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July 2017 US Peace Delegation to South Korea with Medea Benjamin. By Medea Benjamin | August 2, 2017 Originally published on Alternet. Touching down in Washington D.C. Friday night after a peace delegation to South Korea, I saw the devastating news. No, it was not that Reince Priebus had been booted from the dysfunctional White House. It was that North Korea had conducted another intercontinental ballistic missile test, and that the United States and South Korea had responded by further ratcheting up this volatile conflict. The response was not just the usual tit-for-tat, which did happen. Just hours after the North Korean test, the U.S. and South Korean militaries launched their own ballistic missiles as a show of force. Even more incendiary, however, is that South Korean President Moon Jae-in also responded by reversing his decision to halt deployment of the U.S. weapon system known as THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense). President Moon gave his military the green light to add four more launchers to complete the system. South Korea’s new liberal president came into office May 10 on the wave of a remarkable “people power” uprising that had led to the impeachment and jailing of the corrupt President Park Geun-hye. Part of the legacy Moon inherited was an agreement with the U.S. to provide land and support for THAAD, a missile defense system designed to target and intercept short and medium-range missiles fired by North Korea. THAAD is controversial on many fronts: military experts say it doesn’t work; environmentalists say it emits dangerous radiation; national assembly members say it was never submitted for a vote; China says the radar is aimed at it and has responded with economic sanctions; and the local residents of Seongju, where the system is placed, are furious that their tranquil lives have been pierced by a billion-dollar Lockheed-Martin weapon system about which they were never consulted. Our peace delegation, which was organized by the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea (STIK), was composed of former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, Reece Chenault of U.S. Labor Against the War, Will Griffin of Veterans for Peace and myself. We had the opportunity to visit Seongju, a farming town 135 miles southeast of the capital, and the neighboring town of Gimcheon. The feisty residents, including women farmers in their 80s, have been protesting every single day for the past year. We attended a rally with thousands, which concluded with a symbolic smashing of a cardboard version of THAAD and a candlelight vigil that takes place in both towns every night, rain or shine. The villagers have blockaded the roads to prevent entry of the launchers, fought with police, publicly shaved their heads in opposition, and set up a 24/7 protest camp. They are joined by the local Won Buddhists, who consider the THAAD site their sacred ground. It was the resilience of Seongju and neighboring Gimcheon residents that pushed the Moon administration to pause the deployment process until a thorough environmental impact assessment had been completed, which would have taken about a year. This gave the villagers hope that they would have time to convince President Moon to rethink and reverse the THAAD agreement altogether. The president’s recent decision will only spark more local outrage. The North Korean nuclear program is certainly alarming, as are the myriad human rights violations of that repressive regime. But the question is how best to de-escalate the conflict so it doesn’t explode into all-out nuclear war. Adding another weapon system into the mix is not the answer. The North Korean regime feels encircled. It knows that the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, wants to overthrow it. There’s Trump’s belligerent rhetoric: “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.” There’s the ever-tightening screws of sanctions. Just a few hours before the latest North Korean missile test, Congress approved yet another round of sanctions to squeeze the North. There are 83 U.S. military bases on South Korean soil and U.S. warships often patrol the coast. U.S.-South Korean military exercises have been getting larger and more provocative, including dropping mock nuclear bombs on North Korea.The US military also announced that it would permanently station an armed drone called Gray Eagle on the Korean Peninsula and it has been practicing long-range strikes with strategic bombers, sending them to the region for exercises and deploying them in Guam and on the peninsula. The United States has also long held a “pre-emptive first strike” policy toward North Korea. This frightening threat of an unprovoked U.S. nuclear attack gives North Korea good reason to want its own nuclear arsenal. North Korea’s leadership also looks at the fate of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, leaders who gave up their nuclear programs, and concludes that nuclear weapons are their key to survival. So the North Korean leadership is not acting irrationally; on the contrary. On July 29, the day after the test, North Korean President Kim Jong-un asserted that the threat of sanctions or military action “only strengthens our resolve and further justifies our possession of nuclear weapons.” Given the proximity of North Korea to the South’s capital Seoul, a city of 25 million people, any outbreak of hostilities would be devastating. It is estimated that a North Korean attack using just conventional weapons would kill 64,000 South Koreans in the first three hours. A war on the Korean Peninsula would likely draw in other nuclear armed states and major powers, including China, Russia and Japan. This region also has the largest militaries and economies in the world, the world’s busiest commercial ports, and half the world’s population. Trump has few options. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has warned that a pre-emptive strike on the North’s nuclear and missile capabilities could reignite the Korean War. Trump had hoped that Chinese President Xi Jinping could successfully rein in Kim Jong-un, but the Chinese are more concerned about the collapse of North Korea’s government and the chaos that would ensue. They are also furious about the deployment of THAAD in South Korea, convinced that its radar can penetrate deep into Chinese territory. But the Chinese do have another proposal: a freeze for a freeze. This means a freeze on North Korean missile and nuclear tests in exchange for a halt on U.S.-South Korean war games. Report Advertisement The massive war games have been taking place every year in March, with smaller ones scheduled for August. A halt would alleviate tensions and pave the way for negotiations. So would halting the deployment of the destabilizing THAAD system so disliked by South Korean villagers, North Koreans and the Chinese. Given the specter of nuclear war, the rational alternative policy is one of de-escalation and engagement. President Moon has called for dialogue with the North and a peace treaty to permanently end the Korean War. North Korean diplomats have raised the possibility of a “freeze for a freeze.” Time has proven that coercion doesn’t work. There’s an urgent need to hit the reset button on U.S.-Korean policy, before one of the players hits a much more catastrophic button that could lead us into a nuclear nightmare. Medea Benjamin is cofounder of the peace group CodePink. Her latest book is Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection (OR Books, September 2016). #MedeaBenjamin #KoreanWar #THAAD #Nuclearweapons #MoonJaein #Armistice #ICBM #NorthKorea

By Tim Shorrock | September 9, 2017 Originally published in Alternet Over the past month, President Trump’s incendiary threats to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea in response to its ballistic missile program set off a chain of military escalations that climaxed this week with Pyongyang’s sixth test of a nuclear device, a hydrogen bomb three to five times more powerful than the American bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the crisis unfolded, the Rand Corporation, a military-intelligence think tank founded during the Cold War, relentlessly promoted the views of Bruce W. Bennett, a defense researcher it calls “one of the leading experts on the world’s most reclusive country.” Two or three times a day, Rand’s media shop tweets out links to Bennett’s writings on Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old who rules the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK), its formal and preferred name. While Trump has vowed to use sanctions, war threats and diplomacy to stop Kim from developing a ballistic missile that could fire nuclear weapons at the United States—exactly what Kim claimed to do on Sunday—Bennett believes that the only target worth considering is North Korea’s “Supreme Leader” himself. Bennett’s basic theme is that North Korea is teetering on collapse and internal unrest because the military and technocratic elite who run the country have given up on Kim and his dynastic family. It’s a theory that’s been around for decades, but has picked up steam in reaction to Kim’s recent purges, including possibly his own brother and a string of high-level defections that includes Thae Yong-ho, the erudite former North Korea ambassador to London. In glossy books and pamphlets (“Preparing North Korean Elites for Unification”) and in appearances from CNN to Fox to Teen Vogue, Bennett lays out his plan for overthrowing the North Korean government by saturating the country with leaflets and propaganda and providing assurances to potential plotters in the North that they would have a place within a new, unified Korea—but only under South Korean and U.S. control. The U.S., he warned in a recent speech on Capitol Hill that I attended, must deliver Kim a simple message: “We know the only thing you care about is your regime’s survival. Either denuclearize or we will take actions politically to destabilize your regime.” His talk was a basic primer for this “uprising” from within, which is exactly what the Bush administration sought in Iraq when it invaded in 2003. The plan, Bennett said, might begin with the U.S. Air Force dropping leaflets on North Korean missile bases that invite North Korean soldiers to defect. “If there were one or two, that would be a political loss of face.” K-Pop, the South Korean musical genre that’s popular around the world, could be another weapon: “It’s acidic as far the regime is concerned.” And commercials about South Korean life planted in DVDs smuggled into the North “would be terrible for Kim Jong-un.” The purpose of the operation, he said, is to convince the people of the DPRK that their “paranoid” leader is not a “god,” and to plant the idea that his country is unstable: “If that’s in his mind, it will affect his behavior.” In short, a psy-op. As I listened to his spiel, I was reminded of Bennett’s advisory role in the 2014 Seth Rogen comedy The Interview, about two Hollywood stoners hired by the CIA to kill Kim. It depicted, in graphic detail, Kim’s head being blown apart by a guided missile fired by fed-up North Korean “elites” who had come over to the U.S. side after their conversations with the fake American journalists, played by Rogen and his sidekick James Franco. The film was produced by Japan’s Sony Pictures, but finalized only after receiving critical advice and assistance from the Obama State Department, the Rand Corporation, and according to a 2014 interview Rogen gave to the New York Times, the CIA. (“We made relationships with certain people who work in the government as consultants, who I’m convinced are in the CIA.”) But it was all under the tutelage of Bruce Bennett, who was brought into the project by Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, a prominent member of Rand’s board of directors and a close confidante of President Obama. Why Bennett? His official biography states that he has worked for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Forces in South Korea and Japan, the U.S. Pacific Command as well as the South Korean and Japanese militaries. According an email he wrote to Sony’s Lynton in 2014, he got his start in Asia as a Mormon missionary to Japan and began working on Korea in 1989 “at the request of the Pentagon.” By 2014, he said, he had made over 100 trips to South Korea to advise the U.S. Army and senior South Korean military personnel “on how to deter North Korea.” Even though he has never been to the DPRK, he bases his knowledge of the country on his “extensive interviews with senior North Korean defectors.” The movie’s plot closely follows Bennett’s vision for regime change from within, and is illustrated in two key scenes. “We’re aware of a small faction in the existing leadership that already wants him gone,” the CIA agent overseeing the assassination plot tells her American recruits early on. “They want change and they’re too scared to act alone. And they need you two to go in there and remove Kim and embolden them to revolt.” Later, “Sook,” the sexy assistant to Kim who joins the regime change plot, pleads with Rogen: “How do you prove to the 24 million people of North Korea that their god is a murderer and a liar? The people need to be shown that he’s not a god.” The film allegedly sparked North Korea to hack Sony and leak thousands of internal Sony emails. North Korea also warned the Obama administration not to allow the film to be released, branding it “an act of terrorism.” So, when Bennett invited questions at his congressional briefing, I asked him: what was his involvement in The Interview, and did he think it was effective? At first, Bennett was elusive, saying, “I did not work on the movie.” When I reminded him that he had been listed as an adviser, he changed course. “I heard about it for the first time when I was sent a copy of the DVD by the president of Sony Pictures, who was asking, do we need to be worried about this?” he explained, inspiring a ripple of laughter throughout the room. Bennett continued: “So I had a tail-end role in trying to help them appreciate what they might be worried about.” But there’s a lot more to the story. Now that Kim is dominating the news once again, it’s time to revisit this film and how it became a weapon in the long-running American war against North Korea. Obama’s hard line on DPRK As Americans come to grips with Trump’s confrontational policies with North Korea, it’s easy to forget that U.S. relations with North Korea reached a nadir under Barack Obama. Here’s why: Bennett’s regime change proposals were, and are, the culmination of policies hatched by Obama’s left-liberal administration to weaken Kim’s hold on power and hasten what they considered North Korea’s inevitable collapse. Obviously they failed, yet elements of the plan still abound. Let’s start with some basic background. The hostile U.S. relationship with the DPRK dates back to the Korean War, when U.S. bombers turned the country into cinders in a destructive campaign of carpet-bombing that killed millions of people. In 1953, an armistice ended the fighting, leaving the country divided and in a perpetual state of war. A peace treaty was never signed. Sometime in the late 1980s, with the border still tense and the U.S. showing no signs of withdrawing its military forces from the South, the DPRK decided to embark on a nuclear program to defend itself from wars of regime change and guarantee its sovereignty. To head off that development, in 1994 President Bill Clinton negotiated an agreement with North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung, that sought to allay his government’s fears by ending America’s hostile policies. Under the “Agreed Framework,” the DPRK shut down its one test reactor—its only source for plutonium—in return for U.S. shipments of oil for its power grid and two new light-water reactors to be built by an international consortium. Most importantly, both sides agreed to end mutual hostility by fully normalizing their economic and political relations. The agreement, which froze North Korea’s nuclear program for 12 years, held for several years. But in 2002, the Bush administration accused the DPRK—falsely it turned out—of building a secret uranium program as a second route to a bomb and tore up the framework. In response, North Korea, which was by now led by Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father, restarted its nuclear program, and by 2006 had exploded its first nuclear device. Surprisingly, Bush reopened negotiations only three weeks later, and by 2007, under the rubric of the Six Party Talks, the DPRK agreed again to freeze its program. That accord was still pending when Obama was elected in 2009. He had run for president pledging to talk to Iran and North Korea, but quickly changed course on Korea. According to Leon Sigal, a former State Department official who has met with North Korea many times in unofficial talks, Obama and his top adviser on Asia, Jeff Bader, decided in 2009 to side with the new, conservative president of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak, who had campaigned against engagement and demanded stronger pressure tactics against the DPRK. Soon, the idea of direct talks and regular was abandoned. Officially, the doctrine for replacing direct engagement with pressure tactics was known as “strategic patience.” Behind it was a mistaken assumption—the same one made by Bennett today—that North Korea was headed for collapse, making even the chance of an agreement a futile exercise. It’s difficult to overstate how reactionary Obama’s policies became. In contrast to Bush, and even Trump, Obama flatly rejected the idea of negotiating with the North without a prior commitment to denuclearization. He also expressed no interest in the DPRK’s offer to sign a peace agreement. More disturbingly, he was the first president in history to refer to the Korean War, which has been universally recognized as a bloody stalemate, as a “victory.” In doing so, Obama revived a right-wing trope that was first used in the 1950s and resurrected during the Bush years by David Frum and other neocons. So from the onset, Obama caused America’s policy toward Korea to take a sharp right turn. The tensions were exacerbated by the covert cyber war Obama launched against North Korea to damage and slow its missile program. During the Obama years, North Korea tested three more nuclear bombs, and despite the cyber war, rapidly expanded its missile abilities. As the situation deteriorated, Obama embarked on a series of military exercises with South Korea that increased in size and tempo over the course of his administration. They included unprecedented overflights by B-52 and stealth B1-B bombers as well as training in “decapitation strikes” designed to take out Kim and his leadership. All of this led straight to the crisis Trump inherited and has only made worse. But while Trump critics rightly chafe over his reckless allusions to a nuclear attack on Korea, it’s often forgotten that Obama himself made similar statements, couched in his trademark cool. “We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals,” Obama told CBS News in April 2016. A few months later, Daniel Russel, the president’s senior diplomat on Asia who had earlier viewed The Interview at Sony’s request, actually threatened North Korea’s destruction. If Kim gets “an enhanced capacity to conduct a nuclear attack,” Russel told defense reporters, he would “immediately die.” At the time, these threats hardly caused a ripple in the media, and sparked few complaints from the liberals who now criticize Trump for pushing the U.S. to war or the progressive reporters who criticized Bush for his invasion of Iraq. Although the idea for The Interview had been around for a while, the real inspiration, director Seth Rogen told the Los Angeles Times, was some “idle kidding around” he did with his friends after the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011. He and Sony were also encouraged by the wild success of the 2004 hit movie Team America, which ridiculed Kim Jong-il’s big glasses and bouffant hair-do. But what sparked Sony’s decision to go ahead with its $35 million investment was the crisis that shook the Korean Peninsula when the DPRK tested its third nuclear device in February 2013. The nuclear test vaulted Kim Jong-un into the headlines for the first time, giving Sony the moment it had been seeking. In a “strategic marketing and research” paper later leaked by hackers, the studio told promoters to push the theme of “the dictator’s bizarre behavior—he’s a young, inexperienced guy with self-esteem and ‘daddy’ issues.” The film used every racist image and trope that Rogen could dream up, from the sing-songy caricatures of Asian speech that were a film staple in the 1940s and ’50s, to the concept that Koreans are either robotic slaves (like Kim’s security guards) or sex-starved submissives who crave American men (like Sook, the “elite” aide to Kim who falls for the Rogen character). In the end of the film, the Hollywood rebels triumph after badgering Kim with tough questions about his ability to feed his own people, an allusion to the terrible famine that occurred in the late-1990s. Kim goes crazy, forcing “a man once revered among mortals to cry and shit in his pants,” the Rogen character explains. After the stoner character screams, “he’s no god, he’s a butthole,” Kim is struck on his helicopter by the fatal missile shot by Sook’s rebels, and his head explodes in a fireball. The rebels’ job now “is to make sure power is transferred to the right hands,” the Americans explain. It was that ending that caused most of the controversy, both at the studio and when the film was later pre-screened to select officials of the Obama administration. When the first takes were shown in June 2014, some of Sony’s Japanese executives were disturbed by both the violence and the racism. By this time, North Korea (which relentlessly monitors U.S. media) had got wind of the film and its theme of assassinating its head of state. So the studio asked Rogen to tone it down by removing one scene in which moviegoers watched Kim’s face slowly melt and slide off his head. This sent Rogen on a tirade. “We feel the story of censorship and trying to appease North Korea WILL in fact hurt the film critically, and thus financially,” he wrote to Amy Pascal, Sony Pictures’ top executive at the time. “The head melting shot described vividly in all these articles is universally received as awesome by the articles writing about them, and when these critics see a shot that is decidedly LESS awesome, regardless of what story we put out there, the truth will be apparent: it’s a compromised product.” (The head-melting scene was removed, but Rogen’s Hollywood version of selective morality was revealing nonetheless). By this point, North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was denouncing the film as tantamount to “an act of war,” and threatening “a decisive and merciless countermeasure” if the Obama administration allowed it to be shown. That was apparently the result Rogen was looking for. “There was a lot of high-fiving,” he told the Los Angeles Times. Even if it caused a war? “Hopefully,” Rogen said, “people will say, ‘You know what? It was worth it. It was a good movie!'” It was then that Sony turned to the government for help, through Rand and its Korea expert, Bruce Bennett. The Rand Corporation first became famous in 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg, a Rand analyst, leaked the Pentagon Papers that exposed the secret history of the Vietnam War. The incredible tale of official lies that unfolded in pages of the New York Times and other papers helped end the war four years later and triggered the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon. After shaking off that incident, Rand emerged as one of the premiere research centers for the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence. As a result of 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Rand returned full force to refining the practice of counterinsurgency, or COIN, the “soft power” side of empire-building that got its start in Vietnam and aims at winning “hearts and minds” of countries that the United States invades or subverts. Bennett’s policy proposals to divide members of the North Korean “elite” from their government with offers of political support and financial assistance come right out of the COIN playbook. The link between Rand and Sony was made shortly after the first public viewing of the film by Rand CEO Michael Rich, a lifelong employee of the think tank. Under his leadership, Rand developed close ties with U.S. intelligence. In November 2014, for example, Rich presided over a “rare dialogue” with the National Security Agency that took place at Sony’s headquarters in Century City and included then NSA director Michael Rogers as well as Michael Leiter, the former director of the CIA’s National Counterterrorism Center. In June 2014, after the first clips of the movie where shown, Rich emailed Bennett, informing him he had recommended that Rand “trustee Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Entertainment, get in touch with you for some quick assistance.” Lynton, too, had high-level connections. As the hacked Sony emails collected by Wikileaks would later reveal, he had attended dinners at Martha’s Vineyard with President Obama, and as a Rand board member, had contacts throughout government. From June on, Bennett, through Lynton, became a critical adviser to the film and acted as a liaison between the studio and the Obama administration. The makers of The Interview were especially interested in advice on crafting the ending of the film. The scene of Kim’s head exploding pleased Bennett, as he wrote in one of his emails. “I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-Un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government,” he wrote. Bennett continued: ‘Thus while toning down the ending may reduce the North Korean response, I believe that a story that talks about the removal of the Kim family regime and the creation of a new government by the North Korean people (well, at least the elites) will start some real thinking in South Korea and, I believe, in the North once the DVD leaks into the North (which it almost certainly will). So from a personal perspective, I would personally prefer to leave the ending alone.” Bennett firmly believed the film could spark the U.S.-led coup he had dreamed about for so long. “There are many ways that United States and even Sony Pictures could affect North Korean internal politics,” he wrote on the Rand website. “Slipping DVDs of at least parts of The Interview into the North, including a narration describing what their ‘god’ Kim is really like is one way.” (In fact, a version of this stunt was attempted right after the film came out by two of the more fanatical regime-changers in Washington, the neocon writer Jamie Kirchik and right-wing human rights hustler Thor Halvorssen.) To make sure the film was on the right track, Sony arranged to show the ending to officials at the State Department. Lynton emailed Daniel Russel, who was the assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, that the studio was “concerned for the safety of Americans and American and North Korean relations.” He and other U.S. officials gave their blessing to the film’s violent ending. After word of Russel’s involvement leaked out, the State Department denied any role, only to be contradicted by Russel himself. In a 2016 speech in Los Angeles, he said, “I’m the U.S. government official who told Sony there was no problem ‘greenlighting’ the movie The Interview.” Despite the official go-ahead, Sony agreed at first to only release The Interview on DVD. Then, when Sony temporarily pulled the film in December 2014, Obama became its champion, declaring that “we cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” That led to the remarkable sight of Hollywood actors and directors from the liberal left, led by the likes of George Clooney and Michael Moore, defending the film as an act of free speech and urging Americans to defy Kim’s “censorship” and go see it in a theater. By this time, Sony had been hacked by a group that called itself the “Guardians of Peace.” The FBI later claimed this group was secretly working for North Korea. The Obama administration agreed, and said its top intelligence officials had concluded that North Korea was “centrally involved.” This finding was questioned by many cyber-security experts (especially Gregory Elich’s critique in Counterpunch and Kim Zetter’s analysis in Wired). They concluded that the FBI’s “evidence” found in servers in Thailand, Singapore and elsewhere was thin and speculative, and found signs that the real hackers (who had an uncanny insider knowledge of Hollywood) could still be at large and might have been former Sony employees. But the U.S. government had no doubts at all. In January 2015, Obama called the DPRK’s alleged hack an “act of war” and used it as an excuse to launch one of the most aggressive American actions on behalf of a private corporation in U.S. history. His executive order imposed sanctions against three North Korean agencies and nearly a dozen “critical North Korean operatives” in retaliation for the hack. The Treasury Department said the sanctions were in direct response to North Korea’s “numerous provocations, particularly the recent cyber-attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment.” The action marked a major escalation, returning “the U.S. to a posture of open hostility with its oldest remaining Cold War adversary,” the Wall Street Journal noted. Shortly after these actions were taken, the New York Times published a revelation that raised serious questions about the hack, reporting that the NSA had broken into the DPRK’s computer systems as early as 2010 and “penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies.” If that was true, the NSA might have watched the alleged hackers and allowed them to do their work. Here’s what the Times concluded: “The extensive American penetration of the North Korean system… raises questions about why the United States was not able to alert Sony as the attacks took shape last fall, even though the North had warned, as early as June, that the release of the movie…would be ‘an act of war.’” By this time, however, the film had done its damage by convincing Kim’s government that the Obama administration did indeed want its destruction. More missile and nuclear tests followed, and by the end of the Obama administration relations were far worse than they were when Bush left office in 2009. In other words, the film had the opposite of its intended effect, prompting a clampdown by Kim and suppressing whatever internal dissent existed. Today, Kim Jong-un remains firmly in control of North Korea, and the Trump administration—despite Trump’s tweets on Sunday equating engagement with “appeasement“—appears to be slowly moving toward negotiations of some kind with his government. Bruce Bennett continues to fantasize about bringing the leader down. Kim, he argued in a recent post, craves his weapons not for self-defense but because “nukes are one way to show his subjects he’s a god.” Kim is “a weak leader consumed by paranoia,” he wrote in a separate piece. At the same time, there is abundant evidence that the combination regime-change/cyber war project adopted by the Obama administration is still in force. A few weeks ago, CIA Director Mike Pompeo told a crowd at the Aspen Forum that he’s been ordered to find ways to “separate” Kim from his “missiles and nuclear weapons”—a “strong hint,” the New York Times reported, “that the United States was considering seeking a regime change in North Korea.” And on August 29, in a departing interview with Fox News, ousted White House adviser Sebastian Gorka let it slip that the cyber attacks on North Korea probably continue. “On the more covert side of things, you have seen a lot of missile tests fail,” he said. “Most tests actually fail. Sometimes there may be reasons beyond just incompetence by North Korea.