examines Cold War political discourse in South Korea’s Manchurian action films. It opens by questioning the interpretive parameters of South Korea’s cinematic war narratives, which isolate the military conflict of the Korean War (1950–53, in its conventional periodization) as the sole focus of the war experience. This essay, by contrast, expands consideration of the “Korean War” by examining cultural representations of the proto-Korean nation-state during the 1931–45 Pacific War. This shift in focus enables an inquiry into the role of the state in its business practice of war mobilization. In particular, the essay brings close attention to the subject of money, specifically, war funds procurement, as a recurring and governing thematic preoccupation of Manchurian action films as a genre of war film. By exploring the trappings of “money,” as it is configured in such films and relating them to the state’s claims of ownership, this essay examines how the genre reflects the capitalist war politics of the South Korean state. It also discerns how the state gains and furnishes its political authority by controlling and managing the business of perpetual war. Download the pdf: pos234_08An_FF

Reading North Korean defector memoirs and Korean American “roots” narratives as forms of “second culture” relative to North Korea, namely, an alternative US-oriented culture whose representational authority is held as exceeding that of the socialist state of origin, this essay examines the ongoing Korean War as the backdrop for the neoconservative emergence of human rights critique of North Korea. Examining the transnational funding matrix behind the publication and international circulation of the North Korean defector memoir, specifically the National Endowment for Democracy’s role in sponsoring such “human rights” writings, this essay reads the latter as weaponized forms of expression, defined by their instrumentality within an uneven global landscape of power and rendered lethal by the state of unresolved hostilities between the United States and North Korea. Positing the illegitimacy of North Korea, the defector memoir has been marshaled toward sovereignty-challenging, or regime-change, ends. Widely read as “human rights” literary forms, the defector memoir, alongside the Korean American “roots” narrative of North Korea, this essay argues, have served in the geopolitical arena as vehicles for “dissident” North Korean voices in place of an extant samizdat literature. Download the pdf: pos234_07Hong_FF

This article examines the struggle over sovereignty on the Korean peninsula from the US occupation through the Korean War not over the usual stakes of geopolitical territory but, rather, over the politics of recognition surrounding the capacity of the individual postcolonial subject. By beginning with a set of archives that has been foundational for much of the historiography around the Korean War—the documents of US military intelligence—this essay proposes a disruptive reading of the practices, assumptions, and structures of US military interrogation. During the state of emergency declared by US General Douglas MacArthur at the beginning of the occupation in 1945, the Korean person was neither a “citizen,” since Korea was not yet a recognized state, nor a colonized subject, since Korea had been liberated from Japanese colonial rule. This sustained suspension was legitimated by the “rule of law” inscribed by the US Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). In order to undermine the Koreans’ insistent claims to self-governance, the US Counter Intelligence Corps ultimately made “acts of language”—such as slander or rumors—punishable by death by the US military. According to the CIC, the Korean’s inability to discern or narrate a coherent truth in the interrogation room proved the Korean’s incapacity for self-governance. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the global war met this continued state of emergency on the ground, where the question of human subjectivity, and not only territorial borders, was at stake in the conflict. Download the pdf: pos234_05Kim_FF

This essay examines the destructive air war over North Korea from 1950 to 1953 and asks why this enormous atrocity is either unknown or forgotten in the United States, while it remains a burning memory in North Korea—one that deeply affects Korean attitudes toward US citizens. The essay high-lights the remarkable work of Chris Marker, who died in 2012, one day after his ninety-first birthday. A well-known photographer, filmmaker, and artist, he visited the North four years after the air war ended and published a remarkable book of photos—one that also remains unknown or forgotten. In passing, he remarked that “extermination passed over this land.” Download the pdf: pos234_06Cumings_FF

Abstract: As an introduction to the special issue of positions: asia critique on the unending Korean War, this opening essay calls critical attention to the war’s temporal contours, shifting focus from the question of the Korean War’s origins that bedeviled Korean studies throughout the Cold War to the unsettling question of why the Korean War, in our ostensibly post–Cold War moment, is still not over. This introduction highlights how the image-essays, critical analyses, and interview assembled in this issue, in challenging the war’s standard 1950–53 periodization, examine the war’s persistence in multiple, often overlooked modalities that call for critical and innovative interpretive practice. Against the fog of received historiography on the Korean War, the essays in this collection, by variously questioning the integrity of state-sponsored accounts of the “truth” of the war, call much-needed attention to the Korean War’s legacies, its undertheorized afterlives, and its oblique yet telling ongoing manifestations. Download the pdf: pos234_01Hong_FF

South Korean police officers spray water cannons to try to break up protesters who tried to march to the Presidential House after a rally against government policy in Seoul, November 14, 2015. (AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon) By Tim Shorrock | December 3, 2015 Originally published in The Nation.com Following in the footsteps of her dictator father, South Korea’s President, Park Geun-hye, is cracking down on labor and citizens groups opposed to the increasingly authoritarian policies of her ruling “New Frontier” party known as Saenuri. The situation could reach a critical point this weekend, when tens of thousands of workers organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) join forces with farmers, students, and other civic organizations in a national action in Seoul to protest Park’s conservative labor, education, and trade policies. On Saturday, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency banned the march, with Park’s Justice Minister Kim Hyun-Woong vowing to “uproot illegal and violent demonstration…no matter how much sacrifice is required.” Meanwhile, the president herself equated the protesters—some of whom wear masks as protection from riot police—to terrorists. “Given that the extremists of the Islamic State group hide their faces, we should ban demonstrators from wearing masks in the future,” Park said, before flying off to Paris for this week’s Climate Change Conference. She last visited Washington in October, when President Obama, her country’s strongest ally, promised that the United States “will never waver” in its commitment to South Korea. But inside Korea, her actions have brought back memories of her father, General Park Chung Hee, who seized power in 1961 and ruled with an iron hand until he was assassinated in 1979 by the director of the country’s equivalent of the CIA. In 1979, Park’s government was in the midst of a savage repression of workers and students who were trying to organize for improved conditions and livable wages during a time of rapid, export-led economic growth. After his death, conditions worsened when another general, Chun Doo Hwan, took over in a bloody coup that culminated in the Kwangju citizens’ uprising, which was put down with assistance from the United States. Chun continued Park’s draconian treatment of unions and dissidents for nearly a decade. A democratic system was finally established in 1987 after millions of Koreans filled Seoul’s streets for weeks, demanding an end to military rule and for direct elections of their president. It was out of that tumult, and a series of famous industrial strikes, that the KCTU was born. It is now the country’s second-largest union group and by far the most militant. For the past six months, it has been organizing resistance to a raft of labor reforms pushed by President Park that will make it easier for the country’s family-run conglomerates (called chaebol) to fire workers and provide “flexibility” to Korean and foreign corporations. The law’s primary aim is to increase the huge number of part-time “irregular” workers in Korean industry (20 percent of the workforce, one of the highest rates in the industrialized world) and allow public and private employers to make unilateral changes in working conditions without consulting unions. The reform “essentially implements a wish list of measures long advocated by corporate leaders, who hope to see their profits soar as a result,” Korea watcher Gregory Elich reports in a detailed article in Counterpunch. To increase pressure on the government, the KCTU says it will launch a general strike of its 680,000 members if the National Assembly moves to pass the reforms. That could happen shortly before Christmas. “We have staked everything in this fight,” KCTU president Han Sang-gyun said in an interview with New York journalist Hyun Lee. “We’re talking about workers stopping production, freight trucks stopping in their tracks, railroad and subway workers on illegal strikes, and paralyzing the country so that the government will feel the outrage of the workers.” He says the labor reforms will “turn the entire country into a pool of irregular/precarious workers who can be dismissed at any time without cause.” Over the weekend, the KCTU accused the government of “regressing to the dictatorial era” and called Park’s denial of its constitutional right to assembly “tantamount to the self-acknowledgement that the current government is a dictatorship.” In recent weeks, police have conducted raids on union offices throughout South Korea. In one action, police invaded the national offices of the Korean Federation of Public Services and Transport Workers Union, seizing documents and computer hard-drives from the cargo workers. Many of its actions have been directed at public employee unions. Last spring, the government stripped the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union, with 60,000 members, of its representational rights. Park’s crackdown has angered labor activists around the world, who claim that South Korea’s actions violate commitments it has made to respect worker rights in international trade and financial agreements signed over the past two decades. “South Korea is well on the way to becoming a pariah state in terms of trade union rights,” Owen Tudor, a top official with the British Trade Union Congress said last week. In 2014, the International Trade Union Confederation ranked South Korea as among the world’s worst countries for worker rights. It was listed alongside China, Cambodia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh as a place where workers “are systematically exposed to unfair dismissals, intimidation, arrests and violence often leading to serious injuries and death,” The Wall Street Journal reported reported. LabourStart, an international solidarity group, has launched an online petition calling on South Korea to “Stop attacks on trade unions now.” KCTU’s Han, who was elected president of the confederation last year, is currently taking refuge in a Buddhist temple in Seoul to avoid arrest by government security forces. The police ordered his arrest last spring after he refused to appear before prosecutors investigating the KCTU for allegedly violating traffic and assembly laws during large Labor Day demonstrations on May 1. Since then, the temple has been surrounded by dozens of officers waiting for him to emerge. The government holds KCTU and its member unions responsible for the massive demonstrations calling for President Park’s resignation that disrupted Seoul on November 14. On that day, scores of protesters and police were injured in street battles that erupted after security forces tried to disperse protesters with tear gas and water cannons loaded with pepper spray. During the confrontation, Baek Nam Ki, a 69-year-old leader of the Korean Peasant League, suffered a brain injury after being knocked down by a water cannon. He remains unconscious at a Seoul hospital and has since become a rallying point for the peoples’ movement. On Saturday, his daughter Minjuhwa released a plaintive message to supporters, saying “My father is not a terrorist; he has led a good, honorable, respectful, and decent life. We sincerely wish for justice.” Many Korean activists were further shocked when a senior official in Park’s ruling Saenuri Party pointed to the routine use of force by police in America to justify Seoul’s crackdown on dissent. “In the United States, the police use their firearms to