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By KJ Noh | November 4, 2024 As US voters go to the polls on November 5th, they need to remind themselves that when the US elects its next domestic president, it is also selecting the emperor of a violent, global imperium.  Choices made over sundry domestic issues have far reaching effects, far beyond local pocketbook or civil rights issues.  They determine who lives and dies across the planet, and how much pain, harm and suffering the rest of the world will have to bear.  In this context, it's fair to ask, who is the lesser evil?   Trump or Harris?   The answer, of course, is "neither".  Like infinity, when it comes to evil, there's not much use in finger-counting which is greater or lesser.  They are cardinal equivalents. Third party is the moral choice. However, between two terrible choices, President Kamala Harris--to the extent that she has institutional continuity with the Biden/CNAS administration and retains their key advisors--is likely to wage more wars: in Ukraine and most certainly with China.  This is not because Trump is less hawkish or more prudent, but because he is likely to be less effective.   These have to do with: Distraction, Obstruction, and Opprobrium: Trump is likely to be focused on attacking/settling scores with domestic enemies, who have harassed, belittled, betrayed, tattled, audited, impeached, sued, indicted, prosecuted him, and possibly attempted his assassination.  He is also more likely to be thwarted or obstructed by institutional forces as he implements his agenda, even if it is similar to Joe Biden’s, and more likely to attract opprobrium and opposition, including if he wages war. Bean-counting vs Seoul force: Trump has contempt for South Korea's Yoon administration and wants to multiply the cost of stationing US troops in Korea nine-fold to $10 Billion/year.  That could be a deal breaker. He openly refers to South Korea as a "money machine ". This mercantile transactionalism is likely to put sand into the gears of the US war machine that is preparing Korea as the easiest and first place to start an omnicidal war with China. South Koreans are already furious with President Yoon Sok Yeol for subordinating South Korea's political and economic interests to US foreign policy, and they are likely to impeach Yoon if he submits to such flagrant extortion.  On the other hand, If he doesn't pay up, and the US administration weakens its support of Yoon, the Korean people will rise up and overthrow him as they have other US-quisling presidents like Syngman Rhee, Chun Doo Hwan, Park Geun Hye.  This will strategically diminish the prospects of the Empire. The canard of North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine is an attempt to stave off this bad end by heightening the stakes, promoting South Korea (and Yoon's) status as a global "pivot state", and enmeshing Korea into the Ukraine-NATO-Empire trainwreck.   Compassionate rape indulgences: Trump was openly contemptuous of "Shinzo" (Abe), but he has even less relationship with Japanese Prime Minister Ishida (or any future potential Japanese PM).  However, as with South Korea, his uncouth transactionalism  around the omoiyari yosan  (Japan's "empathy contribution budget”) for US troops in Japan, is likely to disorient and vex the Japanese leadership, and outrage the populace who are already livid to be paying reverse indulgences for occupation and rape .  JAKUS, the Japan-Korea-US alliance is already brittle, due to the current political weakness of Japan’s ruling LDP and South Korea's hatred for Yoon's pro-collaborationist position. Prime Minister Ishida has lost the lower house and the LDP, which has governed Japan as a virtual one-party state, is at its weakest in decades.  Simultaneously, Yoon's military collaboration with Japan, Korea's former colonizer, is sending Yoon into crisis territory, as his approval rating plummets down to 17% .    Deadly Insurance policy: Trump has said that the Taiwan authorities need to pay the US for protection  because the US is "no different from an insurance company".  But Trump’s insurance company is a corporation that has no intention of paying out if Taiwan becomes the next Ukraine.   He has also stated that Taiwan should spend 10% of its shrinking GDP on the military, a coded demand to buy more marked up US weapons systems.  Again, the ruling DPP will be bewildered and rattled by Trump's demand—an offer they can’t refuse: being asked to pony up for an extortionary "insurance" policy that guarantees almost certain denial of services while bankrupting the country: Trump has refused to state if he will commit troops to Taiwan to support US-prompted   secessionism. Currently Vice President Louise Hsiao, a former US citizen and deep state denizen, serves as President's William Lai's US minder.  A prissy preacher's daughter from New Jersey, it's a pretty good bet that neither Trump nor Vance will get along with the self-proclaimed "cat warrior" princess. Hsiao, for her part, has bet all her chips on Ukraine--stating that "the Ukraine war sends a powerful message to China"--the de-knickered message of a person squatting in an outhouse hit by a tornado.   Trump’s potential Ukraine pullout could heighten the mortification. Disdain for the McCain Stain: Certainly, Trump is hawkish and belligerent on Iran and could greenlight war.  He will also support Israel in continuing to wage its horrific genocide and ethnic cleansing, just as the Biden administration ministers to, indulges, and excuses every genocidal whim and action of Israel.  But Trump is likely to force some kind of settlement on Ukraine, because he hates losing and losers, and Ukraine is a losing war, which he can blame on Biden. Trump's language is extremely belligerent and hawkish, and he is rash and impulsive, but his narcissism traps him into trying to make himself look like a winner at all times.  Like the over-validated child, who will avoid any challenge  that might reveal the limits of his competence, Trump is less likely to test the outer limits of US power with peer competitors.   That means he could be less likely to start conventional wars he cannot win, and be more likely to try to get out of losing wars.   This could even be true for the genocidal war on Gaza, which despite its stream of atrocities, is Israel’s John McCain moment: a strategic and political loss for a colonizer that has been taken hostage by its own insanity.  Catastrophic Reboot Risk: The catastrophic geopolitical risk with Trump is he may not understand the real risks of nuclear war—he has asked “Why have nukes if they can’t be used?”—and could be recklessly tempted or prompted to use them.  This is in contradistinction to the CNAS neocons who will control Harris’ foreign policy and her nuclear threat posture : they understand the risks  and costs, and they still seek to use them deliberately.  They believe in integrating nuclear war seamlessly into conventional doctrine, exercises, signaling, and operations. This is true also for climate change.  Trump denies global warming and has stated that it is a Chinese conspiracy to undermine the US economy.  The Harris-Biden administration understands global warming but sees sustainable transition as unacceptable because it would boost China’s development and global status. They see doubling down on burning fossil fuels as in US core strategic interests of maintaining hegemony.  They would rather burn up the planet than let China shine. In fact, they would rather destroy the planet than give up an ounce of privilege to the burgeoning multipolar world.  Wonk-speaking necropolitical ideologues from their first cakewalk to the final funeral march of mankind, they would rather be dead rather than be led into a better world of sovereign independence, equality, non-interference, and peace.  If Trump is elected, the global south will pray that he never abandons his neo-mercantilist transactionalism and his petty narcissistic fraudulence. Until the dismantling of Empire and Capital, and until the West stops using wars to reboot the economy, this may be about the only thing that spares the world.   K.J. Noh is a scholar and peace activist focused on the geopolitics of the Asian continent. He writes for Counterpunch  and Dissident Voice , and reports for local and international media.

October 14, 2024 In a stunning sweep of victories, the U-20 Chollima women’s soccer team of the DPRK won the World Cup final, September 22, defeating Japan 1-0 in Bogota, Columbia.  The Chollima (mythic winged horse) team takes its place along side of the US and Germany as having won three World Cup finals, the first in 2006, and the second in 2016.  The players received a hero’s welcome  upon their return home. “In practice the North Korean style was energetic and high pressure, but also free, creative and fun, all inventive high-speed combinations,” observed The Guardian  sports writer, Barney Ronay. The players were engaging and a joy to watch,” he continued.   Amid the ever-escalating tensions between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the U.S. – Republic of Korea alliance, the Korea Policy Institute would like to acknowledge this remarkable achievement of North Korean women athletes, as a reminder that the future they and all of Korea inherit, will depend upon whether the parties to the Korean war make peace or war today.   -Korea Policy Institute

By Kyle Ferrana | September 17, 2024 | Originally published in Monthly Review Every winter, I enjoy attending the Studio Ghibli film festival at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. There’s a great nostalgia among certain Americans these days, a desire to relive pieces of their turn-of-the-millennium childhood and I won’t pretend to be an exception. Seeing classic films like Porco Rosso and Princess Mononoke on the IMAX screen can recreate what that time meant for many of us, for just a little while, and catching The Boy and the Heron this year was almost as magical. There’s one such film the museum shows that I’ll probably only see once, though: Isao Takahata’s 1988 masterpiece The Grave of the Fireflies . Those who have seen it understand why. But if audiences everywhere find it difficult to sit through its characters’ gut-wrenching fate, it’s no less difficult here to confront the how Takahata portrays Americans in his film. That is, not at all—only as the faceless, indifferent operators of distant terror machines that rain down fire on women and children from the sky. It’s not very comforting to realize that this is how much of the world still sees us. Japan today is an occupied country. U.S. military planes and helicopters enjoy exclusive access to much of its airspace and have passed overhead for decades after the events depicted in the film. The Japanese government, perpetually controlled by the U.S.-backed Liberal Democratic Party, is compelled to defray the cost of a U.S. garrison of fifty thousand troops within its borders, most of which abide menacingly in the southwestern Ryukyu Islands (also known as Okinawa), where they are notorious for their abuses. 1 Only this summer, news broke that the government had covered up five sex crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Okinawa Prefecture just since last year, one of which involved the kidnapping and sexual assault of a minor, most of which had gone unprosecuted. 2 Similar incidents have occurred throughout at least the past few decades in Japan, as well as in South Korea, which also hosts tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and the largest overseas U.S. military base at Camp Humphreys. 3 We know why the Ryukyuans and Koreans suffer—so we could fight Russia. And then China. Then North Korea, then China, then Vietnam, then China, and then Russia again, but always and now especially China. Japan’s ideal strategic location commands the coast of East Asia, and the United States has waged open warfare or economic siege all along that coast for half a century. With the same bland indifference as the warplanes of 1945, the U.S. high command has acknowledged that it ended the lives of one million Korean civilians in the early 1950s. 4 Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and Laotians were killed by the U.S. Air Force in the same manner in the 1960s and ’70s, and millions of acres of the Vietnamese jungle were defoliated with chemical weapons that continue to kill today. Google “Agent Orange hydrocephalus.” You won’t thank me. Of course, there is no end of propaganda in the United States, then and now, to justify all this mass murder, explicitly or otherwise. Korea and Vietnam had invaded themselves—surely, we couldn’t stand by and let such a thing happen? Even prominent members of Congress still publicly defend the atomic bombing of Japanese civilian populations as necessary to end the war in the Pacific, ignoring a growing consensus among historians, based partly on the now-available Soviet archives, that the Soviet Union’s offensive against Japanese-controlled Manchuria was far more concerning to Japan’s wartime leaders than atomic weapons. 5 It is, unfortunately, quintessentially American to believe that foreign countries will only respond to force and can only be truly intimidated by a really big bomb. As you read these words, the drums of war are beating again. China and North Korea, we are told, are escalating tensions, issuing new threats and provocations, performing more military exercises, and conducting more missile tests. Seldom is it mentioned why such escalations are happening. They don’t seem to have a cause at all; they could not possibly be countermoves in response to escalations by the United States, because nothing the United States does can be in any way escalatory. It could certainly not be an escalation for the U.S. Navy to send its warships through the South China Sea, as it has done regularly since 2015 in what the United States has called “freedom of navigation” voyages, or through the Taiwan Strait, as it has a hundred times since 2007 and continues to do with greater and greater frequency. 6 After all, were China or any other maritime power to send their warships to the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. government or press would surely have no objection. Surely it couldn’t be an escalation for the U.S. military to operate a secret disinformation campaign in the Philippines to undermine public perception of Chinese-made vaccines for COVID-19 at a time when tens of thousands of Filipinos died from the virus, or to expand its presence in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea in 2023, or to land a B-52 bomber in South Korean airbase for the first time last October, or to send a nuclear-armed submarine to a South Korean port for the first time last July. 7 If the government of China was at all alarmed by the revelation of the presence of U.S. troops on the islands of Kinmen in March of this year, a mere three miles from the Chinese mainland, this was surely an overreaction, just as it would be highly irrational for China to take any particular notice of the United States staging its largest-ever war games in the Philippines in May. 8 When president Joe Biden publicly takes credit for convincing Japan to increase its military budget, it should apparently be of no consequence to Japan’s neighbors, yet when President Xi Jinping remarks that despite his suspicions that the United States might be trying to goad China into attacking Taiwan, they would not take the bait, it can only be a sign of China’s hostility and unpredictability. 9 It is clearly an absurd idea to place no blame on the United States for our collective ascent on the staircase of military and political tensions. Press any American on this point and they will surely agree, if for no other reason than their partisan allegiance. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade war with China, for example, were decried by the Democrats no less fiercely in 2018 than Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was by Republicans in 2022. 10 (Many Americans, of course, will condemn both, but you will not easily find one who thinks both parties have done a fine job.) Now, with all this in mind, suppose the U.S. government chose instead to de -escalate and withdraw from its role as “protector” of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines? What would happen? Even posing such a hypothetical will preclude this article from being published in any mainstream paper of record. Such an idea is so heretical, so unthinkable, that no politician or major public figure can give voice to it. The U.S. right to occupy these countries is so unchallengeable in public discourse that many Americans may be unaware that U.S. forces are there at all. But since it has nevertheless just been posed, let’s continue the thought experiment, if for no other reason than its novelty. It could be that, if given a chance, the nations and governments of East Asia might prove a little more reasonable than our press seems to give them credit for. They might recognize in such a development an opportunity for mutual benefit, rather than bloodshed. There are currently many problems facing both sides of the Korean peninsula. The North has suffered for decades under U.S. and international sanctions, unable to trade for fuel in any legitimate channels, struggling to maintain its agriculture, and compelled to focus instead on its nuclear program, as its best shield for escaping the far worse fates of Libya or Iraq. The immense wealth accumulated by the South—the world’s fourteenth-largest economy—could do a lot of good, if it were invested in the Northern countryside. Meanwhile in the South, households have one of the highest levels of debt in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, nearly 40 percent of all elderly people (those over 65 years old) live in poverty, and with the world’s lowest birth rate, the country faces a serious demographic challenge. 11 Social and political integration with the North has the potential to solve every one of these problems. Northern natural resources could boost the stagnating South Korean high-tech economy and reduce its dependence on foreign supply chains. Combined, the Korean population could far more easily become sustainable. Northern policies of public housing and gender equality, if applied broadly, might ease the harsh disparities in the South and, freed from the enormous burden of military spending, the entire peninsula would have much more resources to distribute to its people. 12 A fantasy, perhaps; but to think that such a positive future is even remotely likely to come to pass at the point of a U.S. gun would be the height of arrogance. The Chinese government has repeatedly made clear it regards the question of Taiwan’s independence to be its “red line,” yet polls have consistently shown that the majority in Taiwan currently favor neither independence nor integration with the mainland, but the persistence of the status quo. 13 There is good reason to believe that if the United States deescalates, they will have their way. Taiwan is a small island with few resources; its importance, to both great powers, lies in its strategic location and in its semiconductor industry, which is by far the most advanced and productive in the world. Yet now that the mainland is rapidly developing its own semiconductor industry despite U.S. sanctions, this importance is diminishing. 14 If a U.S. withdrawal also diminishes the island’s strategic value, then the plain fact will be that in the very near future, the mainland will not need Taiwan at all, though Taiwan may need the mainland. The initiative will then belong to the Taiwanese, just as they desire. The bitter rivalry between China and the Philippines over the waters of the South China Sea may catch the most headlines of any conflict in the region these days, and surely the blame for it can be spread across all parties. Yet the same logic applies. There is not much within the South China Sea that China would want, if the sea’s strategic value were to disappear. There are no habitable islands. Fishing rights currently form the basis of many such disputes, and as China shifts to aquaculture to meet its demand for seafood and brings stronger environmental regulation and reduced fuel subsidies to its fishing industry, these waters will be sought after less by China than by its neighbors. 15 The fossil fuels, too, that lie beneath the sea will be needed less and less as China continues its massive, rapid, and historic shift to renewable energy. Gasoline consumption in China peaked in 2023 and is expected to continue to decline as the production and adoption of electric vehicles skyrockets. 16 China makes an expansive claim to the South China Sea primarily because it is surrounded. While the United States controls nearly the entire first island chain, China’s only avenue for maritime trade with the rest of the world lies through those waters. As the blood-thirstiest U.S. media war hawks continually and publicly fantasize about “chok[ing] off [China’s] oceangoing trade,” China increasingly sees its survival tied to maintaining access to this critical gateway. 17 The Philippines, however, has no such limitations. It can trade with whomever it likes anywhere in the world, being a sprawling archipelago with many unobstructed Pacific coasts, which would be quite difficult for any navy to blockade. If China were no longer encircled, negotiations over who gets which part of the sea would likely bear more fruit (or fish). Finally, Japan could gain an opportunity, for the first time in generations, to determine its own destiny. Presently, the islands face many of the same problems that beset South Korea, in addition to an even more stagnant economy that has not grown significantly since the 1990s. There is little doubt that Japan wants change; the approval rating of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has loyally served the United States for generations, recently sank to 25 percent, the lowest since the party’s brief interregnum in 2009. 18 According to a poll by public broadcaster NHK, 80 percent of the Japanese population do not approve of the distribution of U.S. troops in Japan. 19 The people do not wish the further militarization that is being thrust upon them and the aging population will certainly not sustain any serious conflict. These are of course all very optimistic scenarios, and will no doubt be more complicated and unpredictable in practice. There is always the danger that old resentments in the region will resurface, particularly between Japan and the victims of its own colonial empire in the early twentieth century. But it is also currently the role of the United States to stoke such resentments, in order to keep the different nations of East Asia divided by hatred. The people themselves are not so easily swayed. This June, when a Chinese man attacked a Japanese woman and her child with a knife in Suzhou, a Chinese woman named Hu Youping intervened, sacrificing her life to save them. Her actions were praised by both the Chinese community and the Japanese embassy, and the Chinese government swiftly cracked down on “nationalist sentiment” online that was considered to influence the attack. 20 The wish for peaceful resolution and reconciliation remains far stronger than its opposite. I have no doubt that whoever oversees the U.S. government next year will not follow my advice. Instead, we are likely to see more escalations, more provocations, and an even stronger and more militarized U.S. presence in the Pacific. But I also don’t doubt that the peak of U.S. power is in the past, and that’s where it should stay. The 1990s that many of us are so nostalgic for were not so magical for the rest of the world, which suffered horror, starvation, and destitution, from the cruel shock therapy in Eastern Europe to the wars engulfing Africa to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. The world is stronger now, not so defenseless. The longer the United States waits to face reality, the more painful that reality will be. Notes 1 . Tim Weiner, “ C.I.A. Spent Millions to Support Japanese Right in 50’s and 60’s ,” New York Times , October 9, 1994; Hiroshi Asahina, “ Japan Greenlights $8.6bn to Host U.S. Troops ,” Nikkei , March 26, 2022. 2 . Shohei Sasagawa, “ Hayashi Reveals 3 More Sex Crime Cases in Okinawa Kept from Public ,” Asahi Shimbun , July 3, 2024. 3 . John M. Glionna, “ Alleged Rapes by U.S. Soldiers Ratchet up Anger in South Korea ,” Los Angeles Times , October 20, 2011. 4 . Blaine Harden, “ The U.S. War Crime North Korea Won’t Forget ,” Washington Post , March 24, 2015. 5 . Alexandra Marquez, “ Sen. Lindsey Graham Says Israel Should Do ‘Whatever’ It Has to While Comparing the War in Gaza to Hiroshima and Nagasaki ,” NBC News , May 12, 2024; Associated Press and Vladimir Isachenkov, “ Historians: Soviet Offensive, Key to Japan’s WWII Surrender, Was Eclipsed by A-Bombs ,” Fox News , August 14, 2010. 6 . Jane Perlez, “ U.S. Sails Warship Near Island in South China Sea, Challenging Chinese Claims ,” New York Times , May 10, 2016; John Power, “ US Warships Made 92 Trips through the Taiwan Strait since 2007 ,” South China Morning Post , May 3, 2019; Christopher Bodeen, “ China Criticizes US for Ship’s Passage through Taiwan Strait Weeks before New Leader Takes Office ,” AP News , May 9, 2024. 7 . Chris Bing and Joel Schectman, “ Pentagon Ran Secret Anti-Vax Campaign to Undermine China During Pandemic ,” Reuters , June 14, 2024; US Department of Defense, “ Philippines, U.S. Announce Locations of Four New EDCA Sites ,” press release (US Department of Defense, April 3, 2023); Ryo Nakamura and Rurika Imahashi, “ U.S. Military to Use Papua New Guinea Naval Base for 15 Years ,” Nikkei , July 19, 2023; Chae Yun-hwan, “ U.S. Strategic Bomber B-52 Lands at S. Korean Air Base for 1st Time ,” Yonhap News Agency , October 17, 2023; Martha Raddatz and Luis Martinez, “ ABC News Exclusive: Inside the US Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarine in South Korea ,” ABC News , July 20, 2023. 8 . Austin Ramzy and Joyu Wang, “ Taiwan Acknowledges Presence of U.S. Troops on Outlying Islands ,” Wall Street Journal , March 19, 2024; Nick Aspinwall, “ Philippines, US Simulate Mock Invasions in Largest Ever War Games ,” Al Jazeera , May 9, 2024. 9 . Joseph R. Biden, “ Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception ” (The White House, June 20, 2023); Demetri Sevastopulo and Joe Leahy, “ Xi Jinping Claimed US Wants China to Attack Taiwan ,” Financial Times , June 15, 2024. 10 . Haris Alic, “ House Republicans Blast Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip: ‘Photo Op Foreign Policy ,’” Fox News , August 9, 2022. 11 . Yoo Choon-sik, “ Managing Household Debt ,” Korea Herald , April 22, 2024; Yoon Min-sik, “ S. Korea’s Sky-High Elderly Poverty Edges Even Higher to 38.1% ,” Korea Herald , March 11, 2024. 12 . Se Eun Gong, “ Elections Reveal a Growing Gender Divide across South Korea ,” National Public Radio, April 10, 2024. 13 . “ China’s Xi Tells Biden: Taiwan Issue Is ‘First Red Line’ That Must Not Be Crossed ,” Reuters , November 14, 2022; Chao Yen-hsiang, “ Over 80% of Taiwanese Favor Maintaining Status Quo with China: Survey ,” Focus Taiwan , February 23, 2024. 14 . Vlad Savov and Debby Wu, “ Huawei Teardown Shows Chip Breakthrough in Blow to US Sanctions ,” Bloomberg , September 3, 2023. 15 . Hongzhou Zhang and Genevieve Donnellon-May, “ China’s Fisheries Policy Makes a Belated Shift to Sustainability ,” East Asia Forum , April 7, 2023. 16 . “ China’s Gasoline Demand to Peak Early on Fast Adoption of EVs ,” Bloomberg , August 4, 2023; Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu, “ For China’s Auto Market, Electric Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present ,” New York Times , September 26, 2022. For a transitional and backup power source, China instead still relies mainly on coal—though carbon emissions likely peaked last year as well—and there is surely no coal that can be extracted from the South China Sea. 17 . Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, “ How Primed for War Is China? ” Foreign Policy , February 4, 2024. 18 . Miki Nose and Taishu Yuasa, “ Japan’s Ruling LDP Registers Weakest Support since Return to Power ,” Nikkei , February 26, 2024. 19 . CBS News, “ U.S. Soldier in Japan Charged with Sexually Assaulting Teenage Girl in Okinawa ,” CBS News , June 27, 2024. 20 . Kelly Ng, “ China Honours Woman Who Died Saving Japanese Family ,” BBC, June 27, 2024. Kyle Ferrana is the author of Why the World Needs China , recently released by Clarity Press. He can also be found on Twitter (@KyleTrainEmoji)