“ The Democrats haven’t let up, either. Last month, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal told NBC News that the Obama administration should have responded more aggressively to North Korea’s alleged hack of Sony in 2014. And there was an intriguing exchange recently between one of Obama’s top national security officials and South Korea’s new president, Moon Jae-in. On August 4, Moon spoke out against Korean right-wingers who send anti-DPRK propaganda over the border in large balloons—one of the tactics frequently suggested by Bennett and carried out by neocons Kirchick and Halvorssen. These actions, he warned, unnecessarily aggravate the North, and particularly during times of severe tension, “could prompt accidental clashes.” That sparked an angry tweet from Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s former U.N. ambassador and perhaps the most famous proponent of “humanitarian intervention” against enemy states like North Korea. “So mistaken,” Power tweeted in response to Moon. “Information is what Kim Jong-un fears most.” Like so many Americans who have served time as diplomats or generals in Korea since 1945, Power apparently believes that only the United States knows what’s best for Korea, both North and South. Her attitude appears to be the dominant one in Washington, where the latest crisis has only increased the fervor for a U.S.-led overthrow of North Korea among the national security elite. Last Friday, two days before Kim’s latest nuclear test, Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, took to his paper to argue that “regime change is the only way to definitively end the North Korean nuclear threat.” He added: “As former State Department human rights chief Tom Malinowski has argued, ‘Political change in Pyongyang and the reunification of Korea, as hard as it may be to imagine, is actually much more likely than the denuclearization of the present regime.’” Diplomacy, in other words, shouldn’t even be tried, only war. The Malinowski reference is key: he is the former Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which despite good work on some issues has been at the forefront of the risky humanitarian intervention policies (such as a no-fly zone in Syria) so favored by Power and the left-liberal neocons of the Obama administration. As Malinowski concluded in the Politico article quoted by Diehl, “The central aim of our [regime change] strategy should be to foster conditions that enable this natural, internal process to move faster, while preparing ourselves, our allies and the North Korean people for the challenges we will face when change comes.” That’s exactly Bennett’s point. But people like Bennett and Malinowski should “be careful what they wish for,” two former high-ranking national security officials, Richard Sokolsky and Aaron David Miller, recently argued in 38North, a source of news and analysis on North Korea. Most dangerous is the likelihood that a “decapitation” campaign as envisioned by Bennett and others would spark a wider war. “Trying to topple Kim Jong-un would very probably precipitate a real crisis even worse than the current one,” they wrote, based on their long years of experience in U.S. diplomacy with the North. Koreans can only hope that such voices of reason and diplomacy prevail and that a diplomatic solution can be found to the years of hostility between Washington and Pyongyang. That may be the only way the divided country can avoid the Iraq-like calamity promoted by Bennett and the regime-changers of Washington. *Tim Shorrock is a Washington, DC–based journalist, the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing and a Korea Policy Institute Associate. #RandCorporation #KimJongUn #DPRK #SethRogen #TimShorrock #BruceBennett #NorthKorea #TheInterview

By Jang Jinsook | September 17, 2017 Jang Jinsook, Director of Planning of the Minjung Party of South Korea, presented the following two-part speech at the People’s Congress of Resistance at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on September 16-17. The Minjung Party (formerly called the New People’s Party) is a new progressive party that will formally launch on October 15. Its stated aim is to complete the “candlelight revolution” that ousted former President Park Geun-hye by unifying South Korean progressives and fighting for systemic change and the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula.  This talk can also be viewed on KPI’s youtube channel. Part 1: Urgent Tasks for South Korea’s Progressive Movement in a Time of Looming War Threats North Korea Expands Its Theater of Operation to the Pacific We are in the midst of renewed war threats between the United States and North Korea. The only thing that’s different from past tensions between the two countries is that the Korean peninsula is no longer the only place faced with the threat of becoming a battlefield. The U.S. mainland, too, is no longer sheltered from the threat of a nuclear strike. What North Korea wants is genuine talks with the United States. It demands the United States cease the U.S.-ROK combined military exercises and abandon the idea of denuclearization as a precondition for talks. Absent such steps toward dialogue, North Korea, it appears, will not stop developing nuclear weapons and missiles, as these guarantee its survival. Determined that the United States should also feel the constant threat of war that has become normalized on the Korean peninsula, North Korea has threatened to surround the U.S. territory of Guam with a missile strike. Despite North Korea’s warning, the United States went ahead with the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises in August and threatened military action, including a “preventive war” and a first strike. In response, North Korea conducted its first military exercise in the Pacific Ocean by launching the Hwaseong-12, an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), over Japan and hitting its mark in the North Pacific on August 29. The U.S. response was calling for stronger sanctions and threatening military action. On September 15, North Korea conducted its second Hwaseong-12 test-launch. This missile flew a greater distance than the first, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un praised the combat efficiency of the “strategic ballistic rocket” as “perfect.” What this means is that North Korea’s theater of operation has now expanded to the Pacific. During his visit to the site of the second test-launch of the Hwaseong-12, Kim Jong-un reportedly said, in reference to the U.S. sanctions against North Korea, “How absurd that the so-called superpowers still believe they can force us to surrender through sanctions.” The UN sanctions are, of course, painful for North Korea, but they cannot force the country to capitulate. That’s because North Korea experienced and survived even harsher isolation due to sanctions in the 1990s. That experience taught the country that the only way to survive U.S. aggression is to bolster its military strength and build a self-reliant economy that can withstand an economic embargo. And this is what North Korea has been preparing for the past ten years. This is the history and the present reality. But the Trump administration continues to call for more and stronger sanctions. His administration really knows nothing about North Korea. If the current situation continues, the people of the United States will face the same chronic war threats that I and others on the Korean peninsula have faced all our lives. The Dilemma of “Enveloping Fire” around Guam North Korea’s threat of surrounding Guam with “enveloping fire” poses a growing dilemma for the United States. According to international law, a North Korean missile strike around Guam cannot be construed as an act of war. What Kim Rak-gyom, the head of North Korea’s Strategic Rocket Forces, threatened on August 9 is not that North Korea would actually attack Guam, but that it would launch missiles into the international waters near Guam. Given that most countries with IRBMs have test-launched their missiles in international waters, North Korea’s action cannot be regarded an act of war. Albeit legal according to international law, North Korea’s threat of an “enveloping fire” around Guam poses a political challenge to the United States. The United States has repeatedly said it is reviewing plans to shoot down North Korean missiles if launched toward Guam. But as North Korea’s “enveloping fire” around Guam cannot be deemed an act of war according to international law, it does not constitute the legitimate grounds for a military attack on North Korea. By contrast, a U.S. military response to North Korea’s “enveloping fire” would be an act of war and, in turn, could justify a North Korean military attack. On the other hand, if the United States failed to shoot down North Korea’s missiles, it would be humiliated in the eyes of the international community. This is what we are witnessing today. On September 15, the United States and Japan did not shoot down the Hwaseong-12 missile. After every North Korean missile test, the United States and Japan warned, “If you do it again, we will shoot it down!” They announced that they had detected North Korea fueling its missile the day before the latest test-launch. But even as they watched the missile first being fueled, then flying over Hokkaido, Japan, and finally landing in the Pacific Ocean, they did nothing to intercept it. They just sat there staring at the missile’s trajectory. A U.S. government official said the missile posed no threat to warrant interception. Even a passing dog would laugh at his statement. The U.S. government should be more honest. Shooting down the missile could trigger an all-out war, and failing while attempting to shoot it down would expose the ineffectiveness of its missile defense capability and hurt its ability to produce and sell these costly weapon systems. That’s why they just stared at the sky. The United States is now discussing the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. The U.S.-North Korea crisis is a bonanza for the military industrial complex. But as North Korea intensifies its pressure, the United States will fall deeper into its dilemma of whether to exercise a military option or not. Even if only for their own security and welfare, the people of the United States need to call for immediate talks between the United States and North Korea toward a permanent peace agreement. Next Steps for the South Korean Progressive Movement Step one: Demand immediate U.S.-North Korea talks for a peace agreement on the Korean Peninsula. We regard the current situation as the greatest crisis since the Korean War. There are those in South Korea who do not consider the current situation to be so serious. There are two reasons for this. One is desensitization because of the chronic nature of war threats in Korea. The other is a false sense of security from the belief that North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles guarantee deterrence. This is based on false understanding of the nature of imperialism and the military industrial complex. War often erupts when we’re least expecting it. In the current situation of heightened tension, even a minor accident or miscalculation can trigger a war with catastrophic consequences. We will unite all who desire peace in South Korea to call for immediate talks between the United States and North Korea for a permanent peace agreement on the Korean peninsula. Trump plans to visit South Korea in November. We will organize a mass anti-Trump action to express our opposition to war and to call for peace on the Korean peninsula. Step two: Build progressive political power. The people of South Korea have great expectations of the Moon Jae-in government because it was born out of the candlelight revolution. But as the additional deployment of the THAAD launchers has clearly shown, the Moon administration is powerless in a system centered on the U.S.-ROK alliance. It even chose to prioritize the U.S.-ROK alliance over its pledge to the Seongju residents and the South Korean people. What the Moon government’s THAAD deployment proved is that unless the people create our own party, we cannot become protagonists in our own society. It reaffirmed that unless all South Korean progressive forces come together to fight against U.S. aggression and the forces of reaction, there can be no peace on the Korean peninsula. We aim to unify all progressive forces in this time of war threats and to strengthen our political power through unified struggle for a peace system on the Korean peninsula. Step three: Use every opportunity to expose the problematic nature of the U.S.-ROK alliance and U.S. troops in Korea. We expect a series of issues related to the U.S.-ROK alliance and the presence of U.S. troops in Korea to emerge in the coming months: Trump’s proposed renegotiation of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement; the annual U.S.-ROK Security Consultative Meeting; U.S.-ROK negotiations on defense burden-sharing, the exposure of corruption in the defense industry, the expansion of the U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek, the environmental pollution left behind by the relocation of the Yongsan military base, and the U.S. Military Chemical and Biological Weapons Lab in Busan. We will turn all these issues into opportunities to call for an end to the unequal U.S.-ROK alliance, which subordinates South Korea’s interests, and regain our sovereignty. The United States seeks to transform the mission of the U.S.-ROK alliance from the defense of South Korea to the defense of the U.S. mainland. The U.S.-ROK alliance and U.S. troops in Korea only aggravate the current tension. Once the current tension is resolved and a peace system is established, they will no longer have a reason to remain. Our next steps will focus on mass education on the problematic nature of the U.S.-ROK alliance and U.S. troops in Korea. We will also prepare for a post-Peace Agreement Korea without the presence of U.S. troops. Part 2: Lessons from South Korea’s “Candlelight Revolution”: Consciousness of Protagonism In 1987, the South Korean people, through a blood-stained struggle, won the democratic right to directly elect the president. Everyone celebrated the end of military dictatorship and the beginning of a democratic era. And through the liberal governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, there was actual progress in the areas of democracy and peace. But this so-called democratic system produced the very anti-democratic Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations. The latter largely stemmed from the inadequacy of the current system of democracy, but it also reflected the choice of the majority of the people for whom the question of “how to put food on the table” became the primary concern. Of course, these reactionary governments failed to provide a solution for “putting food on the table” for the majority of the people. They also rolled back democratic gains, and their authoritarian style was not much different from that of previous military dictatorships. The so-called Democratic Party and the National Assembly, which were born out of the struggle for democracy, failed to defend hard-won democratic gains and sometimes even acted as an accomplice to the reactionary Park Geun-hye government. In the fall of 2016, the corrupt nature of the Park Geun-hye government was laid bare in front of the people, but the so-called opposition party and the National Assembly did nothing. The people, however, were different. “I elected this government into power,” they said, “So I will be the one to end it.” October 29, 2016 marked the first candlelight mass demonstration. Nineteen mass demonstrations followed, and the candlelight caught fire across the country and culminated in 1.7 million people pouring out into the streets. This eventually led to the impeachment of Park Geun-hye. How were the South Korean people able to fight and win? First of all, it was through continuous, ceaseless struggle. During the nine years of the reactionary Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye governments, South Korean progressive activists were accused of being “North Korea sympathizers,” the Unified Progressive Party was forcibly dissolved by the government, and labor unions suffered barbarous state crackdowns. And the Park Geun-hye government took complete control of the judicial branch and the corporate media. But the people did not give up and continued to fight. In 2015, workers, farmers, and the urban poor came together in a broad national anti-Park Geun-hye united front and organized a mass demonstration. The more the government cracked down, the more the people responded by coming together in unity and solidarity. It was at this mass demonstration in 2015 that farmer-activist Baek Nam-gi was hospitalized in a coma as a result of the murderous use of force by the police. Meanwhile, the Park Geun-hye government continued to commit heinous crimes, such as its mishandling of the Sewol tragedy and the “comfort women” issue. Even ordinary people without complex ideological views regarded the government’s actions on these issues as egregious. And it was the people’s experiences in these struggles that culminated in the candlelight revolution. In 2016, after lying in a coma for a year, farmer Baek Nam-gi passed away. The South Korean government, in an attempt to cover up its culpability, deployed hundreds of police officers to surround the hospital where his body lay to snatch it away and alter the truth about the cause of his death. Progressive activists physically confronted the police in an attempt to deter them. In the midst of all this, news of the so-called Park Geun-hye/Choi Soon-sil scandal broke in the media. The left was already fired up and ready to fight, and the people who said, “Can’t take it no more”—including office workers, housewives, junior high school students, and the elderly—all came out to the streets. The organized left and civil society—these two forces came together and held candlelight demonstrations at the city, county, and province levels across the country. This became the basis for a sustained movement. Second of all, when people realize that they are the protagonists of change and have the power to uncover the truth, nothing can stop them. When people merely think of themselves as helping or supporting a cause, they tend to de-prioritize it when they get busy with other things. But when we think of something as our own imperative, we don’t put it off. Likewise, when the majority of the people felt that it was their own imperative to bring down the repressive government, this created a revolutionary possibility. I think this is critical. Everyone here is the protagonist of their own lives, this society, and the world. Everyone on this earth was born with the right to be a protagonist. But we don’t yet have the consciousness of protagonists. How do people become protagonists of change? How can we make this happen? The importance of this question was the greatest lesson of the candlelight revolution. The U.S.-North Korea Conflict: The Final Stage Military tension between North and South Korea has always been headline news in Korea. Every year in March and August, when the U.S. and South Korean militaries conduct their massive military exercises, tensions escalate, and each time, people in Korea experience renewed fear: “Maybe this time, it will really lead to war.” The U.S. and South Korean militaries say these are routine exercises, but they deploy weapons of mass destruction, rehearse the occupation of North Korea, and simulate real-war scenarios as well as the decapitation of the North Korean leadership. North Korea has strongly objected to these exercises, but this has been going on for a long time. The Korean peninsula has always lived with the imminent threat of war. But until recently, it never made headline news in the United States. I’ve been seeing the headlines in U.S. news in the few days I’ve been here: “Kim Jong-un, North Korea, missiles….” This ironically pleased me because finally what was once considered only a problem of the Korean peninsula has now become a U.S. problem. Now that the war threats are acute, it has finally become headline news in the United States. It is the United States that has conducted the greatest number of nuclear tests, possesses the greatest nuclear arsenal, and has actually dropped atomic bombs on a civilian population. North Korea is in the stage of developing and testing nuclear weapons, opposes U.S. aggression and sanctions, and demands a peace treaty. Which party is the real threat? For the first time in a long time, defending the U.S. mainland from the threat of nuclear war has become a priority policy agenda for the U.S. government. Of course, news about North Korea must be distressing for the people who live in the United States. But it is the U.S. government that has created this situation, and the solution is quite simple. It is to realize a peace agreement between the United States and North Korea. The more the United States piles on sanctions against North Korea through the UN, the more North Korea will become hostile and the two countries will inch closer to war. And the more this crisis intensifies, the U.S. government will sell more weapons to South Korea and increasingly meddle in South Korea’s internal affairs. For the past sixty years, since the Korean War and the 1953 signing of the Mutual Defense Treaty between South Korea and the United States, South Korea has been a military outpost for the United States. The so-called U.S.-ROK alliance seriously undermines the sovereignty of South Korea. The forced deployment of the U.S. THAAD missile defense system is a case in point. We demand the following: The United States must end sanctions against North Korea, which are an act of war. North Korea and the United States must sign a permanent peace agreement. U.S. forces in Korea should withdraw from the Korean peninsula along with their weapons of mass destruction. The United States must stop meddling in South Korea’s internal affairs. Lastly, we must build enduring solidarity for peace in Korea and across the world. The Minjung Party Is a Party of the Candlelight Revolution The Minjung Party is a party of workers, farmers, urban poor, youth, and women. It is a party that aims to unify all progressive forces in South Korea. The Minjung Party aims to realize people’s sovereignty through the self-reliant unification of the Korean peninsula, class and social equality, and the practice of direct democracy. The era of voting for politicians and hoping they will represent us is over. What we demonstrated through the candlelight revolution is that the people, when unified in action, are more competent than any career politician. The Minjung Party will move the arena of politics from Yo-ui-do, where the National Assembly is located, to the public square, where the people gather. We are a party that aims to realize people’s sovereignty through direct democracy. “The most competent political leader is the unified people” is our slogan, and we will fight for a people-centered society and peace on the Korean peninsula and the world. Jang Jinsook is the Director of Planning of the Minjung Party (formerly New People’s Party) of South Korea. She earned a PhD in Sociology at Sungkonghoe University and studied Political Science and Policy Planning at the Sungkonghoe University Graduate School for NGO Studies. She was formerly a member of the Policy and Education Committee of the Seoul branch of Kyoreh Hana, a South Korean NGO devoted to peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. #USROKAlliance #SouthKorea #peacetreaty #Reunification #THAAD #Nuclearweapons #MinjungParty #NorthKorea