kill people, and in 80 percent to 90 percent of these cases, they’re ruled as justified,” said National Assemblyman Lee Wan-yeong, according to Korean press reports. “Isn’t that how government authority works in advanced countries?” “Everything the government and the ruling party are doing is very shocking and goes beyond our imagination,” Mikyung Ryu, the KCTU’s international director, said in an e-mail to supporters on Sunday. The public appears to be fed up too. After President Park’s veiled attack against masked protesters, netizens took to social media “to lampoon her remarks,” with “graffiti satirizing the president popping up across the nation,” The Korea Herald reported. The People Power Coordinating Body behind the protests was organized by the KCTU and the Peasant League principally to fight the labor reforms, which are seen as hurting all workers as well as the urban poor. KCTU’s rival organization, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions backs the reforms. In total, South Korea’s unionization rate is 10.3 percent—higher than that of the United States. The “people power” coalition is also focused on the impact South Korea’s free trade agreements with the United States and China will have on the country’s rice farmers, whose numbers have drastically dwindled during the period of export-led manufacturing. Another pressing issue is the Park government’s determination to take control of the writing and publication of the nation’s history textbooks. Many Koreans see this as Ms. Park’s attempt to cleanse the dictatorial legacy of her father and his supporters still in government and the military. Equally sensitive is the large number of government officials, past and present, who collaborated with Japan during its colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Park’s own father, for example, was trained by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Park’s move on history books has drawn sharp criticism abroad, including from The New York Times, which uncharacteristically ripped into Park in a November 19 editorial. “Rehabilitating her father’s image appears to be one motivation for making sure South Korea’s students learn a whitewashed version of their country’s history—especially the period when democratic freedoms were seen as an impediment to industrialization,” the Times wrote. The KCTU’s Han compared Park’s attempt to rewrite history to Japan’s refusal to acknowledge its crimes during World War II. “South Koreans have always been critical of Japan’s distortion of history, but now the Japanese media is pointing its finger back at us for doing the same thing,” he told Lee, the New York journalist. “This is an embarrassment.” On Monday, the police announced a new plan to disrupt the December 5 demonstrations, saying it would spray paint into the crowd to “better distinguish protesters committing violence and arrest them on the spot.” But the KCTU and its coalition partners have vowed to press on with the protests. Tim Shorrock is a Washington, DC-based journalist and the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, and a KPI Advisory Board member. #SouthKorea #NationalSecurityLaw #globalization #TimShorrock #Labor

By Martin Hart-Landsberg | December 20, 2015 Previously published in Reports from the Economic Front You wouldn’t know it from reading the mainstream press in the United States, but things are rapidly going from bad to worse for working people in South Korea.  South Korea is typically presented as one of America’s strongest democratic allies in Asia and an economic powerhouse.  Unfortunately, such a presentation is far from accurate. South Korea was ruled by US-supported military dictatorships from 1961 until 1987 when, thanks to the heroics of millions of people demonstrating in the streets, the military dictatorship in power at the time was forced to allow the direct election of the president.  The country didn’t get its first civilian president until 1993. Despite having now achieved a regularized electoral process, South Korea’s democracy still remains compromised by the 1948 division of the country.  For example, the previous President Lee Myung-bak and the current President Park Geun-hye (the daughter of the first military dictator who ruled from 1961-1979) have repeatedly used the country’s draconian national security law to limit freedom of education and the press, political speech, and the rights of workers and social movement and civic activists. Park’s own election victory was due, at least in part, to a secret and illegal on-line campaign to tar the opposition as cozy with North Korea which was run by the country’s National Intelligence Service.  And in 2014, the government formally dissolved the Unified Progressive Party, removing its five members from the National Assembly using trumped up charges that the party was a North Korean front dedicated to the violent overthrow of the South Korean government. The democratic labor movement, one of the main pillars of the country’s democracy struggle, was severely weakened by the 1997-98 economic crisis and the IMF -promoted structural adjustment policies that followed.  Successive governments, responding to a dramatic slowing of growth due in large part to South Korean corporate decisions to globalize operations, have sought to stimulate domestic investment and production by boosting corporate profits through new measures designed to weaken the country’s labor laws. Although South Korea already has the largest percentage of precarious workers among all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, President Park is obviously not satisfied.  Hyun Lee and Gregory Elich, two Korea experts, provide the following summary of her proposed new labor reforms: President Park and her ruling New Frontier party want to introduce a package of laws that would fundamentally change the country’s labor market and undermine the power of unions. They would let employers fire workers arbitrarily, increase the use of temporary labor, and extend the contract term for temporary workers from the current two years to four. “If the reform passes, an employer could hire workers for four years, fire them temporarily, then rehire them for another four years, and they would have no incentive to hire permanent, regular workers,” [Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) President Han Sang-gyun] warned in a recent interview. Contract workers are not entitled to the four major types of insurance that South Korean employers must legally provide to permanent workers—health insurance, unemployment insurance, industrial-accident compensation, and social security.  Unions say employers will use this loophole to replace regular workers with contract workers. Another proposed law would replace the country’s seniority-based salary system with a performance-based system, and let employers terminate workers based on subjective assessments of “low performance.” (Currently, “low performance” cannot be grounds to fire an employee legally, so employers resort to all manners of harassment and humiliation tactics to force employees to leave their jobs voluntarily.) Also, if companies want to push workers into early retirement, they are legally required to pay them 30 days or more of average wages for each year of consecutive service as severance pay.  This new system “would allow a company to get rid of unwanted workers without spending a dime,” Han said. The new law would also allow employers to change their employment regulations as they please without worker consent. By law, employers of ten workers or more are required to prepare rules of employment, such as payment method of wages and annual paid-leave, etc., and submit them to the Ministry of Labor, as well as post them where workers can have free access to them. A company can alter its employment regulations only with the explicit consent of the labor union, or, if there is no labor union, the majority of its workers. . . . The government is also introducing a peak-wage system, in which pay is automatically cut for workers at age 55.  The government argues that businesses need to cut the pay of older workers, because they become less productive as they age, and with the money they save, companies can hire more young people and solve the country’s growing youth unemployment. The government is trying to pit the young against the old, but its feigned concern for young people masks the real beneficiaries of the labor reform – companies that stand to reap enormous profits from cutting the wages of older workers and increasing their reliance on temporary labor. The KCTU is fighting back, and they have allies.  The farmer’s movement opposes President Park’s push for new trade agreements that will drive down the price of rice, slash their income, and leave the country ever more food dependent.  And most people oppose the government’s proposal to take it upon itself to write the only history textbooks to be used in public schools. The KCTU has worked to build a coalition of popular movements around a new vision for the country and helped initiate huge demonstrations in Seoul on November 14 and December 5 demanding the resignation of the president. Park, in response, ordered the police to raid the offices of several KCTU unions and unsuccessfully tried to outlaw new demonstrations.  She also ordered the arrests of top KCTU leaders.  The KCTU president was arrested on December 10.  The police are still searching for other union officers.  It appears that President Park will charge all of them with sedition, which if true will be first time such a charge has been made since the end of the military dictatorship. There is a lot at stake in this struggle, one that seems to fly below the radar of the US media.  As I noted in a previous post: With the deepening of corporate-led globalization processes, governments everywhere seek to weaken labor movements and worker protections and restrict options for public education and democratic debate. As a consequence, the KCTU’s efforts to revitalize its own union structures through its first ever direct election for top officers and renewed internal education and anchor a broad coalition of social forces around an alternative social vision deserves widespread support and serious study. Martin Hart-Landsberg is Professor of Economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon; Adjunct Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences, Gyeongsang National University, South Korea; and Adjunct Professor in the Labor Studies Program at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is on the board of the Korea Policy Institute. #globalization #parkgeunhye #SouthKorea

The Korea Policy Institute is pleased to share an issue of positions: asia critique (volume 23, issue 4) titled, “The Unending Korean War,” edited by Christine Hong and Henry Em. This special issue assembles critical perspectives on the unending Korean War from scholars and creative practitioners working within and across the fields of Korean studies, Asian American studies, and American studies.  KPI Board members, past fellows and advisors are represented in much of this collection. Examining the war beyond its standard 1950-1953 periodization and assumed status as a past event, this issue draws upon an innovative archive of Korean War-era American comic books, declassified prisoner-of-war (POW) political documents, Chicano war narratives, photos of North Korean reconstruction, recent North Korean defector memoirs, South Korean Manchurian action films of the 1960s, a South Korean novel about North Korean war memories, and Korean adoptee documentaries in order to shed light less on the war’s known contours than on its unexamined recesses, forgotten potentialities, and undertheorized afterlives. positions 23:4 has been posted by permission of Duke University Press. Any reuse requires permission from the publisher. www.dukeupress.edu The Unending Korean War Table of Contents Christine Hong: Guest editor’s introduction: The Unending Korean War Leonard Rifas: Korean War Comic Books and the Militarization of American Masculinity Youngju Ryu: Truth or Reconciliation? The Guest and the Massacre That Never Ends Daniel Kim: The Borderlands of the Korean War and the Fiction of Rolando Hinojosa Monica Kim: The Intelligence of Fools: Reading the U.S. Military Archive of the Korean War Bruce Cumings: Violet Ashes: A Tribute to Chris Marker Christine Hong: Manufacturing Dissidence: Arts and Letters of North Korea’s “Second Culture” Jinsoo An:War as Business in South Korea’s Manchurian Action Films Jodi Kim: “The Ending is Not and Ending At All” : On the Militarized and Gendered Diasporas of Korean Transnational Adoption and the Korean War Heny Em, Christine Hong, Kim Dong-Choon: A Coda: A Conversation With Kim Dong-Choon #KoreanWar