By Paul Liem  | August 17, 2024 On August 17, 2024, hundreds of activists participated in rallies in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco  to protest the Ulchi Freedom Shield war games, and to call for the U.S. to get out of Korea. The rallies were organized by the U.S. Out of Korea Campaign  which was launched by Nodutdol for Community Development  on July 27, 2024. The following is a talk delivered by KPI board member, Paul Liem, at the San Francisco rally. There is a narrative in vogue in certain elite circles of academics and politicians in the Republic of Korea (ROK), particularly in the administration of President Yoon Suk Yeol, that Imperial Japan was the benefactor of Korea’s modernization and those who commemorate Korean independence fighters as patriots are badly mistaken.  According to this view it is rather those who prospered from collaboration with Imperial Japan who propelled Korea’s modernization under Japanese rule, and who paved the way for the advancement of the Korean economy after liberation.    This is not a new take.  It is the view of the Korean elite at the time of Korea’s liberation from Japan 79 years ago. It benefited opportunistically from Japan’s rape of Korea’s natural resources and the dispossession of its people.  And it was the ascent of this elite to state power under the auspices of an American Military Government in Korea (1945 – 1948) that assured the continuation of this narrative, after liberation. Such is the sordid advent of the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948 as a separate state south of the 38th parallel.  Such is the beginning of a US-led world order in Asia premised upon the “rehabilitation” of Japan after WWII, the division of Korea, and secured with bi-lateral military alliances with the ROK and Japan.   Under the US-ROK alliance, which is as much an ideological embrace of neoliberalism as it is a military alliance, the regime of private property and the anti-communist laws instituted by Japan, prior to liberation, live on.  However, no amount of repression to date has dampened the indignation of the Korean public at any show of disrespect for those who struggled against Japan for Korea’s Independence.    Yet today a pro-Japanese faction under the leadership of President Yoon Suk-Yeol has reared its ugly head.  Because it believes that its entitlement to wealth depends upon the continuation of US patronage it has forsaken legitimate claims to redress for crimes committed against the Korean people by colonial Japan at the behest of Washington, which seeks to harmonize the ROK and Japan into a frontline fighting force to contain China and isolate the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).  Among these are apologies and redress due from Japan for the sexual slavery of Korean women, known as “comfort women,” for compensation to Koreans forced to labor for the Japanese war machine, and most recently the failed demand that Japan truthfully describe Korean workers of the Sado mine as “forced.”   Moreover, as if to ingratiate himself to Washington even more, in his Liberation Day speech, just as the US-ROK Ulchi Freedom war games were about to launch, Yoon practically declared war on the DPRK, by calling for regime change.  “The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North,” as he put it.   Not since Syngman Rhee has any South Korean president called for reunification by absorption of the north, as Yoon did this week.  That is because the people of south Korea, who by and large embrace democracy as it is understood to be practiced in the west, nevertheless do not want war and have emphatically supported joint north-south efforts at peaceful reconciliation, instead.    Not since Park Chung Hee, a lieutenant in the Japanese imperial army (Lt Okamoto Minoru), tasked with counterinsurgency against Korean anti-Japanese guerillas in Manchuria, and who came to power through a military coup in 1961, has any ROK president proactively conceded the right to claim reparations from Japan.  I am referring to the ROK-Japan Agreement of 1965 in which Park relinquished claims for one half a century of colonial rule for the sum of three hundred million dollars.  That other presidential administrations have sought to gain redress for the enslavement of Koreans by Imperial Japan, is only because the people of south Korea honor those who suffered and died toiling for the Japanese war machine and demand that Japan be held accountable for their sacrifices.   President Yoon came to power in 2022 by a negligible margin of less than one percent.  This was at a time when household debt was at an all-time high and housing prices, stagnant economic growth, and gender inequality were the top issues of the day.  His solution, though, has been to prioritize wealth extraction by the conglomerates, including those of its military industrial complex, by cracking down on labor unions and by going “all in” on a trilateral military alliance with the U.S. and Japan. Known by its acronym, JAKUS, it is posturing for war with China, and possibly the DPRK and Russia, and possibly for war with all of these nuclear armed states at once.   The Korea Policy Institute is supporting the “US Out of Korea Campaign” because we know that the path of self-destruction that south Korea is treading is a direct consequence of 79 years of US foreign policy.   It was the American Military Government in Korea that disbanded the indigenous People’s Republic of Korea and grassroots governing structures, the People’s Committees, in 1945, and directed counterinsurgency warfare massacring progressive forces that continued to struggle for democracy and Korea’s sovereignty.   We recall that just as the US was the first to recognize the Zionist state of Israel in 1948, it called for separate elections in the south to install the remnants of Korea’s feudal aristocracy as the ruling class of the Republic of Korea, with Syngman Rhee as president, also in 1948.  It subsequently went to war against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China to protect the Rhee dictatorship and expand its rule over the whole of Korea, bombing and napalming the north into oblivion and killing millions of civilians in the process.   We know that the repression of workers’ rights, soaring household debt, rising inequality and the ascent of right-wing extremism in the ROK is a consequence of the state’s embrace of a US-led neoliberal world order in which the financial wealth of its ruling class is premised on unrestrained privatization of the economy and the impoverishment of its working class.   We know that the acquiescence of the Yoon administration to the view promoted by the right-wing in Japan that Japanese rule “civilized” Korea is a consequence of US policy to create a NATO-like military formation, with the ROK and Japan at its core, to defend the neoliberal order in Asia.   And we know that if we as members of the Korean diaspora in the U.S., and as American citizens, fail to demand and achieve “US out of Korea” the fate of Korea can be seen in the ongoing death and destruction in Ukraine, to achieve US-led NATO ambitions for expansion over Eurasia, and in the genocide of the Palestinian people by the US-backed Zionist state of Israel.   Although our demand today is “US Out of Korea,” we know that the US, clinging desperately to its mantle of global hegemon, is suppressing liberation movements and plotting regime change adventures on a global scale.  To succeed we must join forces with all of the movements that have gathered here today, and with the American working-class that is struggling to assert its economic interests while carrying the weight of a 35 trillion-dollar sovereign debt from which only the financial elites, the military industrial, and educational complex, and the war mongers in Washington benefit.  Together, in solidarity with our brothers and sisters across the Global South, we will defeat US Imperialism everywhere, and in Korea too.   Long live international solidarity! Down with US Imperialism! Toojeng!   Paul Liem is the Chair of the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors.

By Dae-Han Song | August 10, 2024 | Originally published in Monthly Review In his New Year’s address on January 15, 2024, North Korean Workers’ Party Chairman Kim Jong-un proposed removing from North Korea’s socialist constitution the notions of South and North Koreans as compatriots and the pursuit of peaceful reunification. 1 Furthermore, he argued that North Korea’s education should teach students that South Korea is the North’s main enemy state. 2 While denying that this was an announcement for reunification through preemptive attack, Kim stated that if war broke out, North Korea would occupy, subjugate, and reclaim South Korea. 3 This speech severed ties with the more than thirty years of peaceful reunification pursued by North Korea’s two previous leaders. Since the early 1990s, North Korea has sought the normalization of relations with the United States and peaceful reunification with South Korea. During that time, inter-Korean relations ebbed and flowed. But North Korea’s changed inter-Korean policy moves away from peaceful reunification and toward war in the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia. If we are to chart our way back to peace, we must understand the motivations that led to such a shift and the historical and geopolitical processes that have led us to our current moment: the failed peace negotiations with the United States, the historical and social limits of South Korean politics, and the intensifying polarization of Northeast Asia due to U.S. military escalation. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass famously said that “power concedes nothing without a demand.” 4 Peace movements must organize around a common set of demands against war: opposing the U.S. military escalation that is dividing the region into camps; overcoming the structural limitations of South Korea that keeps it dependent upon the United States; and coalescing frontline struggles within South Korea and the region into a common struggle against U.S. military escalations. Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Address The 2024 New Year’s speech triggered alarm, including among longtime North Korea experts Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker, who penned an article, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing For War?” 5 In his speech, Kim had shifted toward open hostility by recommending the state remove language asserting that South and North Koreans are “80 million compatriots,” as well as the phrase “independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity” from North Korea’s socialist constitution. Instead, he recommended instilling the “firm idea that ROK [the Republic of Korea] is their [North Korean people’s] primary enemy state and invariable principal enemy.” 6 The tone was a marked shift from the approach taken by the state over the past three decades. For reunification, Kim envisioned “completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK and annex [ sic ] it as a part of the territory of our Republic in case of [ sic ] a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula.” While severing fraternal relations, he clarified that the goal is not a “preemptive attack for realizing unilateral ‘reunification by force of arms.’” In effect, while he did not rule out reunification through war, he was also not proposing it. This sentiment of breaking ties but not declaring war is buttressed by the fact, often left out in the media, that over two-thirds of the speech focused on building up North Korea’s economy, as the “supreme task…is to stabilize and improve the people’s living as early as possible.” These are hardly the words of someone mobilizing for impending war. 7 Yet, this shift in North Korea’s policy is also not simply a codification of the current status quo. If war is not around the corner, it is on the horizon. As Professor Jung-chul Lee of Seoul National University points out, we cannot really know the full meaning of these declarations given the current state of the world, the region, and the hardline administration of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. 8 Conflict erupting between China, the United States, and Taiwan could destabilize the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, as the United States is bogged down in regional wars and conflicts—particularly in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing attacks against Gaza—miscalculations or escalating responses by Yoon and Kim have the potential to ignite war in the region. Extricating ourselves from the current situation must start with understanding the motivations behind the speech. Kim’s remarks at the December 27, 2023, Ninth Plenary of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea provides some context for understanding them. Kim stated that South Korea’s status as a “colonial pawn of the United States” makes it an inappropriate counterpart to discuss “reunification.” 9 Furthermore, he stated that, regardless of which party is in power, South Korea’s policy of reunification has always been one of reunification through absorption and the collapse of North Korea. 10 If these are the stated causes for North Korea’s shift in policy, we must look at how we got to this point. To understand, we must look back to the causes and dynamics that brought us to the situation today. North Korea-U.S. Negotiations Collapse Again The collapsed Hanoi Summit in 2019 marks a decisive point in shifting North Korea’s strategy. The summit was one of a long string of failed peace negotiations with the United States that started with the thawing of the Cold War in the 1980s as North Korea shifted its U.S. policy from confrontation to engagement. Revisiting the ebbs and flows of the negotiation process reveals that North Korea earnestly pursued peace with a vacillating United States, whose geopolitical stratagems and imperialist ideology not only sapped its commitment to the process, but often also actively derailed it. The book Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea’s Nuclear Program by Hecker, nuclear scientist, former Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a longtime expert on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, offers valuable insights into the historical context of and motivations behind the negotiation process. One of the most important elements in comprehending the negotiation process is understanding North Korea’s paradoxical pursuit of peace with the United States through nuclear bombs. This shift was precipitated by the thawing of the Cold War, which risked leaving North Korea isolated: China normalized relations with the United States and then—despite North Korea’s strong opposition—with South Korea. 11 In 1988, North Korean leadership presented a plan for peaceful unification that included a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, disarmament, and peace between North and South Korea. In exchange for respecting its autonomy, North Korea would “let bygones be bygones” and “continue to work towards improving relations” with the United States. 12 North Korea’s shift in its U.S. policy from confrontation to engagement was a significant change given North Korea’s animosity toward the primary role of the United States in dividing the Korean Peninsula, as well as its near carpet bombing of North Korea. 13 Furthermore, by 1992, the North was even secretly willing to accept “continuing US military presence on the Peninsula as a hedge against expanded, potentially hostile, Chinese or Russian influence.” 14 Much like North Korea had played the Soviet Union and China against each other, in the post-Cold War era, when ideological bonds were weakened, North Korea was hoping to do the same with the United States as a new balancing force. 15 North Korea’s approach was to normalize relations with the United States from a position of strength and not of weakness. Thus, it pursued a dual-track strategy of diplomacy and nuclear weapons “to hedge against failure in one track or the other.” 16 When diplomacy failed or stalled, North Korea would switch to developing its nuclear weapons. Its survival would be ensured, whether through peace or a nuclear deterrent. Furthermore, the nuclear track could pressure the United States to return to the diplomatic track. 17 As longtime North Korea experts Carlin and John Lewis observed, the best way for the United States to denuclearize North Korea would have been to “make room for the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] in an American vision of the future of Northeast Asia.” 18 One such close moment was the October 2000 joint communiqué to fundamentally improve relations that emerged from U.S. President Bill Clinton’s 1994 Agreed Framework. 19 Clinton’s “Grand Bargain” In 1994, the Korean Peninsula was one decision away from being engulfed in a catastrophic war. Faced with the possibility that North Korea was extracting fissile material from its spent nuclear rods to produce plutonium bombs, Clinton contemplated the possibility of a preemptive strike against North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The latter would have triggered a North Korean attack upon South Korea; the ensuing conflict was expected to kill one million people. 20 Former president Jimmy Carter’s visit with Chairman Kim Il-sung averted catastrophe and opened negotiations to the 1994 Agreed Framework. This “grand bargain” would normalize diplomatic and economic relations through the phased dismantling of the Yongbyon reactor and its replacement with two light-water nuclear ones. 21 Heavy fuel oil would be provided during the transition. North Korea froze operation of its graphite-moderated reactors, accepted the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring, and cooperated in the safe storage of its spent fuel. In 1998, U.S. officials stated to Congress their satisfaction with North Korea’s fulfillment of the agreement. 22 The United States, however, offered neither “formal assurances, against the threat or use of nuclear weapons” nor delivered on the construction of its light-water reactors. 23 As early as December 1996, a Republican-dominated Congress blocked the Clinton administration from meeting its obligations; Congress was waiting for North Korea to collapse. 24 It was likely during this time, in the late 1990s, when the United States appeared split on fulfilling its obligations, that North Korea started its uranium enrichment insurance policy: a second, more technologically sophisticated (but easier to conceal and expand) path toward a nuclear bomb. In 1998, with the Agreed Framework “moribund,” North Korea launched a missile over Japan. 25 Despite the provocations (or, more likely, because of them), the United States and North Korea salvaged the Agreed Framework and achieved the October 2000 joint communiqué to “build a new relationship free from past enmity.” When Clinton left office, North Korea was “at the bottom of the list of future security problems for the United States.” 26 George W. Bush: Neocon Regime Change The neoconservatives that served the U.S. State Department and National Security Council under the George W. Bush administration viewed North Korea’s diplomatic overtures as simply wanting to “buy time for its nuclear program.” 27 Yet, this ideologically distorted assessment failed to hold up logically: if developing nuclear bombs had been its goal all along, North Korea would not have stopped the Yongbyon reactor or halted construction of the larger reactors, which would have produced plutonium in larger quantities. 28 Ultimately, the neoconservative ideology of a post-Cold War, preeminent United States strategically promoting its values (through unilateral military action when necessary) around the world left little room for the strategic empathy that would have allowed it to engage with North Korea. Its bullish approach was emboldened after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. 29 North Korea became part of the “axis of evil.” Furthermore, Bush’s leaked Nuclear Posture Review revealed that the administration did not rule out a nuclear attack against North Korea. 30 The negotiation talks between Bush and Kim Jong-il collapsed in October 2002, when the Bush Administration accused North Korea of admitting to a uranium enrichment program. With hardliners in the administration such as John Bolton pushing to punish North Korea’s “cheating,” Bush stopped shipments of heavy fuel. As North Korea’s freezing of the Yongbyon reactor was predicated on the provision of heavy fuel oil, North Korea announced the resumption of the reactor and the expulsion of IAEA inspectors. As Hecker notes, the Bush administration pushed North Korea to expand its plutonium stock from maybe one or two nuclear bombs to enough for five or six. 31 In his second term, Bush attempted multilateral diplomacy, expanding talks to include China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea, with China playing a central role as the mediator between North Korea and the United States. In the fourth round of the Six-Party Talks, an agreement was reached in which North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapons, its peaceful use of nuclear energy would be guaranteed, and, most importantly, North Korea and the United States would normalize relations. 32 Construction of the light-water nuclear reactors would be discussed at an “appropriate time.” However, after the agreement was reached, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill read a statement from administration hardliners. 33 This terminated construction of the light-water reactors, called for intrusive inspections (that North Korea had opposed), and added human rights issues and other weapons programs as issues that needed to be discussed. 34 North Korea had crossed the finish line, only to see the goalposts moved up ahead. The U.S. Treasury Department then froze North Korean funds held by the Delta Asia Financial Group in Macau. Banks around the world began to cut ties with North Korea, sharply dropping the value of its currency. As the Chinese delegation noted, the United States had just thrown a wrench into the negotiation process. 35 After the derailed talks and the Delta Asia sanctions, North Korea shifted to its nuclear track and conducted its first nuclear test on October 9, 2006. Having displayed its nuclear capability, North Korea switched back to the diplomatic track. Negotiations led to Bush sending the first shipment of heavy fuel oil in five years in September 2007. On June 27 the next year, North Korea blew up one of the cooling towers of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which “seriously limit[ed] the [nuclear weapons] program.” 36 The Six-Party Talks fell apart again when the United States moved the goalposts from the dismantling of the plutonium program (which had been tested in 2006) to also dismantling the uranium program and allowing the United States access to any site it suspected while providing all records of imports and exports of nuclear materials and equipment. Then, in a speech, Bush demanded North Korea “end its harsh rule and respect the dignity and human rights of its people.” 37 The United States failed to remove North Korea from the terrorism list, and North Korea declared it would restore the Yongbyon nuclear facility. 38 When Kim Jong-il became ill, it introduced a more urgent domestic dynamic that would impact the negotiations: ensuring the smooth transfer and consolidation of power to his son, Kim Jong-un, by presenting “a tough posture externally.” 39 The wheels were set in motion for a second nuclear test. Obama’s Strategic Neglect Despite protests from the new Barack Obama administration, North Korea announced it would exercise its right to use outer space by launching a satellite. The rocket launch failed, and the Obama administration condemned it as a provocative act. North Korea responded by pulling out of the Six-Party Talks and, six weeks later, on May 25, 2009, conducted its second nuclear test. Under attack from Bush hardliners, the Obama administration shifted its approach from engagement to “strategic patience,” ratcheting up sanctions against North Korea’s alleged provocations while not engaging diplomatically unless North Korea showed a willingness to end its nuclear program. 40 After revealing its uranium enrichment program to a delegation, including Hecker, in November 2010, North Korea offered to give up its uranium enrichment program if the United States recommitted to the October 2007 Six-Party Agreement. 41 On February 29, 2012, the Leap Day Deal was reached. From the beginning, both countries interpreted the agreement differently, with North Korea understanding the deal as improving bilateral relations based on “respect for sovereignty and equality” and the United States viewing it as North Korea’s need to “demonstrate its commitment to denuclearization.” More concretely, North Korea would enact a “moratorium on nuclear tests, long-range missile launches, and uranium enrichment activity at Yongbyon and…allow the IAEA to monitor” the process. Furthermore, the United States would provide food aid as well as acknowledge North Korea’s security concerns and the lifting of sanctions and provision of the light-water reactors. 42 The death of Kim Jong-il on December 17, 2011, prompted another satellite launch to mark the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birthday. This was likely a decision that had been set in motion before Kim Jong-il’s death. 43 Despite all parties’ attempts to stop the launch, North Korea proceeded, insisting that launching a peaceful satellite did not violate the Leap Day Deal. Still, Obama pulled out of the agreement, and North Korea responded by withdrawing and developing its nuclear program. As Hecker noted, if the United States had practiced some forbearance, it might have arrested the development of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program by having access to Yongbyon, as well as getting an agreement to freeze its nuclear and long-range missile tests. 44 In 2013, North Korea carried out another nuclear test, this time with a uranium bomb. For the rest of his term, Obama maintained “strategic patience,” combining nonengagement with sanctions. As a result, North Korea continued down its nuclear track, going from enough plutonium for a handful of “primitive nuclear weapons,” with one nuclear test and no missiles to deliver them, to having enough for twenty-five plutonium and uranium bombs as well as “dozens of successful missile tests.” 45 Neocons Derail Trump’s Rapprochement Despite a rocky start punctuated by insults and threats between Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, along with escalating U.S. sanctions and North Korea’s sixth nuclear test of a hydrogen bomb and testing an intercontinental ballistic missile able to reach all of the United States, the two countries embarked again on the path of engagement. The path opened with North Korea’s participation in the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics when North and South Korean teams walked under one flag. The mood was further consolidated by Moon Jae-in’s visit to North Korea and an April 27, 2018, statement that created the conditions for Trump’s meeting with Kim later in Singapore. As a gesture of engagement, North Korea destroyed its nuclear test sites (reducing the possibility of a nuclear test) and placed a moratorium on nuclear bomb and long-range missile testing. 46 The June 12, 2018, Singapore statement affirmed the desire for improved relations. Ultimately, the 2019 Hanoi Summit would be derailed through the intervention of Bolton, who demanded a “full baseline declaration of North Korea’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic-missile programs.” North Korea, in Bolton’s words, ensured that such a comprehensive picture would be ultimately given, but it could not do so at the beginning as it “had no legal guarantees to safeguard their country’s security. They had no diplomatic relations; seventy years of hostility and only eight months of personal relations.” 