By Tim Beal | September 5, 2017 updated Originally published in the Asia Pacific Journal Observing Moon Jae-in win the election on 7 May, take up the presidency of the Republic of Korea and move on to a summit with President Trump has been like watching a movie where the action is put into slow motion to emphasise the inevitability of the disaster to come. The hero may gesticulate but he is essentially powerless and the plot flows through to the inexorable denouement. Things have come to this pass because the hero, for whatever reason, has made some fatal mistake and has not sought to extricate himself. He is doomed to a fate over which he has no control. So too with Moon Jae-in. His fundamental mistake was to not recognise, acknowledge and analyse South Korea’s geopolitical situation especially its relationship with the United States. He not merely did not challenge South Korea’s servile status but seemed actively to embrace it. The decisions that were informed by that failure, and his policy towards the US, China and the other Korea – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – mean that his administration is doomed at best to irrelevance, and at worst to being party to a catastrophic war. His summit with President Trump and his vacillating stand on issues such as the US Operational Control of the ROK military and the deployment of THAAD illustrate his precipitate decline from a candidate with promise to a president rapidly becoming a spent force. Reports of plans to establish a new political party may be a bellwether indicating mounting disillusionment with him.1 Although the discussion here, for brevity, focusses on Moon Jae-in as an individual it should be remembered that he represents a large, and at the moment dominant segment of the liberal political elite, as well as the aspirations of many, perhaps most South Koreans. Nor, for reasons of focus, will much be said about the policies of the other main actors – North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States.2 The formation of the US-South Korea relationship South Korea was created by the United States in 1945 out of the detritus of the Japanese empire. It was a client state whose function was to protect the booty of war, primarily Japan itself, from the Soviet Union and whatever contagion might spread from Eurasia. It also served as a base from which Japan could be enfiladed in case the Japanese people, in reaction to the disaster of militarism might veer towards Communism. A foothold on the Korean peninsula, historically the corridor for cultural and military interaction between Japan and mainland Asia might provide a stepping stone for a possible counter-offensive into Eurasia. South Korea’s turbulent history since then might be seen as an attempt to wrest control back from the United States and find its place in the sun. It might be thought that it was naturally progressives who would have led that struggle and that is probably true at the popular level. However, ironically it has been leaders such as Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee, considered reactionaries, who have perhaps shown the most rebellious streak. Syngman Rhee released prisoners of war rather than return them to North Korea and refused to take part in the armistice talks in an attempt to force the Americans to continue the war so the peninsula could be united under his control. The Northern Limit Line, the disputed maritime boundary in the West Sea which the Americans created in order to restrain Rhee’s attempts to reignite the fighting, remain an irritant to North-South relations to this day. Park Chung-hee, who had served in the Japanese puppet Manchukuo Army, fearful that the US withdrawal from Vietnam, and opening to China in the 1970s meant that it might abandon him started a clandestine nuclear weapons programme. He caved in, of course, when the Americans discovered it. Nevertheless in the last few decades it has been progressives such as Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun whose attempts to take a more independent stance have contrasted with the greater subservience of conservatives such as Lee Myung-bak and especially Park Geun-hye. Significantly it was Roh Moo-hyun who, at his summit with Kim Jong Il in 2007, complained about the difficulty of gaining greater autonomy from Washington.3 That conversation has added poignancy because it is his then chief-of staff President Moon Jae-in who is now in a position to further that struggle, but seems unwilling to follow Roh’s aspirations.4 It is because of this history that South Korea’s most important relationship by far continues to be that with the US, and it from the nature of this that other relationships – especially with China, Japan, Russia and the DPRK – emanate. Little can be done about those relationships unless that with the US is resolved. Power, impotence, and possibility The relationship with the US also determines the contours of power of the ROK presidency. There are some things the president can do, there are some things the president cannot do, and then there is a grey, indeterminate area in between. Moon Jae-in has failed to recognise this. In terms of the present situation the president can surely undo the barriers between the two Koreas erected by Lee Myung-bak and Park Chung-hee. That means most importantly the bilateral sanctions (May 24) imposed by Lee and his closing of the Kumgangsan tourism venture and Park’s termination of the Kaesong Industrial Park.5 The US, and conservative forces with South Korea might be unhappy about the reactivation of these links but there is really little they can do about it if the president shows resolve, short of orchestrating a coup and that is an unlikely overreaction.6 He could also surely free the 12 North Korean waitresses whom the National Intelligence Service (NIS) claims ‘voluntarily defected’ on the eve of the parliamentary elections in April 2016.7 Since the waitresses appear to have been held incommunicado since then it is evident that the claim by their colleagues that they were abducted (in an unsuccessful attempt to swing the elections to the conservatives) is probably true.8 Certainly the North has asked for the issue to be on the agenda in North-South talks and said that it will not allow another round of family reunions until they, and Kim Ryon-hui who claims she went South voluntarily but has changed her mind, are allowed to return home.9 Such confidence building measures might require some adroit footwork to save face but are within the power of the president. Moreover the waitress abduction issue would give Moon an opportunity to defang the NIS which is notorious for being involved, in deep state fashion in South Korean politics on behalf of the conservatives.10 On the other hand there is little direct role for the president to play in respect of the North’s nuclear weapons and missile programme. The DPRK has developed a nuclear deterrent principally because of the American threat and if there is to be any agreement about it that has to be negotiated between Washington and Pyongyang.11 The president of the Republic of Korea cannot speak on behalf of the president of the United States. He cannot provide security guarantees and cannot make promises. Most recently Park Geun-hye made a big fuss about South Korea’s role in this process but, despite her earlier talk of Trustpolitik, was merely grandstanding. By contrast we can presume that Moon genuinely wants to promote peace, which makes his policy mistakes all the more puzzling. What he can do (but has not done) is to nudge the US in the direction of realistic negotiations with North Korea on the basis of accepting a minimal nuclear deterrent and endorsing tension-reducing measures such as China’s freeze-for-freeze proposal.12 The area between these two extremes of power and powerlessness is naturally much more difficult to pin down. Much depends on the personal characters of the US and ROK presidents, their resolve, clear-sightedness and intelligence as well as the qualities of their political, military, and administrative apparatus and support among the elite and the populace in general. For instance, what control does the civilian government really have over the joint military exercises which cause so much consternation in Pyongyang, as they are intended to, and which feature in North Korea’s proposal for a mutual freeze (exercises for nuclear and missiles tests) subsequently taken up by China and endorsed by Russia?13 In theory the Republic of Korea is an equal partner and provides the locale and by far most of the troops. But in reality we do not know how much influence the South Korean president really has. All we know is that the exercises go ahead and that the US throws scorn on the idea of suspending them.14 Two issues, for which we do have data, provide a prism with which to examine this amorphous area. One is the question of the Operational Control of the South Korean military (OPCON) and the other is the deployment of THAAD. The United States took over control of the South Korean military during the early stages of the Korean War. Nothing quite comparable seems to have happened in the North involving the Soviet Union and China, and whatever direct leverage China had over the DPRK military is long gone. In the South peacetime control was handed back to the Koreans in 1994, during the Kim Young-sam administration. Before then even the troop movement necessary for Chun Doo-hwan’s coup and the Kwangju Massacre, required US permission. The United States has retained ‘wartime control’, usually known by the acronym OPCON. In 2006 Roh Moo-hyun negotiated for full control to revert to South Korea in 2012 but in 2010 his successor, Lee Myung-bak pushed that back to 2015, and postponement was further extended by Park Geun-hye to after 2025, leaving South Korea, as even the right-wing Chosun Ilbo admitted, facing a unique situation in the world. This was echoed by Gen. Richard Stilwell, a former commander of US forces in Korea, who called it the “most remarkable concession of sovereignty in the entire world.” The OPCON issue is a strange business with many reports in the US and South Korean media suggesting that it is the Americans who want to abolish it and the South Korean military, and conservative presidents, who want to retain US control. Furthermore a Korea Times report in 2014 explicitly linked THAAD and OPCON: “Korea is expected to allow the United States to deploy missile interceptors on its soil in return for Washington delaying the transfer of wartime operational control of Korean forces to Seoul.” It is unclear why the South Korean military would want to stay under foreign control. The proffered explanation that this is necessary because of the North Korean threat does not make much sense; as John Glaser put it in Foreign Affairs ‘South Korean military capabilities far exceed those of Pyongyang.’15. The South Korean military budget is far greater than the North’s, with twice the population it can field twice as many troops, its equipment is generally speaking far more advanced (it is America’s largest arms buyer), and in any case it is protected by the US nuclear umbrella and the US-ROK alliance. The only area in which the North has definite superiority is in nuclear weapons (though the delivery capability is uncertain), but they are a deterrent against American attack and would have little utility in a war between the two Koreas, confined to the peninsula. If Washington backed off from bombing North Korea’s nuclear reactors in 1994 because of the danger of radiation, then the same calculation would apply to Pyongyang. However, if South Korea has little to fear from an attack, the military may have considered that a takeover of North Korea would not be possible without US involvement, partly for its defeat and pacification but also to keep China at bay. Moon Jae-in, as candidate, vowed ‘to push for early takeover of wartime troop control’ although at the same time significantly he said he would ‘enhance deterrence against North’. This may have been a ploy to deflect conservative reaction, or it might reflect a contradiction in his thinking. Now he is president and the right-wing Dong-A Ilbo reports that Pres. Moon and Trump agree on early OPCON transfer. But do they really agree? First of all no specific date is mentioned; it is still a matter of being ‘early’ just as it was in his candidate days back in April. Secondly, the South Korean media, right and liberal, has been prone to self-delusion, especially in respect of foreign relations during the Moon ascendancy. Thirdly the proposed Future Command structure does not seem plausible, as the Dong-A Ilbo points out: ….under the new system, the post of commander goes to South Korean military, and that of deputy commander to the U.S. military. …. “If the Future Command is established after the transfer of wartime operational control, the U.S. forces will be under the command of a foreign military authority for the first time in history,” said a military official…. However, experts point out the possibility that the stance of the Trump administration, which preaches “America First,” might be misaligned with that of the Moon administration. They say that it is unlikely that President Trump will accept the deal and leave the U.S. forces, which boast the world’s best military power, subjected to the commands and instructions of the South Korean military. Indeed. It is difficult to envisage the US, and this is not an exclusively Trump thing, putting its military under Korean command in a situation where war with China, and perhaps Russia, is a distinct possibility. There may perhaps be some face-saving cosmetic arrangement if Moon pushes hard enough, but it seems unlikely that the real configuration of power will change. Despite its wider ramifications, OPCON is primarily a bilateral matter between the US and the ROK. THAAD is different. THAAD is primarily about China, and to a lesser extent Russia, with North Korea being used as a pretext. OPCON might be seen as part of the process by which the US controls South Korea, and THAAD part of the reason why it wants that control. THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense to give it its full title, is part of the US missile defense system. The prime reason for missile defense is arguably to mop-up any counter-attack after a first strike on the near-peer rivals, China and Russia. Iran and North Korea have been used mainly to disguise this underlying strategy which is profoundly dangerous not merely for the target countries but for the US itself and the world in general. Iran does not have long-range nuclear missiles but on top of that the Iran deal halted the development and deployment of any possible nuclear weapons programme. This did not stop the US from continuing to claim Iran as a reason for missile defense deployment in Europe, clearly exposing as the Russians pointed out, what the real target was. There is more validity in respect of North Korea, especially with the test launch of the Hwasong-14 ICBM, but even here the pretext is rather flimsy. Given the huge disparity in power between North Korea and the US and its allies, the very modest, nascent Korean nuclear deterrent would scarcely justify on its own the enormous costs of missile defense. There are cheaper ways of keeping safe. THAAD can be divided into two components – the X-Band radar which in long-distance mode can look deep into China and Russia, and detect ICBM launches, and the accompanying battery of usually six interceptor missiles. It is the X-Band radar which disturbs China and Russia because it threatens their nuclear deterrent capability. Interceptor missiles stationed in Korea would not protect the US, even if they worked, because they are designed to attack incoming missiles in their terminal phase. Significantly they are located in South Korea not to protect Seoul, but US bases further south. However there are serious doubts about their efficacy, both in general but also because they are not designed for the low-level missiles that North Korea would use in a conflict. What is the point if they are ineffective? The clue is that the US has stationed two units of X-band radar (AN/TPY-2) on its own in Japan.16 The Japanese government, and popular opinion to a large extent, is happy to participate in the containment of China.17 The traditional rivalry between the two great East Asian powers has its potency. South Korea is different. Whatever the issues between China and Korea, either Korea or the peninsula as a whole, they fade in comparison with the animus towards Japan. In fact, during the administration of Park Geun-hye, before THAAD surfaced, relations between Beijing and Seoul were very good. So, in contrast to Japan, it would be difficult for the US to install in South Korea a weapons system explicitly aimed at China. The solution was to bundle it with the interceptor missiles and claim that the purpose of the whole business was to protect South Korea against the North. Whether the South Korean political/military elite really bought this story is unclear. Park Geun-hye did, partly because of deference to the US and partly because of the guidance of Choi Soon-sil. There has been a huge amount of popular opposition to THAAD, which fed into the candlelight rebellion again Park. However much of this resistance has been side-tracked into protest on environmental grounds. There may well be genuine reason for concern for the health of communities close to the radar installation, and this has caused its relocation to a new location, a Lotte golf course further away from habitation. However the objections to THAAD are deeper and wider than that. Firstly there is the economic impact of Chinese retaliation, and here Lotte, poetically, has been a major victim. The latest estimate by the Hankyoreh of the economic damage is $4.8billion in the first half of 2017 alone.18 This has been shared by South Korean chaebol operating in the Chinese market, and the small and medium companies that supply them and South Korea’s tourism industry, heavily dependent in recent years on Chinese visitors. The Hankyoreh’s graphics tell their own story.Source:Cho, Kye-wan. “In first half of 2017, THAAD retaliation caused $4.3 billion in losses for S. Korean companies.” Hankyoreh, 6 July; See here. Whilst the actual economic damage of the THAAD deployment and general deterioration in Beijing-Seoul relations is severe, and despite wishful thinking is likely to continue, the potential impact on national security should not be overlooked. In the event of conflict between the US and China, something which the US military media and thinks tanks muse about frequently, the THAAD installation, and by extension South Korea itself becomes a target. The deployment of THAAD is an unmitigated disaster for South Korea. It has already caused huge economic damage, soured relations with Beijing (with concomitant implications for Beijing-Pyongyang relations), and thrust South Korea into danger with little advantage. It provides slight protection in case of a war with North Korea, the possibility of which in any case could be greatly and easily lessened by tension-reduction initiatives. It is, yet again, the sacrifice of South Korea for US strategic advantage. As with OPCON, Candidate Moon promised great things. With President Moon the issue is not yet settled but signs are not promising. It had been clear prior to the election that the US, despite predictable denials by the State Department, had, in collusion with the interim administration of Hwang Kyo-ahn and the South Korean military, been rushing through the deployment of THAAD.19 President Moon would later claim that the THAAD deployment was ‘mysteriously’ rushed.20 In fact there was nothing mysterious about the accelerated deployment, with the battery suddenly being installed before dawn in March.21 It was a natural precautionary measure to assure that the incoming administration, presumed to be led by Moon Jae-in, could not cancel the THAAD agreement. Actually it seems that Washington was not really concerned about Moon since there was no vituperation campaign directed against him, in the way we have been accustomed to in respect of other leaders who might be considered troublesome, like Putin, Assad, and Kim Jong Un. Indeed, President Trump, with his customary ineptness actually said on the eve of the election that the US would send South Korea a $1billion invoice for THAAD.22 General McMaster was hurriedly deployed to bluff his way around that.23 In truth the much maligned Trump may have taken Moon’s measure; although his intervention may have swung votes to Moon, THAAD and the US-SK alliance was not in any great danger however much he tightened the screws. McMaster said that the US would pay for now, but that the deal would be ‘renegotiated’ – in other words South Korea would pay tomorrow, something which had always been on the cards.24 In early June President Moon suspended THAAD deployment because of two issues relating to the rush to deploy.25 One was that the Defense Ministry had failed to mention in a report to the Blue House – the office of the president – the delivery of additional launchers for the deployed THAAD battery.26 It also transpired that the Ministry had not carried out the environmental impact assessments it should have, though this had been known since April at least.27 Moon reprimanded the Defense Ministry and ordered a full environmental impact assessment.28 In reality the issues were marginal and the action diversionary. The number of launchers installed or on their way was of no great importance to either China or the US – it was the X-band radar that counted, and that had been deployed. Whilst the number of launchers, and hence the missiles that could be fired, might offer a degree of extra protection to US troops in South Korea, and by extension the population south of Seoul, this was a minor consideration to the Pentagon?. Furthermore, Japan which already hosts two US-operated X-band radar units was reportedly considering installing THAAD interceptors in 2015 but has now scrapped that in favour of Aegis Onshore units.29 It appears that the interceptors in the Aegis Onshore system are more effective than THAAD and since the X-band radar was already in place the Japanese opted for the better system. There is a further complication. The radar unit only feeds data to the THAAD interceptors when it is in terminal mode, but not in advanced mode, which would be used for surveillance of Chinese missiles sites.30 The US operates the system and the South Korean government cannot be sure what mode the radar is in. If the THAAD deployment in South Korea is really about long-range surveillance of China, and Russia, as the Chinese, Russians and independent experts such as Theodore Postol argue, and the radar is in advanced mode then the interceptors would inoperable.31 The number of launchers would be quite irrelevant. Environmental and health concerns have been a major part of South Korean popular reaction to the THAAD deployment.32 The initial choice for the first THAAD battery was moved in response to protest to a Lotte golf course, which whilst it might have been profitable in the short run to Lotte, made the company’s extensive operations in China vulnerable to government and public opposition to THAAD.33 Protests in other places where THAAD, or X-band radar have been installed have been muted in comparison to the vigorous campaign in South Korea, but they also have tended to focus on the immediate health and environmental aspects.34 However whilst local residents have legitimate cause for concern it is clear that this is a minor aspect of the real cost and danger to South Korea. It may be that the authorities have played the environmental issue up as a straw man diversion. The environmental impact assessment announced by the government in June may retard the full deployment of the first stage of THAAD, but it is unlikely to stop or reverse it. Certainly the government exudes confidence that, in the words of Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha: “Securing democratic and procedural legitimacy through an environmental impact assessment of the THAAD site will further strengthen public support for the THAAD deployment and ultimately strengthen the South Korea-US alliance.”35 Strange sentiment, one might argue, for a government propelled into power by opposition to Park Geun-hye, who in deference to the US-South Korea relationship agreed to THAAD, and to a desire for change.Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, center, holds hands together with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono during their joint talks on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila, the Philippines, Monday. Yonhap Source: Yi, Whan-woo. “Allies ready for follow-up N. Korea steps.” Korea Times, 7 August 2017. The Trump-Moon Summit It is traditional for an incoming South Korea president to make the first overseas visit to Washington to pledge fealty. South Korea is not alone in this, of course, and even Donald Trump, held in such disdain, often scarcely disguised, by foreign leaders had a long waiting list of suitors. That is the nature of international power. However Moon’s visit displayed more than the usual degree of obsequiousness. His pre-summit conciliatory statements were interpreted by many as a ploy to hide his real resolve to chart a new course for South Korea. For instance, the libertarian commentator Doug Bandow, with his usual mixture of realism and fantasy, wrote in Forbes in May, just after the election, that: The two presidents spoke last week by phone shortly after Moon took office and have agreed to a summit next month. Talks might help, but even friendly discussions won’t hide the fact that the two countries’ interests differ in substantial ways. And if President Moon pursues policies which undercut Washington’s objectives, relations could prove quite difficult: President Trump doesn’t suffer criticism gladly. The frigid relationship between George W. Bush and Kim Dae-jung might serve as a model. U.S.-South Korean ties have varied over time, in response to changing international conditions as well as shifts in the respective governments. However, the Trump-Moon match likely will present a special challenge. Donald Trump may find the serious and principled Moon to be a tougher adversary than Kim Jong-un.36 In the event President Trump must have been pleasantly surprised, if he noticed at all, that the new South Korean president was, on the surface at least, neither principled nor tough. The scene was set in two different ways before the actual meeting before the presidents. On the emotional, public relations level, Moon’s first engagement in the United States was a visit to the Marine Corps Chosin Memorial in Virginia commemorating the famous battle in the Korean War between the US-led forces and the Chinese and North Koreans. An Associated Press report put this into context: South Korea’s new leader has vowed to stand firmly with President Donald Trump against North Korea, playing down his past advocacy of a softer approach toward the nuclear-armed nation as he made his first visit as president to Washington. President Moon Jae-in offered an emotional tribute Wednesday to Marines who fought in a fierce battle in the Korean War that helped in the mass evacuation of Korean civilians, including his own parents. Moon said that without those American sacrifices, he would not be here today. Moon was underscoring his personal commitment to the U.S.-South Korean alliance in the face of questions over whether his inclination toward engagement with North Korea despite its rapidly advancing nuclear capability could lead to strains in relations with Washington.37 Moon’s visit to the US marine memorial certainly played well in Washington, but seems like a gratuitous affront both to Pyongyang and to Beijing from someone who wanted to build bridges. On the policy level, as Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations noted with approval: …Moon’s strategy of alignment with Trump on security issues — forecast in public interviews in the weeks prior to the summit — took almost every security issue off the table before Moon arrived in Washington.38 That being the case the primary function of the summit meeting was to establish ‘personal chemistry’. Moon appeared confident that this had been achieved: On this relationship with Trump, Moon said, “We saw eye to eye more than I expected, and he was very respectful and kind.” “Speaking before the US media, President Trump used the terms ‘great chemistry’ and ‘very very, very good,’” he added.39 ‘Respectful and kind’ are not usually qualities associated with Donald Trump. The US president also claimed to have ‘great chemistry’ with Chinese president Xi Jinping after their meeting in April; Xi did not boast about it, merely smiled gnomically. Self-delusion and wishful thinking Unfortunately it soon became apparent that despite the bonhomie things were not as rosy as portrayed. Firstly THAAD. Apart from the more general and longstanding issue of relations with North Korea, this is perhaps the most immediate in South Korea’s relationship with the United States. It is important in itself, as described above, but it is also symbolic of South Korea’s dilemma. Briefly on a range of issues the interests of the United States and South Korea not merely do not coincide, but are at odds. Sanctions on Iran to take one example from many. The United States has its own strategic reasons for its policy towards Iran and hostility to the current Islamic Republic, but whatever they are South Korea has no reason to share them. South Korea has no issues with Iran and would not benefit if the Islamic Republic fell and a US-compliant regime were installed. Nevertheless South Korea has been pressured to impose sanctions on Iran at considerable cost to itself.40 As with Iran, South Korea is compelled to conform to US strategies towards China. However whatever the reasons for US policies, and the potential benefits and costs that might accrue to the United States, they are not shared with South Korea. On the contrary South Korea incurs more economic damage and greater danger, for no possible benefit. If the US did go to war against China what possible good could come to South Korea? So THAAD is important in itself but more than that it symbolises and encapsulates the dilemma South Korea faces being caught between the US and China. This dilemma is frequently mentioned in the South Korean press but only at a superficial level.41 Moreover articles in the South Korean media on the Chinese reaction to THAAD are commonly infused with wishful thinking and a refusal to face up to the facts. We are told that economic danger will really not be that great, that the Chinese are being petulant and that this will pass, that skilful South Korea diplomacy will make the problem go away.42 However, the problem has not gone away, and will not go away.43 So if there is one pressing issue that President Moon needed to discuss with President Trump at the summit it was THAAD. For the conservatives this was a matter of pledging loyalty to the US and for the progressives it was a question of defusing the danger that THAAD posed to South Korea.44 Yet in the preparations for the summit it was reported that Cheong Wa Dae (the Blue House, or presidential office) ‘Wants to Keep THAAD off Summit Agenda’.45 And so it came to pass. The Chosun Ilbo said that ‘Korea, U.S. Skirt THAAD Controversy During Summit’ although it is clear that it was Moon alone, that was doing the skirting because ‘The omission seems to have been the result of strenuous efforts by the government here, which was wary of getting off to a rough start with the notoriously volatile Trump’.46 Then there was the question of the free trade agreement – KORUS FTA – signed by the Obama administration and earlier labelled by Donald Trump ‘“a horrible deal” that has left America “destroyed.”’47 His intention to renegotiate the agreement was clearly signalled.48 Finding a satisfactorily anodyne way of handling the contradiction between Trump’s intention and Moon’s wishes delayed the summit joint statement by 7 hours.49 A further result of the summit is that it reported that the transfer of OPCON has been further delayed, from ‘within the term’ [of Moons’ five year presidency] as promised to ‘at an early date’ which since it is contingent on ‘the situation with North Korea’s nuclear and missile advancements’ may mean sometime in the deep, dark future.50 In the meantime Trump also signalled, yet again, that South Korea would have to pay more for the US military presence in Korea including the cost of relocating forces to Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul out of range, it was hoped, of North Korean artillery.51 Despite the costs this might be a forlorn hope.52 The relocation costs are in addition to the cost, borne by South Korea, of cleaning up contamination from USFK bases.53 The response of the South Korean media, and the officials and politicians up to Moon Jae-in himself whose views they mirrored and amplified was largely a mixture of self-delusion and wishful thinking. It was natural that the South Korean media would give much more coverage to the summit than the American. However what the Koreans did not bring out was how perfunctory US coverage had been. The US media, again naturally, finds little of interest to report when a foreign leader kowtows because is the natural order of things. It is when they don’t that media ears prick up; thus North Korea gets much more attention in the US press. So too with President Moon’s visit. The main article in the New York Times that mentioned the summit was about wider issues –‘Trump Takes More Aggressive Stance With U.S. Friends and Foes in Asia’ – and it was buried on page A8.54 The Washington Post did have one by-lined article on the summit but the heading showed that the real subject was North Korea – ‘With South Korean president, Trump denounces ‘reckless and brutal’ regime in North Korea’. 