South Korean television news report on North Korean hydrogen bomb test. By Suzy Kim | January 8, 2016 Originally published in Speakout/OpEd, Truthout North Korea announced the successful testing of a hydrogen bomb earlier this week, ringing in the New Year with an ominous blast. The conciliatory New Year’s Address delivered by North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, which included no references to the nation’s nuclear ambitions, was greeted in South Korea with hope for better relations in 2016, but such optimism was quickly dashed by detection of seismic activity in North Korea near previous nuclear test sites, followed by official announcement in North Korean state-run media that the “successful” testing of the hydrogen bomb guarantees its sovereignty to defend against American threats. As analysts begin to question the validity of North Korean claims due to the size of the detonation, much of the world may be tempted to either dismiss North Korean brinkmanship as just another example of its saber-rattling and return to the status quo ante, or worse, escalate tensions by imposing another round of sanctions that have yet to prove any efficacy as attested to by the present situation. To our detriment, history is often overlooked as indicated by the epitaph attached to the Korean War (1950-1953), known euphemistically in the United States as the Forgotten War. Yet history is not a thing of the past, but an ongoing reality, lived by every woman, man, and child especially in North Korea, and the timing of the latest announcement is telling. Precisely 63 years ago, on January 7, 1953, President Harry S. Truman announced that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb. Its first successful testing took place just a couple of months earlier on November 1, 1952, making it the world’s first detonation of the thermonuclear weapon. The United States thereby became the first to possess the H-Bomb, escalating the global nuclear arms race with a new weapon that was 1,000 times more destructive than previous atomic devices. All this happened during the Korean War, when General Douglas MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief of the American forces and the United Nations Command, openly advocated the use of nuclear weapons in Korea. With a far superior air power, unmatched by the minimal air support provided by the Soviet Union, the American air force leveled much of North Korean territory. Journalists covering the war at the time noted that North Korea was pulverized to the point that it was like walking on the moon. Entire schools, factories, hospitals, and homes, in addition to military bunkers, were built underground to survive the bombing campaign during the 3-year war, and some estimate that as much as 10% of the North Korean civilian population was killed during the war. While the armistice that finally halted the fighting called for a peace agreement within 90 days of the cease-fire and specifically banned the introduction of new weaponry into Korea, no peace settlement was ever reached and it was the United States that introduced tactical nuclear weapons into its missile bases in South Korea in 1958, not to be pulled out until 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. Throughout that time, North Korea had consistently called for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula to no avail. Ironically, it was with the end of the Cold War in the rest of the world that the Cold War intensified in Korea. In the absence of a Soviet nuclear umbrella, North Korea began its own nuclear program in earnest, which led to the first nuclear crisis in 1993. But with crisis also came opportunity. The 1994 Agreed Framework halted North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for aid and lifting of sanctions toward full diplomatic relations, and it seemed the 21st century was poised for a new era of peace in Korea. The year 2000 saw the first summit by the leaders of the two Koreas since the division of the peninsula in 1945, followed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s visit to Pyongyang, the highest American official to ever visit North Korea. She spoke of a possible visit by President Bill Clinton, which would have been the first step toward normalized relations. Instead, George W. Bush included North Korea in the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union speech, scrapping the Agreed Framework that had halted North Korea’s nuclear program. Unsurprisingly, North Korea promptly resumed its nuclear program resulting in its first nuclear test in 2006 with little progress in resolving the problem since. While the start of 2016 may seem bleak for making headway, history should inform decisions today to open up new possibilities. It is only by acknowledging the impact of the Korean War and the Cold War on the present conundrum – and taking concrete steps to overcome historical barriers against the full normalization of relations – that a deal can be reached for North Korea to give up its nuclear program in exchange for a lasting peace settlement in Korea. Suzy Kim is associate professor of Korean history at Rutgers University, and a former KPI fellow. #Armistice #NorthKorea #Nucleartests

Foal Eagle and Key Resolve 2015 – photo US DoD By Gregory Elich | February 20, 2016 Originally published in Counterpunch. Relations with North Korea are once again in crisis mode. North Korea, we are told, inexplicably launched dual provocations with its nuclear and ballistic missile tests, threatening the security of the United States. It is a simple story, with North Korean irrationality and belligerence on one side, and Washington’s customary desire for peace and stability on the other. Omitted from the standard narrative is anything that would make sense of recent events. North Korea’s nuclear test on January 6 drew fierce condemnation and calls for fresh sanctions. It is interesting to contrast Western outrage over North Korea with the treatment given other nuclear-armed nations operating outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Israeli military receives $3.1 billion annually from the United States while U.S. President Barack Obama has proposed furnishing Pakistan with $860 million in aid next fiscal year, including $265 million in military materiel. Aid to India is more modest, but the United States maintains good relations with India and military cooperation between the two nations is expanding. Clearly, there is a double standard at play, with pats on the back for Israel, Pakistan and India, and brickbats for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the official name for North Korea). The reason is not difficult to fathom. North Korea is the only one of the four nations that the U.S. has targeted in its operational war plans. The United States and South Korea signed the latest operational plan in June of last year. Dubbed Oplan 5015, it covers limited war scenarios and includes a preemptive strike on the DPRK’s strategic targets and “decapitation raids” to kill North Korean leaders. The more North Korea’s nuclear weapons program advances, however, the less likely Oplan 5015 can ever be implemented. Couple Oplan 5015 with the annual military exercises the U.S. conducts with South Korea, and is it any wonder that North Korea feels threatened? In the West, military exercises are sloughed off as a routine matter and North Korean reaction as overly sensitive. Imagine the hysteria, however, that would greet a joint Russian-Cuban military exercise in the Caribbean, practicing the invasion of the United States. Now multiply that perception by the lopsided power imbalance between the DPRK and the United States, and the North Korean reaction appears more rational. North Korea feels threatened because it is threatened. During the George W. Bush Administration, U.S. officials counselled their North Korean counterparts to take note of the Libyan example. Libya abandoned its nuclear program in exchange for better relations with the United States and North Korea can do it too, went the message. These days, that message looks rather different, and the DPRK points out that it has found the Libyan example instructive, as well as those of Yugoslavia and Iraq. For a small targeted nation like North Korea, a nuclear deterrent is seen as a means of warding off attack. As a North Korean news commentary put it, the nuclear test was not intended to threaten or provoke, but to cope with the “undisguised hostile policy” of the U.S. and avert “the danger of war with the help of the strongest deterrence.” Given Washington’s propensity in recent years for bombing, invading, destabilizing and overthrowing governments, North Korea’s concern does not seem misplaced. For all the outcry over the nuclear issue, it must be pointed out that the United States has only itself to blame for the recent turn of events. For the past several years, the DPRK has repeatedly asked the United States for negotiations, only to be snubbed each time. The U.S. position is that the DPRK must substantially denuclearize as a precondition for negotiations. In other words, the U.S. must be given its end goal upfront and all the DPRK would receive in return would be the mere promise of talk. This one-sided approach has been an effective means of blocking the threat of a diplomatic solution. Little more than a year ago, North Korea offered to temporarily suspend its nuclear weapons program if the United States would do the same with its anti-DPRK military exercises, in the interests of “easing tension.” North Korea added that it stood ready “to sit with the U.S. any time” to discuss the proposal. It was an opening bid in what was hoped would lead to dialogue. Predictably, U.S. officials were rudely dismissive and the opportunity to negotiate a resolution of differences was lost. One month after its latest nuclear test, North Korea launched an earth observation satellite into orbit, further inflaming Western sensibilities. The reaction was as fierce as it was unreasoning, and there was a deliberate effort to obfuscate the distinction between a ballistic missile test and a satellite launch. The two are not the same. A satellite launch vehicle relies on an engine with a low-thrust, long-burn time in order to achieve a trajectory high enough to place a satellite into orbit. Testing a ballistic missile requires a flatter trajectory, aimed at maximizing strike distance. For North Korea to test the same missile for ballistic purposes, it would need to redesign the engine. Furthermore, a ballistic missile test requires a reentry vehicle, possessing a heat shield able to withstand the high temperature of passing back through the atmosphere. The DPRK has never tested a reentry vehicle. Relying on the medium-range Unha satellite launch vehicle as a stepping stone to ballistic missile capability is essentially a non-starter. According to German aerospace engineer Markus Schiller, “I assume that they are doing the best they can with the Unha, showing a very slow but continuous progress toward a small satellite launch capability. Turning this program into a real weapon that is deployed in numbers and could hit cities at the push of a button will take decades at that pace.” UN Security Council Resolution 1874 prohibits the DPRK from “any launch using ballistic missile technology.” This demand raises an interesting conundrum. Article I of the international space treaty specifies that outer space “shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind.” What is the hierarchy when a Security Council resolution contravenes international law to deny a right to one nation that is the entitlement of all? The UN Security Council is a political organ, not judicial. All five permanent members of the UN Security Council have agreed on the need for a new sanctions resolution but differ sharply on its nature. China and Russia want sanctions to focus on curtailing nuclear weapons development, whereas the United States, South Korea, and Japan want collective punishment of the entire population of the DPRK. It has been reported that the proposed resolution, as drafted by the United States, bans North Korean ships from docking at foreign ports, in an effort to sharply limit international trade. It also includes measures to block the DPRK from access to international banking. Furthermore, U.S. officials seek a total ban on oil shipments to North Korea. As the DPRK has no oil of its own, that measure could be expected to produce national economic collapse and impoverishment of the population. Behind the scenes, U.S. officials are pressuring China to cancel its contracts to import minerals from the DPRK, and to deny North Korean planes from entering Chinese airspace. The United States is also demanding that China terminate food shipments to the DPRK. With eighty percent mountainous terrain, North Korea has limited arable land, and food imports are needed to supplement agricultural output. If the United States is successful in forcing China to halt food shipments, much of North Korea’s population would be driven into hunger and malnutrition. The brutality of the measures the U.S. is hoping to implement is rather breathtaking. Getting China and Russia onboard with such punitive sanctions is not going to be easy. American officials respond to Chinese and Russian recalcitrance with the technique they know best: bullying. The Chinese government-linked Global Times points out, however: “Washington should be clear that it cannot push China around.” Independently, the United States and South Korea are moving ahead on bilateral sanctions. There is talk of implementing secondary boycotts against any bank doing business with North Korea. Given that international transactions process through U.S. banks, this measure would have the effect of dissuading any bank from dealing with the DPRK. According to a South Korean government official, “South Korea and the U.S. are pushing to employ all possible means to take relevant measures that can effectively bring pain to North Korea.” Seoul, for its part, closed down operations at the Kaesong Industrial Park in North Korea, the last inter-Korean agreement remaining in place. It also resumed cross-border loudspeaker broadcasts. These are only the opening moves in a wide-ranging plan to impose hardship on North Korea. A South Korean official has revealed that the government intends to lean on Southeast Asian nations that employ North Korean labor to sever that relationship and eliminate another source of hard currency for the DPRK. It has also been announced that South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet with President Obama in the coming weeks to discuss further ways to ratchet up the pressure on North Korea. China and Russia point out that the only viable solution to the dispute is dialogue. That is not how U.S. officials perceive the matter, as they sternly lecture the Chinese on the need for a harsher approach. North Korea has a nuclear weapons program because it feels threatened. The U.S. position is that threatening North Korea has not worked. Therefore, more threats are needed. This circular logic can only convince the DPRK of the correctness of its course. It may be that U.S. officials are more interested in capitalizing on North Korea’s nuclear program as a pretext to accelerate the Asia Pivot and tighten the military noose around China. The United States and South Korea have agreed to station a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in the latter nation, ostensibly directed at North Korea. The AN/TPY-2 radar accompanying the radar can be set in two modes, however. In terminal mode, it can detect incoming missiles, but in forward mode it can cover a broad swath of China and a portion of Russia, tracking missiles in their ascending phase and feeding that data to U.S.