47 The Hanoi Summit ended with no deal: Bolton had impressed upon Trump that there was no “need to be rushed” and that he could simply “walk away.” 48 Bi-Partisan Pax Americana Neoconservatives, including Robert Joseph and Bolton, have done the most to derail negotiations with North Korea. Many of these neoconservatives were associated with the Project for the New American Century, the founding principles of which espouse “American military preeminence” to consolidate its “global leadership” in the post-Cold War moment so that it can “maintain American security and advance American interests” through a “foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad.” 49 Given its impetus to challenge not just the “regime hostile to our interests” and to U.S. “values,” neoconservative policy was, from the outset, incompatible with North Korea’s dual-track approach for co-existence on an equal footing. Even as denuclearization took place, Bush accused North Korean leadership of being tyrants and dictators. For an ideology that aggressively, albeit selectively, and militarily pushes and enforces U.S. values, such labels are more than words; they are the future justifications for war and intervention. 50 Yet, it was not simply the neoconservatives that impeded negotiations with North Korea; liberal hawks also did. Even as the Clinton administration engaged with North Korea, it labeled the country one of the “backlash states” that “threaten the democratic order being created around them.” 51 Liberal hawks, including under the Obama and Joe Biden administrations, might differ on the means, but the Democratic Party and its foreign policy advisors are part of the same military-industrial complex and foreign policy network that extends the Monroe Doctrine of U.S. domination globally. 52 The Center for a New American Security, a think tank replete with officials from the Clinton, Obama, and current Biden administrations, not only receives funding from major weapons manufacturers, it also reflects much of the same rhetoric as the Project for the New American Century. 53 In the center’s first report, The Inheritance and the Way Forward , written by Michèle Flournoy (Obama’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy) and Kurt Campbell (architect of Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” and Biden’s Deputy Secretary of State), affirms the same commitment to the United States being “the preeminent leader in the international community” so that it can “protect or advance our interests in a globalized world,” even as it restrains the more aggressive impulses of the neoconservatives. 54 If North Korea viewed denuclearization as part of a larger normalization process with the United States, the United States, even in the most fruitful years under the Clinton administration, viewed negotiations not as a way to establish peace with North Korea, but as a way of disarming it. It is worth pointing out that while the world needs denuclearization, in practice, this has simply meant preventing small countries from going nuclear, while the nuclear powers, including the only country to use nuclear bombs twice, keep their vast arsenal. Furthermore, any observer of U.S. foreign policy can infer that while friends can become foes, foes rarely become friends—unless they agree to house the U.S. military. After all, despite (or perhaps because of) having given up its nuclear weapons in 2003, Libya was attacked eight years later by NATO. 55 Today, the Biden administration contains the same liberal hawks, notably Antony Blinken and Campbell, who were a part of Obama’s failed “strategic patience.” Why Sever Inter-Korean Ties? If the negotiations failed with the United States, why did North Korea label South Korea as its main enemy? The first and most immediate cause is the Yoon administration’s belligerent posture toward North Korea. Even during his presidential campaign, Yoon mobilized his conservative base by branding North Korea the main enemy. 56 Furthermore, he proposed offering economic development for denuclearization. Differing little from the rejected proposals put forth by his conservative predecessors, the proposal was clueless at best, and disingenuous at worst. Yet, if the Yoon and previous conservative administrations’ policies provoked North Korea, it was the failed attempts for cooperation and reconciliation by the liberals that led North Korea to sever ties. North Korea had gone along with South Korean liberals’ approach toward peaceful unification because of the openings it created in South Korean society and for normalizing relations with the United States. When South Korea’s liberals failed, North Korea shifted its approach. Ultimately, the liberals’ repeated inter-Korean failures are driven by South Korea’s contradictions, implanted at its inception. To understand the structural limitations of South Korea’s political landscape, it is important to understand that South Korea, despite its democratization movement, developed under the aegis, control, and occupation of the United States, preventing it from fully shaking off its post-Korean War anti-Communism. South Korea’s Structural Limitations Neither South nor North Korea existed as separate states or identities before the 1945 division by the United States. Its division has no historical, social, or cultural basis. 57 After the surrender of the Japanese at the end of the Second World War, the United States drew an arbitrary line at the thirty-eighth parallel, and offered the northern portion to the Soviet Union as its sphere of influence. The differences between North and South emerged after the division. In South Korea, the United States rejected the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence and its grassroots people’s committees that had sprouted up after Japan’s defeat. Instead, the United States propped up Syngman Rhee, an anti-Communist nationalist from the United States and surrounded him with “the smallest group in Korea”: the elites who had collaborated with the Japanese. 58 In contrast, the Soviet Union allowed the People’s Preparatory Committees to remain in North Korea with Kim Il-sung, an anti-Japanese independence fighter, as its leader. The Korean War became a proxy war, the scale, destruction, death, and duration of which reflected its role as the first “hot” war during the Cold War. In South Korea, the Korean War legitimated the rule of pro-Japanese collaborators by establishing a material basis (that is, the experience of war) for the anti-Communism that would buttress their rule and consolidate a capitalist economy. 59 Despite the democratization and people’s movements, South Korean society has not yet fully cast off its anti-Communist ideology, as is evident by the fact that the anti-Communist National Security Act used to persecute dissidents as “North Korean subversives” still remains in effect. 60 Furthermore, South Korea houses the largest U.S. overseas military base and its wartime operational control is in the hands of the United States. These structural limitations have prevented even the most pro-engagement liberal governments from establishing peaceful relations with North Korea without U.S. permission. Despite the Kim Dae-jung administration’s breakthroughs in the June 15, 2000, agreement, the process could not get past Bush’s neoconservatives. Even after coming into power riding the wave of anti-Americanism, the Roh Moo-hyun administration, despite widespread protests, dispatched Korean troops to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq. 61 Even after the Hanoi talks collapsed, North Korea urged Moon (nearing the end of his term) to quickly improve inter-Korean relations by asserting its sovereignty and to not be so beholden to the United States. 62 Instead of accepting North Korea’s condition-free proposal to reopen the Mount Geumgang tours and the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the moment passed, with the Moon administration responding in October 2019 that it would consult with the United States. 63 Ultimately, South Korean liberals fell into the role of simply cheering from the sidelines. From Kim Dae-jung to Roh to Moon, each tried to facilitate the process between both parties. On each occasion, South Koreans watched from the sidelines as the United States derailed talks. Most glaringly, the liberals, whether due to political considerations or their own beliefs, never got past the notion of peaceful economic absorption of the North by the South. They showed no indication of changing South Korea’s 1987 constitution, which claims the whole of the Korean Peninsula as South Korean (Article 3) and states that reunification will be achieved under a liberal democracy (Article 4). 64 Even during the heyday of engagement, under Kim Dae-jung, reunification was based on economic (albeit peaceful) absorption of the North by the South. 65 North Korea Pushed to the Russia and China Camp Many simply take for granted North Korea joining the Russia and China camp. They gloss over the changes, and even ruptures in these relationships. Most importantly, they fail to understand North Korea’s fierce independence and the centrality of reunification as embodied in their national juche philosophy. If North Korea is severing ties with South Korea and moving toward a survival strategy through alliances with Russia and China, it is because U.S. actions are pushing it in this direction. While the China-North Korea alliance was sealed in blood, the bonds weakened with the thaw of the Cold War in the 1980s. 66 China normalized relations with the United States and its neighbors and wanted to treat North Korea like any other country. 67 When China, despite North Korea’s protests, normalized relations with South Korea, North Korea was left feeling betrayed and increasingly isolated. Given North Korea’s strategic location, China’s North Korea policy has been to treat it like every other country, except in matters that threaten North Korea’s survival. 68 Likewise, relations with Russia broke off when the Soviet Union collapsed. While the Soviet Union had provided much of the economic activity and trade with North Korea, in 1995, Boris Yeltsin did not renew the military alliance with North Korea and cut off aid, contributing to the North Korean famine in the mid-1990s. 69 Now, with the United States, South Korea, and Japan building a NATO-like alliance, North Korea, China, and Russia are also drawn together. 70 Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand If the South Korean movements for peace can be classified as either those pursuing peace or those pursuing reunification, then each has approached the problem of peace too generally (peace in broad strokes) or too locally (peace focused on the inter-Korean process). Today, both approaches need to come together into a coherent movement that encompasses broader universal demands to build solidarity across the region, as well as being informed by the specific geopolitical realities confronting Koreans. Revisiting North Korea’s assessment of the situation provides a start for re-engagement with North Korea in a peace-based process. If North Korea has rejected peaceful reunification with a South Korea that is under the heavy influence of the United States and is seeking reunification based on absorption and designating North Korea the main enemy, then the key for improving conditions is a South Korea that has restored its self-determination, one that seeks peaceful engagement respectful of North Korea’s system and does not push a hostile policy. There must be, in effect, a South Korea with the independence and willingness to engage meaningfully with the North. Yet, neither these nor the necessary broader regional peace can be achieved by standing on the sidelines of history. If South Korea is to play its role in bringing peace to Korea and the region, then its peace movements need to come together to pressure its government to rise up to the task. Discussion, debate, and mutual dialogue must allow us to come up with a common banner for peace, justice, and people’s well-being. In that spirit, I present the following demands to catalyze conversation: Peace in the Korean Peninsula. The tensions and instability of the unfinished Korean War have plagued the lives of Koreans and their neighbors. Peace in the Korean Peninsula must be achieved not by pressuring and isolating North Korea, which not only violates its sovereign right to exist, but also justifies and fuels North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. The only path to peace in the Korean Peninsula is through the normalization of relations that guarantee North Korea’s security. At its core, the United States must be pressured to normalize diplomatic and economic relations with North Korea. Peace in the Taiwan Strait. A historical and legal basis exists in which Taiwan is part of China as one country. Nonetheless, Taiwan’s period of political separation from the People’s Republic of China has resulted in the creation of its own institutions. It is also clear that Taiwan, situated barely one hundred miles from mainland China, is a red line for China in terms of its security concerns. Their differences must be resolved peacefully lest we have a war that would be catastrophic not just for China, Taiwan, and the United States, but also for the Korean Peninsula and for Japan, which would likely be dragged into it. 71 Northeast Asia Peace Community. While peace in the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait are key components for peace in Northeast Asia, peace in Northeast Asia is also key for peace in the Korean Peninsula. The division of the region into two separate camps strains regional stability and lays the tinder for open conflagration. Fight social problems and climate change, not war. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are all experiencing various levels of social problems, from low birth rates to an aging population. Furthermore, the world is faced with the climate crisis. Military spending diverts resources and energy that should be going to improve people’s livelihoods, as well as both mitigating and adapting to a world being reshaped by a rapidly changing climate. How do these translate into demands? We must oppose the joint U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and South Korean war games that escalate inter-Korean tensions. While labeled as routine, these exercises mobilize hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their accompanying weaponry, including nuclear capable aircraft to practice the leadership decapitation, nuclear strike, and full-scale invasion of North Korea near its own waters. In a moment of unintended empathy, military strategists pointed out the dangerous nature of war games aimed at China that might serve as cover for an actual invasion of Taiwan. 72 Likewise, the U.S.-South Korea large-scale military exercises disrupt North Korea’s economy by forcing it to mobilize its full military in response. Some of the greatest overtures the United States has made include pausing these war games. When George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Trump paused the USFK and South Korean war exercises, North Korea responded with diplomatic overtures. Pausing the military exercises to decrease tensions does little to threaten USFK and South Korean war readiness. Furthermore, we must pause all the other war games that are escalating tensions in the region and the world such as the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise. We must recover wartime operational control. Currently, the United States Forces Korea holds operational control over both its own military and that of South Korea during wartime. 73 Regaining the authority to control its own troops during war would give South Korea greater independence and leeway on whether or not to participate in the U.S.-South Korea joint war games. We must dismantle security agreements like the American-Japanese-Korean trilateral pact, which trigger mirror accords between China, Russia, and North Korea. If the war in Ukraine was ultimately triggered by de facto NATO expansion to Russia’s borders, then the splitting of the region across the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula lays the conditions for regional conflict. We should also dispel all illusions that a multinational integrated missile defense system will make us impregnable to missiles. As the U.S. military understands it, the only “deterrent” is not a shield, but the threat of a counterforce (first strike), or, in the case of second strike capability, a massive nuclear counterattack. Interceptor missiles are useful in the first case, not the second. Much like the catastrophic impact of a levee that collapses under the growing weight of rising waters, this strategy works until mutual assured destruction is actually triggered. We must support each other’s struggles in the region. Such solidarity should not simply be centered on the struggle of one’s country, but on the larger struggle for peace in the region. It is easy to become absorbed in the immediate demands and fruits from one’s own struggle. Yet, peace in the region is interconnected and requires long-term vision and investment in strengthening our solidarity. This means actively participating in the struggles for peace across Northeast Asia, such as the annual May peace march in Okinawa, or other special anniversaries and occasions in the region, such as the anniversary of the June 15 Inter-Korean Summit. We must support struggles on the frontlines. While often war and militarization might appear to be abstract and distant issues, they are very concrete and immediate for those living in sites of struggle, such as near bases in Okinawa, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense installation in Soseong-ri in South Korea, or the Naval Base on Jeju Island. Many of these struggles might have started from an immediate impact on people’s daily lives. Yet, they offer political exposure that transforms people into peace activists. We are in perilous times. Our ability to find common ground, understanding, and agreement on tactical and strategic objectives will be crucial for achieving peace in the region, improving people’s lives, and addressing the planetary crisis. Notes ↩ Korean Central News Agency, “ Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech at 10th Session of the 14th SPA ,” January 16, 2024, kcna.kp . ↩ Korean Central News Agency, “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech.” ↩ Korean Central News Agency, “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech.” ↩ Frederick Douglass, “Frederick Douglass, If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress (1857),” Black Past, January 25, 2007, blackpast.org . ↩ Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, “ Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War? ,” 38North, January 11, 2024. ↩ Korean Central News Agency, “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech.” ↩ Korean Central News Agency, “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech.” ↩ Interview conducted by the author with Lee Jung-chul, April 2, 2024. ↩ Kwang-soo Kim, “National Unification Front: Peace Discourse Must Completely Reverse to a Reunification Discourse” (in Korean), Tongilnews, March 19, 2024. ↩ Kim, “National Unification Front.” ↩ Jongwoo Han and Jung Tae-hern eds., Understanding North Korea: Indigenous Perspectives (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 217. ↩ Han and Jung, Understanding North Korea, 164. ↩ The United States dropped more bombs in North Korea than in all of the Pacific Theater during the Second World War. A majority of cities were razed to the ground, with 75 to 90 percent destruction. Owen Miller, “Uncovering the Hidden History of the Korean War,” Jacobin, June 25, 2020. ↩ Robert Carlin and John W. Lewis, Negotiating with North Korea: 1992–2007 (Stanford: Center for International Security and Cooperation, 2008), 3. ↩ Han, Understanding North Korea, 201. ↩ Siegfried S. Hecker, Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea’s Nuclear Program (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023), 9. ↩ Carlin and Lewis, Negotiating with North Korea: 1992–2007, 11. ↩ Carlin and Lewis, Negotiating with North Korea: 1992–2007, 21. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 35–36, 86. ↩ Amanda Erickson, “The Last Time the U.S. Was on ‘the Brink of War’ with North Korea,” Washington Post, August 9, 2017. ↩ Light-water nuclear reactors would produce more energy and be more difficult to weaponize than the Yongbyon graphite gas-based reactor. ↩ Maria Ryan, “Why the US’s 1994 Deal with North Korea Failed—and What Trump Can Learn from It,” The Conversation, July 19, 2017. ↩ While the first light-water reactor was expected to be finished by 2003, ground clearing did not even begin until 1996 and the “concrete for the foundation was not poured until August 2001.” In effect, this pushed completion to 2008 (Leon V. Sigal, “Did the United States Break the Agreed Framework?,” History News Network, n.d.). ↩ During this time, North Korea was suffering under the combined weight of the death of Kim Il-sung, its founding leader, and the 1995–1996 natural disasters that wreaked havoc on its economy and inflicted famine. Niv Farago, “Washington’s Failure to Resolve the North Korean Nuclear Conundrum: Examining Two Decades of US Policy,” International Affairs 92, no. 5 (2016): 1131. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 87; Farago, “Washington’s Failure to Resolve the North Korean Nuclear Conundrum,” 1132. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 35–37. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 37. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 87. ↩ In fact, September 11 was the “catastrophic and catalyzing event” that neoconservatives (in the Project for the New American Century’s 1997 report Rebuilding America’s Defenses) had identified could allow the United States to expedite the transformation of its military technology for “creating tomorrow’s dominant force” (Thomas Donnelly, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century [Washington DC: Project for a New American Century, 1997], 50–51). ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 38. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 40–41. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 120–21. ↩ One of the hardliners was Robert Joseph, who opposed negotiations with North Korea on the grounds that they were immoral (Hecker, Hinge Points, 121, 118). ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 123. ↩ Jay Solomon and Neil King Jr., “How U.S. Used a Bank To Punish North Korea,” Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2007. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 164. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 205. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 206. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 224. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 209. ↩ Once the more advanced technology is mastered, the uranium enrichment program has a greater potential for proliferation, as it can produce larger quantities of fissile material more secretly (Hecker, Hinge Points, 248, 250–51). ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 255–56. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 258. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 262. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 281–82. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 318. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 339. ↩ Hecker, Hinge Points, 333. ↩ Project for the New American Century, “ Statement of Principles ,” June 3, 1997. ↩ Project for the New American Century, “Statement of Principles”; Francis Fukuyama, “The Neoconservative Moment,” National Interest, no. 76 (Summer 2004): 59. ↩ Anthony Lake, “Confronting Backlash States,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (March/April 1994). ↩ John Bellamy Foster, John Ross, and Deborah Veneziale, The United States Is Waging a New Cold War , Tricontinental, September 2022, 38, thetricontinental.org . ↩ Brett Heinz and Erica Jung, The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex: Conflicts of Interest at the Center for a New American Security, Revolving Door Project, February 2021, therevolvingdoorproject.org . ↩ Kurt Campbell and Michèle Flournoy, “The Inheritance and the Way Forward,” Center for a New American Security, June 27, 2007, cnas.org . ↩ Reza Sanati, “A Troubling Lesson From Libya: Don’t Give Up Nukes,” Christian Science Monitor, August 30, 2011. ↩ Hyuk-chul Kwon, “Yoon Suk-yeol’s Loose Security Tongue, after Preemptive Strikes Now North Korea as the Main Enemy” (in Korean), Hankyoreh, January 17, 2022, hani.co.kr . ↩ Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 186. ↩ Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun, 194. ↩ As Cumings notes, given that the “vast majority” of the population were poor peasants and the “tiny minority of which held most of the wealth,” there was no basis for a liberal or democratic party (Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun, 193). ↩ When the liberals both controlled a majority in the legislature and the executive under the Roh Moo-hyun administration from 2004 to 2008, and more glaringly under the Moon Jae-in administration from 2020 to 2024, during which time the liberal majority increased following the candlelight protests, they did not push for the repeal of the National Security Act. ↩ Just six months before the presidential election, on June 14, 2002, two troops driving an armored truck during the daytime ran over two South Korean middle school girls walking home from school. Their acquittal of “negligent homicide” by the U.S. military sparked anti-American protests. ↩ “Pressure on South Korea: Stop Taking Your Cue from the US and Act” (in Korean), BBC News Korea, October 5, 2021. ↩ Ji-won Roh, “Moon Jae-in Will Try to Resolve Sanctions Around the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Geumgang Tourism’” (in Korean), Hankyoreh, October 19, 2019. ↩ As regards North Korea’s approach to unification, article nine of its socialist constitution states that its task is to achieve socialism in the Northern half and, eventually, the reunification of Korea. ↩ The Sunshine Policy is based on an Aesop fable in which the sun and the wind make a wager as to who is the stronger by making the man below them take off his coat. The wind goes first, attempting to blow the coat off the man’s back. In response, the man holds tighter and tighter onto his coat. The sun goes next. He begins to radiate hotter and hotter, and the man takes off his coat of his own volition. Likewise, the Sunshine Policy’s approach was to use reconciliation and cooperation to induce North Korea to willingly open itself up to the world. Inherent within this was the notion that North Korea would be absorbed to South Korea’s larger economy. ↩ North Koreans assisted the Chinese Communists in fighting the Kuomintang during the Chinese Civil War, and the Chinese repelled the U.S. counter-offense during the Korean War. ↩ Han and Jung, Understanding North Korea, 191. ↩ Han and Jung, Understanding North Korea, 202–3. ↩ Khang Vu, “Why China and North Korea Decided to Renew a 60-Year-Old Treaty,” The Interpreter (Lowy Institute), July 30, 2021; “The Highs and Lows of Russia, North Korea Relations,” Al Jazeera, September 13, 2023. ↩ Jeffrey Wagner and Dae-Han Song, “Trilateral Missile Defense System a Step Towards Asian NATO,” Counterpunch, December 1, 2023. ↩ Dae-Han Song, “ The New Cold War Is Sending Tremors through Northeast Asia ,” Tricontinental Institution for Social Research, May 21, 2024. ↩ Mark F. Cancian, Matthew Cancian, and Eric Heginbotham, The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2023), 54. ↩ The conversation of regaining wartime operational control began with the Roh Moo-hyun administration amidst growing anti-U.S. military sentiment. Yet, the transfer of wartime operational control was postponed by the conservative Lee Myung Back, followed by Park Geun-hye. The transfer came back into conversation with Moon Jae-in, but failed to regain it before his administration lost power. The process has effectively halted when the conservatives retook the presidency (Johannes Nordin, “ Taking Back Control: South Korea and the Politics of OPCON Transfer ,” Institute for Security and Development Policy, January 2022, isdp.eu ). Reprinted by permission of Monthly Review magazine. (c) Monthly Review, vol.76, no. 3 . All rights reserved.  Dae-Han Song is the head of the Contents Team for the Seoul-based International Strategy Center and a member of the No Cold War collective.