55 The summit was not considered newsworthy enough to hit the Washington Post’s twice daily email alert. The press conference was relatively poorly attended with ‘dozens of open seats’.56 In general, the JoongAng Ilbo proclaimed that it had been ‘A successful summit’.57 THAAD, as we have noted was ‘skirted over’ but other issues that were discussed were transmogrified into Korean victories. On economic issues the Korea Times decided that South Korean investment into the US demonstrated that ‘Moon’s US visit brings economic achievements’.58 The Joint Statement did not specifically mention KORUS FTA.59 However it did mention steel –one of America’s big gripes – under US pressure ‘fair and free trade’ was simplified to ‘fair trade’ a Trump slogan that meant trade where the US balance was positive, which it is not with South Korea or a lot of other trade partners.60 There was no doubt that the trade imbalance was on Trump’s mind and the existing FTA was to be torn up and refashioned, to America’s benefit.61 When that could no longer be denied President Moon claimed that ‘Trump’s trade comments were “outside of what was agreed upon”.62 However the main issue was North Korea and here the South Korean narrative was embarrassingly delusional. The Joint Statement excoriated North Korea, vowed to maintain and increase sanctions, eulogised the US-South Korea relationship, and had this to say about negotiations: Noting that sanctions are a tool of diplomacy, the two leaders emphasized that the door to dialogue with North Korea remains open under the right circumstances….. President Trump supported the ROK’s leading role in fostering an environment for peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula…. President Trump supported President Moon’s aspiration to restart inter-Korean dialogue on issues including humanitarian affairs.63 This mishmash of PR talk was converted into exuberant headlines, such as the Chosun Ilbo’s ‘Moon Wins U.S. Support for ‘Leading Role’ in Talks with N.Korea’.64 It was all nonsense, of course. The US was not going to hand over a leading role in negotiations with North Korea to South Korea any more than it would give the lead in talks with China to New Zealand, or with Russia to Poland. The US media had been dismissive. Mark Landler in the New York Times noted that Trump ‘showed little patience for Mr. Moon’s hope for engagement with the North’.65 The fantasy was publically exposed when Moon Jae-in did try to open up talks with the North on 17 July.66 Seoul was roundly told off not merely by Washington but also, rubbing salt in the wound, by Tokyo.67 Not surprisingly these criticisms were echoed by the conservative press.68 At the time of writing there has been no response from North Korea.69 No doubt North-South talks will eventually take place but also, no doubt, there will be little progress. Moon has so firmly, and unnecessarily, nailed his flag to the American mast, and has not taken steps to repair North-South relations that he could have, that it is difficult to see Kim Jong Un being enthused. Pragmatism will prevail, and Pyongyang will not refuse out of chagrin to talk to Seoul, but it is unlikely that relations will improve any more than they did under Park Geun-hye. The Korean Tragedy Tragedies in Western literature, from the Greeks through to Shakespeare, Dreiser and beyond have a fixed and usually gory denouement. This Korean tragedy has no obvious denouement in sight but the sense of inexorability is still there. Despite Team Trump’s bluster about strategic patience being over it is abundantly clear that they are following Obama’s policy of ‘strategic patience’ – which might be better termed ‘strategic paralysis’ because, like Obama they do not know what to do. They do not want to negotiate peaceful coexistence with North Korea, which means accepting in some form Pyongyang’s nuclear deterrent, because of its geopolitical implications. Although it certainly cannot be ruled out, going to war is too dangerous and has drawbacks in terms of the containment of China, hence is unlikely. That leaves muddling along.70 Moon Jae-in might well have been able to change this but he has endorsed American intransigence leaving the Korean peninsula in a very dangerous situation. Moon’s fundamental failure has been his commitment to the present US-SK relationship. He sees this as the foundation on which solutions can be built. However the relationship is in fact the problem from which others stem. Principally, but not exclusively, that means relations with North Korea and China while ignoring South Korea. Furthermore by accepting the present relationship with the United States, ‘the US-SK alliance’, he is relinquishing control to America. Instead of autonomously developing a less antagonistic relationship with North Korea by utilising the instruments at his disposal, such as Kaesong or the abducted waitresses, he has subsumed the inter-Korean relationship under the US-SK alliance, so it is subordinated to US North Korea policy. Decisions, if they are made at all, are made in Washington and initiatives such as the July proposals to Pyongyang are doomed not to absolute failure but to very limited outcomes.71 Pyongyang will spend limited time talking to the servant when it knows that it is negotiations with the master that count.72 It did not have to be this way, but with Moon having chosen the path he has it is difficult to see how he can turn back and rescue the situation. He is trapped by his original failure to challenge South Korea’s servile status. This is not to say that choosing the path of autonomy, of seeking to extricate South Korea from the US alliance would have been easy. There would be considerable opposition within South Korea where the military and civil bureaucracies, and wide swathes of society, have been nurtured for generations within the American embrace. The actions of the defense establishment over the rushed deployment of THAAD in defiance of the Blue House, and the July prohibitions on the entry of American-Korean peace activists Christine Ahn and Juyeon Rhee are indications of resistance by what might be called the South Korean deep state.73 It is uncertain to what degree a South Korean president can enlarge autonomy, let alone move towards independence without provoking a crisis. Moon Jae-in, as with any progressive South Korean president, is vulnerable to being removed from office by impeachment or coup and must tread carefully. However the special circumstances in which Moon Jae-in came to office presented an historic opportunity. On the one hand there was the popular impetus towards change and renovation provided by the Candlelight Revolution and on the other the mounting criticism of Donald Trump amongst elites worldwide, including South Korea and within the United States itself. It should be cautioned that the disdain for Trump by the American foreign policy establishment has been for his incompetence, and that establishment would not look kindly on a South Korea breaking free from the US alliance.74 Nevertheless Trump’s low standing does provide leverage. If, for instance Moon had pressed for autonomy at the summit and this had precipitated a public crisis in US-SK relations then this might have been blamed on Trump. South Korean autonomy would have been increased but this might have passed less noticed amongst the slew of criticisms of Trump. Moon Jae-in should have used this historic opportunity and moved quickly during the honeymoon period that new leaders traditionally have to refashion the US-South Korea relationship in the direction of autonomy and eventual independence. This would not have been easy, and might have been fraught with danger, but continuing on the path of subservience towards the United States offers no hope. South Korea will remain a pawn of American policy for the containment of China and the maintenance of global hegemony. This long-term predicament is compounded by the impulsive and strategically incoherent actions of President Donald Trump. The ‘August Crisis’, as it has been labelled by the South Korea press, and which is continuing at the time of writing, will probably pass.75 Trump’s minders, especially and crucially Secretary of Defense Mattis will almost certainly prevent an American attack on North Korea.76 One advantage of Trump’s narcissism is that though he has a reputation for nursing grievances he readily turns, in his own mind, a defeat into a victory. Nevertheless, despite Moon’s phone call s to Trump and delusionary articles in the South Korean media about ‘close and transparent’ cooperation, and wistful calls that ‘Seoul should make its opposition to war even clearer to Washington’ South Korea really has little traction.77 It is clear from coverage in the US media that little attention is paid to South Korea. Senator Lindsay Graham’s TV interview on 1 August quoting Trump seems horribly plausible: Graham said that Trump won’t allow the regime of Kim Jong Un to have an ICBM with a nuclear weapon capability to “hit America.” “If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here. And He has told me that to my face,” Graham said. “And that may be provocative, but not really. When you’re president of the United States, where does your allegiance lie? To the people of the United States,” the senator said.78 South Korea’s tragedy is that Moon Jae-in has failed to realise that if he is to fulfil his allegiance to his people he needs to break free from the status of client and pawn and move towards autonomy and then independence. The ‘Candlelight Revolution’ offered an historic possibility to attempt to do this but President Moon has squandered the opportunity. 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Kim, Jin-cheol, and Eui-gyum Kim. “Was Choi Sun-sil behind the closing of the Kaesong Industrial Complex?” Hankyoreh, 27 October 2016. Kim, Jong-hoon, and Hyun Lee (Interviewer). “S Korean Progressives Launch New Party to Complete ‘Candlelight Revolution’.” Zoom in Korea, 4 August 2017. Kim, Kyu-won. “At 2007 inter-Korean summit, then-Pres. Roh discussed autonomy” Hankyoreh, 26 June 2013. Kim, Oi-hyun. “With consumer boycotts over THAAD, S. Korea-China relations in a tailspin.” Hankyoreh, 1 March 2017. Kim, Rahn. “Greater Trump trade pressure looming” Korea Times, 3 July 2017. ———. “What makes Moon different from Roh Moo-hyun” Korea Times, 8 May 2017. Ko, Young Dae. “U.S. Pushing Destabilizing ‘Missile Defense’ in Asia-Pacific.” Solidarity for Peace and Reconciliation in Korea (SPARK), 27 April 2015. Kwack, Jung-soo. “S. Korean companies hit by China’s THAAD retaliation disappointed at lack of solution from Moon-Xi summit” Hankyoreh, 8 July 2017. Kwak, Byong-chan. “The NIS’s long history of political interference.” Hankyoreh, 12 July 2013. Landler, Mark. “Trump Takes More Aggressive Stance With U.S. Friends and Foes in Asia.” New York Times, 30 June 2017. Lee, Hyun. “North Korea’s ICBM and South Korea’s Confusing Response.” Korea Policy Institute, 10 July 2017. Lee, Kil-seong, and Sung-jin Chae. “Lotte Faces Massive Tax Probe in China After THAAD Decision.” Chosun Ilbo, 2 December 2016. Lee, Rachel. “US, NK may take drastic turn to dialogue.” Korea Times, 11 August 2017. Lee, Se-young. “Pres. Moon: THAAD agreement included deployment of only one launcher this year” Hankyoreh, 23 June 2017. Lee, Se-young, and Ji-eun Kim. “Foreign Minister says environmental assessment can build public support for THAAD.” Hankyoreh, 27 June 2017. Lee, Yong-soo. “Korea, U.S. Skirt THAAD Controversy During Summit.” Chosun Ilbo, 3 July 2017. Lee, Yong-soo, and Myong-song Kim. “N.Korea Ignores Proposal of Military Talks.” Chosun Ilbo, 21 July 2017. “Lift the May 24 measures and get down to business with the North.” Hankyoreh, 24 May 2012. Lim, Ji-sun, In-tack Im, Il-jun Cho, and Hyun-june Choi. “South Korean gov’t on the hook for $870 million to clean up US base contamination.” Hankyoreh, 12 July 2017. “Local residents don’t want US military base to be built in Kyoto.” Japan Press Weekly, 5 October 2014. “Moon-Trump Summit: Two Issues to Watch for.” Zoom in Korea, 27 June 2017. “Moon Says THAAD Deal Was ‘Mysteriously’ Rushed.” Chosun Ilbo, 23 June 2017. Mullany, Gerry, and Michael R. Gordon. “U.S. Starts Deploying Thaad Antimissile System in South Korea, After North’s Tests.” New York Times, 6 March 2017. Nakamura, David, and Jenna Johnson. “With South Korean president, Trump denounces ‘reckless and brutal’ regime in North Korea.” Washington Post, 30 June 2017. “NIS Denies Abducting N.Korean Waitresses.” Chosun Ilbo, 28 April 2016. Oh, Young-jin. “Are we America lovers or China lovers?” Korea Times, 21 July 2017. ———. “Pyeongtaek Garrison vulnerable to chemical, biological missile attacks.” Korea Times, 21 July 2017. Ortiz, Erik, and Arata Yamamoto. “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option.” NBC, 2 August 2017. Park, Byong-su. “Korea to significantly cut oil imports from Iran.” Hankyoreh, 17 January 2012. ———. “Pres. Moon starting diplomatic moves to address THAAD issue with China” Hankyoreh, 12 May 2017. ———. “US partners should cut Iranian crude imports, Einhorn says.” Hankyoreh, 18 January 2012. Park, Byong-su, and Ji-eun Kim. “North Korea could look to add items to military talks agenda.” Hankyoreh, 18 July 2017. ———. “THAAD deployment could slow down as Pres. Moon orders environmental assessment.” Hankyoreh, 6 June 2017. Park, Byong-su, and Se-young Lee. “Moon admin.’s governance plan signals step back on pushing for OPCON transfer.” Hankyoreh, 20 July 2017. Park, Si-soo. “Korea to join sanctions against Iran.” Korea Times, 11 December 2011. Postol, Theodore , Tong Zhao, and Toby Dalton. “Is U.S. Missile Defense Aimed at China?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 15 October 2015. Reuters. “Trump Calls for Firm Response to North Korea, Targets Seoul on Trade.” New York Times, 1 July 2017. Ripley, Will. “Tearful North Korean waitresses: Our ‘defector’ colleagues were tricked.” CNN, 21 April 2016. Rucker, Philip “Trump: ‘We may terminate’ U.S.-South Korea trade agreement.” Washington Post, 28 April 2017. Sanger, David E, and Gardiner Harris. “U.S. Pressed to Pursue Deal to Freeze North Korea Missile Tests.” New York Times, 21 June 2017. Sim, Hyun-jung, and Jin-seok Shon. “THAAD Retaliation from China Unlikely to Kill Business.” Chosun Ilbo, 6 March 2017. Snyder, Scott. “Launch of the Trump-Moon Era in U.S.-Korea Relations.” Council of Foreign Relations, 12 July 2017. “South Korean leader looks for common ground with Trump.” KALB, 29 June 2017. Stromberg, Stephen. “Trump is dangerously incompetent.” Washington Post, 15 May 2017. Suh, JJ. “Missile Defense and the Security Dilemma: THAAD, Japan’s “Proactive Peace,” and the Arms Race in Northeast Asia.” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 27 April 2017. “TPY-2 X-band Radar.” Center for Inetrantional and Strategic Studies, 25 April 2016. “U.S. Troops in S. Korea Can Never Escape Strikes by KPA’s Long-range Artillery: Panmunjom Mission.” KCNA, 14 July 2017. Walt, Stephen. “The Global Consequences of Trump’s Incompetence.” Foreign Policy, 18 July 2017. “Why China is wrong to be furious about THAAD.” Economist, 23 March 2017. Yi, Whan-woo. “China’s THAAD retaliation may backfire” Korea Times, 12 April 2017. Yi, Yong-in. “Moon says Trump’s trade comments were “outside of what was agreed upon”.” Hankyoreh, 3 July 2017. Yi, Yong-in, and Hye-jung Choi. “McMaster’s doublespeak on THAAD costs feeding fire started by Trump.” Hankyoreh, 1 May 2017. Yi, Yong-in, and Ji-eun Kim. “Trump sends South Korea a $1 billion invoice for THAAD” Hankyoreh, 29 April 2017. Yonhap. “THAAD deployment unrelated to political situation in South Korea: State Department.” Korea Times, 14 March 2017. ———. “Top court rejects lawyers’ protection request for N. Korea defectors.” Korea Times, 8 March 2017. ———. “White House: Current conditions ‘far away’ to reopen inter-Korean talks.” Korea Times, 18 July 2017. Notes 1Jong-hoon Kim and Hyun Lee (Interviewer), “S Korean Progressives Launch New Party to Complete ‘Candlelight Revolution’,” Zoom in Korea, 4 August 2017.; See Part 1 here and Part 2 here. 2There is a large, if usually unsatisfactory, literature on this, which also gets extensive coverage, especially at times of crisis, in the media. For what it is worth my recent thoughts on this are at Tim Beal, “The Korean Peninsula within the Framework of US Global Hegemony,” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus 14, no. 22:3 (2016). 3Kyu-won Kim, “At 2007 inter-Korean summit, then-Pres. Roh discussed autonomy” Hankyoreh, 26 June 2013. 4Rahn Kim, “What makes Moon different from Roh Moo-hyun” Korea Times, 8 May 2017. 5Editorial, “Sanctions on Pyongyang,” Korea Times, 24 May 2012. “Lift the May 24 measures and get down to business with the North,” Hankyoreh, 24 May 2012. Rudiger Frank and Théo Clément, “Closing the Kaesŏng Industrial Zone: An Assessment,” The Asia Pacific Journal 14, no. 6:5 (2016); Jin-cheol Kim and Eui-gyum Kim, “Was Choi Sun-sil behind the closing of the Kaesong Industrial Complex?,” Hankyoreh, 27 October 2016. 6There are other ways to attempt to impede the reactivation of i9nter-Korean links such as Kaesong but how successful they would be is uncertain; see Yi-jun Cho, “U.S. Senate Bill Would Thwart Reopening of Kaesong Complex,” Chosun Ilbo, 24 July 2017. 7“NIS Denies Abducting N.Korean Waitresses,” Chosun Ilbo, 28 April 2016. 8Will Ripley, “Tearful North Korean waitresses: Our ‘defector’ colleagues were tricked,” CNN, 21 April 2016.; Yonhap, “Top court rejects lawyers’ protection request for N. Korea defectors,” Korea Times, 8 March 2017. 9Sang-Hun Choe, “South Korea Proposes Military Talks With North at Their Border,” New York Times, 17 July 2017. Byong-su Park and Ji-eun Kim, “North Korea could look to add items to military talks agenda,” Hankyoreh, 18 July 2017. 10Byong-chan Kwak, “The NIS’s long history of political interference,” Hankyoreh, 12 July 2013.; Jamie Doucette and Se-Woong Koo, “Distorting Democracy: Politics by Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” The Asia Pacific Journal (2013); Editorial, “No more political maneuvering by the NIS,” Hankyoreh, 5 December 2013. 11Gregory Elich, “US-North Korean Relations in a Time of Change,” Counterpunch, 13 February 2017. 12David E Sanger and Gardiner Harris, “U.S. Pressed to Pursue Deal to Freeze North Korea Missile Tests,” New York Times, 21 June 2017. 13“Joint statement by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries on the Korean Peninsula’s problems,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 4 July 2017. 14Jonathan Cheng and Alastair Gale, “North Korea Missile Launch Threatens U.S. Strategy in Asia,” Wall Street Journal, 4 July 2017. 15John Glaser, “The Case Against U.S. Overseas Military Bases,” Foreign Affairs, 25 July 2017. 16JJ Suh, “Missile Defense and the Security Dilemma: THAAD, Japan’s “Proactive Peace,” and the Arms Race in Northeast Asia,” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 27 April 2017. 17Gregory Elich, “THAAD Comes to Korea, But at What Cost?,” Counterpunch, 16 August 2016. 18Kye-wan Cho, “In first half of 2017, THAAD retaliation caused $4.3 billion in losses for S. Korean companies,” Hankyoreh, 6 July 2017. 19Yonhap, “THAAD deployment unrelated to political situation in South Korea: State Department,” Korea Times, 14 March 2017. Editorial, “Ramming through THAAD deployment both irresponsible and dangerous,” Hankyoreh, 8 March 2017. 20“Moon Says THAAD Deal Was ‘Mysteriously’ Rushed,” Chosun Ilbo, 23 June 2017. 21Gerry Mullany and Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Starts Deploying Thaad Antimissile System in South Korea, After North’s Tests,” New York Times, 6 March 2017. 22Yong-in Yi and Ji-eun Kim, “Trump sends South Korea a $1 billion invoice for THAAD” Hankyoreh, 29 April 2017. 23Yong-in Yi and Hye-jung Choi, “McMaster’s doublespeak on THAAD costs feeding fire started by Trump,” Hankyoreh, 1 May 2017. Jonathan Cheng, “National Security Chief Tells South Korea U.S. Will Pay for Defense System,” Wall Street Journal, 30 April 2017. 24Elich, “THAAD Comes to Korea, But at What Cost?.” 25Ji-hye Jun, “Moon halts THAAD deployment,” Korea Times, 7 June 2017. 26Se-young Lee, “Pres. Moon: THAAD agreement included deployment of only one launcher this year” Hankyoreh, 23 June 2017. 27Ji-eun Kim and Yi Yong-in, “THAAD missile defense system to become operational soon” Hankyoreh, 28 April 2017. 28Byong-su Park and Ji-eun Kim, “THAAD deployment could slow down as Pres. Moon orders environmental assessment,” Hankyoreh, 6 June 2017. 29Young Dae Ko, “U.S. Pushing Destabilizing ‘Missile Defense’ in Asia-Pacific,” Solidarity for Peace and Reconciliation in Korea (SPARK), 27 April 2015. Ki-weon Cho, “Japan reportedly to deploy Aegis Ashore system instead of THAAD,” Hankyoreh, 24 June 2017. 30“TPY-2 X-band Radar,” Center for Inetrantional and Strategic Studies, 25 April 2016. “Why China is wrong to be furious about THAAD,” Economist, 23 March 2017. 31Theodore Postol, Tong Zhao, and Toby Dalton, “Is U.S. Missile Defense Aimed at China?,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 15 October 2015. 32Darcie Draudt, “THAAD and the Politicization of Missile Defense in South Korea” SinoNK, 29 July 2016.; Jeong-soo Kim, “What the gov’t won’t say about the electromagnetic waves emitted by THAAD,” Hankyoreh, 2 August 2016. 33“Defense ministry seals deal on site for THAAD,” Yonhap, 16 November 2016.; Kil-seong Lee and Sung-jin Chae, “Lotte Faces Massive Tax Probe in China After THAAD Decision,” Chosun Ilbo, 2 December 2016.; Oi-hyun Kim, “With consumer boycotts over THAAD, S. Korea-China relations in a tailspin,” Hankyoreh, 1 March 2017. 34Yun-hyung Gil, “Japanese community with THAAD radar glumly says ‘it’s ok’,” Hankyoreh, 18 July 2016. “Local residents don’t want US military base to be built in Kyoto,” Japan Press Weekly, 5 October 2014. Kim, “What the gov’t won’t say about the electromagnetic waves emitted by THAAD.” 35Se-young Lee and Ji-eun Kim, “Foreign Minister says environmental assessment can build public support for THAAD,” Hankyoreh, 27 June 2017. 36Doug Bandow, “Who Poses Tougher Challenge For Donald Trump: South Korea’s Moon Jae-In Or The North’s Kim Jong-Un?,” Forbes, 17 May 2017. 37“South Korean leader looks for common ground with Trump,” KALB, 29 June 2017. 38Scott Snyder, “Launch of the Trump-Moon Era in U.S.-Korea Relations,” Council of Foreign Relations, 12 July 2017. 39Yong-in Yi, “Moon says Trump’s trade comments were “outside of what was agreed upon”,” Hankyoreh, 3 July 2017. 40Jack Kim, “South Korea imposes new wave of Iran sanctions,” Reuters, 8 September 2010. Si-soo Park, “Korea to join sanctions against Iran,” Korea Times, 11 December 2011. Associated Press, “Senior US official cranks up pressure on South Korea to cut crude oil imports from Iran,” Washington Post, 17 January 2012. Byong-su Park, “Korea to significantly cut oil imports from Iran,” Hankyoreh, 17 January 2012.; ———, “US partners should cut Iranian crude imports, Einhorn says,” Hankyoreh, 18 January 2012. 41Editorial, “Park Needs to Balance Closer Ties with China,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2015. Ji-suk Kim, “The Korean peninsula amid US-China confrontation,” Hankyoreh, 15 October 2015. Editorial, “Need a lasting solution to China-US conflict over THAAD,” Hankyoreh, 16 March 2017; Young-jin Oh, “Are we America lovers or China lovers? ,” Korea Times, 21 July 2017. 42Editorial, “South Korea-China summit signals hope amid challenging circumstances,” Hankyoreh, 7 July 2017. ———, “China’s petty backlash over THAAD deployment,” Hankyoreh, 4 August 2016. Hyun-jung Sim and Jin-seok Shon, “THAAD Retaliation from China Unlikely to Kill Business,” Chosun Ilbo, 6 March 2017. Whan-woo Yi, “China’s THAAD retaliation may backfire” Korea Times, 12 April 2017. Byong-su Park, “Pres. Moon starting diplomatic moves to address THAAD issue with China” Hankyoreh, 12 May 2017. Dae-seon Hong, “Perfect storm of complications has Hyundai Motor facing down a crisis” Hankyoreh, 23 July 2017. 43Jung-soo Kwack, “S. Korean companies hit by China’s THAAD retaliation disappointed at lack of solution from Moon-Xi summit” Hankyoreh, 8 July 2017. 44Editorial, “Moon Must Resolve THAAD Controversy on U.S. Trip,” Chosun Ilbo, 29 June 2017. “Moon-Trump Summit: Two Issues to Watch for,” Zoom in Korea, 27 June 2017. 45 “Cheong Wa Dae Wants to Keep THAAD off Summit Agenda,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 June 2017. 46Yong-soo Lee, “Korea, U.S. Skirt THAAD Controversy During Summit,” Chosun Ilbo, 3 July 2017. 47Philip Rucker, “Trump: ‘We may terminate’ U.S.-South Korea trade agreement,” Washington Post, 28 April 2017. 48Kye-wan Cho, “President Trump signals intention to renegotiate KORUS FTA at summit with Pres. Moon” Hankyoreh, 1 July 2017.; Reuters, “Trump Calls for Firm Response to North Korea, Targets Seoul on Trade,” New York Times, 1 July 2017. 49Yu-gyung Jung, “Seven hours “felt like seven years” – waiting for S. Korea-US summit joint statement,” Hankyoreh, 3 July 2017. 50Byong-su Park and Se-young Lee, “Moon admin.’s governance plan signals step back on pushing for OPCON transfer,” Hankyoreh, 20 July 2017. 51Il-jun Cho, “US asking S. Korea to increase defense cost share, while using funds for relocation,” Hankyoreh, 16 July 2017. 52“U.S. Troops in S. Korea Can Never Escape Strikes by KPA’s Long-range Artillery: Panmunjom Mission,” KCNA, 14 July 2017. Young-jin Oh, “Pyeongtaek Garrison vulnerable to chemical, biological missile attacks,” Korea Times, 21 July 2017. 53Ji-sun Lim et al., “South Korean gov’t on the hook for $870 million to clean up US base contamination,” Hankyoreh, 12 July 2017. 54Mark Landler, “Trump Takes More Aggressive Stance With U.S. Friends and Foes in Asia,” New York Times, 30 June 2017. 55David Nakamura and Jenna Johnson, “With South Korean president, Trump denounces ‘reckless and brutal’ regime in North Korea,” Washington Post, 30 June 2017. 56ibid. 57Editorial, “A successful summit,” JoongAng Ilbo, 3 July 2017. 58Seung-woo Kang, “Moon’s US visit brings economic achievements,” Korea Times, 4 July 2017. 59“Joint statement of Presidents of South Korea and the United States“, Korea Times, 30 June 2017. 60Jung, “Seven hours “felt like seven years” – waiting for S. Korea-US summit joint statement.” 61Cho, “President Trump signals intention to renegotiate KORUS FTA at summit with Pres. Moon “; Rahn Kim, “Greater Trump trade pressure looming ” Korea Times, 3 July 2017. Jae-kyoung Kim, “Analysts expect ‘full-scale resetting of KORUS FTA’” Korea Times, 19 July 2017. 62Yi, “Moon says Trump’s trade comments were “outside of what was agreed upon”.” 63“Joint statement of Presidents of South Korea and the United States “. 64Woo-sang Jeong and Min-hyuk Lim, “Moon Wins U.S. Support for ‘Leading Role’ in Talks with N.Korea,” Chosun Ilbo, 3 July 2017. 65Landler, “Trump Takes More Aggressive Stance With U.S. Friends and Foes in Asia.” 66Choe, “South Korea Proposes Military Talks With North at Their Border; In-hwan Jung,” Pres. Moon setting his N. Korea policy with proposal for talks,” Hankyoreh, 18 July 2017. 67Hyo-jin Kim, “Moon’s dialogue offer to N. Korea unwelcome in US, Japan,” Korea Times, 18 July 2017.; Yonhap, “White House: Current conditions ‘far away’ to reopen inter-Korean talks,” Korea Times, 18 July 2017. 68Editorial, “Moon’s Overtures to N.Korea Are Troubling Alliance with U.S.,” Chosun Ilbo, 19 July 2017.; ———, “Seoul Seems Hell-Bent on Being Duped Again by N.Korea,” Chosun Ilbo, 18 July 2017. 69Yong-soo Lee and Myong-song Kim, “N.Korea Ignores Proposal of Military Talks,” Chosun Ilbo, 21 July 2017.; Ji-eun Kim, “North Korea still with no official response to South’s dialogue offer” Hankyoreh, 21 July 2017. 70Tim Beal, “Hegemony and Resistance, Compellence and Deterrence: Deconstructing the North Korean ‘Threat’ and Identifying America’s Strategic Alternatives,” Journal of Political Criticism, December 2017 71Hyun Lee, “North Korea’s ICBM and South Korea’s Confusing Response,” Korea Policy Institute, 10 July 2017. 72In-hwan Jung and Ji-eun Kim, “North Korea may prefer direct dialogue with the US to inter-Korean talks,” Hankyoreh, 22 July 2917. 73Sang-hun Choe, “American Peace Activist Is Denied Entry to South Korea,” New York Times, 17 July 2017. ji-eun Kim, “Korean-American anti-THAAD activist barred from entering South Korea,” Hankyoreh, 25 July 2017. 74Stephen Stromberg, “Trump is dangerously incompetent,” Washington Post, 15 May 2017. Max Boot, “Donald Trump Is Proving Too Stupid to Be President,” Foreign Policy, 16 June 2017. Stephen Walt, “The Global Consequences of Trump’s Incompetence,” Foreign Policy, 18 July 2017. 75Anna Fifield, “Are we on the brink of nuclear war with North Korea? Probably not.” Washington Post, 11 August 2017. 76Rachel Lee, “US, NK may take drastic turn to dialogue,” Korea Times, 11 August 2017. 77Ji-eun Kim, Kyu-won Lim, and Yong-in Yi, “Expert advice on the August crisis on the Korean Peninsula: Seoul should make its opposition to war even clearer to Washington,” Hankyoreh, 11 August 2017. Ha-young Choi, “S. Korea, US reaffirm ‘close and transparent’ cooperation,” Korea Times, 11 August 2017. 78Erik Ortiz and Arata Yamamoto, “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option,” NBC, 2 August 2017. UPDATE Since this article was published on 15 August (by a cruel irony the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonialism) events have moved rapidly and decisively to confirm that Moon Jae-in’s failure to seek autonomy from American dominance and his enthusiastic embrace of the client status manifested in the US-SK alliance is pushing his country, the peninsula and perhaps the world deeper into danger.  