-based missile defense sites thousands of miles away. By accepting a THAAD battery, South Korea is being incorporated into the U.S. military build-up against China. South Korea has also been drawn into a tripartite plan for sharing military information with Japan and the United States, further entangling it as a junior member in U.S. regional plans. South Korea’s military operations center will be joined directly to the U.S. system via Link 16, the data exchange network currently used by NATO and the United States. The United States wasted little time in demonstrating its disinterest in dialogue, sending a B-52 bomber from Guam to overfly South Korea, in a not so veiled message to the DPRK. U.S. military officials are also consulting with the South Korean military on the possible deployment of B-52 and B-2 bombers on South Korean soil, along with F-22 fighter planes. It has already been announced that the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises, slated to run from March 7 through April 30, will be the largest ever held. The exercises, rehearsing the invasion of North Korea, will include the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier, the USS North Carolina submarine, B-52 and B-2 bombers, and F-22 fighters. The newly minted Oplan 5015 will play an important role in the exercises. North Korea points out that as long as the United States maintains its hostile policy, “our suspension of nuclear development or nuclear abandonment cannot happen.” The formula for resolving the dispute is clear. The DPRK’s legitimate security concerns must be addressed if North Korea is going to give up its nuclear program. Only negotiations can accomplish that. But diplomacy is the one option that Washington rules out, and there is an excess of reckless and dangerous rhetoric. Instead, the United States is pursuing measures that could seriously threaten regional security. China and Russia are firmly advocating negotiations as the only sensible solution. It remains to be seen whether anyone in Washington is listening or not. Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. #GregoryElich #KoreanWar #NuclearCrisis #Armistice #NorthKorea

Noam Chomsky By Simone Chun | March 6, 2016 Originally published on Tim Shorrock’s blog Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears Noam Chomsky has long had a deep interest in Korea. Ever since his involvement in the antiwar movement of the 1960s, he’s paid close attention to the country and the controversial role played by the United States on the peninsula since 1945. Last month, Professor Chomsky was interviewed in Boston by the writer and activist Simone Chun for the Hankyoreh newspaper. Here is the English translation of the interview, courtesy of Ms. Chun. Ms. Chun’s interview took place on January 19th, 2016, at Professor Chomsky’s office at MIT. Chun: Do you feel that there will be any significant change in the foreign policy of the United States after President Obama? Chomsky: If Republicans are elected, there could be major changes that will be awful. I have never seen such lunatics in the political system. For instance, Ted Cruz’s response to terrorism is to carpet-bomb everyone. Chun: Would you expect that Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy would be different from President Obama’s? Chomsky: Judging by the record, she is kind of hawkish—much more militant than the centrist democrats, including Obama. Take for instance Libya: she was the one pressing the hardest for bombing, and look at what happened. They not only destroyed the country, but Libya has become the center for jihad all over Africa and the Middle East.  It’s a total disaster in every respect, but it does not matter.  Look at the so-called global war on terror. It started in 15 years ago with a small cell in a tribal sector in Afghanistan.  Now it is all over, and you can understand why. It’s about comparative advantage of force. Chun: How about Bernie Sanders–what do you think his foreign policy will be? Chomsky: He is doing a lot better than I expected, but he doesn’t have much to say about foreign policy. He is a kind of New Deal Democrat and focuses primarily on domestic issues. Chun: Some people in South Korea speculate that if Bernie Sanders gets elected, he may take a non-interventionist position towards foreign policy, which would then give more power to South Korea’s right-wing government. Chomsky: The dynamics could be different. His emphasis on domestic policy might require an aggressive foreign policy. In order to shore up support for domestic policies, he may be forced to attack somebody weak. Chun: Do you believe that Americans would support another war? Chomsky: The public is easily amenable to lies: the more lies there are, the greater the support for war. For instance, when the public was told that Saddam Hussein would attack the U.S., this increased support for the war. Chun: Do you mean that the media fuels lies? Chomsky: The media is uncritical, and their so-called the concept of objectivity translates into keeping everything within the Beltway. However, Iraq was quite different. Here, there were flat-out lies, and they sort of knew it. They were desperately trying to make connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Chun: Do you think that the Iran nuclear deal is a good thing? Chomsky: I don’t think that any deal was needed: Iran was not a threat. Even if Iran were a threat, there was a very easy way to handle it–by establishing a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, which is something that nearly everyone in the world wants. Iran has been calling for it for years, and the Arab countries support it. Everyone except the United States and Israel support it. The U.S. won’t allow it because it means inspecting Israel’s nuclear weapons. The U.S. has continued to block it, and in fact blocked it again just a couple of days ago; it just wasn’t widely reported. Iran’s nuclear program, as U.S. intelligence points out, is deterrent, and the bottom line is that the U.S. and Israel don’t want Iran to have a deterrent. In any case, it is better to have some deal than no deal, but it’s interesting that Obama picked the day of implementing of Iran deal to impose new sanctions on North Korea. Chun: And do you think that the same can be said about North Korea? Chomsky: You can understand why. If North Korea doesn’t have a deterrent, they will be wiped out. Chun: What is the most constructive way to address the nuclear issue in the Korean peninsula? Chomsky: In 2005, there was a very sensible deal between the U.S. and North Korea. This deal would have settled North Korea’s so-called nuclear threat, but was subsequently undermined by George W. Bush, who attacked North Korean banks in Macau and blocked the North’s access to outside the world. Chun:  Why does the United States undermine efforts to reach an agreement with North Korea? Chomsky: I don’t think that the United States cares. They just assume that North Korea will soon have nuclear weapons. Chun: Can you elaborate? Chomsky: If you look at the record, the United States has done very little to stop nuclear weapons. As soon as George W. Bush was elected, he did everything to encourage North Korea to act aggressively.  In 2005 we were close to a deal, but North Korea has always been a low priority issue for the United States. In fact, look at the entire nuclear weapons strategy of the United States: from the beginning, in the 1950s, the United States didn’t worry much about a nuclear threat. It would have been possible to enter into a treaty with the one potential threat—the Soviet Union—and block development of these weapons. At that time, the Russians were way behind technologically, and Stalin wanted a peace deal, but the U.S. didn’t want to hear the USSR’s offer. The implication is that the U.S. is ready to have a terminal war at any time. Chun: What do you think about U.S. “Pivot to Asia” policy? Chomsky: It is aimed at China. China is already surrounded by hostile powers such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Guam, but the United States wants to build up more tension. For example, few days ago, a B-52 nuclear bomber flew within a couple of miles of China.  It is very provocative. Nuclear war ends everything, but the United States always plays with fire. Chun: What do you think about Japan? Do you think Japan is remilitarizing, and if so, does this pose a threat to the region and the world? Chomsky: Yes, Japan is trying very hard, but it is not certain that it will succeed. Take for instance Okinawa. There is no actual military purpose, but the United States insists on maintaining a base there. Chun: As you know, part of my work centers on supporting individual activists in South Korea who do not tend to receive media attention.  Your statements of solidarity in support of them enable them to receive much-needed attention by the Korean media.  It has been very effective. Chomsky: I hope that my support has been helpful. Is there any hope or mood in Korea in support of Sunshine Policy? Chun: It is difficult due to the incumbent right-wing government. Chomsky: How about South Korean public opinion? Chun: As you know, successive conservative governments have obstructed engagement with the North, and this has greatly deflated the public mood on the matter. Opposition parties remain divided and ineffective, and the current government exercises tight control over the media and represses any activists who would express criticism. South Korea appears to be heading back to the authoritarianism of the 1960s and 1970s. Chomsky: Part of the reason why the United States doesn’t care about North Korea is that the North Korean threat provides justification for the right-wing conservative regime in the South. Chun: Yes, many people argue that the biggest obstacle in dealing with North Korea is South Korean right-wing politics. Chomsky: Relaxation with North Korea would mean conservatives losing power in the South. That’s why, for instance, we have to keep the war on terrorism. Chun: Professor Chomsky, thank you again for your time and your support. Simone Chun is a KPI fellow, who received both her MA and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. An accomplished scholar and international activist, Dr. Chun has more than 10 years of experience in teaching at Liberal Arts colleges in the United States, and has been a central contributor to the creation of a number of interdisciplinary Asian and Korean Studies programs. #elections #SouthKorea #peacetreaty #NoamChomsky #NorthKorea