By Tim Beal | August 8, 2024 | Originally published in Monthly Review   General Paul LaCamera, testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on March 20, 2024, stated: The U.S.-ROK [United States-Republic of Korea] Alliance serves as a linchpin for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific. Our two nations share common values and democratic norms, value human rights, and abide by the rules-based international order. We also share significant economic and cultural ties that benefit both nations. The ROK sits at the heart of Northeast Asia, a region of significant security and economic interest for the United States. The presence of U.S. forces in the ROK and Japan demonstrates our ironclad commitment to the people of Korea and protects our strategic interests in Northeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region. 1 Stripping aside the cant, what LaCamera is saying is that Korea is the linchpin of U.S. strategy in Northeast Asia, and thus across the Indo-Pacific. This strategy is aimed at preserving and expanding U.S. hegemony by containing China and Russia, and destroying them as challenges to U.S. domination. Admittedly, LaCamera is Commander of U.S. Forces in (South) Korea, and so has reason to exaggerate the importance of Korea, but geography does support his assertion. The Korean Peninsula is situated at the point where the four major powers of the contemporary world meet and contest. It is contiguous with China and Russia, physically adjacent to Japan, and effectively adjacent to the United States on the other side of the “American lake.” Historically, the peninsula has been the conduit through which Indian Buddhism and Chinese culture flowed to Japan. It was the route by which the Mongols attempted to conquer Japan and the Japanese, in turn, colonized in their attempts to subjugate China. Geography gave Korea a location with huge potential as the hub joining the major economies of the northern hemisphere, from Western Europe through Eurasia and on to the United States. History has tended to thwart this beneficence as the major powers fought each other in, and over, Korea. It is necessary to look at recent history to understand how the United States utilized geography to make Korea so important in U.S. strategy, and why it has continuing centrality. The American Century and Its Challenges In the mid-1940s, the Second World War was coming to an end and the American Century, proclaimed by Henry Luce in 1941, was in its infancy. 2 The American elite had many issues, usually interlocked and overlapping, to confront as it established its new empire. This was a strange beast. Although it contained many elements of its predecessors throughout history, it was the first truly global one—having been born out of one, if not two, world wars—and of a distinctly different character. It was informal and uncodified, and many denied, and still deny, its existence. Its edges were blurred: Which countries were within and which without and its depth uncertain. How much control does the United States have over Britain or France? These parameters also changed over time; in 1945, China was in, and, four years later, it was out. There were major challenges, including: how to deal with the conquered enemy states, Germany and Japan; how to manage the client states; how to cope with the wave of anticolonialism and socialism; and what to do about the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union was seen as the main obstacle to the implementation of the American Century and its geographical position, straddling Eurasia, leading to the division of the world into four theaters. To the west of the Soviet Union was the rest of Europe and the Atlantic (hence the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO), to the east was the Pacific, the subject of this essay, and to the south was the Middle East, which had its own specific dynamics, especially regarding oil and Israel. That left the rest of the world—Latin America (as still seen as dominated by the United States via the Monroe Doctrine), Oceania, Africa, and South Asia—as peripheral to the main struggle centered on Eurasia. The “Loss of China” in 1949 reinforced this division and raised the importance of the Pacific theater. In 2018, then U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis extended the remit of the Pacific Command to cover South Asia and the Indian Ocean and it was redesignated the Indo-Pacific Command. 3 However, this change reflected not so much the intrinsic importance of the Indian Ocean, and South Asia (mainly India), but rather its role in the U.S. confrontation with China. India was seen as a counterbalance to China, and the Indian Ocean offered great opportunities for the interdiction (hopefully with help from India) of Chinese imports of oil from the Middle East. 4 The focus here is on the two theaters of greatest relevance, the Atlantic and the Pacific, and their position in the struggle to protect and expand U.S. imperialism against the resurgence of Russia and the rise of China. The Atlantic Theater and NATO History presented the United States with a political environment and a civilizational cohesion conducive to the creation of a vehicle for control of the Atlantic theater: NATO. The quip of Lord Ismay, its first Secretary-General, about the purpose of NATO is often quoted: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” 5 In reality, the Russians were not trying to get into Western Europe, and the Americans were not trying to get out, but his formulation served the trans-Atlantic elite and was widely accepted. The ease with which NATO survived the removal of its ostensible raison d’être after the collapse of the Soviet Union indicates its deeper, more resilient function as an instrument of U.S. imperial power articulated through a European client elite. The continued success of NATO as such an instrument serves as a beacon in more perilous, declining times. In February 2024, the publication Foreign Affairs , concerned at the way things were going and fearful of a return to Trumpian disruption of imperial management, republished Dean Acheson’s 1963 essay “The Practice of Partnership,” noting with approval that he had realized that a military alliance was not sufficient, but what was required was “a strategic plan that combined military, political, and economic policies—one that every member of the alliance could stand behind.” 6 In other words, Acheson was calling for an enmeshing of the European elite into an enduring subservient relationship to the United States using the full spectrum of power, not least soft power. The most striking success story here has been the co-option of the European Greens, most notably the Germans such as Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, as fervent servants of U.S. strategy against Russia, sacrificing their own societies in the process. 7 History presented the United States with a more difficult task in the Pacific theater. The Pacific Theater The United States had a very different canvas with which to work in the Pacific. The Soviet Union had borne the brunt of the war against Germany. It had suffered the most human and material damage, inflicted the most casualties, and taken Berlin. Its role in the peace settlement might be contested, but could not be ignored. By contrast, the United States was the paramount power in the Pacific War, with the Soviet Union playing a far smaller (but in actuality a very significant) role. Although the atom bomb was in the pipeline, tests were not complete, and no one could be sure what devastation nuclear weapons might produce or the effect this would have on Japanese decisions. Accordingly, Franklin D. Roosevelt had been pressing Joseph Stalin to enter the war against Japan, and at Yalta in February 1945, Stalin agreed that the Soviet Union would do so three months after victory in Europe. This it did, and the Red Army routed the once-famed Japanese Kwantung Army, producing “Japan’s Greatest Defeat.” 8 Indeed, so impressive was the Soviet campaign that it is argued that: “The fear that the Soviet Union would replicate its Manchurian exploits in Europe became the foundational anxiety of the Cold War.” 9 The Soviet entry into the Pacific War was overshadowed by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and nuclear weapons have been a dominant feature of geopolitics since then. However, the necessity of bringing the Soviet Union into the war, and the fear of the consequences, led to the U.S. division of Korea, which has had a profound impact, both globally and on U.S. Pacific strategy in particular. The bilateral division had not been discussed at Yalta, but was a last-minute decision to forestall Soviet participation in the Japanese peace settlement and to ensure as much U.S. control over the Korean Peninsula as possible. Harry S. Truman, who had become president upon Roosevelt’s death during this crucial period, had hoped that the atomic bomb would force Japan’s surrender before the Soviet Union entered the war, and that the United States would gain unilateral control over Japan, China (via the dependent government of Chiang Kai-shek), and the Korean Peninsula. The State Department feared that, if left to their own devices, the Koreans would establish a socialist regime which “might easily receive popular support.” 10 Moreover, the only Korean military force was Kim Il-Sung’s guerrilla army—the United States had no surrogate force such as the Republic of China (ROC) army. The Soviet entry into the war and rapid invasion of Manchuria precipitated a change in policy. Truman dumped Roosevelt’s trusteeship in favor of pushing a bilateral deal with Stalin to divide Korea; better, in the words of James I. Matray, “to settle for half a loaf since its troops were over six hundred miles away.” Colonels Charles H. Bonesteel (who later commanded the U.S. forces in Korea, USFK) and Dean Rusk (subsequently Secretary of State during the Vietnam War) were to find a dividing line as far north as possible. According to Rusk, they tore a map out of a National Geographic magazine and chose the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, giving the United States the capital, Seoul. 11 To the Americans’ surprise, Stalin acquiesced to the division at the Thirty-Eighth parallel. In reality, the United States would not have accepted Soviet occupation of the peninsula with equanimity. It is likely that Stalin was acutely conscious of the weakness of the USSR compared with the United States and its allies, and was anxious to avoid unnecessary confrontation. Control of Poland and the western borderlands of the Soviet Union were vitally important for defense of the country; Korea was not. 12 Moreover, although the Red Army had shattered the Japanese defense forces (though not without some bitter fighting), it was a long way from the Soviet heartland. Geography is more than distance on a map and while the Soviets had local superiority at the time, the United States would have the logistical advantage in a protracted war—the waters of the Pacific would have provided easier transit than the steppes of Siberia. Moreover, the United States was at the time the “Arsenal of Democracy” and the behemoth of production for industrial warfare. This is true no longer, and its current weakness has made control of South Korea particularly important. 13 Consequences of the Division of Korea Although overshadowed by the advent of nuclear weapons, the division of the Korean peninsula was to have momentous and continuing consequences. First of all, it led to the Korean War, which was both a civil war and an anticolonial war. The U.S.-installed president in the South, the Korean-American Syngman Rhee, did not have a political base of his own (unlike Kim Il-Sung in the North) and needed to rely on an administration inherited from the Japanese and run by collaborators. The U.S. occupation prevented the eradication of Japanese colonialism from the southern part of Korea, while in the north, the Soviet occupation allowed Kim Il-Sung to consummate decolonization. In Bruce Cumings’s view, this unfinished business inexorably led to the Korean War. 14 The heritage of Japanese colonialism has bedeviled South Korea ever since and today is resurfacing strongly in the Yoon Suk Yeol administration to much public criticism. 15 The United States did not sweep away Japanese colonialism, but rather incorporated it into its own neocolonial control of South Korea. The Korean War was the first modern U.S. war that it did not win, which led to the conflict being shunted aside in U.S. memory (though not of that of Korean or Chinese) and becoming the “Forgotten War.” 16 It was also the first U.S. war against China, with a second, and arguably more consequential one, looming. 17 The U.S. division of Korea also led to the division of China, because, in the early days of the Korean War, the United States reversed course and directly intervened in the Chinese Civil War by sending the Seventh Fleet to protect the rump Chiang Kai-shek government that was holed up in the province of Taiwan (which had been returned to China from Japan upon U.S. insistence in 1945). The two interconnected divisions of Korea and China are hugely important because they both in their various ways create an inherently unstable situation, and one which is used by Washington to justify its forward military presence in East Asia (and by extension now the whole Indo-Pacific), and which provides the United States with a mechanism to escalate tension whenever required. The Korean War, firmly bedded in the Cold War, created the Permanent War Economy, changing the business of the United States from business, as in President Calvin Coolidge’s days, to war. 18 The United States became a state constantly at war, be it economic, political, informational, or kinetic, either directly or by proxy. Undoubtedly, this would have happened even without the war in Korea. If not there and in that way, then it would have happened elsewhere, in some way or another because it was inherent in the concept of the American Century. However, it did happen in Korea, and that forged the specific characteristics of U.S. imperialism. It also placed the Korean Peninsula at the core of evolving U.S. imperial strategy in the region, through which the major objectives of U.S. policy—the subordination of Japan and the destruction of the Soviet Union/Russia and China as challenges to global hegemony—could be achieved. In short, it transformed U.S. policy in the Pacific theater. The Transformation of U.S. Pacific Policy Prior to the Korean War, U.S. policy toward China had been somewhat ambivalent. It had wisely refrained from direct involvement in the Chinese Civil War and had reconciled itself to the fall of Taiwan, the ROC’s last stronghold, to the Communists. The Korean War changed that. The United States intervened, but in a way that posed no danger to U.S. forces, since it was confined to naval protection of the island. Chiang Kai-shek, of course, wanted the United States to take back the mainland on his behalf, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff dismissed that fantasy. 19 However, buttressed by McCarthyism at home, the Korean War also solidified hostility to the newly established People’s Republic of China (PRC). Instead of coming to some sort of terms with Beijing, which was put on hold until the Henry Kissinger/Richard Nixon démarche in the early 1970s, Washington continued to recognize the ROC as the legitimate government of China and to block the PRC from taking up the China seat in the United Nations Security Council. Not for the first or last time, a state that the United States could not control was transmogrified in both elite and popular consciousness into a fantastical parody of reality. Chester Bowles, writing in Foreign Affairs in 1960, gives a typical prediction: “That mainland China, with an inadequate resource base, spiraling population, ruthless Communist leadership and intense nationalist spirit, will develop fiercely expansionist tendencies directed toward the weaker neighboring states to the south.” 20 This perception led to the war in Indochina, complicity in the massacres in Indonesia, and general support of repression in Southeast Asia. It also has echoes in Cold War discourse about “Soviet expansionism” then and in current warnings that Vladimir Putin will “invade Europe.” 21 All of this has strong elements of psychological projection about it, since it was the U.S. empire that was expanding and the Soviet Union, later Russia, and China were reacting to that. Interventions across the border—in Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, in Ukraine by Russia, and in the Korean War by China—were essentially defensive. More than any empire in history, the American one is curiously lacking in self-awareness. Others may have happily conflated plunder with the altruistic promotion of their religion, or a “civilizing mission,” but they did not deny empire. 22 The United States does, and this fact makes it particularly important to disregard surface froth and to attempt to analyze the actual functions of policies and actions, even though they may be hidden from the principal actors themselves. In this case, we have the United States constructing a network of alliances and a latticework of institutions whose function is to preserve hegemony and to expand it by defeating any challenges to its rule. This is often identified as the Wolfowitz Doctrine, but it is more than the exultation of the triumphalist unipolar moment. Rather, it is the constant purpose, with variations, of the American Century. 23 How could it be otherwise post-1945 for an empire with global aspirations? The Network of Alliances and a Latticework of Institutions A defining characteristic of an empire is that it combines its own power with a hierarchal architecture of subordinate states and, in the modern world, with institutions that transcend state boundaries. No power is absolute and, in the case of countries, must be shared with local elites and, in the case of institutions, other countries, even adversaries, the United Nations being the major example. Moreover, there is always the danger that countries outside the empire might coalesce; thus the first rule of imperial management is divide et impera . The Nixon/Kissinger move to enlarge the split between China and the Soviet Union is a classic, if belated, example. Recent U.S. administrations, perhaps out of arrogance and entitlement, have been bad at this, driving their adversaries together rather than apart—leading to the growth of the BRICS+ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and several more recently joined states); the China-Russia partnership, now bringing in Iran; and a strengthening of the relationship among North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK), China, and Russia. 24 U.S. Pacific policy originally focused on the defeat of Japan and aimed at the exclusion of the Soviet Union, with the division of Korea being a part of that. The “Loss of China” in 1949 and the subsequent rise of China led to adjustments in policy, and over time China has become the chief focus. Japan has remained the major component of what might be termed “American Asia,” with Australia playing a subsidiary role to the south. The United States was very lucky with respect to Japan. Not merely had they kept the Soviet Union out, but their vassal allies had little say in the governance of Japan. By keeping the imperial state in place, they have been able to rule Japan without much difficulty since 1945. The initial policy to demilitarize Japan was abandoned—another result of the Korean War—and today, Japan is on its way to having the third largest military budget in the world. 25 The Korean Peninsula was not in itself considered important in 1945. It was its location that provided value. 26 While location has continued to be a major factor, Korea—North and South—has assumed great importance in differing ways in U.S. strategy. Although North Korea achieved significant growth in its early decades, the collapse of the Soviet Union, coupled with ongoing U.S. sanctions, devastated its economy and, although recovering, it is still far short of its potential. While its economic and societal resilience has surprised and exasperated the United States, it is the development of its nuclear missile deterrence that has been the main issue. Both the economic problems of North Korea and its pursuit of a nuclear deterrent are the result of U.S. policy. The first can be judged as deliberate on the U.S. part; if it produced the collapse of the DPRK and its absorption by the South Korea, thus extending U.S. control over the whole peninsula up to the borders of China, then that would be well and good. If it did not actually precipitate collapse, it would demonstrate the sorry fate that awaited those who defied Washington. The deliberateness of the second is more complex. Clearly, for most, the development of the North Korean deterrent was unwelcome, but there may have been those in the U.S. strategic community who saw the value of it—and valuable for U.S. grand strategy it certainly is. Although portrayed as a huge threat to the United States, it is not. Except in the unlikely case of a truly “accidental war” (that is, a war that has not simply been made more likely by the deliberate construction of a situation so as to increase the chances of a triggering incident), a weak country’s deterrent is not a real threat to the United States. Its offensive use would be not only unproductive, but also suicidal. 27 However, the myth of a North Korean aggressive threat is the cornerstone for the justification for the U.S. forward military position in Asia, primarily aimed at China. 28 The U.S. domination of South Korea, together with the concomitant “North Korean threat,” has produced a number of benefits—bases, control of the ROK military, and ROK nominal sovereignty as a political asset and utilization of its economy as a resource, a weapon, and a munitions manufacturer. The main U.S. base in South Korea, Camp Humphreys, is the largest U.S. overseas base, and the one closest to Beijing. 29 South Korea also serves as a virtual base for the U.S. military alliance. One aspect of this is the constant stream of joint military exercises involving countries throughout the empire, from Australia to the United Kingdom. 30 In addition, the ROK participates in exercises held outside the region, in Europe or the United States. 31 The overriding objective of these exercises is to enhance interoperability and U.S. control and command of alliance forces. 32 More substantial are the underlying linkages being developed under parental supervision among these various militaries and that of the ROK. Two in particular stand out: Japan and NATO. Legacy of Colonialism—Japan-South Korea Antagonism A classic management problem, from empires to corporations (and families), is how to bring fractious subordinates together for a common purpose. The enmity between Japan and South Korea at the popular level and, frequently, at the government level—a legacy of Japanese colonialism—has long bedeviled the United States, for which the integration of the two, militarily and politically, under its leadership is a priority. The greatest gift that Yoon has brought the United States is his willingness to flout popular opinion to forge a close, junior relationship with Japan. 33 This has led to the U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral Alliance, formalized at the Camp David summit among U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Yoon in August 2023. 34 This is clearly aimed at China, and its area of operation is described as the Indo-Pacific, with sometimes the words “and beyond” added, signifying that the United States is a global power, and it seeks to utilize its assets worldwide. 35 Asian NATO—the Integration of the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters So far this integration of global assets has focused on bringing the Atlantic to the Pacific. Leaders of American-influenced Asia—Japan, ROK, Australia, and New Zealand—have been summoned to Europe as attendees at NATO summits. The talk has been of NATO extending its role to Asia, frequently using terms such as “Global NATO” and “Asian NATO.” 36 Although the idea of a Tokyo Liaison Office had currency for a time, this fell through because of objections from French President Emmanuel Macron, and it is South Korea that is becoming the linchpin of NATO’s Asian expansion. 37 Western European countries are also projecting power eastward and developing Indo-Pacific strategies to counter China, both individually and as members of the European Union. 38 Nevertheless, NATO has been the main instrument for this meshing of the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, in particular establishing Individually Tailored Partnership Programs with Japan, Australia, South Korea, and possibly New Zealand: the “Indo-Pacific Four.” 39 The United Nations Command However, this may change with the “revitalization” of the South Korea-based United Nations Command (UNC). 