The major events in this short period were North Korea’s test of a Hwasong-12 IRBM on 29 August and the nuclear test, purportedly of an ICBM-compatible H-bomb on 3 September.[i] Both tests demonstrated North Korea’s rapid progress in developing a nuclear deterrent and although development has been faster than American experts expected the test were predictable.[ii] As long as the US refuses to engage in meaningful negotiations Pyongyang has little choice but to press ahead. Moreover North Korea is in a perilous situation at the moment being in the period between America’s realisation that before too long it will have the capability to deliver a high-yield bomb to the US mainland and the attainment of that capability. This imparts great urgency to North Korea’s programme. Once it has the perceived capability of hitting the US mainland it is probably safe from US attack, unless that were part of a war against China. Until then, at least in the eyes of President Trump, it will be a question of a war that ‘…will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here’.[iii] In truth, deaths might number millions, including more than 300,000 American civilians and soldiers in the region who would be vulnerable, but the principle holds good. The costs of war now would be paid mainly in Korea, and the immediate region, and would not be shared by the United States.  President Moon’s confidence that he could forbid the US going to war seems misplaced. [iv] Whilst the nuclear test was very important in demonstrating North Korea’s ability to construct an advanced nuclear device, one capable of obliterating Seoul, it was the missile test that perhaps best highlighted the foolishness and dangers of Moon’s policy.[v]  The Hwasong-12 was not, as in previous tests notably that of the Hwasong-14 ICBM in July, on ‘lofted trajectory’ where it would fall short of Japan but on a standard trajectory whereby, given the constraints of geography, it had to overfly Japan. It was sent on the safest possible course, over the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaido and Honshu, and would have been well above Japanese airspace, as a map in the New York Times makes clear. [vi] Although the Japanese government made as much fuss as it could, stirring up public opinion with sirens, with Abe Shinzo seeing this as another opportunity to advance Japanese remilitarisation, in fact the Hwasong-12 test posed little danger to Japan.  Indeed, North Korea’s development of long-range missiles actually lessens the risk. The nuclear deterrent is a matter between the United States and North Korea. The US threatens North Korea, despite the sanctimonious and dishonest spin from Mattis and Tillerson.[vii] North Korea threatens retaliation if attacked.[viii] Given that its deterrent arsenal is very limited it will focus on the United States. Japan would suffer collateral damage because it is part of the American war machine. However long-range missiles are designed for distant targets – Guam and then the continental US – and not for Tokyo. In that calculus, the more North Korea is able to strike back directly at the US, the less likely it is to waste resources on Japan. Making use of a perceived threat from North Korean IRBMs and ICBMs makes sense for Abe because it furthers his aim of remilitarisation, revising the constitution and making Japan a ‘normal country’.[ix]  For Moon the situation is rather different. As with Japan, and for the same reasons of geography and technology, North Korean long-range missiles have no direct military significance and produce a constraint on precipitate American action. Yet Moon’s response to the Hwasong-12 test was as belligerent as that of Abe, or of Trump. Indeed. Moon had declared on 17 August that a North Korean ICBM would be a ‘red line’.[x] This was a particularly strange thing to do. It is usually considered that drawing ‘red lines’ is an unwise strategy because it yields the initiative to others.[xi] Here it was even more foolish because an ICBM test would be a matter of US-North Korea dynamics over which South Korea would have no control and precious little influence. Moon’s statements demonstrated and deepened the predicament into which his failure to distance himself from the US has brought him, and his country. He is reduced to waving the American flag more vigorously than the Americans themselves and to no avail. Trump has publically chastised him for not being loyal enough – the charge of ‘appeasement’ towards the enemy – and has indicated that he will withdraw from KORUS FTA and inflict various other economic and social damages on South Korea.[xii] There is little gratitude there for Moon’s subservience. THAAD deployment is being expanded, despite local protests and the great damage done to its relations with China.[xiii] Hyundai is closing down plants in China and Beijing appears to have made it clear that Moon will not be invited to China this year.[xiv] The meeting with President Putin in Vladivostok seems to have been polite but perhaps a little frosty – certainly there was no agreement on the North Korean issues and Putin explicitly rebuffed Moon on oil sanctions.[xv] The only foreign leader who seems to agree with Moon on North Korea is Abe Shinzo.[xvi] Moon Jae-in has not promoted peace when he could have, either bilaterally, such as reopening Kaesong, or on the international stage by supporting the Chinese/Russia freeze-for-freeze tension –reducing proposal. [xvii]On the contrary his interventions have reinforced American intransigence. His call for China to stop oil exports to North Korea was a mix of the impotent – it is unlikely that China will oblige – and the malevolent – if China did cut back it would have impact not on North Korea’s military capability but on the welfare of the people. [xviii] So far President Moon’s public support is holding up remarkably well but then the media gives him an easy ride.[xix] The liberal press supports him because he is one of theirs and the conservatives, grudgingly, because he is following their programme in respect of North Korea. But ultimately he can satisfy the conservatives no more than he can Trump and the dissatisfaction of both will grow.[xx]  He remains popular with ordinary people because his personal style is a refreshing contrast to that of Park Geun-hye.[xxi] Moreover in a time of crisis people tend to rally around incumbent authority.  However it is uncertain how long Moon’s levitation can defy gravity; leaders that embody great promise on their road to power but betray those aspirations when in office can suffer a precipitate decline in popularity. 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. —————————————- Cho, Kye-wan. “Hyundai Motor, latest Korean company to receive fallout over THAAD deployment.” Hankyoreh, 1 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/809299.html Cho, Yi-jun. “Young Koreans Face Deportation as U.S. Scraps ‘Dreamers’ Program.” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701341.html Choe, Sang-Hun. “Putin Rejects Cutting Off Oil to North Korea.” New York Times, 6 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/asia/north-korea-putin-oil-embargo.html ———. “U.N. Condemns North Korea’s Latest Missile Tests, but Takes No Action.” New York Times, 29 August 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/north-korea-japan-missile-us.html Chollet, Derek. “Trump Will Likely Regret His Red Line on Iran.” Foreign Policy, 2 February 2017.http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/02/trump-will-likely-regret-his-red-line-on-iran/ Editorial. “When Will Moon Wake up to the New Reality?” Chosun Ilbo, 30 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/30/2017083001484.html Elleman, Michael. “North Korea’s Hwasong-12 Launch: A Disturbing Development.” 38 North, 30 August 2017.http://www.38north.org/2017/08/melleman083017/ Hayes, Peter, and David von Hippel. “Sanctions on North Korean Oil Imports: Impacts and Efficacy.” Nautilus Policy Forum, 4 September 2017.http://mailchi.mp/nautilus/napsnet-special-report-sanctions-on-north-korean-oil-imports-impacts-and-efficacy?e=705746c27c Jeong, Woo-sang. “No Prospect Yet of Moon Visiting China.” Chosun Ilbo, 25 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/25/2017082501364.html “Joint statement by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries on the Korean Peninsula’s problems.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 4 July 2017.http://www.mid.ru/en/web/guest/maps/kr/-/asset_publisher/PR7UbfssNImL/content/id/2807662 Jung, Yu-gyung. “Moon’s first hundred days in office show a president at ease with the people.” Hankyoreh, 17 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/807235.html Kim, Rahn. “Putin opposes North Korea oil embargo.” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/120_236071.html Kim, Rahn “Moon, Abe vow to seek oil supply cut to punish North Korea.” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/103_236111.html Lee, Jiyeun. “President ‘Moon-bama’ Enjoying a Honeymoon in South Korea.” Bloomberg, 23 May 2017.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/president-moon-bama-captivates-korea-with-down-to-earth-style Mattis, Jim, and Rex Tillerson. “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account.” Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2017.https://www.wsj.com/articles/were-holding-pyongyang-to-account-1502660253 McCormack, Gavan. “Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Agenda.” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus 14, no. 24:1 (15 December 2016). McIntyre, Jamie. “Does Trump need permission from South Korea to attack the North?” Washington Examiner, 20 August 2017.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/does-trump-need-permission-from-south-korea-to-attack-the-north/article/2632019 Ortiz, Erik, and Arata Yamamoto. “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option.” NBC, 2 August 2017.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/sen-lindsey-graham-trump-says-war-north-korea-option-n788396 Paletta, Damian. “Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal, a move opposed by top aides.” Washington Post, 2 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal/ Park, Byong-su. “President Moon issues ‘red line’ to North Korea over nuclear program.” Hankyoreh, 18 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/807411.html Penn, Michael. “Japan’s Empty Menu of Options to Stop North Korea.” Foreign Policy, 29 August 2017.https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/29/japans-empty-menu-of-options-to-stop-north-korea/ “Putin Rejects Moon’s Calls for N.Korea Oil Embargo.” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090700757.html “Statement of DPRK Government.” Rodong Sinmun, 8 August 2017.http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2017-08-08-0001 Thrush, Glenn, Gardiner Harris, and Emily Cochrane. “After North Korea Nuclear Test, Trump Saves Harshest Words for South Korea.” New York Times, 3 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/us/trump-north-south-korea-nuclear.html Warrick, Joby. “North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone.” Washington Post, 3 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-defies-predictions–again–with-early-grasp-of-weapons-milestone/2017/09/03/068ac20c-90db-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html Yi, Yong-in, and Ji-eun Kim. “Nuclear test demonstrates international community’s lack of options on North Korea.” Hankyoreh, 4 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/809592.html Yonhap. “Four more THAAD launchers deployed amid protests.” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/205_236105.html ———. “Hyundai Motor plant in China suspended due to payment problems ” Korea Times, 5 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2017/09/419_235976.html ———. “Moon’s approval rating drops slightly to 73.1% ” Korea Times, 4 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/356_235915.html Yu, Yong-weon. “Blast from N.Korea’s New Nuke ‘Could Obliterate Seoul’.” Chosun Ilbo, 4 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/04/2017090401430.html ———. “THAAD Fully Deployed in Early-Morning Operation.” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701272.html [i]               Michael Elleman, “North Korea’s Hwasong-12 Launch: A Disturbing Development,” 38 North, 30 August 2017.http://www.38north.org/2017/08/melleman083017/. Yong-in Yi and Ji-eun Kim, “Nuclear test demonstrates international community’s lack of options on North Korea,” Hankyoreh, 4 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/809592.html [ii]               Joby Warrick, “North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone,” Washington Post, 3 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-defies-predictions–again–with-early-grasp-of-weapons-milestone/2017/09/03/068ac20c-90db-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html [iii]              Erik Ortiz and Arata Yamamoto, “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option,” NBC, 2 August 2017.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/sen-lindsey-graham-trump-says-war-north-korea-option-n788396 [iv]              Jamie McIntyre, “Does Trump need permission from South Korea to attack the North?,” Washington Examiner, 20 August 2017.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/does-trump-need-permission-from-south-korea-to-attack-the-north/article/2632019 [v]               Yong-weon Yu, “Blast from N.Korea’s New Nuke ‘Could Obliterate Seoul’,” Chosun Ilbo, 4 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/04/2017090401430.html [vi]              Sang-hun Choe, “U.N. Condemns North Korea’s Latest Missile Tests, but Takes No Action,” New York Times, 29 August 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/north-korea-japan-missile-us.html [vii]             Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson, “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account,” Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2017.https://www.wsj.com/articles/were-holding-pyongyang-to-account-1502660253 [viii]             “Statement of DPRK Government,” Rodong Sinmun, 8 August 2017.http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2017-08-08-0001 [ix]              Gavan McCormack, “Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Agenda,” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus 14, no. 24:1 (2016); Michael Penn, “Japan’s Empty Menu of Options to Stop North Korea,” Foreign Policy, 29 August 2017.https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/29/japans-empty-menu-of-options-to-stop-north-korea/ [x]               Byong-su Park, “President Moon issues ‘red line’ to North Korea over nuclear program,” Hankyoreh, 18 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/807411.html [xi]              Derek Chollet, “Trump Will Likely Regret His Red Line on Iran,” Foreign Policy, 2 February 2017.http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/02/trump-will-likely-regret-his-red-line-on-iran/ [xii]             Glenn Thrush, Gardiner Harris, and Emily Cochrane, “After North Korea Nuclear Test, Trump Saves Harshest Words for South Korea,” New York Times, 3 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/us/trump-north-south-korea-nuclear.html. Damian Paletta, “Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal, a move opposed by top aides,” Washington Post, 2 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal/. Yi-jun Cho, “Young Koreans Face Deportation as U.S. Scraps ‘Dreamers’ Program,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701341.html [xiii]             Yong-weon Yu, “THAAD Fully Deployed in Early-Morning Operation,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701272.htm; Yonhap, “Four more THAAD launchers deployed amid protests,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/205_236105.html [xiv]             Kye-wan Cho, “Hyundai Motor, latest Korean company to receive fallout over THAAD deployment,” Hankyoreh, 1 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/809299.htm; Yonhap, “Hyundai Motor plant in China suspended due to payment problems ” Korea Times, 5 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2017/09/419_235976.html; Woo-sang Jeong, “No Prospect Yet of Moon Visiting China,” Chosun Ilbo, 25 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/25/2017082501364.html [xv]             “Putin Rejects Moon’s Calls for N.Korea Oil Embargo,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090700757.htm; Rahn Kim, “Putin opposes North Korea oil embargo,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/120_236071.htm; Sang-Hun Choe, “Putin Rejects Cutting Off Oil to North Korea,” New York Times, 6 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/asia/north-korea-putin-oil-embargo.html [xvi]             Rahn  Kim, “Moon, Abe vow to seek oil supply cut to punish North Korea,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/103_236111.html [xvii]            “Joint statement by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries on the Korean Peninsula’s problems,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 4 July 2017.http://www.mid.ru/en/web/guest/maps/kr/-/asset_publisher/PR7UbfssNImL/content/id/2807662 [xviii]           Peter Hayes and David von Hippel, “Sanctions on North Korean Oil Imports: Impacts and Efficacy,” Nautilus Policy Forum, 4 September 2017.http://mailchi.mp/nautilus/napsnet-special-report-sanctions-on-north-korean-oil-imports-impacts-and-efficacy?e=705746c27c [xix]             Yonhap, “Moon’s approval rating drops slightly to 73.1% ” Korea Times, 4 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/356_235915.html [xx]             Editorial, “When Will Moon Wake up to the New Reality?,” Chosun Ilbo, 30 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/30/2017083001484.html [xxi]             Jiyeun Lee, “President ‘Moon-bama’ Enjoying a Honeymoon in South Korea,” Bloomberg, 23 May 2017.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/president-moon-bama-captivates-korea-with-down-to-earth-styl; Yu-gyung Jung, “Moon’s first hundred days in office show a president at ease with the people,” Hankyoreh, 17 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/807235.html [1]               Michael Elleman, “North Korea’s Hwasong-12 Launch: A Disturbing Development,” 38 North, 30 August 2017.http://www.38north.org/2017/08/melleman083017/. Yong-in Yi and Ji-eun Kim, “Nuclear test demonstrates international community’s lack of options on North Korea,” Hankyoreh, 4 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/809592.html [1]               Joby Warrick, “North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone,” Washington Post, 3 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-defies-predictions–again–with-early-grasp-of-weapons-milestone/2017/09/03/068ac20c-90db-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html [1]               Erik Ortiz and Arata Yamamoto, “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option,” NBC, 2 August 2017.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/sen-lindsey-graham-trump-says-war-north-korea-option-n788396 [1]               Jamie McIntyre, “Does Trump need permission from South Korea to attack the North?,” Washington Examiner, 20 August 2017.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/does-trump-need-permission-from-south-korea-to-attack-the-north/article/2632019 [1]               Yong-weon Yu, “Blast from N.Korea’s New Nuke ‘Could Obliterate Seoul’,” Chosun Ilbo, 4 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/04/2017090401430.html [1]               Sang-hun Choe, “U.N. Condemns North Korea’s Latest Missile Tests, but Takes No Action,” New York Times, 29 August 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/north-korea-japan-missile-us.html [1]               Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson, “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account,” Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2017.https://www.wsj.com/articles/were-holding-pyongyang-to-account-1502660253 [1]               “Statement of DPRK Government,” Rodong Sinmun, 8 August 2017.http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2017-08-08-0001 [1]               Gavan McCormack, “Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Agenda,” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus 14, no. 24:1 (2016); Michael Penn, “Japan’s Empty Menu of Options to Stop North Korea,” Foreign Policy, 29 August 2017.https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/29/japans-empty-menu-of-options-to-stop-north-korea/ [1]               Byong-su Park, “President Moon issues ‘red line’ to North Korea over nuclear program,” Hankyoreh, 18 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/807411.html [1]               Derek Chollet, “Trump Will Likely Regret His Red Line on Iran,” Foreign Policy, 2 February 2017.http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/02/trump-will-likely-regret-his-red-line-on-iran/ [1]               Glenn Thrush, Gardiner Harris, and Emily Cochrane, “After North Korea Nuclear Test, Trump Saves Harshest Words for South Korea,” New York Times, 3 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/us/trump-north-south-korea-nuclear.html. Damian Paletta, “Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal, a move opposed by top aides,” Washington Post, 2 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal/. Yi-jun Cho, “Young Koreans Face Deportation as U.S. Scraps ‘Dreamers’ Program,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701341.html [1]               Yong-weon Yu, “THAAD Fully Deployed in Early-Morning Operation,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701272.htm; Yonhap, “Four more THAAD launchers deployed amid protests,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/205_236105.html [1]               Kye-wan Cho, “Hyundai Motor, latest Korean company to receive fallout over THAAD deployment,” Hankyoreh, 1 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/809299.htm; Yonhap, “Hyundai Motor plant in China suspended due to payment problems ” Korea Times, 5 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2017/09/419_235976.html; Woo-sang Jeong, “No Prospect Yet of Moon Visiting China,” Chosun Ilbo, 25 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/25/2017082501364.html [1]               “Putin Rejects Moon’s Calls for N.Korea Oil Embargo,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090700757.htm; Rahn Kim, “Putin opposes North Korea oil embargo,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/120_236071.htm; Sang-Hun Choe, “Putin Rejects Cutting Off Oil to North Korea,” New York Times, 6 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/asia/north-korea-putin-oil-embargo.html [1]               Rahn  Kim, “Moon, Abe vow to seek oil supply cut to punish North Korea,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/103_236111.html [1]               “Joint statement by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries on the Korean Peninsula’s problems,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 4 July 2017.http://www.mid.ru/en/web/guest/maps/kr/-/asset_publisher/PR7UbfssNImL/content/id/2807662 [1]               Peter Hayes and David von Hippel, “Sanctions on North Korean Oil Imports: Impacts and Efficacy,” Nautilus Policy Forum, 4 September 2017.http://mailchi.mp/nautilus/napsnet-special-report-sanctions-on-north-korean-oil-imports-impacts-and-efficacy?e=705746c27c [1]               Yonhap, “Moon’s approval rating drops slightly to 73.1% ” Korea Times, 4 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/356_235915.html [1]               Editorial, “When Will Moon Wake up to the New Reality?,” Chosun Ilbo, 30 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/30/2017083001484.html [1]               Jiyeun Lee, “President ‘Moon-bama’ Enjoying a Honeymoon in South Korea,” Bloomberg, 23 May 2017.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/president-moon-bama-captivates-korea-with-down-to-earth-styl; Yu-gyung Jung, “Moon’s first hundred days in office show a president at ease with the people,” Hankyoreh, 17 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/807235.html #Japan #SouthKorea #Nuclearweapons #TimBeal #MoonJaein #NorthKorea

Reece Chenault, left, with members of the US Solidarity Peace Delegation and others in South Korea, July 2017. By Paul Liem | September 9, 2017 This is the second in a series of interviews with the five-member U.S. Solidarity Peace Delegation to South Korea from July 23 to July 28, 2017, of whom the delegation coordinator, Juyeon Rhee, was denied entry to South Korea under a travel ban imposed by the Park Geun-hye administration, a ban that remained in force under the new administration of President Moon Jae-in. The delegates met with South Korean peace and labor activists, the Chair of the National Assembly Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee Shim Jae Kwon, and villagers of Seongju, Gimcheon, and Soseong-ri who are waging a struggle against the deployment of the THAAD anti-missile system in their communities. The delegation was sponsored by the Taskforce to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific as well as the Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation. It was hosted in South Korea by the National People’s Action to Stop the Deployment of THAAD in South Korea (NPA), a coalition of 100 civil society organizations. Delegates Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, Reece Chenault of U.S. Labor Against the War, Will Griffin of Veterans for Peace, delegation coordinator Juyeon Rhee, Jill Stein of Green Party USA, have since spearheaded an international petition campaign calling upon presidents Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump to pull back from the brink of war in Korea by halting the war games and negotiating a freeze on missile and nuclear weapons testing with North Korea. Following the delegate’s return to the United States, Paul Liem, KPI Board Chairperson, interviewed the delegates about their experiences in Korea and their reflections on how to strengthen solidarity between peace activists there and in the United States. His interview with Reece Chenault follows. ___________________________________________________________ PL: Thanks for your time this morning Reece. I think our readers would be interested in knowing a bit about you. How did you came to be involved in the labor movement? What were your earliest experiences that influenced your path? RC:  I was a student in college, I guess in 2000, and I had just transferred to a new school, Virginia State University, which is a historically black college in Petersburg, Virginia. RC:  I was pretty introverted and shy and had just started to get to know people on campus and develop some relationships. Fast forward a year, we are headed to class and get word that planes had hit the towers in New York. And for me it was a very different experience being on campus with folks who were personally affected by the events of 9/11.  Their family and friends were in New York, many were working class and trying to get home. They couldn’t because work study payments at the university had been late.  Many didn’t have money, phone lines on the college campus and cell phone lines were jammed. That was my first sense of just how difficult it can be for working class students who also have jobs and other responsibilities in life. I started to develop more relationships with these students and met some professors I trusted and liked. Over the next few years I became more of an activist, partly because of anti-war activism that was going on, but then I also developed a greater appreciation for that intersection between struggle, the anti-war struggle that was on the ground, being working class and also being a student. It was a complicated time. I led a student action on campus. We locked the administration building with chains and locks as part of a protest and the cops got involved. PL:  Let me just step back bit. What were the demands of students? RC:  The school wasn’t going to pay us for work already performed at our work study jobs. At a historically black college, that struck a lot of students because the connection between that and slavery was apparent. They also suspended a lot of the rights of students on campus. We also had many students in ROTC and other programs. They got activated as part of the call to war after Bush’s ramp up of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So those were our big issues. But It was also deeply connected to money.  Actually, a lot of kids just wanted their money back. My professors were saying to me, you know, your student activities on campus, things are getting kind of hot, and maybe you ought to think about taking some time off.  I wasn’t going to stop.  But they turned me on to Union Summer program of the AFL-CIO and said maybe you should explore that. I got accepted into the program, summer of 2003, and went to Mississippi. I had never seen poverty like the poverty I saw in Mississippi. It totally blew my mind that people in the United States lived that way and continue to live that way. It blew my mind even more that they were usually working in job that were the biggest in town, but were still living in third world conditions. So I stayed. I worked on a union campaign with the printer’s union that later merged with the Teamsters. From there I was hooked, and I’ve been union organizing ever since. It’s been about 15 years. PL:  Those were tumultuous times you came up in. You’re now the national coordinator for U.S. Labor Against the War.  