Protesters against the largest ever U.S.- South Korea war games, at U.S. Embassy in Seoul, March 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) By Tim Beal | April 23, 2016 Paper prepared for KPI March 2016 webinar on “The Crisis in Korea” Hysteria, hypocrisy and self-harm amongst a shower of satellites In the first half of February 2016 a number of satellites were launched; two by Japan, three by the United States, one each by Russia and China and one by North Korea. The other launches went unremarked outside the scientific community but the North Korean satellite was another matter; a very curious matter. It was, we were told, really a missile, an ICBM. ‘North Korea is committed to striking the U.S. with a nuclear-armed missile’ the Pentagon told Congress.  This satellite launch was taken as indication of North Korea’s wicked intention. No matter that a satellite carrier rocket is a rather different beast to a missile. Satellites are designed to stay up in space and missiles to come down to deliver a warhead on a target – this missile was, in fact, a satellite launcher, no matter that the intention was clear. In the background, though, there is North Korea’s KN-08 ICBM. It has not been tested, although it has been displayed, either the real thing or a mock-up, on parade in Pyongyang. The KN-08 “likely would be capable” of striking the continental U.S. if successfully designed and developed, said the Pentagon.  A couple of assumptions there, lodged in a tautology – the KN-08 ICBM, if successfully designed and developed, would be a successful ICBM. The North Korean satellite was roundly condemned by that fine institution ‘the international community’ because it had been launched by a ballistic rocket, and North Korea had been expressly forbidden to use ballistic rockets. No matter that all satellites are launched by ballistic rockets; that’s the physics of it. No matter that there must be tens of thousands of ballistic rockets, of all sizes, military and civil, around the world. This prohibition only applied to North Korea. The United States went to work trying to push a resolution through the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to increase sanctions against North Korea. There is an interesting story here, only half-revealed. The U.S. moved to deploy more financial sanctions, utilising its dominant position in world banking, designed, according to Andrei Lankov, to push ‘the North Korean economy towards crisis’ and famine. The beauty of this strategy is that, if successful, the malnourished children will be produced as evidence not of American ruthlessness, but of Kim Jong Un’s desire to starve his own people. No one, so far, has asked John Kerry, in relation to sanctions against North Korea, the question asked of Madeleine Albright regarding sanctions against Iraq. When asked on 60-Minutes, May 12, 1996, by Leslie Stahl: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright paused briefly and replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” She regretted her honesty that next day. Presumably that interview is now part of the induction process for senior U.S. officials, on questions to avoid answering. Meanwhile, in South Korea, North Korea’s satellite launch, preceded by its fourth nuclear test on January 6, 2016 (way behind America’s thousand plus tests), caused the Park Geun-hye administration to move into high gear. The situation was used as a justification for pushing forward the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missiles, in spite of protests by Russia and especially China. No matter that the THAAD rockets would probably be ineffective against the missiles that North Korea actually has, but are rather part of missile defence against China and Russia. And no matter that North Korea’s Unha satellite carrier rocket, even if converted to an ICBM, would pose no threat to South Korea. Again the physics; a ballistic trajectory means that you cannot use a long-range rocket to attack your immediate neighbour. President Park closed down the Kaesong Industrial Park, causing losses of 800 billion won, nearly a billion dollars, for South Korean companies involved  and  reduced Inter-Korean relations to their lowest in decades, while warning of North Korea’s ‘collapse’.  The word, ’collapse,’ really used here as a euphemism, because no informed observer thinks that a collapse, in the real meaning of the word, is in the cards. Rather the contrary. The lawyer and investment consultant Michael Hay, based in Pyongyang, recently complained wryly in an interview with NK News that ‘“the country is in such a state of self-confidence – the highest level of self-confidence I have ever seen – that I perhaps think they may have a slightly less than full picture of how they are perceived from the outside, in terms of business assessment.” But President Park is probably using ‘collapse’ in a sort of Orwellian sense as indicated by the fractured grammar of a headline in the South China Morning Post  – ‘South Korea’s President Park Signals Shift by Invoking Threat of ‘Regime Collapse’ against North Korea.’ Now you can logically invoke a danger of collapse, or you can threaten invasion, but you cannot threaten collapse against a country. You can threaten someone that you will shoot him, but you can’t threaten diabetes. Does President Park have an invasion of the North in mind?  Hopefully not, because the consequences for the peninsula, the region and indeed the world, should it morph into a war against China, would be horrendous.  The current joint military exercises led by the U.S., but with South Korea providing the bulk of the troops, and with contingents from far-flung colonial outposts such as Australia and New Zealand to add a touch of ‘the international community,’ are exceedingly worrisome. These exercises have been described as ‘the biggest in history,’ involving nearly as many troops as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and apart from a computer-simulated drive towards the Chinese border, and amphibious landings in the spirit of Inchon. For the first time the exercises also incorporate an OPLAN 5015 which includes ‘decapitation strikes’ against the North Korean leadership and the use of Special Forces to seize key nuclear assets before the South Koreans can get to them. Imagine this: The U.S. launches decapitation and Special Forces strikes alleging that the regime is collapsing and it is forced to act to prevent nuclear weapons from being transferred to terrorists. Most of the media, and allied governments, will not question this fantasy. No doubt the phrase ‘humanitarian intervention’ will be weaselled in somewhere.  North Korea will retaliate as promised and the U.S. will launch the invasion proper, with South Korea troops doing most of the fighting, and filling most of the body bags. This invasion will be purely defensive, of course. How do we try to explain the hypocrisy, the hysteria and the war-mongering; and in the case of South Korea, self-harm? A framework for analysis with the U.S. at its core In order to make sense of this and, lay the foundation for activism, as appropriate, we must contextualise and establish a framework for analysis. The starting point for this framework is that we must look in the right direction. Most writing and discussion on Korean peninsula issues focuses almost exclusively on North Korea. We are told of the North Korean problem, the North Korea threat, how North Korea, or the Kim family, is mad, bad, unpredictable, and so forth. The clue is to look at phrases such as the “Vietnam War,” the “Korean War,” “ invasion of Afghanistan,” “ invasion of Iraq,” and work out what they have in common; or rather what is left out that they have in common. The answer of course is the United States. The U.S. is the common denominator. No doubt some wise person thousands of years ago pointed out that we will not see the mountain, however high it may be, if we are looking in the wrong direction.  And the American mountain is very high indeed. The U.S. is the global colossus.  It is the world’s major economy (although now overtaken in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms by China) and one relevant consequence of that has been its fondness for economic warfare.  Physical sanctions may devastate a target economy without impinging on the far larger American one. The U.S. had an embargo against China for 25 years without American business protesting; mind you they didn’t realise what they were missing out on. Sanctions on North Korea have been in place some 70 years, with no apparent protest from American business. The U.S. dominance in international business makes financial sanctions very appealing; again they cause great damage without much cost to the U.S. U.S. economic might means there is plenty of cash to buy friends and influence people. Vicky Nuland’s boast, in December 2013, just before the coup in the Ukraine, that they had ‘invested’ $5 billion in the Ukraine is one example; then there are all the stories of CIA operatives sashaying through Afghanistan and Iraq with dollars, not in fistfuls but in suitcases. The U.S. is uniquely blessed by nature, with extensive agricultural and mineral resources meaning it cannot be blockaded into submission, however strong a future enemy might be. It is protected by vast oceans east and west and bordered by small, non-threatening countries north and south. Despite this geographical invulnerability, the U.S. spends on its military nearly as much as the rest of the world put together. If one adds to its military budget that of its ‘allies’ and compares that to the military wherewithal of potential adversaries the disproportion is staggering.  At a rough calculation using data from the latest Military Balance assessment from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the military expenditure of U.S. and its ‘allies’ is about $1 trillion a year. They outspend China seven times, Russia 19 times and North Korea somewhere between 100 times and, if one accepts the estimate of Pyongyang’s military budget made by the director of the South Korean Defence Intelligence Agency back in 2013, 1000 times. The United States also has immense Soft power, as understood by Joseph Nye, which includes diplomatic power and its domination of the global intellectual space which are linked together, the one feeding off the other. The U.S. has immense diplomatic power. Hence for instance all those dubious UN Security Council resolutions censuring North Korea, and violating the sovereignty of Libya, Yugoslavia, Iraq, or Iran. The U.S. is able to bully, cajole or perhaps just instruct permanent and non-permanent members of the UNSC to commit egregious violations of the UN Charter, damaging its enemies and protecting its friends, such as Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and of course itself. Again its power is not absolute, but it is extraordinary. The official U.S. narrative not merely fashions Western media and academia but also much of that in Russia and China. If you look at Russian or Chinese media, in English at least, you will see that unless national interests are directly challenged – in Ukraine and Eastern Europe for the Russians and the South China Sea for the Chinese, the default position is to accept uncritically what the Western news agencies, and hence Western officials, portray. This, needless to say, only works one way. No Western newspaper would ever regurgitate a statement from Tass or Xinhua without inserting it in a political envelope telling the reader not to believe it. As a result of this domination of the international intellectual space no one seems to blink when the U.S., with its thousand nuclear tests, fulminates against North Korea’s four, or with its myriad nuclear and conventional missiles, bombers, fighters, aircraft carriers, and submarines claims that it is being threatened by North Korea with its very limited and uncertain ability to project power far beyond its borders.  This goes beyond hypocrisy and double standards into the construction of a special sort of unreality. Of all countries in the world North Korea alone has been censured by the UNSC for launching satellites, and that on the strange ground that they utilised ballistic missile technology. Strange because not merely, as noted early, are all satellites launched by ballistic rockets, but ballistic missiles are not themselves illegal. How could they be when the U.S. has so many of them? There are various bilateral and multilateral agreements by which the U.S. attempts to manage the situation – there is, for instance, the limitation it has imposed on South Korean missiles (they don’t want Seoul attacking China without permission) but missiles per se are not prohibited  Similarly for nuclear tests and weapons. There are various ‘voluntary’ agreements – the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the Non-Proliferation Treaty – but these are different in nature from, for instance, the prohibition on invading other countries which is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, and dates back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.  In this regard the construction of North Korea as an international pariah is an expression of American power rather than, as is usually claimed, a result of the infringement of international law.  In fact, the discriminatory charges against North Korea are themselves a violation of the norms of international law and the equal sovereignty of states. American power means that nothing much happens in the world without the U.S. being involved although that is frequently hidden. Sometimes it is the dominant actor, sometimes just an endorser, but the U.S. is always there. This does not mean that the U.S. is omnipotent. Indeed something that intrigues me is that clients sometimes have surprising leverage against the U.S. One thinks of Syngman Rhee in the 1950s, or more recent Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. These are people who were installed by the U.S., had not much popular support and many domestic enemies, but nevertheless at times could disobey orders quite flagrantly.  