40 NATO has various drawbacks as an instrument of U.S. strategy, and the UNC may well provide a preferable alternative. NATO is too democratic, constraining U.S. power. Decisions have to be taken by consensus and so leaders, if they can withstand U.S. pressure, have a veto. Macron scuttled the Tokyo Liaison Office, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delayed the accession of Sweden in order to do some horse-trading. 41 Then there are Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary, and Slovak prime minister Robert Fico. In the late 1940s, when NATO was established, subordinate states knew their place. NATO is also redolent of European imperialism. More importantly, Asian NATO seems to be driven not by the United States, where there are voices in the strategic community who see it as a distraction. 42 Rather, its most active proponents are those (mainly European countries) in the huge NATO apparatus who are desperate to demonstrate to Washington their continued relevance (hence guaranteeing their employment) in the face of the collapse of the proxy war in Ukraine, the lackluster remilitarization of the European powers, and the looming possibility of a second Donald Trump administration. 43 All this is epitomized by the franticness of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. NATO has been here before. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a desperate need to justify NATO. The solution was to follow Senator Richard Lugar’s injunction “go out of area or out of business.” 44 That led to war against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya; now it leads to confrontation, perhaps war, with China. The so-called UNC offers an elegant solution to the need to harness European power—military but also political—to fortify U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. It is best articulated by Clint Work in an article in Foreign Policy titled “South Korea Offers a Chance to Modernize Old Alliances”: “The United Nations Command (UNC), a U.S.-led multinational command headquartered in South Korea (formally named the Republic of Korea, or ROK), is often overlooked in discussions of the minilateral architecture that Washington hopes to construct in the Indo-Pacific.” 45 “Modernization” here essentially means utilizing the UNC as the core of an expanded and repurposed global alliance structure to be deployed against China. Admittedly, there is an element of special pleading here in that Work is director of academic affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America, a Washington-based, American-staffed think tank owned by the South Korean government. 46 The UNC has three characteristics that make it eminently suitable as a vehicle for U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. First, despite its name, it is not an organization under the control of the United Nations, but, in fact, a U.S.-controlled military alliance that got its deliberately misleading title during the early stages of the Korean War, when the Soviet Union was boycotting the UN Security Council over the United States blocking the PRC assuming China’s seat. 47 Second, because of its name and its illegal use of the UN flag and logo, the UNC can be portrayed as a UN body, an expression of “the international community,” rather than of the U.S. military. One ploy is to embed officers of dependable vassals in subordinate roles: a Canadian was made Deputy Commander of the UNC in 2018. He was followed by an Australian, a Brit, and, currently, another Canadian. 48 Third, the UNC is scalable, with membership not being limited to original countries or constrained by geography. The United States has been making efforts over recent years to rejuvenate it and reactivate the involvement of the “Sending States,” the original sixteen participating countries, and any new ones that might be added “solely within the discretion of the U.S. Government .” 49 The Sending States are, in Work’s phrase, “ The Forgotten Parties in the Korean War ,” who fought China in the 1950s and need to be remembered in the context of the present challenge. 50 The original impetus for this program was to find a solution to how to retain de facto control over the South Korean military if the United States were forced to make good its promise to transfer operational control back to the South Korean government. 51 The United States had taken over direct control during the Korean War, and so-called peacetime control was transferred in 1994, but the jewel in the crown, wartime control, still lies with the United States via the Combined Forces Command (CFC). The UNC is a superior and separate body to the CFC. LaCamera, when testifying to the House Armed Services Committee, described himself as “Commander, United Nations Command; Commander, United States-Republic of Korea Combined Forces Command; Commander, United States Forces Korea.” The order of titles by UNC, CFC, and USFK is significant. Accordingly, when the role of CFC was under challenge, its reactivation became imperative. 52 The South Korean military is a major force multiplier for the United States, so control over it is not to be relinquished easily. However, the potential of the UNC stretches far beyond the Korean Peninsula. The Sending States, in theory, comprise a formidable military asset, comprising sixteen countries, ranging from Australia to the United Kingdom. Some, such as Turkey, are unlikely to return for a second war against China; others probably would, with Australia, Canada, and Britain in the vanguard. It was not without reason that their senior military personnel have been appointed to the post of Deputy Commander. However, as Work suggests, the UNC can be expanded by invitation to those countries, which, for a variety of reasons, were not able to be utilized in 1950—including Japan, Germany, Poland, and, the holy grail of U.S. desire, India. In other words, these bodies (NATO, Asian NATO, and more) would all be under direct U.S. control . Ironically, the one entity that cannot be brought into the UNC is the Republic of China on Taiwan because it is not a recognized state, even by the United States, and so is not a member of the United Nations. None of this may yet come to pass. The U.S. government may not take up the idea; U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has not publicly commented on the UNC. India is proving a difficult prize , one moment aligning with the United States, then edging toward China, Russia, and BRICS+, keeping its options open. 53 The United States military command in Korea might be stripped of its UN camouflage, with the use of the UN flag and logo the first to go. The United States has tried many minilaterals in the Indo-Pacific over the years, but none has matched NATO for sustainability, and bilateral alliances have tended to be more dependable. 54 Bilateral relationships are limited and the search for suitable minilaterals continues. Current frontrunners are AUKUS (the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom), the Quad (the United States, Japan, Australia, and India), and the Trilateral Alliance (the United States, Japan, and South Korea). These may be expanded, merged, or supplanted, but none really answers the challenge of linking the vassal militaries of the Atlantic and Pacific theaters into an integrated whole that can be deployed as required against China, Russia, and minor adversaries. The U.S.-ROK Bilateral Relationship The Washington-Seoul alliance provides substantial benefits in its own right to the United States over four dimensions: Military The United States currently has direct control, when required, over the very large ROK military, the fifth most powerful worldwide according to one league table, although there are doubts about the capabilities of its reservists. 55 This may be deployed globally—it has been used in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—but in the event of a war with China, its primary use, apart from logistical support, would be to create a crisis on the Korean Peninsula to tie down Chinese forces in the north. 56 Political As a middle power and a major economy, and nominally sovereign, South Korea has or could have considerable political heft. It hosted the third “Summit for Democracy,” an annual jamboree thrown by the Biden administration’s “Democracy versus Autocracy” campaign in March 2024. This was a damp squib, which may have been due to the inherent falsity of the concept, the declining status of Biden’s United States, and its being overshadowed by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Nevertheless, President Yoon, basking in U.S. approval, is an inveterate globetrotter and has grandiose plans for South Korea to become a “global pivot state.” 57 In fact, this is a charade. South Korea is merely a surrogate for the United States, not an independent player. However, Yoon can be portrayed by the U.S.-dominated media as a global statesman, enjoying “major foreign policy successes.” 58 Industrial South Korea’s astounding industrial growth has led it to become one of the world’s major centers for information technology and semi-conductors, both of these sectors, as well as military production, are of great importance to the United States. Its technology sector has been used as a pawn against China, especially in the “Chip War.” 59 It has assumed a major role in the provision of munitions, especially in the context of the hollowing out of U.S. and European capability, and is fast becoming the “Arsenal of Imperialism.” 60 Geostrategic Instrument The division of Korea into an U.S.-dominated South and an independent North provides the United States with a powerful instrument to influence the geopolitical environment and climate in Northeast Asia and beyond. The construction of a threatening North Korea provides justification for the U.S.-forward military presence. 61 It is noticeable that any time there is a danger of peace breaking out, someone like John Bolton, National Security Advisor under Trump, steps in to save the day. 62 The United States also has the ability to adjust the temperature, especially through the use of threatening military exercises on North Korea’s borders, with the propaganda machine inverting the chain of causality. 63 The Pentagon is fully aware that North Korea’s military posture and policy are defensive—how could it be otherwise with such a disparity in military power? LaCamera admitted as much in his testimony to Congress: “North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s top priorities are ‘regime survivability’ and ‘preparing to defend his nation.’” 64 The Linchpin Ever since 1945, Korea has played a central role in U.S. Pacific theater strategy. The principal target of that strategy was initially the Soviet Union, but since 1949–1950 China has taken its place. The theater was renamed the “Indo-Pacific” in 2018, but this extension was primarily to outflank China. While the division of the world into two major oceanic theaters was a necessary organizational construction for a traditional seapower, it should not obscure the global underpinning of U.S. strategy. The United States is a global empire and all parts of the world, and all the countries in it—friend, nonaligned or foe—are interconnected. The four main U.S. enemies at the moment, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, are joined together in Eurasia. The struggle can be conceptualized as the United States deploying two giant oceanic pincers to contain, subjugate, and dismember Eurasia, a replay of the debate between Alfred Mahan and Halford Mackinder for our times. 65 Thus, we have seen South Korea being used to supply artillery shells to Ukraine and to host European militaries either bilaterally, or via the Asian NATO/UNC. All countries are interconnected through geopolitics. Korea’s position in this giant mechanism is due to its role as a linchpin of U.S.-China strategy in Northeast Asia, and thus inevitably throughout the Indo-Pacific theater, and further into the global struggle between U.S. imperialism and the emerging multipolar world. Notes ↩ Full Committee Hearing: U.S. Military Posture and National Security Challenges in the Indo-Pacific Region , U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, 118th Congress, March 20, 2024, armedservices.house.gov . ↩ Henry R. Luce, “American Century,” Life, February 17, 1941. ↩ “ History of United States Indo-Pacific Command ,” United States Indo-Pacific Command, Department of Defense. ↩ Keith Johnson, “How Pirates Kick-Started India’s Navy Into Action,” Foreign Policy, February 14, 2024. ↩ “Hastings Ismay, 1st Baron Ismay,” Wikipedia, accessed July 19, 2022. ↩ Dean Acheson, “The Practice of Partnership,” Foreign Affairs (January 1963); editorial, “The Backstory: The United States and NATO,” Foreign Affairs, February 18, 2024. ↩ Diana Johnstone, “Washington’s Green Branches in Europe,” Consortium News, May 3, 2021; Wilfried Eckl-Dorna, Jana Randow, Carolynn Look, and Petra Sorge, “Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End,” Bloomberg, February 10, 2024. ↩ Nathan N. Prefer, “The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria Led to Japan’s Greatest Defeat,” WWII Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Spring 2018): 54–65; D. M. Glantz, “August Storm: The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria,” Leavenworth Papers no. 7, U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, Leavenworth, Kansas, 1983. ↩ Big Serge, “ Maneuver Theory and the Cold War ,” SubStack, March 28, 2024, bigserge.substack.com . ↩ James I. Matray, “Captive of the Cold War: The Decision to Divide Korea at the 38th Parallel,” Pacific Historical Review 50, no. 2 (May 1981): 145–68. ↩ Sebastien Roblin, “How 2 Colonels and a National Geographic Map Divided Korea,” National Interest, March 2, 2018; Michael Fry, “National Geographic, Korea, and the 38th Parallel,” National Geographic, August 4, 2013. ↩ The borderlands still are important, of course, for the Russian Federation, hence the opposition to NATO expansion. Significantly, one explanation for the origin of the word “Ukraine” is that it comes from the Slavic for “borderlands.” ↩ Alex Vershinin, “The Return of Industrial Warfare,” Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, June 17, 2022, rusi.org ; William Schryver, “ The Arsenal of Democracy Isn’t ,” SubStack, February 4, 2023, imetatronink.substack.com ; Michael Lee, “ Korea Rising as a Defense Supplier amid Global Tensions ,” JoongAng Ilbo, May 1, 2023, koreajoongangdaily.joins.com . ↩ Bruce Cumings interviewed by Haeyoung Kim, “ It’s Called a Forgotten War, So People Don’t Pay Attention: An Interview with Bruce Cumings ,” Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, January 29, 2024. ↩ Lee Minji, “Main Opposition Slams Korea-Japan Summit as ‘Most Humiliating’ Moment in Diplomacy,” Yonhap, March 17, 2023; Suh Jae-jung, “ Why is Seoul Playing Dumb about Japan’s Unlawful Colonial Rule? ,” Hankyoreh, March 21, 2023; Myunghee Lee and Sungik Yang, “President Yoon is Lauded in West for Embracing Japan—in South Korea It Fits a Conservative Agenda that Is Proving Less Popular,” The Conversation, March 6, 2024. ↩ Clay Blair, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953 (New York: Anchor Books, 1987). ↩ Kiji Noh, “ After Ukraine: U.S. Readies ‘Transnational Kill Chain’ for Taiwan Proxy War ,” Pearls and Irritations, February 27, 2024, johnmenadue.com ; Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, “How Primed for War Is China?,” Foreign Policy, February 4, 2024; Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The Big One: Preparing for a Long War With China,” Foreign Affairs 103, no. 1 (January/February 2024). ↩ Ellen Terrell, “When a Quote Is Not (Exactly) a Quote: The Business of America Is Business Edition,” Library of Congress blog, January 17, 2019, blogs.loc.gov . ↩ Memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara , Office of the Historian , U.S. State Department, Washington, DC, November 16, 1965, history.state.gov . ↩ Chester Bowles, “The ‘China Problem’ Reconsidered,” Foreign Affairs, April 1, 1960. ↩ Con Coughlin, “Putin Is Close to Victory. Europe Should Be Terrified,” Telegraph, December 7, 2023; Simplicius, “New War Drums Chill Europe with Renewed ‘Putin Invasion’ Fears,” SubStack, January 16, 2024, simplicius76.substack.com . ↩ Thanapat Pekanan, “How Important is the Notion of the ‘Civilising Mission’ to Our Understanding of British Imperialism Before 1939?,” Interstate—Journal of International Affairs 2015/2016, no. 3 (2016). ↩ Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop,” New York Times, March 8, 1992. ↩ Samuel Ramani, “Russia and North Korea: A Growing Strategic Partnership,” 38 North, November 17, 2023; “How China, Russia and Iran Are Forging Closer Ties,” Economist, March 18, 2024. ↩ Hana Kusumoto, “ Japan’s Cabinet Approves Largest-Ever Defense Budget, Another Record Hike for Next Fiscal Year ,” Stars and Stripes, December 22, 2023; Rahm Emanuel, “What No Expert Saw Coming: The Rise of Japan,” Washington Post, February 12, 2024. ↩ Tim Beal, “Korea and Imperialism,” in Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope, eds. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). ↩ Tim Beal, “ Hegemony and Resistance, Compellence and Deterrence: Deconstructing the North Korean ‘Threat’ and Identifying America’s Strategic Alternatives ,” Journal of Political Criticism 21 (December 2017): 57–113. ↩ Van Jackson, “What Kim Jong Un Wants From Trump,” Politico, April 30, 2018. ↩ Shin Hyeong-cheol, “ Camp Humphreys: A Sprawling Symbol of the SK-U.S. Alliance Where War and Life Blur ,” Hankyoreh, May 15, 2023, english.hani.co.kr . ↩ Hyun-woo Nam, “Korea’s Strategic Importance Growing amid U.S.-China Tensions,” Korea Times, August 22, 2021; Chae Yun-hwan, “ S. Korea’s Navy Holds Regular Multinational Mine Warfare Drills ,” Yonhap, October 19, 2023, en.yna.co.kr . ↩ Esther Chung and Lee Yu-jung, “Korea to Take Part in U.S.-led Space Training Event This Month,” JoongAng Ilbo, February 5, 2024. ↩ U.S. Army Eighth Army Public Affairs Office, “Eighth Army Begins Annual Exercise Freedom Shield 2024,” March 4, 2024. ↩ Bae Ji-hyun and Kim Mi-na, “Yoon-Kishida Summit Concludes with No Apology or Sincere Response from Japan,” Hankyoreh, March 17, 2023. ↩ White House, “Fact Sheet: The Trilateral Leaders’ Summit at Camp David,” news release, August 18, 2023, whitehouse.gov ; U.S. Department of Defense, “ United States-Japan-Republic of Korea Trilateral Ministerial Meeting Unilateral Press Statement ,” news release, November 12, 2023, defense.gov . ↩ Editorial, “Camp David Summit Could Be Dangerous for Japan, South Korea,” Global Times, August 6, 2023; Daniel Russel, “The Camp David Summit Must Send China an Unmistakable Message,” New York Times, August 17, 2023. ↩ Richard Tanter, “Mr. Albanese Goes to Madrid: Australia on the Alliance Path to Global Nato,” Pearls and Irritations, June 30, 2022; Tim Beal, “Global NATO—Bringing Extra Danger to Our Neighbourhood,” Pearls and Irritations, July 26, 2023; Michael Green, “Never Say Never to an Asian NATO,” Foreign Policy, September 6, 2023; Kaush Arha, “ Time For An Asian NATO: Meet The Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization ,” 19Fortyfive, September 27, 2023, 19fortyfive.com ↩ Demetri Sevastopulo, “France Objects to Nato Plan for Office in Tokyo,” Financial Times, June 6, 2023; “France Pushes Back Against Proposal for NATO Office in Japan,” Japan Times, June 7, 2023; Saeme Kim and Bence Nemeth, “South Korea: An Emerging NATO Partner,” King’s College London, February 24, 2023, kcl.ac.uk ; Ji Da-gyum, “8 NATO Envoys to Visit Seoul to Discuss Indo-Pacific Security,” Korea Herald, December 11, 2023; Bence Nemeth and Saeme Kim, “South Korea and NATO: From Unlikely Companions to Key Partners,” International Affairs 100, no. 2 (March 2024): 609–29. ↩ Keith Johnson, “Europe Yearns to Be an Indo-Pacific Player,“ Foreign Policy, March 19, 2024; European External Action Service, EU Indo-Pacific Strategy, Diplomatic Services of the European Union, Brussels, January 30, 2024. ↩ Hae-Won Jun, “NATO and its Indo-Pacific Partners Choose Practice over Rhetoric in 2023,” Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, December 5, 2023. Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand are collectively known as the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4), sometimes called Asia-Pacific Four (AP4). ↩ Tim Beal, “False Flag: Asian NATO under a New Guise,” Pearls and Irritations, January 20, 2024. ↩ Stuart Lau, “Turkey’s Erdoğan Signs Off on Sweden’s NATO Bid,” Politico, January 25, 2024. ↩ Daniel DePetris and Rajan Menon, “Why NATO’s Growing Interest in Asia Is a Mistake,” Time, July 13, 2023. ↩ Stephen Bryen, “NATO’s War Problem: Weak Armor,” Weapons and Strategy, January 5, 2024, weapons. substack.com ; Marianne LeVine, “Trump Says He’d Disregard NATO Treaty, Urge Russian Attacks on U.S. Allies,” Washington Post, February 10, 2024. ↩ Richard G. Lugar, “NATO: Out of Area or Out of Business; a Call for U.S. Leadership to Revive and Redefine the Alliance,” news release, August 2, 1991, The Richard G. Lugar Senatorial Papers, indiana.edu ; Justin Logan, “NATO Will Live Forever, until It Doesn’t,” Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, February 22, 2023. ↩ Clint Work and Hanbyeol Sohn, “South Korea Offers a Chance to Modernize Old Alliances,” Foreign Policy, November 30, 2023. ↩ Korea Economic Institute, keia.org . ↩ Jang-hie Lee interviewed by the Korea Policy Institute, “In Name Only: The United Nations Command and U.S. Unilateralism in Korea,” Korea Policy Institute, July 1, 2020. ↩ Steven Chase, “UN Command Names Canadian to Key Post in South Korea for the First Time,” Globe and Mail, May 13, 2018. Wikipedia gives a list of deputy commanders in its UNC entry: “ United Nations Command ,” Wikipedia, accessed March 22, 2024. ↩ Anthony Rinna, “ Revitalising Korea’s United Nations Command ,” East Asia Forum, May 29, 2020; Ji Da-gyum, “S. Korea, U.S. to Stage ‘Realistic, Tough’ Military Exercise against NK Threats,” Korea Herald, August 14, 2023; U.S. Department of Defense, “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction: Procedures to Make Forces Available to the United Nations Command,” directive, April 1, 2019, jcs.mil . ↩ Clint Work, “UN Sending States: The Forgotten Parties in the Korean War,“ The Diplomat, August 7, 2023. ↩ Song Sang-ho, “U.N. Command Revs Up Revitalization Campaign amid Korea Peace Cfforts,” Yonhap, September 5, 2018, en.yna.co.kr . ↩ Clint Work, “No More Delays: Why It’s Time to Move Forward With Wartime OPCON Transition,” Stimson Center, June 21, 2022. ↩ M.K. Bhadrakumar, “India-Russia Ties Get a Makeover,” Indian Punchline, January 5, 2024. ↩ Ryan King, “History Tells Us that an ‘Asian Nato’ Is Destined to Fail,” Pearls and Irritations, March 13, 2022. ↩ “S. Korea Ranks 5th in Military Power Worldwide; N. Korea is 36th,” Korea Times, January 19, 2024; Brendan Balestrieri and Won-Geun Koo, “South Korea Needs a Wake-up Call on Its Reservist Crisis,” War on the Rocks, July 26, 2022. ↩ Hanbyeol Sohn, “How the Next Taiwan Crisis Connects to Korea,” PacNet no. 17, Pacific Forum, March 19, 2024. ↩ William Choong and Joanne Lin, “South Korea: A Global Pivotal State, Not Quite,” Fulcrum (ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute), May 17, 2023; Jagannath Panda and Choong Yong Ahn, “South Korea’s Indo-Pacific Strategy: Quest for Clarity and Global Leadership,” The Diplomat, January 16, 2023. ↩ Ellen Kim, “All Politics Are Local: Yoon’s Newfound Popularity,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 7, 2024, csis.org . ↩ John Liu and Jin Yu Young, “What the U.S.-China Chip War Means for a Critical American Ally,” New York Times, September 27, 2023. ↩ Cho Ki-weon, “Senior U.S. Diplomat Expresses Hope Seoul Will Provide More Defense Support to Ukraine,” Hankyoreh, February 28, 2024; Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, “Can South Korean 105-Millimeter Ammunition Rescue Ukraine?,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 22, 2024. ↩ Edward Wong, “Why Is the U.S. Wary of a Declaration to End the Korean War?,” New York Times, August 13, 2018. ↩ Steven Nelson, “Trump: I Should Have Fired John Bolton for Botching North Korea Nuclear Talks,” New York Post, June 18, 2020. ↩ Alexander Vorontsov, “War Games: Who Is Responsible for Tension on the Korean Peninsula?,” NK News, September 15, 2016, nknews.org ; “U.S. Forced to Intensify Joint Military Drills in Response to N. Korean Provocations: State Dept.,” Yonhap, March 14, 2023. ↩ Lee Bon-young, “USFK Commander Calls for Maintained Troop Presence in Korea, Citing China and Russia,” Hankyoreh, March 22, 2024. ↩ Philip Reid, “Mahan and Mackinder Addressing the False Dichotomy in the Eurasian Pivot Theory,” Occasional Paper no. 59, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, June 2022, idsa.in . Translated and reprinted by permission of Monthly Review magazine. (c) Monthly Review  76, no. 3 (July–August 2024) . Tim Beal is a retired New Zealand academic with a special interest in U.S. imperialism, mainly but not exclusively with respect to Asia. He is the author of North Korea: The Struggle Against American Power (Pluto Press, 2005), Crisis in Korea: America, China, and the Risk of War (Pluto Press, 2011), and numerous articles. He has traveled to North and South Korea and is chair of the NZ-DPRK Society. His website, Asian Geopolitics, has more information and links to his recent publications.