How did you arrive at your focus of working on the anti-war issues from within the labor movement? RC:  For me the anti-war movement and the labor movement have always been connected. A lot of anti-war folks just didn’t expect Black students to participate at all. The idea was that they just didn’t care about what was happening.  But I knew the truth. I knew that my friends really did care about war. But they didn’t see themselves in the movements that were taking shape. That wasn’t true for everyone but it was definitely true for folks that I was with. They saw a lot of the activity as silly in a time where they themselves felt threatened. My friends on campus were talking about how militarized their neighborhoods had become and how the police had taken on military tactics and strategies and implemented them in their neighborhoods and how they felt like they lived in war zones but nobody cared about the war zone they lived in. They cared about wars that were thousands of miles away. I took that to heart and it affected the way that I organized on campus. When I would go and talk at national gatherings and events, a lot of anti-war activists would tell me they had never heard people talk about war that way. PL:  Can you explain? RC:  Connecting the war at home with the war abroad. People would try but there wasn’t a lot of desire on the part of anti-war activists to make those links and to understand how those wars are connected. So when the opportunity to work for US Labor Against the War came up I was anxious to take it. I think that the connection is easy to make. It’s not a question of whether or not the connection is legitimate.  It’s a question of will. Are we willing to do the soul searching work and change as labor organizations?  And I’m seeing it happen. National Treasury Employees Union here, NTEU, passed a resolution in support of a moving toward social movement unionism and also to develop a Racial Justice caucus. This is the kind of thing that needs to happen. And the issue of demilitarization and the effect that it has on union families, often overwhelmingly people of color, makes a real impact and makes a real difference in how we organize and also how we connect to the issues. PL: What made you decide that it was important for you and for your organization to be involved in the Solidarity Peace Delegation to Korea in July? RC:  The most common e-mail I get post November 2016 is “what the hell is going on in certain countries?” I get an e-mail from a random union member, it asks, “union leader, can you explain to me what’s happening in Syria? Explain to me what’s happening in Afghanistan. Explain to me what’s happening in Pakistan?” And over and over again in my e-mail box there is an increase each month in messages about North and South Korea. I think what happened was people were terrified by Trump’s language and there were no indications as to who on his team would be making substantive policy decisions about foreign policy other than him. People just thought well if Trump is at the wheel then it’s going to be terrible. The actions at the airports, for example, took the media attention by storm. They highlighted immigration policy, impacts of our foreign policy and other conflicts that we were engaged in. Then bluster and language about North Korea that had been happening all throughout the campaign, was now suddenly front and center and people were really concerned about that. Even now in the past 48 hours we’re thinking we’re on the brink of nuclear war. I’m getting messages from shop stewards and Union leaders who are saying “now everybody’s talking about North Korea, and I saw that you just went to South Korea, did you happen to go to North Korea?”  I reply, no, I didn’t go there.  Then they say, “Well what do you know about North Korea?”  They want a left perspective on what’s going on in Korea. And when people started asking me more and more about it I said well I’m just going to have to reach out. I spoke with Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network (Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space) and talked with the Korean activist Hyun Lee.  When the opportunity came up to actually go to Korea, I thought this would be a natural next step. It’s just something that we have to do. All of the conversations among members about complex international relations and foreign affairs were happening without a lot of guidance. And people look to us to provide more information. So if we’re not going to be able to supply it, they’ll get it elsewhere. And the information they will get is probably going to be pretty bad. So we have a responsibility. Reece Chenault at press conference in Korea. PL:  What did you want to take with you to Korea as a message people you would meet? What did you want to share with them about the U.S. experience and struggles here? RC:  When I first met Hyun I was at a conference in Alabama to talk about workers who make weapons, who work in the military industrial complex.  I wanted to put a face on the faceless and to give the audience a sense that the workers feel really trapped in their situation. I sometimes describe it as a burning house. There’s political machinations that keep the workers inside. But there’s also just the trappings of life, the need to provide for your family and the more complicated problem of dignity and respect that you get from having a job that pays enough for you to live on. Ultimately we as the labor movement in the U.S. need to take responsibility for these workers as our brothers and sisters and try and help them figure a way out of the predicament of either supporting militarism or staying poor. Politicians aren’t going to be able to help them because they’re trapped in the same burning house. Their campaigns are often financed by these corporations. No one ever gets out without supporting militarism in some way.  But we want people to know that those workers can’t, they can’t exist in isolation, while there is a desire within them to change. Nothing works that way. Solidarity is what’s going to get us out of the burning house, because isolation and desperation is what got us into the mess in the first place. PL:  Did you have opportunities to explain this predicament of workers in the defense industries with people that you met? Were you able to speak with labor activists in Korea? RC:  After I explained the work that we’re trying to most folks were shocked and also surprised that workers weren’t just blindly taking the money and weren’t just happy with that. I was particularly interested in the reaction of folks in Seongju who were convinced that American workers just didn’t care and were happy to build anything for money. Once I explained the situation and also that we’re doing something about it, the response was positive across the board. PL:  As you look back on all the things you did in that very short period of time is there any one or two single event or a meeting or person that resonates with you still, that stands out in your mind? RC:  Talking to the unification committee for the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) was really informative. It helped me understand just how important it is that we as Americans understand the way the rest of the world sees us and how that picture is of our own making. For U.S. labor folks, it’s a learning experience talking about the relationship between the AFL-CIO and intelligence agencies in the United States and how for a long time the AFL-CIO was known as the AFL-CIA because of its participation in all kinds of chicanery. And in Korea to say that people know about that and are well educated about it is an understatement. Folks were quick to point out that the United States holds a lot of responsibility for the situation that they face in Korea and that the work moving forward requires the participation of U.S. labor.  It was hard but it was great to be there, to have that conversation, and to be pushed to think about what are some concrete things that we can do to move forward together It was uncomfortable for us to think about doing anything around North Korea just because of the political challenges here at home. But by the end of our conversation with the KTCU reunification folks I was ready to say let’s figure out some ways to meet with North Korean trade unionists. You know it’s going to be a challenge. And you know we’re going to have to think about how we’re going to meet but we can do it if we put our minds to it. PL:  Is this something that you are proposing to US Labor Against the War, have you come back and proposed to meet with the North Korean trade unionists? RC:  Last night I gave my full report to the U.S. Labor Against the War steering committee. When I left for Korea we weren’t even prepared to make Asia an area where we were going to do intense work. We weren’t prepared for that. But I reported that as the only organization in the United States that works with Labor on this particular issue of international solidarity, we have a responsibility to take this on. There are areas of work where we can involve labor unions that normally wouldn’t have anything to do with us. In the short term I’m going to have to do some traveling and explain in different parts of the country the work we’ve been trying to do. But in the medium term and the long term we need to think about going back to South Korea with a full labor delegation and meet one on one with people who represent the various trades. But also think about the soccer game between North Korean and South Korean trade union folks. I said look I know we can’t go if it’s in North Korea but if it’s in South Korea or China let’s go to the soccer match and let’s build on that. When it was time for questions people were freaked out about going to North Korea. But if we met in a neutral space, someplace where it wouldn’t be risky for us to travel, the steering committee was excited. So U.S. Labor Against the War is forming a task force of different union leaders and over the next month, we’ll decide where we can do some work.  So we’re committed; I think it’s really exciting.  When I left for South Korea we were not prepared to engage in this new area of work, a new geographic region. But now we are. PL:  That’s amazing, Reece. I hope that you’re able to communicate your success to those you met in Korea. I’m sure they would be thrilled to know how your meeting went last night. That’s historic I think that U.S. Labor Against the War is taking this step.  Before closing is there anything else that you want to share that we didn’t talk about? RC:  The only thing I would say is that one area of focus for us is going to build a solid crew of folks to return to South Korea and do some work with trade unionists there. I’m interested in bringing younger people who are thinking about labor in a 21st century way and in trying to find some rising stars within the labor movement to come along with us and engage in this work. PL:  Reece, I hope we can continue to have conversations with you and wish you every success in your work. RC:  Thank you man, I really appreciate it. _______________________________________ *Reece Chenault has spent almost fourteen years as a union and community organizer with ONE DC, Restaurant Opportunities Center in New Orleans and SEIU Local 500. Currently Reece is National Coordinator for U.S. Labor Against the War, an anti-war organization dedicated to changing the labor movement’s foreign policy from within. Reece is also on the Board of Directors for the National Black Worker Center Project. *Paul Liem is the Chair of the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors. #ReeceChenault #KoreanWar #SouthKorea #THAAD #Nuclearweapons #Labor #USLaborAgainsttheWar

By Tim Beal | September 5, 2017 Update to Korean Tragedy UPDATE Since this article was published on 15 August (by a cruel irony the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonialism) events have moved rapidly and decisively to confirm that Moon Jae-in’s failure to seek autonomy from American dominance and his enthusiastic embrace of the client status manifested in the US-SK alliance is pushing his country, the peninsula and perhaps the world deeper into danger.  The major events in this short period were North Korea’s test of a Hwasong-12 IRBM on 29 August and the nuclear test, purportedly of an ICBM-compatible H-bomb on 3 September.[i] Both tests demonstrated North Korea’s rapid progress in developing a nuclear deterrent and although development has been faster than American experts expected the test were predictable.[ii] As long as the US refuses to engage in meaningful negotiations Pyongyang has little choice but to press ahead. Moreover North Korea is in a perilous situation at the moment being in the period between America’s realisation that before too long it will have the capability to deliver a high-yield bomb to the US mainland and the attainment of that capability. This imparts great urgency to North Korea’s programme. Once it has the perceived capability of hitting the US mainland it is probably safe from US attack, unless that were part of a war against China. Until then, at least in the eyes of President Trump, it will be a question of a war that ‘…will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here’.[iii] In truth, deaths might number millions, including more than 300,000 American civilians and soldiers in the region who would be vulnerable, but the principle holds good. The costs of war now would be paid mainly in Korea, and the immediate region, and would not be shared by the United States.  President Moon’s confidence that he could forbid the US going to war seems misplaced. [iv] Whilst the nuclear test was very important in demonstrating North Korea’s ability to construct an advanced nuclear device, one capable of obliterating Seoul, it was the missile test that perhaps best highlighted the foolishness and dangers of Moon’s policy.[v]  The Hwasong-12 was not, as in previous tests notably that of the Hwasong-14 ICBM in July, on ‘lofted trajectory’ where it would fall short of Japan but on a standard trajectory whereby, given the constraints of geography, it had to overfly Japan. It was sent on the safest possible course, over the Tsugaru Strait between Hokkaido and Honshu, and would have been well above Japanese airspace, as a map in the New York Times makes clear. [vi] Although the Japanese government made as much fuss as it could, stirring up public opinion with sirens, with Abe Shinzo seeing this as another opportunity to advance Japanese remilitarisation, in fact the Hwasong-12 test posed little danger to Japan.  Indeed, North Korea’s development of long-range missiles actually lessens the risk. The nuclear deterrent is a matter between the United States and North Korea. The US threatens North Korea, despite the sanctimonious and dishonest spin from Mattis and Tillerson.[vii] North Korea threatens retaliation if attacked.[viii] Given that its deterrent arsenal is very limited it will focus on the United States. Japan would suffer collateral damage because it is part of the American war machine. However long-range missiles are designed for distant targets – Guam and then the continental US – and not for Tokyo. In that calculus, the more North Korea is able to strike back directly at the US, the less likely it is to waste resources on Japan. Making use of a perceived threat from North Korean IRBMs and ICBMs makes sense for Abe because it furthers his aim of remilitarisation, revising the constitution and making Japan a ‘normal country’.[ix]  For Moon the situation is rather different. As with Japan, and for the same reasons of geography and technology, North Korean long-range missiles have no direct military significance and produce a constraint on precipitate American action. Yet Moon’s response to the Hwasong-12 test was as belligerent as that of Abe, or of Trump. Indeed. Moon had declared on 17 August that a North Korean ICBM would be a ‘red line’.[x] This was a particularly strange thing to do. It is usually considered that drawing ‘red lines’ is an unwise strategy because it yields the initiative to others.[xi] Here it was even more foolish because an ICBM test would be a matter of US-North Korea dynamics over which South Korea would have no control and precious little influence. Moon’s statements demonstrated and deepened the predicament into which his failure to distance himself from the US has brought him, and his country. He is reduced to waving the American flag more vigorously than the Americans themselves and to no avail. Trump has publically chastised him for not being loyal enough – the charge of ‘appeasement’ towards the enemy – and has indicated that he will withdraw from KORUS FTA and inflict various other economic and social damages on South Korea.[xii] There is little gratitude there for Moon’s subservience. THAAD deployment is being expanded, despite local protests and the great damage done to its relations with China.[xiii] Hyundai is closing down plants in China and Beijing appears to have made it clear that Moon will not be invited to China this year.[xiv] The meeting with President Putin in Vladivostok seems to have been polite but perhaps a little frosty – certainly there was no agreement on the North Korean issues and Putin explicitly rebuffed Moon on oil sanctions.[xv] The only foreign leader who seems to agree with Moon on North Korea is Abe Shinzo.[xvi] Moon Jae-in has not promoted peace when he could have, either bilaterally, such as reopening Kaesong, or on the international stage by supporting the Chinese/Russia freeze-for-freeze tension –reducing proposal. [xvii]On the contrary his interventions have reinforced American intransigence. His call for China to stop oil exports to North Korea was a mix of the impotent – it is unlikely that China will oblige – and the malevolent – if China did cut back it would have impact not on North Korea’s military capability but on the welfare of the people. [xviii] So far President Moon’s public support is holding up remarkably well but then the media gives him an easy ride.[xix] The liberal press supports him because he is one of theirs and the conservatives, grudgingly, because he is following their programme in respect of North Korea. But ultimately he can satisfy the conservatives no more than he can Trump and the dissatisfaction of both will grow.[xx]  He remains popular with ordinary people because his personal style is a refreshing contrast to that of Park Geun-hye.[xxi] Moreover in a time of crisis people tend to rally around incumbent authority.  However it is uncertain how long Moon’s levitation can defy gravity; leaders that embody great promise on their road to power but betray those aspirations when in office can suffer a precipitate decline in popularity. 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. —————————————- Cho, Kye-wan. “Hyundai Motor, latest Korean company to receive fallout over THAAD deployment.” Hankyoreh, 1 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/809299.html Cho, Yi-jun. “Young Koreans Face Deportation as U.S. Scraps ‘Dreamers’ Program.” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701341.html Choe, Sang-Hun. “Putin Rejects Cutting Off Oil to North Korea.” New York Times, 6 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/asia/north-korea-putin-oil-embargo.html ———. “U.N. Condemns North Korea’s Latest Missile Tests, but Takes No Action.” New York Times, 29 August 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/north-korea-japan-missile-us.html Chollet, Derek. “Trump Will Likely Regret His Red Line on Iran.” Foreign Policy, 2 February 2017.http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/02/trump-will-likely-regret-his-red-line-on-iran/ Editorial. “When Will Moon Wake up to the New Reality?” Chosun Ilbo, 30 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/30/2017083001484.html Elleman, Michael. “North Korea’s Hwasong-12 Launch: A Disturbing Development.” 38 North, 30 August 2017.http://www.38north.org/2017/08/melleman083017/ Hayes, Peter, and David von Hippel. “Sanctions on North Korean Oil Imports: Impacts and Efficacy.” Nautilus Policy Forum, 4 September 2017.http://mailchi.mp/nautilus/napsnet-special-report-sanctions-on-north-korean-oil-imports-impacts-and-efficacy?e=705746c27c Jeong, Woo-sang. “No Prospect Yet of Moon Visiting China.” Chosun Ilbo, 25 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/25/2017082501364.html “Joint statement by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries on the Korean Peninsula’s problems.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 4 July 2017.http://www.mid.ru/en/web/guest/maps/kr/-/asset_publisher/PR7UbfssNImL/content/id/2807662 Jung, Yu-gyung. “Moon’s first hundred days in office show a president at ease with the people.” Hankyoreh, 17 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/807235.html Kim, Rahn. “Putin opposes North Korea oil embargo.” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/120_236071.html Kim, Rahn “Moon, Abe vow to seek oil supply cut to punish North Korea.” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/103_236111.html Lee, Jiyeun. “President ‘Moon-bama’ Enjoying a Honeymoon in South Korea.” Bloomberg, 23 May 2017.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/president-moon-bama-captivates-korea-with-down-to-earth-style Mattis, Jim, and Rex Tillerson. “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account.” Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2017.https://www.wsj.com/articles/were-holding-pyongyang-to-account-1502660253 McCormack, Gavan. “Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Agenda.” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus 14, no. 24:1 (15 December 2016). McIntyre, Jamie. “Does Trump need permission from South Korea to attack the North?” Washington Examiner, 20 August 2017.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/does-trump-need-permission-from-south-korea-to-attack-the-north/article/2632019 Ortiz, Erik, and Arata Yamamoto. “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option.” NBC, 2 August 2017.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/sen-lindsey-graham-trump-says-war-north-korea-option-n788396 Paletta, Damian. “Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal, a move opposed by top aides.” Washington Post, 2 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal/ Park, Byong-su. “President Moon issues ‘red line’ to North Korea over nuclear program.” Hankyoreh, 18 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/807411.html Penn, Michael. “Japan’s Empty Menu of Options to Stop North Korea.” Foreign Policy, 29 August 2017.https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/29/japans-empty-menu-of-options-to-stop-north-korea/ “Putin Rejects Moon’s Calls for N.Korea Oil Embargo.” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090700757.html “Statement of DPRK Government.” Rodong Sinmun, 8 August 2017.http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2017-08-08-0001 Thrush, Glenn, Gardiner Harris, and Emily Cochrane. “After North Korea Nuclear Test, Trump Saves Harshest Words for South Korea.” New York Times, 3 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/us/trump-north-south-korea-nuclear.html Warrick, Joby. “North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone.” Washington Post, 3 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-defies-predictions–again–with-early-grasp-of-weapons-milestone/2017/09/03/068ac20c-90db-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html Yi, Yong-in, and Ji-eun Kim. “Nuclear test demonstrates international community’s lack of options on North Korea.” Hankyoreh, 4 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/809592.html Yonhap. “Four more THAAD launchers deployed amid protests.” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/205_236105.html ———. “Hyundai Motor plant in China suspended due to payment problems ” Korea Times, 5 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2017/09/419_235976.html ———. “Moon’s approval rating drops slightly to 73.1% ” Korea Times, 4 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/356_235915.html Yu, Yong-weon. “Blast from N.Korea’s New Nuke ‘Could Obliterate Seoul’.” Chosun Ilbo, 4 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/04/2017090401430.html ———. “THAAD Fully Deployed in Early-Morning Operation.” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701272.html [i]               Michael Elleman, “North Korea’s Hwasong-12 Launch: A Disturbing Development,” 38 North, 30 August 2017.http://www.38north.org/2017/08/melleman083017/. Yong-in Yi and Ji-eun Kim, “Nuclear test demonstrates international community’s lack of options on North Korea,” Hankyoreh, 4 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/809592.html [ii]               Joby Warrick, “North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone,” Washington Post, 3 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-defies-predictions–again–with-early-grasp-of-weapons-milestone/2017/09/03/068ac20c-90db-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html [iii]              Erik Ortiz and Arata Yamamoto, “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option,” NBC, 2 August 2017.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/sen-lindsey-graham-trump-says-war-north-korea-option-n788396 [iv]              Jamie McIntyre, “Does Trump need permission from South Korea to attack the North?,” Washington Examiner, 20 August 2017.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/does-trump-need-permission-from-south-korea-to-attack-the-north/article/2632019 [v]               Yong-weon Yu, “Blast from N.Korea’s New Nuke ‘Could Obliterate Seoul’,” Chosun Ilbo, 4 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/04/2017090401430.html [vi]              Sang-hun Choe, “U.N. Condemns North Korea’s Latest Missile Tests, but Takes No Action,” New York Times, 29 August 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/north-korea-japan-missile-us.html [vii]             Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson, “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account,” Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2017.https://www.wsj.com/articles/were-holding-pyongyang-to-account-1502660253 [viii]             “Statement of DPRK Government,” Rodong Sinmun, 8 August 2017.http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2017-08-08-0001 [ix]              Gavan McCormack, “Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Agenda,” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus 14, no. 24:1 (2016); Michael Penn, “Japan’s Empty Menu of Options to Stop North Korea,” Foreign Policy, 29 August 2017.https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/29/japans-empty-menu-of-options-to-stop-north-korea/ [x]               Byong-su Park, “President Moon issues ‘red line’ to North Korea over nuclear program,” Hankyoreh, 18 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/807411.html [xi]              Derek Chollet, “Trump Will Likely Regret His Red Line on Iran,” Foreign Policy, 2 February 2017.http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/02/trump-will-likely-regret-his-red-line-on-iran/ [xii]             Glenn Thrush, Gardiner Harris, and Emily Cochrane, “After North Korea Nuclear Test, Trump Saves Harshest Words for South Korea,” New York Times, 3 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/us/trump-north-south-korea-nuclear.html. Damian Paletta, “Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal, a move opposed by top aides,” Washington Post, 2 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal/. Yi-jun Cho, “Young Koreans Face Deportation as U.S. Scraps ‘Dreamers’ Program,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701341.html [xiii]             Yong-weon Yu, “THAAD Fully Deployed in Early-Morning Operation,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701272.htm; Yonhap, “Four more THAAD launchers deployed amid protests,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/205_236105.html [xiv]             Kye-wan Cho, “Hyundai Motor, latest Korean company to receive fallout over THAAD deployment,” Hankyoreh, 1 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/809299.htm; Yonhap, “Hyundai Motor plant in China suspended due to payment problems ” Korea Times, 5 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2017/09/419_235976.html; Woo-sang Jeong, “No Prospect Yet of Moon Visiting China,” Chosun Ilbo, 25 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/25/2017082501364.html [xv]             “Putin Rejects Moon’s Calls for N.Korea Oil Embargo,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090700757.htm; Rahn Kim, “Putin opposes North Korea oil embargo,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/120_236071.htm; Sang-Hun Choe, “Putin Rejects Cutting Off Oil to North Korea,” New York Times, 6 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/asia/north-korea-putin-oil-embargo.html [xvi]             Rahn  Kim, “Moon, Abe vow to seek oil supply cut to punish North Korea,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/103_236111.html [xvii]            “Joint statement by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries on the Korean Peninsula’s problems,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 4 July 2017.http://www.mid.ru/en/web/guest/maps/kr/-/asset_publisher/PR7UbfssNImL/content/id/2807662 [xviii]           Peter Hayes and David von Hippel, “Sanctions on North Korean Oil Imports: Impacts and Efficacy,” Nautilus Policy Forum, 4 September 2017.http://mailchi.mp/nautilus/napsnet-special-report-sanctions-on-north-korean-oil-imports-impacts-and-efficacy?e=705746c27c [xix]             Yonhap, “Moon’s approval rating drops slightly to 73.1% ” Korea Times, 4 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/356_235915.html [xx]             Editorial, “When Will Moon Wake up to the New Reality?,” Chosun Ilbo, 30 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/30/2017083001484.html [xxi]             Jiyeun Lee, “President ‘Moon-bama’ Enjoying a Honeymoon in South Korea,” Bloomberg, 23 May 2017.