The client/master relationship is constantly being negotiated and is complex. However, if push comes to shove the master prevails, as Rhee found out in 1960. Deciphering U.S. global strategy So, in analysing world affairs the starting point must be the U.S. What does America want?  That, needless to say, often bears little connection with what it proclaims as its objective. Analysis must be hard-nosed looking beyond the spin and rhetoric, focussing on actions and seeking real explanations.  When we have some idea of America’s position we can start looking at the other players, in descending order of importance. For most countries, most of the time, the United States is their major partner-cum-adversary. They tend to tailor their policy in relation to third countries in the light of their relationship with the United States. At the same time we must presume that Washington has a global grand strategy (however incoherent and subject to various factions that may be) and that this strategy prioritises and subordinates the part to the whole. The failure to put the U.S. at the core of geopolitical analysis is a fundamental reason why so much writing on the Korean peninsula is usually off mark. We have innumerable websites and NGOs, books and articles focusing on North Korea, often with little attention paid to the U.S., other than considering what effect North Korea, and often ‘the North Korean threat’ has on America. Looking in the wrong direction, asking the wrong questions, they get misleading or meaningless answers. Associated with this, and arguably a result of it, is the fact that virtually all the experts, all the pundits we hear from, are to use Perry Anderson’s term ‘state functionaries’. He was talking about American experts on China. Here I am focussing on American experts on Korea, though much the same holds for experts from Britain, Russia, and China. Most of these experts either currently work for the U.S. government or have in the past – in the CIA, Defence, or State usually. If they are former employees they now work for think tanks or NGOs which are, to put it politely, state-aligned. Even academics are constrained by the desire for research funding.  There are very few neutral, dispassionate, disinterested (in the proper meaning of the term) voices. One simpler indicator is that virtually all of them express horror at the idea of North Korea having nuclear weapons but few have any qualms about the U.S. and its arsenal. They tend to view the prospect of the U.S. attacking North Korea with moral equanimity. The Korean peninsula in U.S. strategy Why is the U.S. interested in the Korean peninsula? The answer is location. Korea is the most valuable piece of geopolitical real estate in the world.  It is the nexus where most of the great powers meet and contend. China and Russia share a land border with Korea, Japan is separated by a small sea, and although the Pacific is a large ocean it is also ‘the American lake’.  None of these powers want a unified Korea subservient to any of the others and since the U.S. is by far the most powerful it has the most-pro-active policy. The U.S. is also different in that it alone, at the moment, has aspirations for global hegemony.  This means keeping Japan subservient, and containing China and Russia with the longer term aim of fragmenting them so that they are no longer competitors.  It is easy to see how Korea fits in with these strategic objectives.  As a physical location it provides bases adjacent to China and Russia and whilst the number of troops permanently deployed in South Korea is small, one of the functions of the joint exercises with the ROK is to practice the rapid influx of massive reinforcements. Japan fulfils the same role. As an aside it might be noted that Korea also provides a base for keeping an eye on Japan. Whilst the U.S. has been an enthusiastic supporter of Japanese remilitarisation, thinking in terms of the containment of China, it is possible this may change. A remilitarised Japan (and it should be remembered that Japan has the expertise to rapidly develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems that might well be superior to China’s), made a ‘normal’ country again, may want to assert its independence from the U.S. As Lord Henry John Temple Palmerston remarked, back in the nineteenth century, countries don’t have perpetual friends and enemies, merely perpetual interests. The Korean peninsula not merely provides the U.S. with physical bases for its military; it provides access to a huge reservoir of Korean military assets. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies report, Military Balance 2015, South Korea has a total troop complement – that is the combination of service personnel and reserves – of about 5.1 million. For comparison this is 2.6 times as much as that of North Korea’s 2 million, considerably more than America’s 2.2 million and quite a bit more than China’s 3.5 million. Because of interoperability, these South Korean troops can fight alongside America, under American command, but probably can’t operate on their own in a major war. The Joint military exercises such as Key Resolve, Foal Eagle and Ssang Yong are described as defensive to deter North Korean aggression. Given North Korea’s incredible military inferiority against the U.S.-led forces this is obviously a pretext. The exercises practise more than the invasion of the North. The Chosun Ilbo  which, like Donald Trump sometimes blurts out an inconvenient truth, recently made this comment about the exercises: The underlying aim is to bring South Korea, Australia, Japan and the U.S. closer together to thwart China’s military expansion in the Pacific. When the United States looks at Korea, it sees China. So it is clear that for the Unites States the Korean peninsula is hugely important. This is partly in its own right – its 75 million people put it on a par with Germany or France. However its main significance to the U.S. is that it is a strategic asset in its confrontation with China, and to a lesser extent, Russia.  If the peninsula could be detached from the Asian mainland, towed down to the South Pacific and parked near New Zealand, then the U.S. would be far less interested. We would not have had the division of Korea, the war, the militarisation. All this means that the U.S.’s North Korea policy, and hence its South Korea policy, must be seen within the context of its struggle with China, and Russia.  In 1945 when the U.S. had the peninsula divided its main concern was Russia, then the Soviet Union. At that time it ‘owned’ China, through Chiang Kai-shek.  This changed over time and now China is the major component in its East Asia strategy. However Russia should not be overlooked. The U.S. is a global power, and Russia straddles Europe and Asia, and although it is the European face of Russia which concerns the U.S., it is its Asian side which is most vulnerable; if Russia is struck in East Asia, it bleeds in Europe. To recap, the U.S.’s Korea strategy is a component of its global strategy, and China is the major focus of that, with Russia coming in behind. North Korea is important because of the role it has in that strategy; it is not really important in itself. So, if for instance, the U.S. decided that good relations with North Korea would better serve its containment of China than the present hostility – by no means a foolish idea – then its Korea policy would change, whatever the screams in Seoul. U.S. North Korea policy What, then, is the U.S.’s North Korea policy? Most people, left or right, find that easy to answer. It sees North Korea’s nuclear programme threatening and its focus is the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. I am not so sure. For one thing U.S. hostility long preceded North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. More important and telling is the fact that there has never been a serious, bipartisan, and sustained attempt to negotiate with Pyongyang on the issue. There was, indeed, the Agreed Framework of 1994 but that was sabotaged by the Republicans while out of the White House, and torn up by them, by George W Bush, when they did hold the presidency. Bush did go through the motions of negotiating for some years, but despite North Korean gestures such as the blowing up the cooling tower of its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon in 2008, these came to naught. Obama, under the rubric of ‘strategic patience’ has refused to negotiate. To some extent this history can be ascribed to infighting within the power elite, and between government agencies; for instance Treasury’s actions against Banca Delta Asia which scuttled the negotiations for some time.  American governments are also reluctant to negotiate with adversaries because negotiation implies compromise, thus exposing themselves to charges of being soft and unpatriotic by opponents – Trump, Cruz, Rubio, et al. However, underlying this is a fundamental strategic dilemma. Some argue that the U.S. could easily negotiate a deal by offering a grand bargain where it guaranteed North Korea’s security with perhaps the concession of allowing Pyongyang to retain its present, probably inoperable and certainly tiny, nuclear deterrent. Sig Hecker’s ‘The Three No’s’ is an example of this – ‘no new weapons, no better weapons, no transfer of nuclear technology.’  With Libya in mind, let alone the abrogation of the Agreed Framework, it is difficult to see how the U.S. could offer credible guarantees, even if it wanted to. But it is scarcely likely that it wants to. North Korea’s major threat to the U.S. is not its nuclear weapons but its proposal for a peace treaty. If North Korea, by developing a nuclear deterrent, by building a formidable, but primarily defensive, military, by refusing to buckle down under sanctions and having the temerity to launch satellites – if North Korea by doing all this is able to force the U.S. into accepting peaceful coexistence then its example might be followed by others. The one thing empires detest above all else is independence; that and its brother, rebellion. It was for this crime which the Roman Empire reserved crucifixion. North Korea’s success would also have implications for China and Russia in their struggle with the U.S. Having said that, the U.S. would probably negotiate if it were genuinely concerned that North Korea’s nuclear weapons presented a serious threat. It seems to me that despite the posturing, they do not. Firstly it is a deterrent, not an offensive weapon, so if North Korea is not attacked then it does not come into play. Barring accidents, the initiative lies with Washington. Secondly, there is no evidence that North Korea can actually deliver a nuclear weapon, certainly not to substantial U.S. territory. This may change; miniaturization may proceed beyond photo opportunities, and an ICBM may someday be tested. Thirdly, the U.S., bolstered by its allies, has overwhelming military superiority.  For the moment there is no pressing need to negotiate. This brings us back to China policy. If the U.S. did negotiate a peace treaty, or if it were able to invade and conquer North Korea and extend Seoul’s administration up towards the Yalu (under an American general of course) without provoking a Chinese intervention, what would this do to its China policy? If China did intervene then we would have a second Sino-American war, with all that might entail. But leaving aside that possibility and just considering the implications of a peaceful Korean peninsula we immediately see problems in justifying the U.S. military presence, and missile defences.  How would the U.S. keep South Korea, and to a lesser extent Japan, in line with the containment of China without a North Korean threat? Even today we see lot of anguish in South Korea – I will leave details to my South Korea colleagues – of the impact of THAAD, and other measures, on South Korea’s relations with China, and with Russia. It seems to me that the present situation serves U.S. policy towards China (and towards Russia) very well. Going to war to remove North Korea’s nuclear weapons would be perilous, negotiating them away might be even more problematic for U.S. interests, should other small countries follow North Korea’s example. China and Russia – shared predicaments, common strategies Let us now turn to China, and to Russia. Both are competitors to the Unites States and so both are targets of U.S. global strategy. In addition, both are resurgent states. Russia is recovering from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Yeltsin years, and China from the 19th century meltdown of the Qing dynasty. Other things being equal, this means that both are getting stronger relative to the U.S., but both are currently very much weaker, Russia of course more than China. But the shift in relative power means that the U.S. has an incentive to go to war earlier rather than later, while for China and Russia the longer they can delay any such clash the better. This in itself does not mean that the U.S. will attack either of them, although there is plenty of conjecture from all quarters on that. However, current weakness combined with the likelihood of greater security in the future does present both China and Russia with a shared predicament – how do they cope with an America in relative decline, which is very strong, has a history of aggressiveness and, the current presidential campaign suggests, may be more adventurist in the future. This surely is no easy matter. It requires cool and calm judgement in balancing the need to be firm on core issues while giving the United States neither cause nor pretext on more peripheral ones. But what is core and what is peripheral?  