An Interview with Dr. Kee Park Dr. Kee Park and members of the Korean American Medical Association performing surgery alongside their North Korean counterparts in Pyongyang, May 2017 By Haeyoung Kim | January 15, 2020 | Jointly published with Asia-Pacific Journal Kee B. Park, MD, MPH, is a lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine and Director of the Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as Director of the North Korea Programs at the Korean American Medical Association, and has led over 20 delegations to North Korea since 2007 to work alongside and collaborate with North Korean doctors in the DPRK. Dr. Park obtained his medical degree from Rutgers University, trained in neurosurgery at the Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and earned a Master of Public Health from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Korea Policy Institute (KPI) Executive Board Member Haeyoung Kim spoke with Dr. Kee Park on December 9, 2019 about his work in the DPRK, the unique features of the North Korean health system, and how geopolitics impact public health and human security in North Korea. [Haeyoung Kim] Dr. Park, can you begin by sharing with us a bit about your personal background and how you came to be one of the few American doctors providing health care in North Korea? [Dr. Kee Park] I’m a neurosurgeon by trade. Right out of residency, I went into private practice in a small town south of St. Louis, Missouri, and I loved being a community-based neurosurgeon. But, a few years into it, I and a few Korean American neurosurgeon friends who had been in practice for some time found ourselves wondering if there was something else we could do to help others. After some discussion, we settled on the question: how could we help North Korean neurosurgeons? Not really knowing if they needed help or not, we made some assumptions and wanted to reach out to them. This was in 2006. American Physicians Medical Exchange With North Korea [Haeyoung Kim] What led you to decide that it was important for you, an American doctor, to reach out to North Korea? [Dr. Kee Park] My state of mind in 2006 was not like it is today. I’ve had 12 years now to familiarize myself with North Koreans and the country, especially their health and things that effect their health. In 2006, I knew nothing about what was happening inside North Korea, but I suspected that things were difficult. Later on, I found out how difficult things actually were. But, in 2006, I only had an inkling. Being Korean with an ability to help, I felt a sense of responsibility. It’s like helping a family member. If a family member were struggling, you would go help them first before you stand by and watch strangers offer help. It was that kind of feeling. Koreans are of one country; we share the same culture. Because I’m Korean, I felt and feel this sense of oneness, so it was up to me to do what I could. [Haeyoung Kim] How did your engagement with North Korean doctors begin? [Dr. Kee Park] In 2007, we were introduced to and met with North Korea’s diplomats at the DPRK mission to the United Nations (UN) in New York. We started discussing the prospect of working with North Korean neurosurgeons and came up with the idea to invite a delegation of North Korean neurosurgeons to the US. This was during the Bush administration. We—the Korean American Neurosurgical Society—contacted the Korea Desk at the State Department and said that we wanted to invite a delegation. We had a nice series of communications, they eventually sent us the application, the North Koreans filled everything out, we submitted it all, and we waited. It wasn’t until one week before their proposed scheduled travel date out of Pyongyang that we received notice from the State Department saying their visas had been approved. They also had conditions on their visas, including one that said all meetings in the US with the North Korean delegation must be closed. The press could not be notified. We all accepted the terms, and we were able to host the three-member delegation in the US in 2008. Two were neurosurgeons and one was not in the medical field, but later became a counselor at the DPRK mission in New York. During their visit, they met with physicians in Missouri and New York, and attended an annual meeting of neurosurgeons in Chicago. We also held a private reception and a number of Korean American neurosurgeons attended to meet with them. Also, just before the delegation arrived, the DPRK mission in New York asked if we wanted to go to Pyongyang. Of course, I jumped at the chance. September of 2007 was my first trip to North Korea, and I’ve been going back twice a year since. [Haeyoung Kim] How large have your delegations to North Korea been and who are the participants? Has the 2017 US ban on American citizens traveling to North Korea greatly impacted your efforts to practice in the DPRK? [Dr. Kee Park] At one point, over the course of the twenty plus trips we have now taken, our group was as large as 25. It has fluctuated, and the group has gone down to 2 or 3 at the most including myself since the travel ban. It’s difficult to get people to go through all the trouble that you need to go through these days to get there, and you might not be able to go. The State Department can deny our passports, and they sometimes have. Since the travel ban, we have requested to go 4 times. We were denied once and granted permission the other three times. Our groups have been composed of doctors with various specialties. The way it works, we set them up with their counterparts in North Korea. If they are ophthalmologists, we pair them up with North Korean ophthalmologists. If they’re cancer surgeons, we pair them up with North Korean cancer surgeons. Then, the doctors can figure out where North Korea is at and what kind of support they’re able to provide. [Haeyoung Kim] In 2010, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan made a visit to North Korea and reported that the health system has things that the developing world would envy. These comments were a dramatic departure from the 2001 remarks offered by her predecessor, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who reported that North Korea’s health system was near collapse. How can we make sense of these dramatically different takes? If these statements are accurate in any way, what happened in the intervening years to impact the health system? [Dr. Kee Park] In 1995, things crumbled in North Korean because of the famine. Everything fell apart. They abandoned the public distribution system. People were dying of starvation. The health system suffered. North Korea has been on a recovery track since the late 1990s. So, in 2001, being “near collapse” is not an unreasonable description. The mid-to late-90s is also the period when the North Korean government issued an official appeal for international assistance. They opened up to receive international aid including from the UN and a number of countries that had fought the DPRK in the Korean War, which was historic. UN agencies started entering North Korea, and American NGOs went in. A number of agencies and international organizations said they would of course help, and began establishing offices inside of Pyongyang. Many are still there. The North Korean Health Care System [Haeyoung Kim] How would you assess North’s Korea’s health care system today? What sorts of challenges do doctors in North Korea face? Dr. Kee Park and members of the Korean American Medical Association performing surgery alongside their North Korean counterparts in Pyongyang, May 2016. [Dr. Kee Park] Let me qualify my statement. I’m someone who sees things periodically in North Korea, and I try to patch things together much like the parable of a blind man feeling an elephant from different places. With a patchwork of data points, I can say I think this is what things look like. What I can deduce is that North Korea’s health care system is highly organized and centralized. They have a section doctor system, which assigns one doctor to an area containing several hundred individuals for whom that doctor is responsible. They also have ri-clinics (rural community or village clinics), district hospitals, regional hospitals, and specialty hospitals. They have one of the highest densities of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers that I’m aware of. They certainly have plenty of doctors and nurses, meaning that the government is investing in and spending money on pre-service education. Education is free in North Korea, so the government is investing money to insure that every nurse and doctor gets trained and educated. The government is also paying their salaries. So, the government spends quite a bit of money on the health workforce. Costly supplies, though, are posing big problems. North Korea just doesn’t have ready access to certain things. So, supplies get reused and North Korean healthcare workers find ways to cut costs. Single-use scalpels, gloves, and gauze, for instance, are cleaned and sterilized and reused. Because of this, doctors and hospitals are having a difficult time. Medical equipment like x-ray machines are hard to repair once they break because it’s difficult to import necessary parts. At the same time, North Korea is trying to invest where it can. I’ve seen North Koreans invest in renovating operating rooms at Pyongyang Medical College over the last year or so. They are also investing in new technologies. I have seen an artificial knee joint they have developed, which they are manufacturing and implanting in patients. They have a domestic ultrasound machine that they’re producing for use in local hospitals. I would also characterize North Korea’s health system as highly efficient, if not one of the most efficient health care systems. With the sanctions, they have limited resources and face challenges. But, it’s a highly efficient and cost-effective health system. I can give you an example: North Korea wanted to do a public health campaign for tuberculosis detection and treatment. With the Global Fund grants that UNICEF and the WHO offices in Pyongyang received, the Ministry of Public Health was able to achieve one of the largest reductions in mortality from TB at half the cost of other countries. This gives you an idea. Also, consider their maternal mortality ratio, which is a Sustainable Development Goal target for health. The target for developing countries is to reduce mortality below 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by year 2030. North Korea has already hit that target. In fact, they’re below that number. People have asked if I believe these numbers. In the 1990s, a fair argument could be made that the numbers coming out of North Korea were not reliable. But, UN agencies have been inside the country, working with the National Bureau of Statistics, and verifying these figures such that most people agree that the numbers are pretty accurate. It has been a function of time, and I think the numbers are now much more accurate. So when people question these numbers, I think it’s because they don’t understand the evolution of the data. It’s much better than it was, and I find it credible. US Sanctions on North Korea [Haeyoung Kim] The US has imposed sanctions on North Korea since the Korean War, and the United Nations began imposing sanctions in 2006. In what ways has the sanctions regime against North Korea impacted your work? Dr. Kee Park and members of the Korean American Medical Association performing surgery alongside their North Korean counterparts in Pyongyang, May, 2016 [Dr. Kee Park] We knew that the US had executive orders and embargoes in place when we were working in 2007 and 2008. We also understood back then that there was general license given to humanitarian aid workers like us when we went there. We were able to work with a certain amount of latitude. Based on this, we were able to provide equipment and sent a container of surgical equipment in the early 2010s. But, then the sanctions started to be ramped up. I would say the inflection point was 2016-2017, which of course coincided with North Korea’s nuclear weapons development program. They went from “smart” sanctions to “total” sanctions and started blocking the importation of fuel—an almost complete embargo. How do you operate a hospital, how do you drive ambulances, how do you move patients around without fuel? Also, consider farm machinery. How do you power farm machinery without fuel? When fuel imports are reduced this drastically—with only one-tenth of what formerly entered the country now coming in—there will inevitably be a rationing system and prioritization of how available fuel is used. Then, of course, all major imports and exports were banned. And, compounding the issue, there are those individuals who are employed by these industries, and it’s reasonable to assume that their incomes were markedly impacted. Since most North Koreans supplement their food rations provided by the state’s central distribution system with food purchased from the markets, this inevitably resulted in greater food insecurity. So sanctions were ratcheted up in 2016-2017, and then the travel ban on US citizens traveling to North Korea was imposed in 2017. Around that time, we started to hear stories from UN agencies about how they couldn’t conduct their work anymore and that they were unable to send money into the country. [Haeyoung Kim] The UN Security Council makes case-by-case exemptions for humanitarian-related items. Is this sufficient to allow humanitarian organizations to deliver aid? [Dr. Kee Park] Yes, there is an exemption process, but it doesn’t work very well. Before the more rigid sanctions were launched, aid was getting in. Then, it came to a trickle—not a standstill, but a trickle. Then, one by one, case by case, the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee would approve or deny shipments. And, it’s not just the UN Security Council sanctions resolutions aid workers have to face. The US has its own unilateral sanctions, which involve the Bureau of Industry and the US Treasury. The Bureau of Industry issues import and export licenses, and you have to obtain their permission to bring anything into North Korea. Then, to use US money on North Korean goods, you have to a get a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Treasury. They give you a time-bound license, maybe two years or so, and you have to reapply thereafter. But, they’re very specific about the kinds of activities and transactions you’re allowed to conduct. And each agency applies its own criteria for what it will and will not approve. It’s not standardized. In fact, the criteria are not really known, and I think it’s intentional, so the agencies can ratchet up or down the restrictions and apply pressure when politically opportune. Dr. Kee Park and members of the Korean American Medical Association alongside their North Korean counterparts in Pyongyang, May 2017 Because of the bureaucratic red tape, we basically abandoned the idea of bringing in anything of value to North Korea. The Korean American Medical Association is not an NGO; we’re a professional society. We don’t have the resources to navigate these kinds of bureaucratic hurdles. Only large groups like World Vision and the UN agencies, organizations with deeper pockets, can hire the necessary lawyers and administrative staff to handle the paperwork and go through the lengthy process to acquire licenses. The Human Cost of US and International Sanctions Joy Yoon, whom I worked with to co-author the report commissioned by the Korea Peace Now! campaign titled The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea, has gone into detail about what the small NGO she co-founded, Ignis Community, has experienced throughout this process. She has shared how long it has taken to jump through the bureaucratic hoops and her fears that the delays experienced by her organization because of the barriers imposed by myriad sanctions have led to deaths among patients they have been treating. In fact, I think one did recently die. To the UN’s credit, though, the Security Council Sanctions Committee is reviewing requests and making decisions within 2 weeks of requests to provide aid. They’ve sped the process up. It used to take longer. But, we shouldn’t have to ask for every case. The fact that humanitarian organizations have to ask for permission to provide aid to the vulnerable and the marginalized people of North Korea is a travesty. [Haeyoung Kim] According to the United Nations, the measures imposed by UN resolutions are “not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of the DPRK.” Sanctions should not aim to negatively impact or restrict “the work of international and non-governmental organizations carrying out assistance and relief activities in the DPRK.” As a practitioner on the ground in North Korea, can you help our readers make sense of how these stated intentions don’t reflect the practice of implementing sanctions? Dr. Kee Park and members of the Korean American Medical Association performing surgery alongside their North Korean counterparts in Pyongyang, May 2017 [Dr. Kee Park] Yes, all of these sanctions include that line: adverse humanitarian consequences are not intended. In reality, though, they undoubtedly do have adverse humanitarian consequences. It calls into question the sincerity of the sanctions writers. Can they really mean that given the fact that it’s pretty clear from the ground that sanctions adversely impact the humanitarian conditions in North Korea? Perhaps that line provides political cover. I cannot imagine that those who impose sanctions don’t know how sanctions play out, especially since they have been through this recently with the sanctions imposed on Iraq. Joy Gordon has written the definitive book on Iraqi sanctions, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. When you think about this coverage in the context of understanding the North Korean sanctions, it’s mind-boggling. It’s the same playbook. For instance, sanctions have blocked vaccines from going into Iraq. We all know the impact that would have. But, the senders of sanctions always turn it around and say it’s the government’s responsibility to provide these things. When the sanctions boot is on a government’s neck, applying a great deal of pressure, there’s a certain amount of dishonesty to expect that a sanctioned state can fully help its people. As an academic who does research, I know there are ways to estimate potential deaths related to sanctions without having to actually count the number of deaths. As a response, some may say we must discount certain figures if they’re just estimates. But, if what they’re saying is “Tell us how many people have actually died?” It’s too late if that’s the question being asked. These are children and women, and we should be counting how many people have died? Then, after having a death count, sanctions writers can then say, “Oh, you’re right, we’ve harmed innocent people and we should change our policies”? It’s way too late at that point. [Haeyoung Kim] You mention children and women. Are these the demographic groups hardest hit by sanctions? Your recent co-authored report on the human impact of sanctions against North Korea, titled The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea, notes that sanctions have “differential consequences for women’s security as well as their social and political rights.” Can you explain to our readers why sanctions have a disproportionate impact on women and children? [Dr. Kee Park] Sanctions are worsening humanitarian conditions inside North Korea. This we know. Food costs have gone up, for instance, and international aid agencies working to provide clean water have faced delays or their efforts have been hampered significantly. These things directly affect the health of the people. If we look at water, we know that a lack of clean water causes illnesses. Children are hit the hardest. If you look at the cause of death of children under the age of 5, it’s infections like pneumonia and diarrhea. After the age of 5, it’s injuries and accidents. So, if clean water interventions are blocked or delayed through sanctions, the number of children that develop diarrhea will go up. And who are the primary caretakers of children when they get sick? It’s the mothers. Women are also the primary gatherers of water in North Korea. If no clean water sources are readily available, women have to go further to find it. Food security is also getting worse, which we know. Which parent wouldn’t give food to their children first before they feed themselves? Both mom and dad, of course, would feed their children before themselves. But, women tend to be primary caretakers of children in North Korea. If you’re the primary caretaker, you’re feeding your child first. So, from a caretaker standpoint, women bear a disproportionate amount of the burden. If you look at farming, more than half of North Korean farmers are women. Women now farm by hand, because there’s no fuel for farming machinery and broken machinery can’t be repaired because sanctions prohibit the importation of necessary parts. So, women have to work harder to get the same yield, bearing a disproportionate burden. And, there are industries that are impacted by sanctions. One industry particularly impacted is the garment industry, which is a leading export industry. Textiles now can no longer be exported from North Korea. The majority of workers in the garment industry are women, and all of a sudden they are without an income. For someone who is already poor, making them poorer puts them at a higher risk of all kinds of social dangers. Let me share a case from last year about UN agency programming that directly impacted mothers. The UNFPA—the United Nations Fund for Population Activities—works inside North Korea and they provide emergency reproductive kits to women. These kits contain critical treatments if there are any complications during delivery. You want to have these kits ready. They treat postpartum hemorrhages, eclampsia, and other kinds of emergency situations. We know that access to these kits reduces mortality. They save lives. Last year, in 2018, the UNFPA intended to provide these kits to 400,000 pregnant mothers in North Korea, which is great. However, what they were able to achieve was the delivery of just 4,000 kits. My colleagues and I have looked at the number of complications that could arise within that population and the expected mortality of not having these kits, and I think we calculated that 72 mothers would die if these kits were not available when complications arose. As a doctor, I’m outraged. Is this something that we as human beings can accept? Whether you’re a security person or not, it’s universally deplorable that we allow mothers to die. We have interventions and we have ways to save them. But, we can’t do much because of international security concerns, the global sanctions regime, and the sanctions process. But, that’s just a part of the problem. The other part is that the donors of these agencies are also facing diplomatic and political pressure from certain countries, and they are being asked to not donate. So, these programs face funding shortages. [Haeyoung Kim] Speaking of second- and third-order consequences that result from sanctions, how about North Korea’s economic development, which they have been trying to recalibrate since the 1990s? Is the financial system impacted by sanctions? [Dr. Kee Park] How do you develop an economy when you don’t have access to the global financial transaction system? When you can’t get any fuel? How do you develop an economy when exports are blocked? I think it’s clearly the intent of these sanctions to interfere with North Korea’s economic development. Let me talk about the financial aspect. There have been political and diplomatic efforts by the US and Japan to put pressure on countries that have typically donated to support humanitarian aid to North Korea. They’ve been asked to not donate anymore, which has been very effective. The UN every year comes up with a needs and priorities list of what’s urgently needed in North Korea and how much humanitarian aid is going to cost. Last year they appealed for 111 million US dollars, which would cover urgently needed clean water, food, and basic medical needs for 6 million people in North Korea. Donors are to provide funds for this, but in 2018 they only raised 24 million US dollars. That’s just not enough to cover programming costs. It may pay for the overhead and maybe some programming, but it’s not enough. In short, donors are being asked to not provide funding for humanitarian programming inside North Korea. The US has also been using unilateral sanctions to block any financial transactions dealing with North Korea. For instance, the World Health Organization has an office in Pyongyang and they have money to operate this office. The money, though, is in a bank account in India. So, to pay their rent and salaries to their local staff, they had to send the cash from India to North Korea. Then, the bank in India asked where the cash was going, and when they found out that the cash would be brought to North Korea, they refused to allow the transaction. They didn’t want to risk having the US Treasury shut them down because they’re allowing money to go into North Korea. So, they said they wouldn’t let the World Health Organization withdraw money if it was going to North Korea. Now, there’s no way to send money from India into North Korea because the banking channels have been closed. This is the same reason that FIDA—the Finnish International Development Agency—pulled out of North Korea after working in in the country for 20 years. Restricted financial channels and banking channels were making operations impossible. Most recently Handicap International—a very important organization that’s been working inside North Korea helping the disabled—decided to pull out. Handicap International is a European organization and they made a lot of progress in helping disabled people in North Korea. I’ve seen it firsthand. They’ve pulled out. We have to do something. Something needs to change. International organizations that seek to help ordinary people to survive in North Korea or anywhere else should not have to experience operational barriers. Do No Harm [Haeyoung Kim] What specifically do you think could change? If you could offer a recommendation to the international community to improve humanitarian conditions in North Korea, what would it be? [Dr. Kee Park] Consider international humanitarian law in times of conflict. The Geneva Conventions is the perfect example. There are certain things that we as members of humanity have agreed on as being barbaric, including not harming civilians in times of armed conflict. It’s immoral and wrong to hurt civilians. We also have codes of conduct to define how we treat enemy combatants. For physicians, this means we don’t make distinctions between enemy combatants and our own. A patient is a patient is a patient. We first do no harm, and we treat the patient regardless. I think these norms are the best of what humanity has to offer. I mean, we shouldn’t have wars at all if possible but conflicts are a reality. But, we need to have codes of conduct, and not ones that only apply in times of armed conflict. We need codes of conduct for times when there is no active gunfire, as in the case of North Korea, but there may be security concerns. No one can rationalize harming the ordinary people of North Korea, but no laws are currently in place to hold sanctions accountable. This all really speaks to a need for the international community to develop something like the Geneva Conventions that apply when sanctions are being imposed. [Haeyoung Kim] Is there anything thing you wish more Americans knew about North Korea? What could Americans and the Korean American community do to support your work in North Korea? [Dr. Kee Park] I’m currently visiting the University of Oregon and gave a talk last night with Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, the former US Ambassador to South Korea. The questions and comments we got from the audience are windows into how people see things and how they understand the issues. There’s a fair amount of demonization happening. So, people say things like North Korea is not trustworthy and ask why we are negotiating with them. We hear that a lot. But that kind of thinking prevents any kind of progress. The work that KPI is doing—providing analysis and education—is what is necessary. I wish the education around and views on US-North Korea relations could be more balanced. As of now, it’s very one-sided. They’re bad and we’re good. The truth is we’ve done a lot of things to create a level of paranoia for the North Koreans. I think most Americans just don’t understand how complicit we are in all of this. That’s a big concern. [Haeyoung Kim] What can we expect to see from you and your work in the foreseeable future, Dr. Park? [Dr. Kee Park] I’m a global health practitioner working in the field of global surgery at Harvard Medical School. I feel fortunate to have found the intersection between North Korea and global surgery, which allows me to engage more with policymakers and conduct research that would be more focused on the needs of the population. I would like to continue studying the health of North Korean people and the impact of geopolitics on health. My immediate plans are to start a health policy project on North Korea within the medical school, which would enlarge the work I’ve been doing. The project is going to sit within the Global Health Department at Harvard Medical School. For now, we’re thinking of calling it the Korea Health Policy Project. We’re going to bring in researchers and form a faculty, and keep looking at the current standoff on the Korean peninsula from the global health standpoint. How does the failure to achieve peace impact the health of the North Korean people? What does that mean as far as what we should be standing for and what positions we should be taking as health advocates? Peace is a prerequisite to health, and in no place is that clearer than in North Korea. This article is jointly published with The Asia-Pacific Journal Haeyoung Kim is on the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors. #HumanitarianAid #NorthKorea #Sanctions

This is a very dangerous moment in our relations with North Korea, the most dangerous since June 1994, when Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang with the grudging consent of the Clinton Administration. Carter negotiated an agreement with Kim Il Sung that headed off a war and paved the way for the suspension of the North Korean nuclear weapons program for the next eight years. Now we urgently need another high-level emissary, but the Obama Administration is not even prepared to give its grudging consent to Al Gore, who wants to negotiate the release of the two imprisoned U.S. journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, both employees of Current TV, which he founded, and who could in the process pave the way for a reduction of tensions. As members of this Committee may know, Al Gore met Hillary Clinton on May 11 and asked for the cooperation of the Administration in facilitating a mission to Pyongyang and in empowering him to succeed in such a mission by exploring with him ways in which the present stalemate in relations between North Korea and the United States can be broken. She said she would “consider” his request, but the Administration has subsequently delayed action. The Administration’s position is that the case of the two imprisoned journalists is a “humanitarian” matter and must be kept separate from the political and security issues between the two countries. In a News Hour interview with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on June 10, Margaret Warner asked Rice how the latest U.N. sanctions resolution would “complicate efforts to win the release of the two American journalists.” But Rice turned the question around, declaring that the issue of the two journalists “cannot be allowed to complicate our efforts to hold North Korea accountable” for its nuclear and missile tests. This is an unrealistic position. It shows a callous disregard for the welfare of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. It ignores the danger of a war resulting from the Administration’s naïve attempts to pressure North Korea into abandonment of its nuclear and missile programs. Past experience with North Korea has repeatedly shown that pressure invariably provokes a retaliatory response that makes matters worse. The Administration should instead actively pursue the release of the two women through intervention in their behalf by a high-level unofficial emissary empowered to signal U.S. readiness for tradeoffs leading to the reduction of tensions, such as the provision of the 200,000 tons of oil that had been promised to North Korea, but had not been provided, when the six-party talks broke off last fall. This was one third of the energy aid promised in return for the disablement of the Yongbyon reactor. Looking ahead, the goal of the United States should be to cap the North Korean nuclear arsenal at its existing level and to move toward normalized relations as the necessary precondition for progress toward eventual denuclearization. The prospects for capping the arsenal at its present level have improved as result of Pyongyang’s June 13 announcement admitting that it has an R and D program for uranium enrichment. Since this program is in its early stages, and it is not yet actually enriching uranium, there is time for the United States to negotiate inspection safeguards limiting enrichment to the levels necessary for civilian uses. Until now, North Korea’s denial of an R and D program has kept the uranium issue off the negotiating table and kept alive unfounded suspicions that it is capable of making weapons-grade uranium. Progress toward denuclearization would require U.S. steps to assure North Korea that it will not be the victim of a nuclear attack. In Article Three, Section One of the Agreed Framework, the United States pledged that it “will provide formal assurances against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States” simultaneous with complete denuclearization. Pyongyang is likely to insist on a reaffirmation of this pledge. Realistically, if the United States is unwilling to give up the option of using nuclear weapons against North Korea, it will be necessary to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea while maintaining adequate U.S. deterrent forces in the Pacific. The President set the tone for a new direction in U.S. relations with the Muslim world in Cairo. He acknowledged the legacy of colonialism in the Middle East, the impact of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinians and the U.S. role in overthrowing the elected Mossadegh regime in Iran. Similarly, he should break through the present poisonous atmosphere by expressing his empathy for the deepest feelings of the Korean people in both the North and the South. Visiting Pyongyang on March 31, 1972, the Reverend Billy Graham declared that “Korean unity was a victim of the cold war.” He acknowledged the U.S. role in the division of Korea and he prayed for peaceful reunification “soon.” President Obama should declare his support for peaceful reunification through a confederation, as envisioned in the North-South summit pledges of June 2000 and October 2007, in order to set to rest North Korean fears that the United States will join with right-wing elements in Japan and South Korea now seeking reunification by promoting the collapse of the North Korean regime. Above all, he should express his empathy for the painful memories of Japanese colonialism shared by all Koreans. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonstrated complete insensitivity to these memories during her Tokyo visit on February 18, 2009 by needlessly embroiling herself in the explosive abductee dispute between North Korea and Japan and by ignoring Kim Jong Il’s apology to Prime Minister Koizumi on September 17, 2002. This is a bilateral dispute and, to paraphrase Susan Rice, “should not be allowed to complicate” the reduction of tensions with Pyongyang. In the event of another war with North Korea resulting from efforts to enforce the U.N. sanctions, it is Japan that North Korea would attack, in my view, not South Korea, because nationalistic younger generals with no experience of the outside world are now in a strong position in the North Korean leadership following Kim Jong Il’s illness and his reduced role in day to day management. Some of them, I learned in Pyongyang, were outraged at Kim Jong Il’s apology to Koizumi and have alarmed others in the regime with their unrealistic assessments of North Korea’s capabilities in the event of a conflict with Japan. The U.N. sanctions have further strengthened their position because all North Koreans feel that they face a threat from the U.S. nuclear weapons deployed near their borders and would be united, in my view, if tensions resulting from attempts to enforce the sanctions should escalate to war. Selig Harrison is a Senior Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, and a member of the Korea Policy Institute’s Advisory Board. He has specialized in South Asia and East Asia for 58 years as a journalist and scholar and is the author of five books on Asian affairs and U.S. relations with Asia. His latest book, Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U. S. Disengagement (Princeton University Press), won the 2002 award of the Association of American Publishers for the best Professional/Scholarly Book in Government and Political Science. He has visited North Korea 11 times, most recently in January 2009. In the last week of May 1972, Harrison, representing The Washington Post, and Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times became the first Americans to visit North Korea since the Korean war and to interview Kim Il Sung. In 1989, Harrison presided over a Carnegie Endowment symposium that brought together North Korean spokesmen and American specialists and officials for the first time and has reported on this meeting in his Endowment study, Dialogue with North Korea. In 1992, he led a Carnegie Endowment delegation to Pyongyang that learned for the first time that North Korea had reprocessed plutonium. In June 1994, on his fourth visit, he met the late Kim Il Sung for three hours and won agreement to the concept of a freeze and eventual dismantlement of the North Korean nuclear program in exchange for U.S. political and economic concessions. President Carter, meeting Kim Il Sung a week later, persuaded the North Korean leader to initiate the freeze immediately, opening the way for negotiations with the U.S. that resulted in the U.S.-North Korean nuclear agreement of October 21, 1994.