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/president-moon-bama-captivates-korea-with-down-to-earth-styl; Yu-gyung Jung, “Moon’s first hundred days in office show a president at ease with the people,” Hankyoreh, 17 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/807235.html [1]               Michael Elleman, “North Korea’s Hwasong-12 Launch: A Disturbing Development,” 38 North, 30 August 2017.http://www.38north.org/2017/08/melleman083017/. Yong-in Yi and Ji-eun Kim, “Nuclear test demonstrates international community’s lack of options on North Korea,” Hankyoreh, 4 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/809592.html [1]               Joby Warrick, “North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone,” Washington Post, 3 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-defies-predictions–again–with-early-grasp-of-weapons-milestone/2017/09/03/068ac20c-90db-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b_story.html [1]               Erik Ortiz and Arata Yamamoto, “Sen. Lindsey Graham: Trump Says War With North Korea an Option,” NBC, 2 August 2017.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/sen-lindsey-graham-trump-says-war-north-korea-option-n788396 [1]               Jamie McIntyre, “Does Trump need permission from South Korea to attack the North?,” Washington Examiner, 20 August 2017.http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/does-trump-need-permission-from-south-korea-to-attack-the-north/article/2632019 [1]               Yong-weon Yu, “Blast from N.Korea’s New Nuke ‘Could Obliterate Seoul’,” Chosun Ilbo, 4 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/04/2017090401430.html [1]               Sang-hun Choe, “U.N. Condemns North Korea’s Latest Missile Tests, but Takes No Action,” New York Times, 29 August 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/north-korea-japan-missile-us.html [1]               Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson, “We’re Holding Pyongyang to Account,” Wall Street Journal, 14 August 2017.https://www.wsj.com/articles/were-holding-pyongyang-to-account-1502660253 [1]               “Statement of DPRK Government,” Rodong Sinmun, 8 August 2017.http://www.rodong.rep.kp/en/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2017-08-08-0001 [1]               Gavan McCormack, “Japan: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s Agenda,” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus 14, no. 24:1 (2016); Michael Penn, “Japan’s Empty Menu of Options to Stop North Korea,” Foreign Policy, 29 August 2017.https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/29/japans-empty-menu-of-options-to-stop-north-korea/ [1]               Byong-su Park, “President Moon issues ‘red line’ to North Korea over nuclear program,” Hankyoreh, 18 August 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/807411.html [1]               Derek Chollet, “Trump Will Likely Regret His Red Line on Iran,” Foreign Policy, 2 February 2017.http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/02/trump-will-likely-regret-his-red-line-on-iran/ [1]               Glenn Thrush, Gardiner Harris, and Emily Cochrane, “After North Korea Nuclear Test, Trump Saves Harshest Words for South Korea,” New York Times, 3 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/us/trump-north-south-korea-nuclear.html. Damian Paletta, “Trump preparing withdrawal from South Korea trade deal, a move opposed by top aides,” Washington Post, 2 September 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal/. Yi-jun Cho, “Young Koreans Face Deportation as U.S. Scraps ‘Dreamers’ Program,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701341.html [1]               Yong-weon Yu, “THAAD Fully Deployed in Early-Morning Operation,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090701272.htm; Yonhap, “Four more THAAD launchers deployed amid protests,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/205_236105.html [1]               Kye-wan Cho, “Hyundai Motor, latest Korean company to receive fallout over THAAD deployment,” Hankyoreh, 1 September 2017.http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/809299.htm; Yonhap, “Hyundai Motor plant in China suspended due to payment problems ” Korea Times, 5 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2017/09/419_235976.html; Woo-sang Jeong, “No Prospect Yet of Moon Visiting China,” Chosun Ilbo, 25 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/25/2017082501364.html [1]               “Putin Rejects Moon’s Calls for N.Korea Oil Embargo,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 September 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/09/07/2017090700757.htm; Rahn Kim, “Putin opposes North Korea oil embargo,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/120_236071.htm; Sang-Hun Choe, “Putin Rejects Cutting Off Oil to North Korea,” New York Times, 6 September 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/world/asia/north-korea-putin-oil-embargo.html [1]               Rahn  Kim, “Moon, Abe vow to seek oil supply cut to punish North Korea,” Korea Times, 7 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/103_236111.html [1]               “Joint statement by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries on the Korean Peninsula’s problems,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 4 July 2017.http://www.mid.ru/en/web/guest/maps/kr/-/asset_publisher/PR7UbfssNImL/content/id/2807662 [1]               Peter Hayes and David von Hippel, “Sanctions on North Korean Oil Imports: Impacts and Efficacy,” Nautilus Policy Forum, 4 September 2017.http://mailchi.mp/nautilus/napsnet-special-report-sanctions-on-north-korean-oil-imports-impacts-and-efficacy?e=705746c27c [1]               Yonhap, “Moon’s approval rating drops slightly to 73.1% ” Korea Times, 4 September 2017.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/09/356_235915.html [1]               Editorial, “When Will Moon Wake up to the New Reality?,” Chosun Ilbo, 30 August 2017.http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/08/30/2017083001484.html [1]               Jiyeun Lee, “President ‘Moon-bama’ Enjoying a Honeymoon in South Korea,” Bloomberg, 23 May 2017.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-23/president-moon-bama-captivates-korea-with-down-to-earth-styl; Yu-gyung Jung, “Moon’s first hundred days in office show a president at ease with the people,” Hankyoreh, 17 A #KoreanWar #SouthKorea #THAAD #Nuclearweapons #MoonJaein #ICBM #NorthKorea

By George Koo  | July 9, 2017 Originally published in Asia Times North Korea’s latest test of a missile with a range capable of threatening American cities has left the Trump Administration somewhere between wishful thinking and a hard place. Too bad neither represents a realistic resolution of the conundrum. The easy way out, for the US at least, is to “let China do it.” President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley have in unison chanted the same basic mantra: The problem would be solved if China would apply more pressure on North Korea. Unfortunately, this naïve wishful thinking is based on several false premises. First there is no evidence China can tell North Korea what to do with any real hope of success. The two countries are not buddies and there is no love lost between China’s President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. They have not met since both leaders came to power in 2012 and they communicate via messengers. China has supported a UN resolution strongly condemning North Korea. The Kim regime no more pays heed to China than it has to protests from South Korea, Japan or the United States. Just as China cannot stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapon and intercontinental missile technology, North Korea is not developing these technologies for China’s sake. North Korea believes it needs nuclear strike capability in order to be taken seriously by the US. To date, sanctions on North Korea have not worked. The American response has been to ask the UN Security Council to impose more sanctions. In particular, Trump does not feel China is tightening the screws hard enough. Shutting down North Korea’s economy might bring Kim to heel from the American perspective but clearly such as move is unacceptable from China’s view. Economic collapse would trigger a massive humanitarian crisis and China would be left to deal with the refugees as they take the only viable option and migrate north into China. There is a flip side to this approach. Even if the sanctions bring North Korea to its knees, it does not mean the Kim regime will become more conciliatory. Kim may decide he has nothing to lose and simply launch an attack on the south. The other tough approach is to launch a Rumsfeldian shock and awe military bombardment on North Korea before the North can attack. There is virtually no chance, however, that carpet-bombing could vaporize the array of artillery and missiles facing South Korea. The consequent damage to Seoul and other parts of South Korea from the retaliation would be significant, not to mention the danger to the 30,000 American troops stationed in the south. There is also no assurance any precision strikes could successfully take out Kim and his inner circle nor knock out all the country’s nuclear weapons and development centers. The risks of failure are simply too great to contemplate. There is a more sensible approach that an increasing number of commentators and foreign policy observers are suggesting the Trump Administration consider: offer talks without preconditions. North Korea fears the US and knows Beijing cannot commit on behalf of Washington. Pyongyang wants to deal directly with Washington and does not see China as a credible intermediary. Why not begin a direct conversation? The Clinton Administration almost reached an agreement with Pyongyang when the clock ran out on Clinton’s term. George W. Bush elected to ignore North Korea and then imposed preconditions before being willing to resume negotiations. Pyongyang saw the Bush White House as dealing in bad faith and that the only way to gain American respect was to complete the development of a nuclear bomb. North Korea detonated its first nuclear bomb in October 2006, during Bush’s second term. The Obama administration, unfortunately, followed the Bush line: no negotiations without preconditions. To push for North Korea’s agreement, Washington bandied the threats of sanctions and solicited Beijing for help. In the 16 years since the end of the Clinton administration, Washington and Pyongyang have made no progress in reaching a common understanding. Each has accused the other of acting in bad faith. The US threatened more sanctions; North Korea kept testing weapons with bigger bang and missiles with longer range. This endless cycle is not going anywhere and the threat of an American shock-and-awe style attack clearly worries Pyongyang. Why can’t Washington soften a bit and show a willingness to talk without pre-conditions? What does it have to lose? Will the world respect us less as a fearsome hegemon because we are willing to swallow our pride, or will it applaud us for taking the first step towards peace? Donald Trump has an opportunity to accomplish an important foreign policy triumph that has eluded his two predecessors. Dr. George Koo recently retired from a global advisory services firm where he advised clients on their China strategies and business operations. Educated at MIT, Stevens Institute and Santa Clara University, he is the founder and former managing director of International Strategic Alliances. He is a member of the Committee of 100, and a director of New America Media. #GeorgeKoo #China #Nuclearweapons #ICBM #NorthKorea

KPI Board members, Advisors and fellows have been speaking on the US-North Korea tensions. Christine Ahn, KPI advisor and Executive Director of Women Cross DMZ Democracy Now!, July 5, 2017  “Will Trump seek talks with North Korea or Counter Missile Test with more US Military Aggression?” NY Times Op-Ed August 2, 2017: The North Korea Travel Ban Will Do More Harm Than Good Gregory Elich, KPI Advisor RT, July 10, 2017: “‘Patience Is Over’: U.S., North Korea Latest Exchange of Threats” Christine Hong, KPI Board member FlashPoints with Dennis Bernstein (KPFA), July 5, 2017, “U.S. Saber-Rattling off Coast of Koreas, after North Tests Its New ICBM” (18 minutes in) The Joe Show with Joe Teehan, July 6, 2017, “U.S. Foreign Policy Driving Hostility between United States and North Korea” The Morning Show with Felipe Luciano (WBAI), July 7, 2017, “North Korea’s Nuclear Test in Historical Perspective” (82:45) Positively Revolting (KBOO Community Radio), July 7, 2017, “Warmongering Against North Korea” Thom Hartmann Program, July 6, 2017, “What We’re Seeing Now is the Result of the Korean War Never Really Ending (w/guest Christine Hong)” Hyun Lee, KPI Fellow,  Member, Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, writer for ZoominKorea.org RT.Com, July 5, 2017 :  ‘N. Korea now has capacity to target heart of US Pacific Command’ Loud & Clear with Brian Becker, July 6, 2017:US Threatens War on North Korea: Who is the Real Provocateur? Thom Hartmann Program, July 7. 2017: The Big Picture on the Korea situation Tim Shorrock, KPI Advisor Free Speech TV, July 6, 2017: “Trump and Kim Jong-un face off under cloud of nuclear weapons”

South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House with Donald Trump (Photo: White House) By Geoffrey Fattig | September 14, 2017 Originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus Despite campaigning for the presidency with a pledge to “say no to the Americans,” South Korean leader Moon Jae-in lately seems like a man who can’t stop saying “yes.” As tensions with North Korea have risen once again, Moon has doubled down on his country’s alliance with the United States by authorizing the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system — which he’d opposed during his campaign — and has fallen into lockstep with the Trump administration’s call for tougher sanctions on the North. Moon has even found himself sounding like a milder version of the American president, recently ruling out the possibility of dialogue with the North for the foreseeable future. To be fair, it’s far from certain that Kim Jong-un would be interested in listening to anything that Moon had to say. The North Korean regime has expressed repeatedly that its primary goal is talking with the United States directly, viewing the American military as the country’s main security threat. Whether one takes the view that Pyongyang is building its stockpile of missiles and nuclear weapons mainly as a defense deterrent, or if they instead are part of a longer term strategy to launch a new war with the goal of reunifying the peninsula, is immaterial to this point. In the current security climate, the North Koreans know that all deals go through Washington. So why bother talking with Seoul? This situation illustrates the quandary facing South Korean governments of all political stripes. Two months after taking office, the liberal Moon offered a conciliatory vision in his much publicized “Berlin Declaration,” in which he announced his intention to “embark on a dauntless journey towards establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula.” But this has so far been met with as much enthusiasm from the North as his conservative predecessor Park Geun-hye’s equally ballyhooed — at least in the West — “Trustpolitik,” which tried to balance an openness to engagement with a harder line. Either way, the North seems scarcely interested. The South Korean media often complains about the country’s lack of clout in regional and peninsular affairs, even coining the phrase “Korea Passing” to describe the phenomenon, and criticizes whichever government is in power for not asserting Korean interests more forcefully. Tellingly, these criticisms rarely touch on the root cause of the problem. That cause, of course, is the fact that it is impossible to gain the respect of neighboring countries when the government has essentially outsourced its security policy to the world’s main imperial power and houses upwards of 20,000 of its troops in bases throughout South Korea. This is particularly true when the legitimacy of the North Korean regime rests on the fact that it fought that imperial power to a draw. As North Korea has shown time and again in dealing with South Korea, it’s more than happy to take Seoul’s money and aid when it’s on offer, but is far less willing to make concessions in return. This, then, is why a government coming to power preaching a message of dialogue and reconciliation with the North is doomed to find itself in exactly the position that Moon is in today: well-intentioned, but hopelessly constrained by the country’s alliance with the United States. And on this point, South Koreans need to begin asking themselves some hard questions. Under President Trump, the U.S. has pursued an erratic approach toward the North, veering from threats of “fire and fury” one day to offers of dialogue the next. Meanwhile, American public support for taking military action against North Korea is creeping up: A recent CNN poll found half of respondents in favor of the military option, and this was in the weeks before Kim Jong-un had conducted his most recent ICBM and nuclear tests. South Koreans continue to assume that their American ally wouldn’t do anything to put them in harm’s way, and they’ve lived with the North Korean threat for so long as to become numb to it. Yet they’re deluding themselves if they believe they have veto power over the United States, should Trump conclude that North Korea represents a direct threat to the American homeland and decide to take military action. Senator Lindsey Graham — a leading proponent of the invasion of Iraq, among many other military misadventures — summed up this view quite succinctly. “President Trump is not going to allow the ability of this madman [Kim Jong-un] to have a missile that could hit America,” he said. And “if thousands die, they’re going to die [in Korea].” Becoming an unwilling participant in the latest American military misadventure is of course still just an unpleasant hypothetical. What is quite concrete, however, are the recent diplomatic hits that Seoul has taken as a result of its alliance with the United States. Due to its acquiescence to American demands regarding the deployment of THAAD, South Korea’s relationship with China — the country’s largest trading partner — has sunk to the lowest point in decades. Moon couldn’t even get a phone call with President Xi Jinping following the North’s sixth nuclear test. Considering the key role that China needs to play in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, this is hardly an ideal time for such a rupture. There’s also been considerable economic fallout due to the THAAD deployment. Consumer boycotts and overzealous police inspections of the major Korean retail chain Lotte have forced the company to shutter 87 of its 99 Chinese stores, while declining profits briefly suspended the Chinese operations of Hyundai Motors after the company fell behind on payments to suppliers. One recent study claimed that South Korea could lose as much as $15 billion due to the economic ramifications resulting from THAAD — all of this to install a system of dubious effectiveness. In a final act of insult, Trump also demanded that the South Korean government pay $1 billion for the privilege of cutting off its nose to spite its face. None of this is to say that South Koreans should end their alliance with the United States; that’s a question that they must decide for themselves. However, their leaders need to start being honest about what the alliance has cost them, both in terms of leverage with North Korea and their relationship with China, if they’re serious about changing the dynamics of their country’s position in regional affairs. Geoffrey Fattig was formerly a speechwriter for the U.S. Department of State and is currently the deputy international editor at the Hankyoreh newspaper in Seoul. He holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from UC San Diego’s School of International Relations/Pacific Studies. #MoonJaein #SouthKorea #THAAD #USMilitaryBases

By John Feffer | July 7, 2017 Originally published in The Hankyoreh. North Korea is not a tourist destination that I generally recommend for Americans. South Koreans have special reasons to visit the country – to see members of their divided families, to visit legenday places like Mt. Paektu, to experience an alternative Korean reality. Chinese tourists visit North Korea to get a taste of their own more austere Communist past. Humanitarian workers from a variety of countries go back and forth to North Korea to help people who would otherwise fall through the frayed safety net of the country. American tourists, on the other hand, are usually looking for a good time. Although Pyongyang has a casino and a bowling alley and numerous restaurants, North Korea is not a fun destination. Still, some Americans go there as part of their quest to visit every country in the world or because they can claim bragging rights for having participated in adventure tourism. I’ve also met American tourists who were genuinely curious about North Korea. Some tour companies go the extra length by incorporating briefings by experts in North Korean society. Otto Warmbier, a third-year student at the University of Virginia, took a trip to China at the end of 2015. On an impulse, he decided to take a side trip to North Korea on a tour sponsored by Young Pioneer Tours, which offers “budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from.” He chose the New Year’s Party tour, which promises a good amount of drinking. Warmbier was described as an intellectually curious kid. He was double majoring in commerce and economics with a minor in global sustainability. A sports fan and fraternity member, he also liked to have a good time. From the photos and videos taken by other members of his tour group, Warmbier looks like he’s enjoying himself sightseeing and engaging in a snowball fight. Before he could board the plane and leave North Korea with the rest of his group, however, North Korean authorities pulled him aside. They wouldn’t let him leave. He had one last phone call with one of the tour guides in which he reported having a headache so severe that he wanted to go to the hospital. Twenty days later, the North Korean authorities announced that they were detaining Warmbier for committing a “hostile act.” Eventually they put him on trial for stealing a propaganda poster. They sentenced him to 15 years hard labor. Warmbier gave a tearful confession and then he was led out of the courtroom. Later, North Korea released a grainy video that purportedly showed Warmbier stealing the poster. After 17 months in captivity, Warmbier was released in a vegetative state. Transported back to the United States, he died shortly thereafter. He’d suffered severe brain damage. University of Cincinnati doctors reported that they couldn’t determine the cause of the brain damage but that the young man showed no obvious signs of trauma such as fractures. Unfortunately, Warmbier’s parents did not allow an autopsy, so it will be impossible to figure out his ultimate cause of death. Otto Warmbier’s death is a tragedy. He was obviously a gifted young man. His offense, if in fact he did commit one, should have occasioned a slap on the wrist, not a sentence of 15 years hard labor. But North Korea is notoriously sensitive about what it considers offenses to the state and its leadership. Before I made my first trip to North Korea, I was well briefed on protocol. Don’t throw out a copy of the newspaper – if it contains a picture of Kim Jong Il, then you are inadvertently insulting the leadership. Don’t fold a North Korean banknote in half – if it features a picture of Kim Il Sung, then you are inadvertently insulting the leadership. In other words, you have to be especially careful when you’re visiting North Korea. Drinking a lot and engaging in high-spirited camaraderie is natural for college students abroad. But it’s not such a good idea in North Korea. I did the same when I studied Russian in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s – and I threw up in Red Square after one especially rowdy party. I shudder to think what might have happened to me if I’d been in Pyongyang instead. We don’t know what happened to Otto Warmbier during his period of detention. It’s tempting to conclude that he was beaten, perhaps even tortured. But the North Korean authorities have been generally quite careful with American detainees. They seize Americans for what they consider serious offenses – religious proselytizing, trying to sneak into the country – not just as bargaining chips (they rarely get anything in exchange for releasing such detainees). If they arrested Warmbier for no reason other than to send a message to the United States and if they then mistreated him in custody, that would mark a significant shift in policy. Even if North Korea has changed its policies under Kim Jong Un, it would be unwise to militarize this tragedy. “We would be morally justified in launching a military attack,” writes former diplomat Chris Hill in The New York Times. This is an odd argument, particularly coming from a former American official. After all, the United States seized hundreds of foreign nationals, imprisoned them in Guantanamo, and denied them due process. Three prisoners died in custody in 2006, possibly after torture. Hill goes on to recommend that the United States demand a full accounting of what happened to Warmbier and pursue more sanctions rather than a military attack. Certainly an accounting is necessary. But perhaps the punitive action should come after the accounting, rather than before. U.S.-North Korean relations are at a nadir. The Trump administration has expressed anger at Beijing for not disciplining Pyongyang. And the United States may not look favorably at South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s proposals to restart north-south economic relations. It’s hard to know how Otto Warmbier himself might have come down on this issue. Before he was detained, he had generally positive interactions with North Koreans. As a commerce and business double major, he probably believed that economic engagement could make a difference. I’d like to believe that the best way of honoring his legacy would be to avoid war on the Korean peninsula, work to release other foreign detainees, and encourage citizen-to-citizen exchanges with North Korea. By improving the economic and social conditions of the North Korean population, we can best ensure that nobody has to face whatever Otto Warmbier endured while he was imprisoned in the country. John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus, and the author of several books and numerous articles.  He is a Korea Policy Institute advisor. #JohnFeffer #KoreaPeace #NorthKorea #OttoWarmbier