And where does Korea fit in? It is often said that the Korean peninsula is the most likely place for conflict between the United States and China (though the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea are also candidates).  For Russia it is more likely to be Eastern Europe or Turkey, but a war in Korea would involve Russia to some degree. It is also the place where Russia is most militarily vulnerable. Whilst the U.S. keeps a pretty firm grip on South Korea (it does have wartime control of its military for example) China has little leverage over North Korea and Russia even less. So while the U.S. can ratchet tension up and down as it requires, neither China nor Russia have much control over Korean events; an unenviable strategic position to be in. However, whilst recognising the dilemma they face I would argue that they have erred on the side of timidity, even perhaps appeasement, especially in relation to the UN Security Council.  They were both complicit in voting for UNSC resolutions censuring North Korea for actions which were quite legal. They have done this on other occasions; Libya comes to mind but they seem to have learnt a lesson from that and have stood firmer on the issue of Syria. UNSC resolutions against North Korea stretch back to 1950, when unfortunately the Soviet Union was absent and not in a position to utilise its veto to defeat the U.S.’s resolution to go to war in Korea, but the modern series date from an attempted satellite launch in 2006. Once having accepted that as a violation of the UN Charter they have been on a slippery slope with no way back. The word ‘appeasement’ is often used loosely in order to condemn compromises which are the natural consequence of negotiations between adversaries of some degree of equality. Country A makes a demand of country B. If country B complies will that be the end of the matter; indeed will A reciprocate with a gesture of good faith? If so, well and good. However, if country A’s demands are really stepping stones on the way to an objective – perhaps the enfeeblement or destruction of B – then giving way only whets is appetite. The problem for China is that America’s North Korea policy is really aimed at it, so concession does not solve the problem, but probably exacerbates it. The same, with obvious differences, applies to Russia. It might be argued that China, and Russia, have followed a Zen strategy of bowing to the wind, which would break a brittle tree, while staying rooted in the soil. They have negotiated a softening of the resolutions and then not implemented them vigorously.  I don’t think this has been a wise strategy because it means they are constantly on the defensive. North Korea will remain intransigent, because it has no choice, and the U.S. will continue its pressure. I suspect that Putin’s response to the U.S.-assisted coup in Ukraine and the U.S.-assisted crisis in Syria offers lessons. Nimble footwork and countermeasures, a judicious amount of military intervention, both in quantity and duration, while at the same time restraining criticism of America with plenty of face-saving gestures. China, supported by Russia, calls for the resurrection of the Six Party Talks as a solution to the problem. There have been rumours that China cut a deal with the U.S. over the latest resolution for some sort of American promise of talks. Personally I think the Six Party Talks are probably dead, partly because as explained above the U.S. has little interest in negotiating with North Korea but also because the Obama administration realised that Bush had made a strategic mistake in agreeing to them in the first place. Allowing your main competitor to chair and host the major security forum in East Asia while you, and your allies Japan and South Korea, sit on the second tier with North Korea and Russia was not a smart move. China’s contortions, and those of Russia, have been painful to watch. They have condemned North Korea for its violations of the UNSC resolutions forbidding satellite launches and nuclear tests, but they are partly responsible for the resolutions in the first place. They are also partly responsible for the nuclear tests. The United States does provide security and a nuclear umbrella for South Korea. Because it is a master-client relationship it has been able to prevent the South developing nuclear weapons in the past, during Park Chung-Hee’s time, and will surely do so in the future. Neither China nor Russia provides real security assurances, or a nuclear umbrella, to North Korea, so they can scarcely be surprised if it attempts to look after itself. To be fair, the United States is far superior in military terms and they perhaps cannot be expected to match America’s muscular approach. This leaves China in particular in a vulnerable, defensive position where the initiative is in America’s hands. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has recently warned that: As the largest neighbour of the peninsula, China will not sit by and see a fundamental disruption to stability [there], and will not sit by and see unwarranted damages to China’s security interests. But what does this mean in practice? Is he saying that if the U.S. does invade North Korea, China will intervene?  If so, surely it would be wise for China to be more explicit. It should be recalled that in 1950, with no direct communication with the U.S., China conveyed a message through Indian Ambassador K. M. Panikkar that it would intervene if U.S. forces invaded the North and moved towards the Yalu. Washington did not hear, did not listen, or just ignored that warning. The first Sino-American War ensued.  Will history repeat itself for a lack of a clear understanding of the consequences of invasion? If, however, the U S decides that now is the time to give resurgent China a bloody nose, explicit warnings will be irrelevant. Starting the conflict in Korea would give the U.S. signal advantages, not available elsewhere. It would automatically bring in the formidable South Korean military, with the world’s largest reservoir of military manpower. It would certainly utilise Japan, whose military budget is 25% higher that South Korea’s and who navy is reputedly superior to China’s. Japan – leveraging the Korean situation for remilitarisation Japan’s position in all this is relatively straightforward. It has long used the Korean situation, and the perceived ‘North Korean threat,’ buttressed by a good dose of Japanese colonial racism as a pretext for remilitarisation. This has long been supported by the U.S., not in respect of North Korea, where it is scarcely needed except as a place for bases, but as a bulwark against China. Japan’s recent eagerness to join in conflict on the Korean peninsula, however, has caused considerable anguish in Seoul. Fighting fellow Koreans under an American general is bad enough, but for South Korea soldiers to fight alongside Japanese troops would be a public relations disaster. South Korea – the pivot which did not turn I hesitate to say much about South Korea in this forum but perhaps a few brief remarks, however, ignorant, from a foreign perspective might be tolerated. I must confess I was wrong about President Park Geun-hye. The North Korea policy of her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, had been such a disaster that it seemed to me that she would move in some ways to correct things. Lee had increased the danger of war, and his sanctions had damaged the South Korean economy while pushing the North’s into the hands of China. Even on his own terms nothing had been achieved. Whilst Park was less likely than a progressive to want to improve the relationship with the North she has a distinct advantage in being able to do so, if she wishes. Just as Nixon, with his anti-Communist reputation could go to Beijing and play the ‘China card’ against the Soviet Union without being accused of being ‘soft on Commies’ so too could Park, as the daughter of the late anti-Communist dictator, Park Chung Hee, engage with Pyongyang in ways that the more liberal Moon Jae-in could not. Back in 2011, before the election President Park published an article in Foreign Affairs entitled ‘A new kind of Korea: building trust between Seoul and Pyongyang’ where she talked about ‘Trustpolitik.’ That, and the phrase ‘peaceful unification’ was often on her lips; a notable occasion being her speech in Dresden in 2014. She described unification as a ‘bonanza’ and described her dream, stolen in fact from Kim Dae-jung, of a Eurasian land bridge through the Koreas and Russia through to Western Europe. The words still live on. Yet her actions have always belied her words. Obviously, if she had been serious about building trust she would have cancelled the May 24 Sanctions, have built economic and social links between South and North, and have at least attempted to curtail the joint military exercises. She did none of those things. On the contrary, she has now done what Lee couldn’t do, and closed down the Kaesong industrial Park, and the current exercises are larger than ever. It is commonly agreed that she has brought inter-Korean relations to a nadir. The Cheonan and Yeonpyeong incidents were spurious, as I have written elsewhere, but they did provide Lee with an alleged justification for his actions. Nothing comparable has happened during Park’s term of office I leave it to my South Korea colleagues to explain this strange behaviour.  Is she delusional or is she just lying? Park Geun-hye aside I still think South Korea remains what I call a ‘pivot state’. All the other actors in this drama, from the U.S. through to North Korea, have their lines written for them. The United States is an empire and will do what empires do. It has many options within that characterisation but the general thrust is fairly ineluctable. Mao Zedong once said that we shouldn’t expect imperialism to put down its butcher’s knife and become a Buddha. Conceivably it could, but it won’t. North Korea is a vulnerable target sate and will do what it can to defend itself, wisely or unwisely. It has few options and cannot avoid the role it has to play. South Korea is different. Born as a client state of the U.S. from the ruins of the Japanese empire it now has considerable economic and social strength. It has options. It can make choices. It can, at its most brutal, choose between putting Korea first or serving the U.S. Roh Moo-hyun, in a rather sad exchange with Kim Jong Il at their 2007 summit described how he was attempting to make gradual moves towards autonomy from the U.S.  He did not succeed but the challenge is still on the agenda. Park Geun-hye, under American pressure, has given into Japan over the comfort women issue. That, though galling, is mainly symbolic. More important she has antagonised China, and Russia, over the proposed deployment of THAAD missiles in South Korea. This in itself is important, but it is also a symbol of a deeper and continuing dilemma. The United States sees South Korea as a pawn in its struggle against China, and Russia. Pawns, as we know, sometimes survive but are often sacrificed. North Korea – limited options of a target state Most writers put North Korea first. I’ve put it last because there is less to say. Military speaking, as we have seen, North Korea is vulnerable and far inferior to its adversaries who outspend it from a hundred to a thousand times. It has survived sanctions so far – some 70 years and counting – but that is to a large degree due to uncertain and undependable Chinese policy. There are many things about North Korea policy I find difficult to fathom. I do not understand, for instance, why Kim Jong Un has not worked harder at relations with China and Russia. There may be good, but unknown reasons, why he did not attend the anniversary celebrations in Moscow and Beijing last year. Why, with his overseas education did he not do anything to reform North Korea’s notoriously dysfunctional foreign communications/propaganda apparatus? Having lived in Switzerland he must have been aware of how superbly the Americans do these sorts of things. Lack of resources is clearly an issue and frankly however sophisticated and adroit the communications became it would not make much difference to the way that North Korea is portrayed in the mainstream Western media. The Russians run a pretty sophisticated show but that has not stopped the demonization of Putin and the vilification of Russia. But it would help on the margins and would be appreciated by scholars like me and others honestly seeking to comprehend what is going on. Then there are the ridiculously excessive prison sentences imposed on foreigners, most of whom are seemingly mentally unstable or pawns, for petty crimes. There is a long list. However, I do think the Byungjin policy of a simultaneous development of a nuclear deterrent with economic development is sensible and perhaps inevitable.  