First the life and now the death of South Korea’s activist turned President Kim Dae-Jung has opened the door to peace in Korea. Kim Dae-Jung authored the “sunshine policy,” which resulted in the June 2000 landmark summit between the leaders of North and South Korea — the first meeting since the country was divided in 1945. For over ten years, the “sunshine policy” significantly reduced military tensions on the Korean peninsula, opened the door for thousands of family members in divided Korea to meet in powerful and tearful reunions, and gave birth to real hope that reunification was not only possible, but inevitable. In over six decades of division, the “sunshine policy” represents the most peaceful and productive stretch of relations between North and South Korea, and justifiably earned former President Kim the Nobel Peace Prize. With the death of Kim Dae-Jung last Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il sent a high-ranking delegation to Seoul to offer condolences and pay respects to the late former president, who had tirelessly advocated for cross-border reconciliation. This moment of national Korean unity through shared grief offers a new window for the Obama administration to improve relations with North Korea through diplomatic engagement. In recent weeks, Pyongyang has shown a softening of tone with both South Korea and the U.S. On Monday, Kim Jong-Il expressed an interest in holding an inter-Korean summit between the two leaders. North Korea also recently announced that it will resume the operation of a cross-border cargo train and will lift travel restrictions from the South to the joint industrial zone in the North. Diplomatic overtures offered by the Obama team to North Korea earlier this month were also met with a warm reception. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s mission to the country secured the release of the two detained American reporters — Laura Ling and Euna Lee — who had crossed onto North Korean soil without permission. The visit was a global demonstration that U.S.-North Korea diplomacy has the potential to yield results. Indeed, diplomacy has undeniably worked in the past. During the Clinton administration, a policy of engagement led to eight years of freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and a moratorium on ballistic missile tests. While Clinton pursued a strategy that brought North Korea to the negotiating table, George Bush enacted a hard-line approach and ignored the previous administration’s diplomatic advances. North Korea responded by restarting its nuclear weapons program and launching its missiles. Whatever the critics of diplomacy say, no one can doubt that the North Korean nuclear program took a huge leap forward only after Washington stopped talking seriously with Pyongyang. We are at a dangerous moment in relations with North Korea. President Obama appears to favor the same “tough guy” approach that Bush realized too late would not work. Obama’s position that total denuclearization must come as a precondition to normalizing relations will indefinitely stalemate negotiations, just as it did under Bush, and tension will continue to rise. Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, recently testified in Congress that if Pyongyang does not satisfy Washington’s outlined preconditions, the U.S. will “take defensive measures to bring significant pressure to bear for North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.” Last month, several U.S. Senators, led by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, introduced legislation that would re-designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism, reactivate additional economic sanctions, and increase support to an already bloated South Korean army. A cornerstone of the Obama administration’s language around foreign policy has been to engage with states that are fundamentally different than the U.S. With North Korea’s recent softening of tone, let’s hope the Obama administration recognizes the need to change course with North Korea, and goes back to the future — the time is now to engage and establish a lasting peace treaty on the Korean peninsula. *** Haeyoung Kim is a Fellow with the Korea Policy Institute.

By Martin Hart-Landsberg | June 12, 2024 | Originally published in Le Monde diplomatique A speech by Kim Jong-un this January seen to directly threaten South Korea is causing anxiety in the West. But analysts haven’t taken into account the views of other parties to this conflict. There is certainly reason to worry about the possibility of war on the Korean peninsula – just not that given by the mainstream media and their experts of choice, who see signs that an ever more reckless North Korea, taking advantage of Western preoccupation with the Ukraine war, is seriously considering an attack on South Korea. The French newspaper La Croix published an article titled ‘In North Korea, Kim Jong-un says he is ready to go to war with South Korea’ (16 January 2024). And according to two respected North Korea analysts, the current situation on the peninsula ‘is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950’ (1). At least some US officials seem to agree. As the New York Times reported, US officials believe that Kim Jong-un ‘could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility’ (2). Those who distrust North Korean intentions found support for their fears in Kim Jong-un’s dramatic announcement of a new policy towards South Korea in his 15 January speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly (3). Kim labelled South Korea the nation’s ‘primary foe’ and called for the dismantling of ‘all the organisations we established as solidarity bodies for peaceful reunification’ as well as ‘all the channels of north-south communication along the border, including the one of physically and completely cutting off the railway tracks on our side’. He also ordered the elimination of such ‘concepts as “reunification”, “reconciliation” and “fellow countrymen” from the national history of our Republic’. This determined break with North Korea’s long-stated commitment to peaceful reunification with the South (which even included the demolition of the Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification), coupled with a stepped-up schedule of missile firings, provides the commonly cited evidence for the growing possibility of North Korean military action. However, a full reading of Kim’s speech offers important counter-evidence. In fact, most of Kim’s speech was about the North Korean economy – an emphasis captured by its title, ‘On the Immediate Tasks for the Prosperity and Development of Our Republic and the Promotion of the Wellbeing of Our People’. Kim spoke of the need to complete projects in several key sectors, including the metallurgical, chemical, machine-tool and power industries, to ‘firmly put the overall economy of the country on the track of stable and sustainable development’. He also stressed the importance of overcoming ‘the great disparity of living standards between the capital city and provinces and between towns and the countryside’, noting that this disparity runs ‘counter to the idea of the comprehensive development of socialist construction’. One highlighted response was a new regional development policy that called for the planned construction of new industries, healthcare and educational institutions, and housing, in 20 counties over the next ten years to reduce regional imbalances. In short, this was not a speech signalling the militarisation of the North Korean economy; its primary focus was on development challenges not war preparations. ‘We will never unilaterally unleash a war’ Kim stated several times that his country’s new policy towards South Korea was a response to a deteriorating security environment and not a desire for war. One example was ‘Explicitly speaking, we will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us.’ Another was ‘There is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality facing us, we will never try to avoid it, and we will take perfect and prompt action we thoroughly prepared in order to defend our sovereignty, security of the people and right to existence.’ The deterioration in North Korea’s security environment is easy to document. Here is a snapshot that illustrates the growing aggressiveness of US foreign policy: in 2023 the US and South Korea conducted 42 joint military exercises. The US, South Korea and Japan conducted 10 combined military exercises. All targeted North Korea. Many were far from simple exercises designed to test equipment and communication. Several involved planning a first strike nuclear attack, others the elimination of the North Korean leadership. There is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality, we will never try to avoid it, and we will take perfect and prompt action in order to defend our security, sovereignty of the people and right to existence -- Kim Jong-un On seven different occasions the US flew nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean peninsula as a show of force. Several flights were made by B-1 bombers, escorted by South Korean and sometimes Japanese fighters, to test North Korean air defences. In July North Korea complained about US planes conducting spy missions over ‘the North’s exclusive economic zone’ for eight straight days (4). Perhaps most worrying to Pyongyang was the US success in overcoming past South Korean resistance to a trilateral military agreement that included Japan. Such an agreement was approved during the August 2023 Camp David summit. The three countries agreed to engage in real-time sharing of military intelligence, ballistic missile defence cooperation, annual trilateral military exercises, and military cooperation to meet threats from any common enemy ‘across domains and across the Indo-Pacific and beyond’ (5). US control of United Nations Command Three months later, the first ever ‘Republic of Korea and United Nations Command [UNC] Member States Defense Ministerial Meeting’ took place in Seoul. The UNC was established by the US during the Korean war, without UN authorisation (6), and its forces continue to operate under direct US military command. With US encouragement, the defence ministers pledged to strengthen the UNC’s military readiness to respond to North Korean provocations. The US is now working to secure Japanese participation in UNC training and operations (7). Almost a year before Kim’s speech, South Korea’s president Yoon Suk-yeol had ordered that North Korea be listed as the ‘principal enemy’ in the government’s Defence White Paper. And, in a December 2023 visit to the demilitarised zone separating South and North, Yoon told South Korean troops there, ‘In case of provocations, I ask you to immediately retaliate in response and report it later’ (8). North Korean leaders would be foolish not to take these developments seriously, especially South Korea’s membership of a trilateral military alliance called into existence to support US foreign policy aims. As part of the alliance, South Korea’s foreign and military policies cannot help but become ever more enmeshed with, and shaped by, US and secondarily Japanese interests. The US commander of the Combined Forces Command in South Korea already has operational control over South Korean forces in time of war. Consequently, South Korea is likely to become an ever more unreliable, if not hostile, negotiating partner. This recent history helps to explain Kim’s decision to dismantle all ties between the two Koreas. It also supports the interpretation that Kim’s foreign policy remarks were primarily intended to warn South Korean and US leaders about the risk of unintended consequences from their actions, not signal a new aggressive posture. It remains to be seen how well Kim’s decision will serve North Korean interests in the long run. He could have just quietly downgraded work on joint North-South projects while maintaining the various solidarity organisations that Pyongyang had established to support efforts at peaceful reunification. The decision to dismantle these organisations has certainly left South Korean activists working for the demilitarisation of the peninsula and improved relations between North and South in a difficult position. It also leaves those in the Korean diaspora who remain committed to reunification, or at least the normalisation of relations between the two Koreas, with few avenues to maintain dialogue with the North. Moreover, the political environment in South Korea is far from stable. South Korea’s current president, Yoon Suk-yeol, is very unpopular for his labour, human rights and foreign policy decisions: the next government might prove a more responsive negotiating partner. Need for a new US policy What we are witnessing on the Korean peninsula is a dangerous spiral of action and reaction. For example, in December 2023 a US nuclear-powered submarine docked in Busan, South Korea to demonstrate US resolve to defend South Korea. The next day North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. It did so, it declared, as a response to the presence of the submarine. South Korea and the US condemned the action as provocation. And in January, shortly after Kim’s speech, the US, Japan and South Korea conducted a massive trilateral naval exercise that included a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. AP News called it ‘perhaps their biggest-ever combined naval exercises in a show of strength against nuclear-armed North Korea’ (9). Two days later North Korea carried out a test of what it claimed was its latest weapon, the Haeil-5-23 ‘underwater nuclear weapons system’. In early March 2024 the US and South Korea held their annual Freedom Shield joint military exercises. For the first time, 12 member states of the UNC (including Australia, Canada, France, the UK, Greece and Italy) also took part in the exercises (10). In late March Washington and Tokyo decided to carry out ‘the biggest upgrade to their security alliance since they signed a mutual defence treaty in 1960’ (11). One false step and this deadly dance could easily trigger a full-scale regional war, with unimaginable consequences. And if we are going to stop it, we need to shift public attention from North Korean intentions to US intensions, because it is the US that is leading this spiral. North Korea has, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, sought direct negotiations with the United States. It wanted to sign a peace treaty ending the Korean war as a step towards normalisation of relations. But the US has refused to engage in such negotiations. There are several reasons for its reluctance. The North Korean threat has greatly benefited the US military-industrial complex, justifying funding for the development of a range of expensive and profitable weapons systems. It provides a useful rationale for keeping US bases and troops in both Japan and South Korea, close to China as well as North Korea. The continuing threat also helps to bolster the political standing of pro-US conservative parties in both countries. Thus, the US has only been willing to meet with North Korea if the agenda was limited to when and how North Korea will end its nuclear programme and destroy its weapons. But such a demand has been a nonstarter for North Korea. It was the US, not North Korea, that brought nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, in 1958. They were repeatedly used to threaten North Korea, decades before North Korea began its own nuclear programme, in violation of the principles of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. And now North Korea faces a US-dominated alliance of well-armed hostile countries. While annual military spending is close to $900bn in the US and approximately $40bn in South Korea, North Korea, according to US State Department estimates, spends only $4bn (12). Unilaterally denuclearising must appear suicidal to North Korean leaders. Does this mean North Korea is a threat to peace? (1) Robert L Carlin and Siegfried S Hecker, ‘Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War?’, 38 North, 11 January 2024 (2) Edward Wong and Julian E Barnes, ‘US is watching North Korea for signs of lethal military action’, The New York Times, 25 January 2024. (3) KCNA Watch, ‘Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un makes policy speech at 10th session of 14th SPA’, 16 January 2024. (4) Song Sang-ho, ‘Kim’s sister warns US military will face “very critical flight” in case of “repeated intrusion” ’, Yonhap News Agency, 11 July 2023. (5) ‘The Spirit of Camp David: Joint Statement of Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States’, White House Briefing Room, 18 August 2023. (6) ‘In Name Only: the United Nations Command and US Unilateralism in Korea’, Korea Policy Institute, 1 July 2020, www.kpolicy.org/. (7) Jang Chang-jun, ‘War crisis on the Korean Peninsula: Is it a repeat of the past or a new phase?’ (in Korean), 24 January 2024, minplusnews.com/. (8) Kim Han-joo, ‘Yoon orders military to retaliate first, report later in case of enemy attacks’, Yonhap News Agency, 28 December 2023. (9) Kim Tong-hyung, ‘The US, South Korea and Japan conduct naval drills in a show of strength against North Korea’, AP News, 17 January 2024. (10) Suh Jae-jung, ‘SK-US spring exercises usually prompt drills by North – this time, it’s focused on potato farming instead’, Hankyoreh, 12 March 2024. (11) Demetri Sevastopulo and Kana Inagaki, ‘US and Japan plan biggest upgrade to security pact in over 60 years’, Financial Times, London, 24 March 2024, www.ft.com/. (12) Kim Tong-hyung, ‘North Korea passes new defense budget’, Defense News, 19 January 2023. Martin Hart-Landsberg is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Lewis and Clark College, US, author of several books on Korea and the political economy of East Asia, and a board member of the Korea Policy Institute.

By Gregory Elich | May 1, 2024 | Originally published in Counterpunch Since the U.S. military brought its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea in 2017, it has met with sustained local resistance. THAAD is the centerpiece of the numerous actions the United States has undertaken to enmesh South Korea in its hostile anti-China campaign, a course that Korean peace activists are fighting to reverse. In a unanimous decision at the end of March, South Korea’s Constitutional Court dismissed two challenges lodged by residents of Seongju County against the deployment of THAAD. [1] Since its arrival, the THAAD system has met with recurring demonstrations in the nearby village of Soseong-ri. The hope in the Yoon and Biden administrations is that the court’s decision will dishearten opponents of THAAD. In this expectation, they are already disappointed, as anti-THAAD activists responded to the court’s decision by vowing to “fight to the end.” [2] Although protestors have regularly held rallies on the road leading to the THAAD site, swarms of Korean police cleared them away to allow free passage for U.S. military supply trucks. Opposition to THAAD has angered U.S. officials, leading the Biden administration to dispatch Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Seoul to deliver the message that it deemed the situation “unacceptable” and progress on establishing the base needed to accelerate. Austin also raised objections to protests by residents in Pohang over noise from U.S. Apache attack helicopters conducting live-fire exercises. [3] Predictably, the Yoon administration responded by prioritizing U.S. demands over the welfare of the Korean people and promised “close cooperation for normalizing routine and unfettered access to the THAAD site” and “improvement of the combined training conditions.” [4] THAAD is billed as an anti-missile defense system consisting of an interceptor missile battery, a fire control and communications unit, and an AN/TPY-2 X-band radar. The ostensible purpose of THAAD in Seongju is to counter incoming North Korean missiles, but serious doubts exist about its efficacy in that role. In terms of coverage, THAAD’s position in Seongju puts it in range to cover the main U.S. military base in South Korea, Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, but out of range to protect Seoul, which at any rate is indefensible due to its proximity to the border. Even so, it is questionable how much utility the system offers even for Pyeongtaek. THAAD’s missiles are designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles at an altitude of 40 to 150 kilometers. The THAAD battery would have less than three and a half minutes to detect and counter-launch against a high-altitude ballistic missile fired from the farthestpoint in North Korea. By then, the incoming missile would have fallen below the lower-end altitude range of 40 kilometers, leaving it invulnerable to interception. [5] That would be the best-case scenario, as in the event of a war, the North Koreans are not likely to be so accommodating as to launch ballistic missiles from as far away as possible. Furthermore, the THAAD battery in Seongju is equipped with six launchers and 48 interceptor missiles. With a thirty-minute THAAD battery launcher reload time, incoming missiles would not take long to deplete THAAD’s ability to respond, even under the most accommodating circumstances. An upgrade was recently made to integrate THAAD with Patriot PAC-3 defense to intercept ballistic missiles at a lower altitude. This enhancement is of doubtful utility, as the radar’s response would still be constrained by the short flight time of an incoming missile. For all the hype about the successful interception of Iranian missiles fired at Israel, the Patriot’s showing in a more suitable scenario was less than stellar. It had an advantage there, as Iranian and Yemeni launch sites were situated much farther away from their target than in the Korean case. Yet, out of 120 Iranian ballistic missiles, the Patriot system shot down only one. The others were intercepted primarily by U.S. warplanes. [6] North Korea’s development of a solid-fuel hypersonic intermediate-range missile has added another unmeetable challenge for THAAD. Because of its proximity, it is doubtful that North Korea would target US forces with high-altitude ballistic missiles in case of war. Instead, it would likely rely on its long-range artillery, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles, flying well below the lower limit of THAAD’s altitude coverage. Despite its doubtful defensive effectiveness on the Korean Peninsula, the United States attaches enormous importance to THAAD’s deployment in South Korea, which suggests an unstated motivation. A clue is provided by the stationing in Japan of two stand-alone AN/TPY-2 radars without an accompanying THAAD system. [7] In other words, it is the radar that matters to the U.S. military, and the linkage to THAAD interceptors is primarily a pretense made necessary by popular feeling in Korea.  What makes the AN/TPY-2 special is its ability to operate in two modes. In terminal mode, it feeds tracking data to the THAAD missile battery, allowing it to target an incoming ballistic missile as it descends toward its target. In forward-based mode, the THAAD missile battery is not involved, and the role of the radar is to detect a ballistic missile as it ascends from its launching pad, even from deep into China. In this mode, the radar is integrated into the U.S. missile defense system and sends tracking data to interceptor missiles stationed on U.S. territory and Pacific bases. [8] As a U.S. Army publication points out, when in forward-based mode, a field commander may use the radar system “to concurrently support both regional and strategic missile defense operations.” [9] There are hints that preparations may already be underway to establish the conditions necessary for THAAD to operate in forward-based mode. Last year, South Korea and Japan agreed to link their radars to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. [10] The ostensible purpose is to enhance the tracking accuracy of missiles fired from North Korea, but the concept applies equally well to Chinese missiles. It is not a stretch to imagine that if South Korean and Japanese radars have been linked to the United States, the same may be true with the THAAD’s AN/TPY-2. Certainly, if the U.S. Army switches the mode, it will not be informing South Korean authorities, so sure are the Americans that they can freely treat Korean sovereignty with contempt. Switching an AN/TPY-2 radar from one mode to the other takes only eight hours, a quick process that is opaque to outsiders. [11] An anti-ballistic missile system can easily be overwhelmed by a full-scale enemy attack. The system’s primary purpose is to support a first-strike capability, in which the United States takes out as many of the enemy’s missiles as possible, leaving the anti-ballistic missile system to counter the few surviving missiles. In essence, that makes the radar in the THAAD system a first-strike weapon. The closer the radar is stationed to an adversary’s ballistic missile launch, the more precise the tracking provided to the U.S.-based anti-missile system. South Korea is ideally located for the AN/TPY-2, where its radar can cover much of eastern China. [12] The effect is to enlist South Korea, willingly or not, in U.S. war plans against China. When residents in Seongju argue that THAAD makes them a target, they are not mistaken. The Yoon administration is taking integration with the U.S. missile defense system one step further in planning to spend an estimated $584 million to procure American SM-3 interceptor missiles, suitable for protecting the United States and its bases in the Pacific.