By Gregory Elich | July 7, 2017 Originally published in Zoom in Korea and Counterpunch.org Since Donald Trump became president, North Korea has conducted a flurry of missile tests, triggering a wave of condemnation by U.S. media and political figures. The reaction contains more than an element of fear-mongering, and it is sometimes implied that armed with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), North Korea is liable to launch an unprovoked attack on the U.S. mainland. What tends to be lacking in such reports is any sense of sober reflection, and much confusion is sown concerning the actual state of North Korea’s program. This article takes a closer look at North Korea’s recent missile launches and argues that they pose a threat–not to the safety of the U.S. population, as the corporate media claim, but to the United States’ strategic calculus in the region. Pukguksong-2 First tested on February 11, the Pukguksong-2 is a medium-range ballistic missile based on the design of the submarine-launched Pukguksong -1. The main advantage the Pukguksong-2 has over North Korea’s other land-based ballistic missiles is that it relies on solid fuel. For that reason, the Pukguksong-2 is far more mobile and survivable than North Korea’s other medium-range missiles that outperform it. The other missiles are liquid-fueled and therefore hampered by the need to be accompanied by tanker trucks while on the move. Their necessity of a lengthy fueling process before launch makes them vulnerable to attack. [1] Flying on a nearly vertical trajectory, the Pukguksong-2 travelled 500 kilometers and soared to an apogee of 550 kilometers. That translates into a range of 1,200 kilometers, were the missile to be fired at a regular trajectory using the same payload. [2] One of the reasons for the unusually steep trajectory of the test was so that technicians would be within technical monitoring range to gather data on performance. [3]  The unusual flight path may have also been undertaken, as North Korea indicates, to avoid the political sensitivities of overflying Japan. The missile was again tested on May 21 and followed a trajectory similar to the first. Despite North Korea’s claim that the missile should go into mass production, more testing is needed to solidify reliability and accuracy. It does not appear that the reentry vehicle was tested on this occasion, as it lacked the fins or thrusters necessary for terminal guidance capability. According to missile expert John Schilling, it “will likely take at least five years” for the Pukguksong-2 to become “the mainstay of North Korea’s strategic missile force, and even then, only in a first-generation version with a non-maneuvering warhead.” [4] The differing performance of the two tests indicates that there are unmet challenges in the engine manufacturing process so that it can produce consistent results. Hwasong-12 After three failed launches in April of this year, the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 finally achieved success on May 14. Unlike the Pukguksong-2, this missile is liquid fueled.  By all accounts, the performance of the Hwasong-12 demonstrated a significant technological advance over any of North Korea’s other missiles. In the last test, the missile flew at a steep 85-degree angle and achieved a height of 2,111 kilometers. It is calculated that a normal trajectory would give the missile a range of 4,500 kilometers, making it capable of striking the U.S. strategic bomber force in Guam. [5] More importantly, this marked North Korea’s first successful test of a reentry vehicle. A nuclear warhead must be able to withstand the enormous heat generated from reentering the earth’s atmosphere for it to reach its target. Without that capability, North Korea would not have an effective nuclear deterrent. South Korean monitoring equipment picked up data communications between the descending warhead and North Korean ground control, confirming the success of the test. [6] Anti-Ship Missiles On May 29, North Korea tested an upgraded version of the Hwasong-7. Among the improvements were fins to improve stability during the boost phase, an engine in the middle section for speed control, and terminal guidance technology to provide greater accuracy.  The missile is said to have a range of 1,000 kilometers and is intended to strike targets at sea. [7] Little more than a week later, North Korea launched several anti-ship cruise missiles, which demonstrated excellent maneuverability and precision. According to North Korean media, the missiles “accurately detected and hit the floating targets on the East Sea of Korea after making circular flights.” [8]  The flight distance was estimated at 200 kilometers, and like North Korea’s other missiles tested this year, the cruise missiles are newly designed. [9] The cruise missiles were fired from tracked transport vehicles that are capable of travelling across rough terrain, thus allowing them to go where they would be harder to spot and destroy. [10] Hwasong-14 On July 4, North Korea launched what it claimed was an ICBM, the two-stage Hwasong-14. Analysts are split on whether or not the launch actually demonstrated the ability to achieve the minimum range of 5,500 kilometers needed to qualify as an ICBM. U.S. officials call the launch an ICBM, while Russian analysts place the missile’s performance in the intermediate range category. In any case, there are technological challenges involved in developing an ICBM that will be much harder for North Korea to overcome than was the case with the Hwasong-12. This was only a single test, and The longer the range of a ballistic missile, the higher the amount of total heat a reentry vehicle must be able to withstand. The rate of heat associated with range – and therefore speed – increases so rapidly that a successful test of an intermediate ballistic missile’s reentry vehicle says nothing about how it would fare in an ICBM. A reentry vehicle launched by an ICBM must absorb far more punishment than is the case with shorter-range missiles, and survive temperatures of 7000˚C. It took the United States several years to master the challenge of designing a survivable ICBM reentry vehicle, [11] and we have no solid information on the Hwasong-14’s reentry performance. A nuclear warhead must be miniaturized to reduce the weight enough for it to be deliverable in a missile. As military technology specialists Markus Schiller and Theodore Postol point out, “It is unlikely that North Korea now has a nuclear weapon that weighs as little as 1000 kg. It is also unlikely that such a first-generation nuclear weapon would be capable of surviving the unavoidable 50 G deceleration during warhead reentry from a range of nearly 10,000 kilometers.” [12] It appears that the Hwasong-12 provided the basis for the Hwasong-14, but a significant amount of work remains to be done to perfect associated technology, such as the guidance system and reentry vehicle. Moreover, before a missile can be considered operationally ready, it must undergo multiple tests to ensure that it meets performance and reliability standards. The Hwasong-12, which provided the likely base, was only successful in one of its four tests. A missile needs to be thoroughly tested to establish its reliability before it is ready to accommodate a nuclear warhead. No nation is going to risk having a missile blow up on the launch pad with a nuclear warhead on top. It may take years for North Korea to develop a fully operational ICBM capability. “If a vague threat is enough for them, they could wait for another successful launch and declare operational deployment after that, and half the world will believe them,” Schiller points out. “But if they take it seriously, as the U.S. or Russia do, it would take at least a dozen more launches and perhaps ten years. Mind you, this is their first ICBM.” [13] Threats and Provocations It is an article of faith in the West that each missile test by North Korea is a “threat” or “provocation.” But is it true? Over the last several months, India tested its Agni-2 medium-range and Agni-3 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, as well as an Agni-5 ICBM, producing only yawns of indifference. Pakistan fired an Ababeel medium-range ballistic missile, capable of delivering multiple warheads, while China and Russia both tested ICBMs. The United States, as it was roundly condemning North Korea for its tests, launched Minuteman 3 and Trident missiles. None of these tests by nuclear powers were deemed provocative. Nor was note taken of the hypocrisy of the Trump administration in expressing outrage over North Korea doing what it was doing. Objectively speaking, there is no difference between North Korea’s missile tests and the others, although it should be pointed out that the U.S. arsenal of nearly 7,000 nuclear warheads dwarfs that of North Korea. As the North Korean foreign ministry observed, “Not a single article or provision in the UN Charter and other international laws stipulates that nuclear test or ballistic rocket launch poses a threat to international peace and security.” [14] The political and economic might of the United States gave it the means to prod other members of the UN Security Council to agree to its demand to impose sanctions on North Korea. As a result, North Korea is the only nation singled out by UN sanctions that forbid it from testing the same types of missiles as other countries are free to do. There is no legal basis for this double standard, which is primarily a product of U.S. influence. From the North Korean perspective, the large-scale military exercises that the United States regularly conducts in tandem with South Korea are threatening. These drills rehearse the invasion of North Korea, including decapitation operations to kill North Korean leaders. Recently, American B-1B bomber planes executed a series of flights over South Korea, simulating the carpet bombing of North Korea. [15] Originally designed to deliver nuclear weapons, the B-1B underwent conversion to a conventional weapons only role ten years ago. [16] The plane is still a formidable weapon, however, and can carry three times the payload of a B-52. [17] In the Western mindset, none of these actions can be construed as being “provocative” or a “threat” to North Korea. But it is easy enough to imagine the hysterical reaction if Russia were to conduct joint military exercises in Cuba, practicing the bombing and invasion of the United States, along with the assassination of U.S. political leaders. Refusal to Recognize North Korea as a Nuclear State Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure and engagement” is based on the principle that the United States will not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state. But what does this mean? North Korea, as everyone knows, is a nuclear state. What the U.S. means is that it won’t recognize North Korea’s right to be a nuclear state. Why is this important? According to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), only the five countries that already had nuclear weapons when the treaty went into force in 1970—the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China—are internationally recognized as nuclear weapon states. The treaty requires them to reduce their nuclear arsenal towards eventual elimination and prohibits all other signatories from possessing nuclear weapons. Never mind that the five nuclear weapon states are far from achieving their commitment to disarmament and that the United States is spending $1 trillion to modernize its nuclear arsenal. The United States’ primary concern is the second half of the NPT’s stated goal—that no one else besides the five officially-recognized nuclear weapon states should have nuclear weapons. As such, North Korea’s nuclear and missile program, in the U.S.’ view, is an affront to this doctrine and the country should be punished accordingly. But what about India, Pakistan and Israel—also countries with nuclear weapons that are not parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), you might ask. Does the United States refuse to recognize them as nuclear states? Therein lies the greatest hypocrisy behind U.S. condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests. Because the U.S. has no problem with India, Pakistan and Israel possessing nuclear weapons, it has seen no need to make such a pronouncement. North Korea’s Accelerating Missile Development: Threat to U.S. Hegemony It has not gone unnoticed that the pace of North Korea’s missile testing has accelerated in recent months. When the year began, North Korea found itself in a somewhat vulnerable position, given the Trump administration’s aggressive rhetoric. North Korea had a nuclear weapons program but no tested reentry vehicle–which meant that it had no means of delivery.  The north’s conventional arms are sufficient to inflict heavy damage on South Korea. But in a conflict, harm to U.S. forces would be relatively mild, especially if the U.S. launched a first strike to eliminate much of North Korea’s military capability. The window of opportunity for attacking North Korea would permanently close once it could demonstrate an effective means of delivering a nuclear weapon and the ability to strike U.S. warplanes stationed in Guam and aircraft carriers off the coast of the Korean Peninsula. Thus for North Korea, the race was on. The North Koreans have taken note of the experience of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, and arrived at the conclusion that a small nation relying on conventional arms alone has no chance of deterring attack by the United States. North Korea says its nuclear program “is a legitimate and righteous measure for self-defense to protect the sovereignty and the right to existence” of the nation. [18] That is a conclusion the U.S. is keen to discourage. For the United States, it is a fundamental principle of its foreign policy that it should be able to attack any nation of its choosing, and that no country ought to have the means of defending itself. And therein lies the source of U.S. concern. The reason why stopping North Korea’s nuclear and long-range missile program is a priority for the Trump administration is not because it truly believes North Korea will launch an ICBM at the United States. Rather, it’s that if North Korea succeeds in establishing an effective nuclear deterrent, then this could have serious geopolitical implications for U.S. policy, as other targeted nations may follow North Korea’s example to ensure their survival. For this reason, the United States has branded North Korea a pariah state and sponsored harsh UN sanctions. North Korea faces a dichotomy between policy objectives. If it does not denuclearize, then it risks succumbing to the economic strangulation imposed by the United States. But if it abandons its nuclear program, it becomes far more vulnerable to military strikes by a hostile U.S. The lesson of Libya’s fate after it abandoned its nuclear weapons program is not forgotten. Moreover, it is exceedingly unlikely that the U.S. would lift sanctions on North Korea even after full denuclearization. The United States declares that it will not engage in talks with North Korea unless it denuclearizes as a precondition while receiving nothing in return. [19] That position shuts down any possibility of diplomacy, and it is hard to visualize any way out of the current impasse as long as Washington clings to that attitude. The launch of the Hwasong-14 has set U.S. officials and media into a frenzied reaction, and there are mounting calls for harsh, reckless, and even dangerous measures. The more belligerent Washington becomes, the more convinced North Korea is that it needs a nuclear deterrent. For its part, North Korea has recently reiterated its position that unless the United States drops its hostility, it will not give up its nuclear program. [20] South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s deferential attitude when meeting Trump was a deep disappointment. Nothing good can come from supporting Trump’s aim of ramping up pressure and threats against North Korea and China. It is to be hoped that Moon can shift course and demonstrate more independence. The time has come for South Korea to take the lead in finding a peaceful resolution of the nuclear dispute. 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 member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, 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. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific. His website is https://gregoryelich.org Notes. [1] John Schilling, “The Pukguksong-2: A Higher Degree of Mobility, Survivability and Responsiveness,” 38 North, February 13, 2017. [2] David Wright, “North Korea’s February 12 Missile Launch,” Union of Concerned Scientists, February 12, 2017. John Schilling, “The Pukguksong-2: A Higher Degree of Mobility, Survivability and Responsiveness,” 38 North, February 13, 2017. [3] Li Bin, “The Logic Behind North Korea’s Recent Pukguksong Missile Test,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 15, 2017. [4] John Schilling, “The Pukguksong-2 Approaches Initial Operating Capability,” 38 North, May 24, 2017. [5] Tamir Eshel, “Pyongyang Tested its Longest Arm Yet – Hwasong 12 Ballistic Missile,” Defense Update, May 15, 2017. [6] Lee Chul-jae, “North Korea Acquires Re-entry Technology,” JoongAng Ilbo, May 17, 2017. [7] Tamir Eshel, “How Capable are North Korean Scud-Based ‘Carrier-Killers’?”, Defense Update, May 30, 2017. Lee Chi-dong, “N. Korea Seeks ‘Carrier-Killer’ Missile Amid Technical Hurdle,” Yonhap, May 30, 2017. [8] “Kim Jong Un Guides Test Fire of New Ground-to-Sea Cruise Rocket,” KCNA, June 9m, 2017. [9] Ankit Panda, “North Korea Launches Multiple Coastal Defense Cruise Missiles into Sea of Japan,” The Diplomat, June 8, 2017. [10] Ankit Panda, “North Korea Introduces a New Coastal Defense Cruise Missile Launcher: First Takeaways,” The Diplomat, June 9, 2017. [11] David Wright, “North Korea’s Missile in New Test Would Have 4,500 km Range,” Union of Concerned Scientists, May 13, 2017. [12] Theodore A. Postol, Markus Schiller, “The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program,” Korea Observer, Vol. 47, No. 4, Winter 2016. [13] Eric Talmadge, “Analysis: Despite Test, N. Korean ICBM Likely Years Away,” Associated Press, July 6, 2017. [14] “Press Statement of DPRK Foreign Ministry,” KCNA, June 16, 2017. [15] “B-1B Bombers Fly Training Missions Near Korean Peninsula,” DOD Buzz, May 1, 2017. Ju-min Park and Jack Kim, “South Korea Says Conducted Joint Drills with U.S. B-1B Strategic Bomber,” Reuters, May 29, 2017. Lee Chi-dong, “Two B-1B Bombers to Train over Korea,” Yonhap, June 20, 2017. [16] “B-1B Lancer,” U.S. Air Force, December 16, 2015. [17] Joe Pappalardo, “Learn to Love the B-1 Lancer,” Popular Mechanics, Apr 9, 2012. “B-1B Lancer Long-Range Strategic Bomber, United States of America,” Air Force Technology, undated. [18] “Press Statement of DPRK Foreign Ministry,” KCNA, June 16, 2017. [19] Heather Nauert, Press Briefing, U.S. Department of State, June 15, 2017. [20] “ICBM Test-Launch is Demonstration of Juche Korea’s Invincible Might: KCNA Commentary,” KCNA, July 5, 2017. Gregory Elich is a Korea Policy Institute advisor, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, 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. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific. His website is https://gregoryelich.org #GregoryElich #KoreanWar #peacetreaty #NorthKoreanMissiles #Nuclearweapons #NorthKorea

US-ROK War exercises August 2017 (US Pacific Command) By Liu Jianxi with Bruce Cumings | September 19, 2017 Originally published in Global Times The nuclear crisis in North Korea is growing more serious in the wake of nuclear tests and war games. Decades after the Korean War (1950-53), how is the tension escalating? Is new war likely on the Korean Peninsula? What should be done to alleviate tensions? Global Times reporter Liu Jianxi (GT) talked with American historian, lecturer and author Bruce Cumings (Cumings) on these issues. Cumings specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international relations. GT: You once mentioned that Washington’s North Korea policy is a failure at the fundamental level. To what extent has the US contributed to the nuclear crisis, and why is Washington’s policy a failure? Cumings: The US has sanctioned North Korea for decades, but none of these sanctions or embargoes worked to change North Korea’s behavior. Instead, the regime has become very defensive and feels it has its back to the wall, and that the US is a sworn enemy in all of that. No positive results have come out of almost 70 years of sanctions. American war games have only helped South Korea and the US to coordinate their military activities while North Korea feels very threatened by both. So the war games tend to heighten tensions on the peninsula. But the fundamental reason that North Korea has developed missiles and bombs is that the US has had a policy of nuclear intimidation toward North Korea going back to 1950 during the Korean War, including the installation of hundreds of nuclear weapons in South Korea after 1958. For decades, American war plans called for using nuclear weapons very early in any new Korean war. American generals who previously served in Korea told me that they’d be willing to use nuclear weapons in the Korean but not the European theater because in the Korean theater North Korea had no nuclear weapons. Pyongyang knew this and as a result, it had to build thousands of underground facilities for its own defense against these weapons. North Korea’s missiles and bombs are the things that the US has helped to build by blackmailing the North with nuclear weapons. This doesn’t justify what North Korea is doing, but makes the country’s behavior much more understandable. Over the long run, this is the primary reason that North Korea has been attempting to develop nuclear weapons. GT: North Korea has tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and just had its sixth nuclear test. Given that Pyongyang may soon have the ability to launch a nuclear attack against the US, how will this fact change the US’ North Korea policy? Cumings: Firstly, for North Korea to warn of an ICBM that can hit the US is a simple tit-for-tat. North Korea is attempting to intimidate the US the same way it was once intimidated. When I say “intimidate,” I’m not just talking about threats. Both former president Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have brandished US nuclear capability by showing bombers on TV in an attempt to deter and intimidate North Korea. Any country would try to develop a nuclear deterrent against such threats. Secondly, if North Korea has developed the ability to hit the US, American military commanders worry that North Korea may use that threat to launch a conventional war, but not a nuclear war, against the South, preventing the US from coming in with nuclear weapons to defend South Korea. I don’t think that’s very likely. The North Korean army is much weaker than it used to be, and so I don’t think North Korea is going to attack conventionally. But the logic of American commanders can be understood. In the past, the US has been attempting to deter North Korea with conventional and nuclear forces. If North Korea possesses usable nuclear weapons, it might make it very difficult for the US to deploy nuclear weapons in defense of South Korea. This is one of the hidden reasons that American officials oppose North Korea’s nuclear program. Thirdly, a lot of people in Washington, including the Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, said recently that Kim Jong-un is irrational and unpredictable, and therefore the long-term standoff the US had with the Soviet Union during the Cold War doesn’t apply to North Korea. North Korea has been very calculating and rational for decades in responding to South Korea and the US. North Korea’s world view is different from that of the US. The country’s primary goal is reunification with the South, but the US doesn’t want this. North Korea is very focused on what it wants while the US has interests all around the globe and only pays attention to North Korea when there’s a crisis. How do you have deterrence if you think your enemy is irrational? GT: China proposed a suspension for a suspension, hoping to ease tension on the Korean Peninsula and seek a breakthrough in the North Korea nuclear crisis. But Washington rejected this proposal. What was Washington’s concern? Cumings: I support a freeze-for-freeze proposal. This was already done in 1994 when the US was trying to get a freeze on the plutonium that North Korea had. The US had conducted Team Spirit war games with South Korea going back to 1976. As part of American concessions to get North Korea to freeze plutonium, the US stopped Team Spirit. Haley says that the US can’t do a freeze-for-freeze because North Korea is testing missile and bombs while the US is just defending its allies with routine joint military training exercises that do not threaten North Korea. All we need to say to Haley is that the US did a freeze-for-freeze back in 1994, so why not now? It’s also important that both China and Russia support a freeze-for-freeze, so the proposal has a lot of backing. GT: The Six-Party Talks platform is no longer working. How do you view the possibility of bilateral talks between Pyongyang and Washington? Cumings: I wish the Six-Party Talks would come back, because all concerned parties were involved in the talks. In general, the platform was designed to get the US and North Korea talking to each other. Everybody knew the central problem was between these two countries. The Six-Party Talks platform is also one of the first diplomatic efforts in Northeast Asia to have international forums that existed in Southeast Asia with ASEAN or in Europe with the EU. Previously there were few arrangements in Northeast Asia for concerned countries to talk to each other, so the Six-Party Talks were a real breakthrough. American historian Francis Fukuyama wrote an article where he thought the Six-Party Talks were a precursor or foundation for international organizations of many types to develop in East Asia. The platform drew the US and North Korea into multi-party discussions with lots of ideas coming from other countries. If it were just the US and North Korea in the talks, probably the discussions would go back and forth on things that divided Pyongyang and Washington for decades. I also would support bilateral talks if the Trump administration wanted to talk to North Korea, which of course is a positive thing. But the Six-Party Talks are superior for these kinds of negotiations. GT: The UN Security Council adopted the seventh round of sanctions on North Korea last week. To what extent will the sanctions curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile activity? Cumings: I would say there’s a two or three percent chance of that happening. It’s much more likely that North Korea is going to test more missiles and bombs because it is angry about sanctions. There was a demand to impose a full oil embargo on North Korea, and China refused to do that. So the UN cut one-third, which is supposed to be the amount of oil the military uses. All that will happen is the military will use the next third, and the third third will be left for the people of North Korea. So the sanctions basically hurt the people of North Korea. The country’s textile exports will also be blocked. This will hurt North Korea, but won’t impose enough pain to get the country to stop testing. If you look back to 2002 and 2003, North Korea wasn’t exporting much coal to China, but then coal became a big export worth upwards of $1 billion a year. Now China has cut back on importing coal from North Korea as a part of previous sanctions earlier in the year. So the worst thing that can happen to North Korea is that the country goes back to the 2003 situation. Likewise, textiles are a recent export. North Korea actually hadn’t exported or imported a lot up until recently as the Kim Jong-un government was engaging in market activities and letting North Koreans engage in market activities for the first time in the country’s history. These latest sanctions really hurt not Kim Jong-un’s nuclear program but the country’s market activities and trade, which we should be encouraging. The textile industry is always the industry that countries use to industrialize in the first instance and could bring major changes to North Korea’s economy. But now the UN is trying to block it. Russian President Vladimir Putin was exactly right when he said that North Koreans would eat grass before they give up their missiles and bombs. North Koreans had the experience of eating grass back in the 1990s during the famine. I was glad to see President Putin say that because it is a realistic judgment. The UN is trying to sanction North Korea into denuclearization. It’s just not going to work and it never has worked. GT: Trump warned “we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea.” How likely is real war on the Korean Peninsula? Cumings: He never should have said that. That was very irresponsible. His remarks about “fire and fury like the world has never seen” are even more irresponsible. Trump actually echoed former US president Harry Truman’s statement after the Hiroshima bomb but before Nagasaki that if the Japanese don’t surrender, “they [Japan] may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” Many people in the world view Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes that killed hundreds of thousands of people. It is very bad for the American president to threaten that against North Korea, a smaller country than Japan. Everybody knows that the US can turn North Korea into a “charcoal briquette” as Gen. Colin Powell said in 1995, if it wants to, but it’s undignified for the president to say that. I don’t think there’s going to be a “major, major conflict” with North Korea. President Trump will sooner or later realize that there’s no real military solution to the Korea Peninsula. GT: You once mentioned “in the West, treatment of North Korea is one-sided and ahistorical.” What factors have contributed to this phenomenon? What can be done to help North Korea reintegrate into the international community? Cumings: American policy toward North Korea has always been remarkably one-sided, and the US has basically set up a South Korea government and then defended it ever since the Korean War. It’s also one-sided in that the US assumes North Korea has no reason to exist, no interest or values that anyone should respect and so the best thing that could happen is if North Korea collapsed and disappeared. The long history going back 72 years to 1945 of American actions in North Korea is generally not known to the American people. The US always talks about the present and the future of the North Korean crisis, but never the past where the US intimated North Korea with nuclear weapons going back to 1950, and installed nuclear weapons in South Korea from 1958 to 1991. North Koreans know this very well, but the American people don’t know it. This is a part of a much deeper problem that Americans always look at the present and future, but not the past. Going into the history of our relations with North Korea would be a good start to educate the American people on the Korean War. Even well-informed people don’t know that the US occupied Korea for three years from 1945 to 1948 and set up a military government there. It would be good for the American media to investigate the past. Now both Democrats and Republicans say that the US can’t negotiate with North Korea because Pyongyang always breaks its agreements, which completely ignores the eight-year freeze on plutonium from 1994 to 2002. North Korea went along with a lot of what the US wanted at that time, and things looked very rosy until George W. Bush messed it all up. Either Six-Party Talks or bilateral talks between the US and North Korea can help Pyongyang reintegrate into the international community. Things could become integrated if North Korea feels secure. Bruce Cumings  teaches at the University of Chicago and is the author of The Korean War: A History. He is a Korea Policy Institute Associate. #BruceCumings #KoreanWar #peacetreaty #Nuclearweapons #ICBM #NorthKorea