Let’s unpack that a bit. First of all North Korea is constantly under military threat – the current exercises are just one example – and is subject to continual economic, propaganda, and psychological warfare. Sometimes this is relatively straightforward with physical and financial sanctions. Often these are very petty – here in New Zealand we were prevented by the government from donating laptops to a school in Pyongyang.  Recently there have been a couple of stories from Japan, one of a South Korean who was arrested for sending sweets, garments, dishes, spoons and forks to North Korea  and then there was the Chinese woman arrested for selling knitwear. Sometimes the warfare is more invidious.  Last month there were media stories from Australia of goods for the sports clothing company Rip Curl being made in Pyongyang by ‘slave labour’. Unnerved by the hype, Rip Curl apologised and cancelled the contract. Perhaps the unfortunate textile workers in Pyongyang lost their jobs – which were probably highly prized – just like their compatriots in Kaesong. There is clearly no easy way for North Korea to counter what it rightly calls the ‘hostility policy’ of the U.S. but with nuclear weapons.  For all their direct and indirect costs, they do make sense. They are cheaper than conventional arms. Moreover, even if it suddenly acquired huge wealth North Korea could never match the conventional military power of the U.S. and its allies. It may be the best option for North Korea in the circumstances, but it does have its drawbacks.  ‘Best option’ of course does not mean that something is desirable, merely that of all of the possible options it is the best choice. This obvious point is often avoided or obscured by people who do not recognise the predicament that North Korea is in; a predicament produced by geographical location, by history and by U.S. global strategy. It was the U.S. that divided the Korean peninsula; it is the U.S. that is hostile to North Korea.  This is not a situation that North Korea can avoid, but only seek to cope with. Being cheaper than conventional weapons means that more resources can be devoted to the economy. There are indications that this is happening. As a corollary, it should be remembered that one function of the military threat, as exemplified by the invasion exercises, is to force North Korea to divert resources from the productive economy into defence. There are three major disadvantages of the nuclear weapons option. Firstly the early stage of nuclear weapons requires physical testing. The U.S. no longer needs that, but it already has under its belt those 1000 physical tests in the past that brought it to this position. Unlike, for instance, acquiring an F-35 fighter or an Aegis destroyer nuclear tests are obvious and newsworthy and attract much opprobrium, hypocritical though most of that is.  One of the great successes of American propaganda has been to attach to non-proliferation the assumption of peace and disarmament. In fact it has nothing to do with that, it is merely preserving the monopoly of nuclear weapons states. Kenneth Waltz argues that proliferation is peace-enhancing because it provides protection to small states that that they would not otherwise have. Secondly, nuclear weapons for North Korea can only be used as a deterrent. However unlike the prospect of mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, North Korea’s deterrent is rather like the ‘Sampson Option’ described by Seymour Hersh in respect of Israel.  It is similar to a suicide bomber who kills himself, and in the process some, but not all, of the enemy. In any case deterrence is a matter of convincing the other side that attacking you would result in intolerable damage to them, and that it is not worth the risk. So it is a matter of perception rather than reality. You may be bluffing – and bluff is an inherent aspect of deterrence – and your defences may in reality be weak, but that is irrelevant. North Korea is often mocked for making extravagant claims about its military capabilities and accused of being crazy for threatening to attack the U.S. That is a misunderstanding of what it is all about. North Korean threats are always essentially conditional. For instance the recent warning by the KPA Supreme Command regarding stories that the U.S. was preparing to launch a ‘decapitation’ attack: …….all the powerful strategic and tactical strike means of our revolutionary armed forces will go into pre-emptive and just operation to beat back the enemy forces to the last man if there is a slight sign of their special operation forces and equipment moving to carry out the so-called “beheading operation” and “high-density strike.”[Emphasis added] The media often, especially in headings, leaves out the crucial little word ‘if’ thereby creating the false impression that North Korea is being threatening and bellicose, when in reality it is the other way round. The military exercises, the practising of decapitation and amphibious landings, and of the invasion of North Korea are surely threatening and belligerent – one can well imagine the uproar in the West if it were Chinese and North Korean forces practising to invade the South. North Korean statements therefore are not a matter of threat, but of deterrence. However, the problem for North Korea, and this is the third problem, is that its deterrent in respect of the U.S. is a nuclear one. If the U.S. were not involved and it were merely a matter of deterring the South then North Korea’s  artillery, which it claims can turn Seoul into a sea of flames, would be sufficient.  But it is the U.S. that must be deterred and the only feasible way to do that is to convince them there is a real chance that America itself might be damaged in a counterattack and that means nuclear weapons. In this context bluff is quite reasonable since it is a matter of instilling doubt in the minds of the other side. North Korea almost certainly can’t deliver a nuclear warhead on the U.S., but it just might. The phrase used above -not worth the risk- is relevant here. From the point of view of the U.S. it is a matter of risk-benefit analysis. The amount of risk must be related to the amount of benefit.  We might image some megalomaniac strategist sitting in Washington and calculating that it might be worthwhile losing the West Coast if it meant destroying China. With China out of the way the U.S. would have no challengers for generations. The world would be at its feet. It would be a big prize. North Korea is quite a different matter. It is a very small prize and as discussed above removing it through war, or indeed peace, would cause problems for the containment of China. Moreover a nuclear deterrent is a blunt instrument. For a small country like North Korea, faced by vastly more powerful adversaries, a retaliatory attack has to be all out, no holds barred. No calibrated response, no escalation such as a powerful country might apply to a weak one – Vietnam comes to mind.  But, as noted above, this is the Samson option, resulting in the devastation of North Korea. This brings us to the word ‘pre-emptive.’ This was misconstrued by George W. Bush to mean unprovoked. A simple dictionary definition is an action to prevent attack by disabling the enemy. Since Iraq was in no position to attack the U.S., the invasion was clearly not pre-emptive. Pre-emption is normally associated with the action of a weaker person or country faced with what is perceived as an imminent attack by a stronger adversary. This is probably what would happen in a conflict between the U.S. and China, apart from the scenario of China intervening, as in 1950, in response to a U.S. invasion of North Korea. The U.S. would force China into a situation in which it felt it was compelled to make a pre-emptive strike. Being by far the stronger combatant the U.S. would absorb this strike, and then having gained the moral high ground would launch the attack, now a counter-attack, that it had planned; a variant on Pearl Harbour. Leaving aside the moral deception involved in shifting blame there is the danger that the weaker party might misinterpret the actions of the stronger and launch a pre-emptive strike unnecessarily. This is particularly plausible in the case of North Korea which has very limited surveillance and intelligence capabilities compared with the Americans (North Korea’s satellite programme is an attempt to remedy this deficiency).  The U.S. makes a feint which North Korea interprets as presaging, say, a decapitation strike and launches a pre-emptive and all-out attack. The war, so long desired in certain quarters, comes about. It might well be argued that for North Korea nuclear deterrence is unwise and might in fact incite the U.S. to attack now, before it is too late. If tomorrow the enemy will be invulnerable, better to attack today. North Korea could say ‘if you invade we will unleash a people’s war – remember the 1950s, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.’  The problem with that is what might be called the ‘Stalingrad factor’. Stalingrad, it has been said, was easier to defend against the Germans when it had been reduced to rubble. But who wants their cities reduced to rubble? North Korea’s nuclear deterrent does also have potential of being able to force the U.S. into some sort of peace agreement in a way that a conventional defence, which by its nature would pose little danger to the U.S., ever could. Whether that might come to pass is another matter but since peace with America must remain North Korea’s major foreign policy goal, it will always be on the agenda even if denied. Conclusion There is much more to be said but time is limited. Let me conclude by re-iterating the main points In order to understand the situation on the Korean peninsula, and East Asia, we must contextualise and establish a framework of geopolitical analysis The analysis should place the United States center stage because the U.S. is by far the dominant player on the world stage The U.S. and its allies spend about $1 trillion a year on their military; this is 7 times that of China, 19 times that of Russia and between 100 and 1000 times that of North Korea Dominance does not mean omnipotence and we must realize that the relationship between the U.S. and its subordinate allies, and its adversaries, is subject to constant negotiation The key to America’s interest in the Korean peninsula is its location which brings together more of the world powers than any other place on earth When America looks at Korea it sees China, and to a lesser extent Russia; U.S. – Korea policy is a subset of its global policy, and in turn a subset of it policy towards China (and Russia) Globally, the U.S. wants to remove competitors and that implies the destruction/dismemberment of China and of Russia S. policy towards North Korea is ambiguous – it would like to destroy the North but in doing so it would remove a key component of its containment of China The U.S. does not want to return to negotiations; it is not currently too concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons; the present situation serves its China policy and the Six Party Talks gave too much prestige to China China and Russia share the challenge of coping with the U.S. and the Korean peninsula is a key battle field, more important for China than Russia Both are resurgent states recovering from collapse of previous regimes (China the Qing, Russia the Soviet Union); they need to advance this resurgence without unduly antagonising the U.S. and providing a justification/pretext for war Both made a strategic mistake in acquiescing to America’s delegitimising of North Korea’s right to launch a satellite by acceding to UNSC Resolution 1695 in 2006 and both have been caught in the consequences of that Since U.S. strategy in Korea is ultimately aimed a China, and at Russia, their appeasement has exacerbated their predicament Japan uses the Korean situation as a justification, pretext, and shield for its remilitarisation South Korea is a pivot state which can move towards greater autonomy from the U.S., and rapprochement with the North Park Geun-hye has belied early rhetoric about ‘Trustpolitik’ and peaceful reunification’ and has brought inter-Korean relations to a nadir. Park’s policy endangers South Korea moving it towards become the meat in the sandwich in the event of a second Sino-American war North Korea, being by far the weakest country on this stage has few options There are imponderables especially why Kim Jong Un has not worked harder at building relations with China and Russia The Byungjin policy of developing the economy behind the shield provided, and the money saved by, the nuclear deterrent is probably the best option available, but it has disadvantages Nuclear weapons require testing, they can provide no more than a deterrent for North Korea, and this deterrent is the ‘Samson option,’ balancing the destruction of North Korea against intolerable, but limited damage to the U.S. However nuclear weapons may potentially force the U.S. into some sort of peaceful coexistence with North Korea and that is Pyongyang’s major foreign policy objective. Tim Beal is an author, researcher and educator.  Before his retirement, he was a professor in Asian Studies at the Victoria University in New Zealand.  He is the author of Crisis in Korea: America, China, and the Risk of War and maintains a website on Asian geopolitics. #KoreanWar #Japanmilitary #Armistice #AsiaPacificpivot #NorthKorea