[13] The SM-3 interceptors are to be deployed on South Korean Aegis destroyers, which will need to be upgraded at additional cost to handle them. [14] Residents in Seongju are also concerned about potential health risks associated with living adjacent to the THAAD installation. Radars transmit pulses of high-frequency electromagnetic fields, and the AN/TPY-2 radar generates radio frequencies of 8.55 to 10 GHz. [15] According to the World Health Organization, radio frequency waves below 10 GHz “penetrate exposed tissues and produce heating due to energy absorption.” [16] One study observes that radars generate pulsed microwaves “in very high values of peak power compared to mean power emitted.” To evaluate risk, one must also take peak values into account. In that case study, exposure levels for 49 workers were assessed, where it was noted that “peak values are about 200 – 4000 times higher than corresponding mean values.” Although recorded mean values fell below exposure limits that could have caused thermal effects, the peak values suggested potential non-thermal impacts, and “peak power density frequently exceeded the reference level and were correlated with nervous system effects.” [17] The AN/TPY-2 relies on a phased array antenna. The U.S. Army publication on Ground-based Midcourse Defense Operations warns, “Dangerous radio frequency power levels exist on and near antennas and phased-array radars during operations. Radio frequency electromagnetic radiation may cause serious burns and internal injury. All personnel must observe radio frequency danger indications and stay outside designated keep out zones.” It adds that the keep out zone can vary according to power output “but may extend out from a radar face in excess of 10 kilometers and sweep more than 70 degrees on each side from the system bore sight.” [18] In other words, the extent of risk depends heavily on the radar’s power output and disposition. Where the radar is aimed matters; the extent of human exposure is sharply reduced outside of the direct path of the primary beam. The U.S. Army’s AN/TPY-2 forward-based operations field manual specifies three search plans for the radar while in that mode. The “standard operations mode,” named Autonomous Search Plans, “normally provides multiple search sectors,” and in general, the larger the ballistic missile named area of interest, “the larger the search volume of the radar sector.” [19] Since China constitutes a vast area of interest, the THAAD radar in forward-based mode potentially exposes a wide range of the local population to radiation. Shortly after THAAD was brought to South Korea, the Daegu Regional Environmental Office attempted to ascertain the environmental impact through periodic measurements; results registered at safe levels at a point in time when the THAAD system was not yet fully implemented. However, the Environmental Office noted that the radar’s power output level and vertical and horizontal angles were unknown “due to military secrecy.” [20] While the low measurements were suggestive, they were essentially meaningless without knowing what radar settings were being measured. Since the arrival of THAAD in 2017, the local population’s concerns about possible health impacts from electromagnetic radiation had gone unanswered until June 21 last year, when the Ministry of Defense issued a press release announcing the result of its THAAD environmental impact assessment. The Ministry of Environment judged the impact as “insignificant.” [21] The press release reported that the highest measurement registered was 0.018870 watts per square meter (W/㎡), far below the limit for human exposure. An earlier series of tests in Gimcheon City, at four locations northwest of the radar, produced a slightly higher but comparable measurement to the Seongju test, definitely within a safe limit. The tests were conducted over one year, ending in May 2023. The highest and maximum readings were registered at the farthest location, 10.2 kilometers from the radar. [22] However, as in the earlier Daegu test, nothing about how the radar operated was known. At first glance, the Seongju test result would appear to allay concerns over the radar’s health impact. But has it? The most striking aspect of the press release is its lack of transparency. No information is provided other than a single result. The Ministry of Defense withheld information because it would be “likely to significantly harm the vital interests of the state if disclosed.” [23] It is unclear how revealing details about the test conditions, such as the radar’s angle, would pose a security risk. More likely, United States Forces Korea preferred to hide the details from public view so that the test could be conducted in a way sure to produce safe readings. Unlike the earlier Gimcheon report, which identified the populated areas where measurements had been taken, the Seongju environmental impact assessment “was done for the entire base, including the site negotiated by the Daegu Regional Environmental Office.” [24] The phrasing suggests that no measurements were taken outside of the THAAD base, an odd choice given the concerns of nearby residents. Even within that limitation, less than thirty percent of the base was included in the assessment. [25] Several factors can produce dramatically different results when measuring radiation. The public’s only knowledge of the Seongu test is that radiation poses no risk in an unknown set of conditions. Risk remains a mystery in other scenarios. We do not know which mode(s) the test included. It is probable that only the terminal mode was involved, aligning with the fiction that the radar’s purpose is purely defensive. Estimated ranges for the AN/TPY-2 vary but are consistently far higher when set to forward-based mode. Therefore, a test in forward mode could be expected to produce a higher electromagnetic radiation reading, as the longer the range, the higher the average power the radar has to generate. [26] There are also the factors of angle and direction. The press release was silent on these matters, as well. In none of the measurements was it known in which direction the radar was pointed. In terminal mode, the radar would presumably point north. The forward-based mode should have the radar directed toward China in a different and much broader range of directions. Furthermore, the AN/TPY-2 can be set at any angle ranging from ten to 60 degrees. [27] Presumably, the angle would be positioned much lower in forward-based mode than in terminal mode, resulting in a more direct environmental impact on the ground. The highest radiofrequency radiation is in the path of the radar’s main beam. Outside of that, there is a sharp drop-off, typically at levels thousands of times lower. [28] If measurements are taken outside the line of the beam, then results would be misleadingly low. Also unknown are the positions of the radar in various planned operation scenarios. What populated areas would be situated directly in line of the beam? Without that information, let alone corresponding measurements, potential risk remains unknown. The U.S. Army conducted the Seongju test, and the South Korean Air Force, partnering with the Korea Radio Promotion Association, measured the radiation. [29] There was no outside involvement in planning or conducting the test. Lacking independent outside oversight, the U.S. military chose the test conditions based on the motivation to produce a reassuring finding. In coordination with selected third parties, the Ministry of Environment’s sole role was to review the measurements handed to them by the South Korean military. In its recent decision, the Constitutional Court dismissed every point in the two appeals that challenged the deployment of THAAD. The petition filed by Won Buddhists charged that THAAD violated their freedom of religion by requiring them to obtain permission from the military to conduct religious activities and meetings and by restricting pilgrimages. Similarly, the petition by residents argued that security restrictions imposed on farmers required them to seek permission from the police to work their fields. To both complaints, the court ruled that restricted access to a religious site and farmland does not apply to the constitution, as a joint U.S.-Korean commission had decided to deploy THAAD in accordance with the Mutual Defense Treaty. The court summarized its point by asserting, “If the exercise of public authority has no effect on the legal status of the applicants, there is no possible violation of their fundamental rights in the first place.” It was a curious framing for the court to adopt in that it ignored the impact on residents who could no longer conduct their activities in a normal manner. In dismissing the challenges relating to health concerns and noise pollution, the court cited the Ministry of Defense’s environmental test press release in evidence. Finally, in rejecting the challenge that THAAD would make Seongju a target in times of war, the court made the specious claim that since the system is defensive, it cannot be said that it “is likely to threaten the peaceful existence of the people by subjecting them to a war of aggression.” [30] Chinese complaints about the nature of THAAD are well known in South Korea; the judges could hardly have been unaware of how deployment has been perceived in the People’s Republic of China. Following close on the heels of the publicized environmental test result, the court’s decision surely had Washington in a jubilant mood. South Korea’s military promised to “work closely with the U.S. side to faithfully reflect the opinions of the U.S. side so that the project can proceed.” [31] They plan to expedite the steps needed to “normalize” the base and ensure its permanent emplacement. THAAD can be considered a microcosm representing everything unsettling about the U.S.-South Korea military alliance. It is a relationship serving American geostrategic objectives in which Koreans play a subservient role, often acting against their interests. As East Asian specialist Seungsook Moon explains, “While there have been variations and changes in the U.S. relationships with host countries over time, the military relationship between the USA and South Korea has been persistently neocolonial.” Moon adds that, in “maintaining the boundary between us and them,” the South Korean state “imposes the unequal burden of hosting the missile defense system on lower-class and rural citizens” and “exacerbates class inequality by diminishing these citizens’ quality of life and human security.” [32] The costs of U.S. militarism are also offloaded onto Koreans in other ways, as well, including communities impacted by toxic pollution from active and abandoned American bases. Those living near live-fire practice exercises must endure unbearable noise levels, while crimes committed by American soldiers victimize residents near bases. As for South Korea as a whole, the presence of U.S. bases in the context of American hyper-militarized confrontation with China and North Korea poses an ongoing danger of dragging the nation into war. Indeed, the United States is quite explicit about the role it assigns to South Korea. Shortly after taking office, in a revealing statement, President Biden declared, “When we strengthen our alliances, we amplify our power.” [33] That leaves no doubt about whose interests allied nations are expected to serve. In South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, the United States has found an ideal lackey, a true believer who eagerly prioritizes American demands over the welfare of his people. It has long been a U.S. goal for its alliance to expand beyond the Korean Peninsula. With Yoon in power, the United States had been progressing toward moving the alliance in that direction. Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik recently announced that the alliance is committed to “operate across the region with greater bilateral and multilateral political-military alignment to realize this vision of a true global comprehensive strategic Alliance…” [34] The U.S. objective is total economic, diplomatic, and military domination of the Asia-Pacific. When Yoon met with Biden last year, he signaled his support for that policy, including the usual anti-China euphemisms. [35] Biden and Yoon have also been ramping up regional tensions with a nearly nonstop series of aggressive full-scale military exercises intended to intimidate and threaten North Korea and China. [36] Yoon and Biden have underestimated the determination of the Korean progressive movement, which is unswayed by recent developments. If anything, the setbacks have energized them. On April 27, the seventh anniversary of the introduction of THAAD in Soseong-ri, activists held a demonstration at the site to proclaim their undying opposition, shouting, “We will be with you until the day THAAD is dismantled!” [37] One of the speakers, student Lee Ki-eun, pointed out that THAAD’s radar is intended to defend the United States and Japan. “It is completely for foreign powers.” She added, “What is Korea? At the forefront of the confrontation with North Korea and China, the lives of our people are sacrificed for foreign powers.” Lee urged her audience: “With greater determination, with an even greater life force like a bursting prairie fire, let’s continue the anti-THAAD struggle!” [38] The anti-THAAD battle is part of a broader movement by Korean progressives against the deepening military alliance with the United States and Yoon’s colonial mindset that sacrifices Korean sovereignty and the welfare of the Korean people on the altar of U.S. imperialism. As Ham Jae-gyu of the Unification Committee declared at the rally, “The Japanese colonial period merely passed the baton to U.S. imperialism, and subjugation by imperialism is accelerating. The United States is trampling every corner of Korea.” [39] Notes. [1] https://www.lawtimes.co.kr/news/197154 [2] Kwan Sik Yoon, “Anti-THAAD Group: ‘The Constitution Does Not Protect Basic Rights…We Will Fight to the End,” Yonhap, March 29, 2024. [3] Oh Seok-min, “S. Korea, U.S. Working Closely on How to Improve THAAD Base Conditions: Seoul Ministry,” Yonhap, March 29, 2021. [4] Press Release, “54th Security Consultative Meeting Joint Communique,” U.S. Department of Defense, November 3, 2022. [5] Yoon Min-sik, “THAAD, Capacity and Limitations,” Korea Herald, July 21, 2016 [6] Lauren Frias, “US Fighter Jets, Destroyers, and Patriot Missiles Shot Down Loads of Iranian Weapons to Shield Israel From an Unprecedented Attack,” Business Insider, April 15, 2024. Vera Bergengruen, “How the U.S. Rallied to Defend Israel From Iran’s Massive Attack,” Time, April 15, 2024. [7] “U.S. Defense Infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific: Background and Issues for Congress,” p. 39, Congressional Research Service, June 6, 2023. [8] https://sldinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Mobile-Radar.pdf [9] ATP 3-27.3, “Ground-based Midcourse Defense Operations,” U.S. Army, October 30, 2019. [10] Jesse Johnson, “Japan, South Korea, U.S. Begin Sharing Real-time Data on North Korean Missiles,” The Japan Times, December 19, 2023. [11] Park Hyun, “Pentagon Document Confirms THAAD’s Eight-hour Conversion Ability,” Hankyoreh, June 3, 2015. [12] https://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/an-tpy-2.htm [13] Eunhyuk Cha, “South Korea Approves Procurement of SM-3 for Ballistic Missile Defense,” Naval News, April 26, 2024. [14] Younghak Lee, “South Korea to Upgrade KDX-III Batch-I Ships to Operate SM-3 and SM-6,” Naval News, November 19, 2023. [15] “AN/TPY-2 Transportable Radar Surveillance Forward Based X-Band Transportable [FBX-T],” GlobalSecurity.org. [16] “Electromagnetic Fields and Public Health: Radars and Human Health,” Fact Sheet N 226, World Health Organization. [17] Christian Goiceanu, Răzvan Dănulescu1, Eugenia Dănulescu, Florin Mihai Tufescu, and Dorina Emilia Creangă, “Exposure to Microwaves Generated by Radar Equipment: Case Study and Protection Issues,” Environmental Engineering and Management Journal, April 2011, Vol. 10, No. 4, p 491-498. [18] ATP 3-27.3, “Ground-based Midcourse Defense Operations,” U.S. Army, October 30, 2019. [19] ATP 3-27.5: “AN/TYP-2 Forward Based Mode (FBM) Radar Operations,” U.S. Army, April 16, 2012. [20] Press Release, “성주 사드기지 소규모 환경영향평가 협의 완료,” Daegu Regional Environment Agency Environmental Assessment Division, September 4, 2017. [21] Song Sang-ho, “S. Korea Completes Environmental Assessment of U.S. THAAD Missile Defense Base,” Yonhap, June 21, 2023. [22] “사드기지 소규모 환경영향평가 후속조치 기술지원 결과,” Republic of Korea Ministry of Environment, undated report. [23] https://www.peoplepower21.org/peace/1927732 [24] Press Release, “전 정부서 미룬 사드 환경영향평가 완료, 윤정부 ‘성주 사드기지 정상화’에 속도,” Republic of Korea Ministry of Defense, June 21, 2023. [25] https://www.peoplepower21.org/peace/1927732 [26] “Radar Navigation and Maneuvering Board Manual,” National Imagery and Mapping Agency, 2001, p. 24 https://www.furuno.com/en/technology/radar/basic/ [27] “Shielded from Oversight: The Disastrous US Approach to Strategic Missile Defense – Appendix 10: Sensors, Union of Concerned Scientists, p. 9. [28] J. Kusters, “X-band Wave Radar Radiation Hazards to Personnel,” General Dynamics Applied Physical Sciences, November 26, 2019. https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/radiation-radar [29] “Science Prevails Over Wild Rumors,” JoongAng Ilbo, June 21, 2024. [30] “2017헌마372: 고고도미사일방어체계 배치 승인 위헌확인고고도미사일방어체계 배치,” Constitutional Court of Korea, March 28, 2024. [31] Press Release, “전 정부서 미룬 사드 환경영향평가 완료, 윤정부 ‘성주 사드기지 정상화’에 속도,” Republic of Korea Ministry of Defense, June 21, 2023. [32] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09670106211022884 [33] “Remarks by President Biden on America’s Place in the World,” The White House, February 4, 2021. [34] Press Release, “Defense Vision of the U.S.-ROK Alliance,” U.S. Department of Defense, November 13, 2023. [35] “Leaders’ Joint Statement in Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Alliance Between the United States of America and the Republic of Korea,” The White House, April 26, 2023. [36] Simone Chun, “Unprecedented US War Drills and Naval Deployment Raise Fear of War in Korea,” Truthout, April 7, 2024. [37] https://spark946.org/party/kor_en?tpf=board/view&board_code=3&code=27545 [38] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMb3eLbBve0 [39] https://worknworld.kctu.org/news/articleView.html?idxno=504477 Gregory Elich is a Korea Policy Institute board member. He is a contributor to the collection, Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy (Haymarket Books, 2023). His website is https://gregoryelich.org  Follow him on Twitter at @GregoryElich.

By Simone Chun | April 10, 2024 | Originally published in Truthout South Korea’s general election will be held on April 10, as candidates compete for the 300 seats in the country’s unicameral National Assembly. The latest polls show a neck-and-neck race between President Yoon Suk-yeol’s right-wing ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the main opposition “liberal” Democratic Party which currently holds a majority. This election will serve as a referendum on Yoon’s repressive “republic of prosecutors” and his administration’s dismal neoliberal economic policies. One critical issue that has been absent in the media coverage of these critical elections is Yoon’s decision to entirely subsume South Korea’s national interests to Washington’s regional objectives, particularly with respect to the Biden administration’s new Cold War with China and the massive expansion of the provocative U.S.-led military exercises in the Korean Peninsula. Yoon’s complete acquiescence to the demands of Biden’s aggressive new Cold War has earned steady criticism from opposition liberal and progressive parties. Lee Jae-myung, chair of South Korea’s Democratic Party, has criticized Yoon for “Cold War posturing … [that] stokes fear and division,” calling for South Korea to pursue its own national interests rather than allowing itself to be reduced to a “pawn in the plans of others.” Similarly, Cho Kuk, chair of the progressive Rebuilding Korea Party, opposes South Korea’s regression toward Cold War-era diplomatic relations with China and Russia, which he argues are straining relations to the breaking point. Nevertheless, in spite of the considerable opposition to Washington’s imposition of its new Cold War on South Korea, Yoon has obediently rubber-stamped two years of virtually unabated U.S.-led military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, putting the South Korean military entirely at Washington’s disposal and thrusting it firmly in the front lines of the new U.S. Cold War. In the continued absence of any meaningful Korea policy, President Biden has failed to mention North Korea in his State of the Union address for the third year running. Despite being the world’s largest military exercises in peacetime, these war games have hardly received any attention in the United States. The latest U.S.-led military exercise, “Freedom Shield 2024,” mobilized more than 300,000 South Korean troops alongside 10,000 American troops in a staggering series of 48 field maneuvers — double those of last year’s “Freedom Shield.” These combined battle-ready attack and invasion forces carried out airstrikes, tactical live fire drills, and air combat and bombing runs at the North-South Korean border. Per Operations Plan (OPLAN) 5015 between the U.S. and South Korean Army, which envisages a preemptive strike against North Korea, these forces are armed, deployed and poised to cross the border literally at a moment’s notice. That the United States and South Korea are ramping up provocations against North Korea is nothing new: Every U.S. president since 1945 has been antagonistic toward the North. Donald Trump threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen” while Biden vowed the “end of North Korean regime if it attacks.” But the scope, intensity and frequency of the war drills have been steadily intensifying and now far surpass those held during the Cold War. The past year alone included: 250+ days of U.S. and South Korean joint military maneuvers, including almost every day between February and April 2023, compared with 30 days of North Korean military exercises over the entire year; 21 instances in which U.S. strategic assets, including nuclear-capable weapon platforms, were deployed to South Korea; 10+ UN Command member nations participating in U.S. and South Korean joint military maneuvers, and pledging to provide firepower in the event of hostilities; Attainment of a new record as the world’s largest military exercises to date in scale and scope. South Korea’s defense chief has pledged to “swiftly eliminate North Korean leadership” as a pillar of the military’s three-axis deterrence system against the North, which includes a “Kill Chain” preemptive strike platform designed to destroy North Korea’s ballistic missiles prior to launch as well as selectively “remove” North Korean leadership. To further drive the point home, South Korea’s far right President Yoon Suk-yeol has encouraged frontline troops to “shoot first and ask questions later” in the event of any exchange with the North. For its part, while continuing the customary line that the U.S. harbors no hostile intent toward North Korea, Washington justifies the rapidly expanding U.S. military posture on the Korean Peninsula as purely a “defensive response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs” and its “resistance to negotiations.” Even conservative security analysts dispute Washington’s claim, while experts stress that “neither North Korean conventional forces nor its nuclear weapons pose a significant threat of war on the peninsula.” The combined United States Forces Korea (USFK) and South Korean forces far overshadow those of North Korea, whose entire military budget is $1.47 billion compared to that of South Korea at $43.1 billion, not to mention that of the U.S. at $816.7 billion. Others draw attention to the fact that, despite Pyongyang’s rhetoric, North Korea’s nuclear platforms are a defensive tool. In his speech to the North Korean legislature this past January, Kim Jong Un reaffirmed the self-defensive posture and stressed, “We will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us … there is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war.” Even USFK Commander General Paul LaCamera has admitted that the North Korean leader’s priorities are in fact “regime survivability” and “preparing to defend his nation.” Three important points merit particular attention with respect to the ongoing U.S.-led joint military exercises within the context of U.S. foreign policy in the Korean Peninsula. First, the driving force of the increasingly offensive U.S.-led joint military exercises is Washington’s “hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy” in support of its new Cold War against China. While the USFK notes that the military exercises “aim to bolster security and stability not only on the Korean peninsula but also across Northeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific,” Washington’s actions are in fact increasingly destabilizing. In addition to ramping up the scope and frequency of regional military exercises, the U.S. is deploying more than half of its aircraft carriers to the Pacific in the coming weeks — an unprecedented regional concentration of naval power that is being branded as a “show of force” against China and North Korea. Second, the U.S. quest to leverage an ever-increasing network of global assets in its conflict with China directly drives U.S. military exercises in South Korea. Case in point is the increasing involvement of the United Nations Command (UNC) in the U.S.-led joint military exercises. Despite its name, the UNC is not an organization under the control of the United Nations; it is in fact a U.S.-controlled military alliance organized under the nominal auspices of the “international community.” According to Tim Beal, a preeminent researcher on U.S. imperialism in Asia and the author of Crisis in Korea: America, China and the Risk of War, the U.S. has initiated a rapid “modernization program” for the UNC in order to upgrade it to a key component of the U.S. military architecture in the Indo-Pacific. This effort entails: A multi-year push to revitalize the UNC into a “formidable military asset” and induct its member states to take part in military exercises in the Korean Peninsula. Some states such as the U.K. have already been sending combat troops to participate in joint landing exercises. Expansion of UNC as part of a U.S. push to frame the UNC as the core of an “expanded and repurposed global alliance structure” that “stretches far beyond the Korean peninsula” to serve Washington’s geopolitical aims. Third, U.S. military cooption of countries along China’s perimeter requires the seamless management of a network of multinational military assets via the U.S.-controlled UNC, the recent emergence of the U.S.-led Japan-South Korea-U.S. (JAKUS) military alliance, and carving out a greater role for NATO in East Asia that has, in Tim Beal’s words, uncomfortable “echoes of the European imperialisms of the past” along with Washington’s parallel efforts to create a NATO-like bloc in Asia. South Korea, the U.S. military outpost closest to China, is a critical linchpin in the network of U.S. “force-multipliers,” serving as a frontline launch pad for any U.S.-led war in East Asia. The U.S. has retained continuous wartime operational control of the South Korean military since the Korean War in 1950, and ensures that South Korea’s 600,000 troops and 3.1 million reservists — Washington’s principal regional instrument against China — are constantly combat-ready as the first wave in any such conflict. In his hearing at the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on March 20, USFK Commander General LaCamera bluntly admitted that the strategic value of the USFK in fact lies in the fact that it serves as a “counterweight to China and Russia.” As a result, South Korea is being swept up in Washington’s intensifying hegemonic war, even though there is, in author Kim Sung-hae’s words, “no inherent reason why Korea should be an enemy of China or Russia.” The U.S. is using North Korea as a pretext for its new Cold War against China, and, with its control of 40 percent of the world’s nuclear stockpile, is even willing to risk nuclear war to further its geopolitical aims. As Noam Chomsky puts it, “U.S. policy is very provocative. Nuclear war ends everything, but the United States always plays with fire.” It is in fact the U.S., not North Korea, that not only fans the flames of confrontation between North and South Korea, but appears to be actively planning for the possibility of a new war in the Korean Peninsula — an inconvenient truth that is absent from Western media amid fearmongering about Pyongyang. Simone Chun is a researcher and activist focusing on inter-Korean relations and U.S. foreign policy in the Korean Peninsula. She has served as an assistant professor at Suffolk University, a lecturer at Northeast University and an associate in research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. She is on the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors, and serves on the advisory board for CODEPINK. She can be found on Twitter at @simonechun. Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission