By Martin Hart-Landsberg | December 3, 2017 Tensions between the US and North Korea are again rising in the wake of North Korea’s November 28th test of an ICBM that experts believe has the potential to deliver a nuclear bomb to cities on the east coast of the US, including Washington D.C. As I have written before, we desperately need to change US foreign policy towards North Korea.  North Korea’s leaders continue to seek talks with the United States, with all issues on the table, those of concern to them and those of concern to the US government.  But the US government continues to refuse.  The Trump administration has even rejected North Korean offers to freeze its production and testing of missiles and nuclear weapons in return for a halt to US war games directed against North Korea. Instead, Trump continues Obama’s strategy of responding to every North Korean missile launch or nuclear test with new military threats and sanctions. Unfortunately, changing US foreign policy towards North Korea is no easy matter.  One reason is that there are powerful forces opposing a de-escalation of tensions.  Sadly, the tension is useful to the US military industrial complex, which needs enemies to support its desire increase in the military budget.  It is also useful to the US military, providing it with a justification for maintaining troops on the Asian mainland and in Japan.  The tension also helps the US government isolate China and boost right-wing political tendencies in Japan and South Korea, developments favorable to our own militarists and right-wingers.  Of course, the costs of US policy fall on ordinary people. Another reason for the difficulty in changing US policy towards North Korea is that the US media does little to provide the context necessary for people in the United States to understand its lawless and destructive nature. The illegality of Trump administration threats of destruction The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened North Korea with total destruction.  What is missing from media accounts of these threats is the explanation that they represent a violation of the UN Charter and international law.  As Gavan McCormack explains: According to the UN Charter’s Article 2 (3), disputes between states must be settled by peaceful means and (4) “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state …” [italics added]. Article 33 further specifies the obligation of parties to any dispute likely to endanger international peace and security to “first of all, seek a solution by negotiation inquiry, mediation, conciliation … or other peaceful means of their own choice.” By ruling out negotiations with North Korea and insisting only on submission, the US, Japan and Australia ignore or breach this clear rule (and Japan breaches also the proscription on the “threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” in its own constitution). Going beyond that, President Trump has also not only insulted the North Korean leader from the platform of the UN General Assembly but actually threatened his country with “total destruction,” by “fire and fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” That surely qualifies as threat. It is even genocidal, and therefore criminal behavior, not only on the part of those (Trump) who utter it but on the part also of those like Abe and Turnbull (to whom perhaps now India’s Modi is to be added) who endorse and encourage it. Moreover, in 1996, the International Court of Justice, in response to a UN request, ruled that threats to use nuclear weapons against another country are a violation of international law except “in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”  In certainly seems clear that the US is in violation of international law because of its repeated threats and military exercises designed to practice a nuclear attack on North Korea. Tragically, the US media has remained silent about this lawlessness on the part of the US government. The illegality of US-initiated UN sanctions on North Korea The US has aggressively pursued the adoption of UN sanctions on North Korea.  The ones adopted in August and September are the most sweeping yet. They call for blocking North Korean exports of coal, iron, iron ore, lead, lead ore, seafood and textiles, all of which are important earners of foreign exchange. The resolutions also ban countries from opening new or expanding existing joint ventures in North Korea or renewing labor export agreements.  They also impose a cap on the amount of oil North Korea is allowed to import and call for a total ban on the country’s import of natural gas and condensates.  If rigorously enforced these sanctions will devastate living conditions for the great majority of North Koreans. However, sanctions that target an entire population with the aim of causing economic collapse, such as those being imposed on North Korea, are illegal under the UN charter.  As McCormack points out: Only sanctions carefully tailored to apply to those who act in the name of the government and bear responsibility for its offensive actions may be legitimate. . . . The point is clear that that those imposing sanctions bear an obligation to ensure they impact only upon those who are in a position of power, not on innocent civilians. There is reason to wonder if the United Nations itself, by the ordering of collective punishment of the entire North Korean people for offenses committed by their government, may be acting criminally. Again, where are the stories pointing out the lawlessness of US and UN actions? The missing explanation of North Korean responses to US policy The reporting on North Korea’s November 28th ICBM test offers another example of the US media’s failure to educate its readers. For example, here is the LA Times: The launch is North Korea’s first since it fired an intermediate-range missile over Japan on Sept. 15, and may have broken any efforts at diplomacy meant to end the North’s nuclear ambitions. U.S. officials have sporadically floated the idea of direct talks with North Korea if it maintained restraint. . . . Italy’s U.N. Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi, the current Security Council president, told reporters late Tuesday that “it’s certainly very worrying. Everybody was hoping that there would be restraint from the regime.” This reporting certainly suggests that North Korea just doesn’t want peace no matter how hard the US and broader international community try.  But the story changes if we provide some missing context. Since 2013 North Korea has offered to halt its testing of missiles and nuclear weapons if the US would halt its war games.  The US organizes two different annual war games in South Korea, the first is held over March and April and the second is in August.  But from time to time, it also engages in other smaller military exercises on and near the Korean peninsula. The August 2017 war games included planning for a nuclear attack and “decapitation” of North Korea’s leadership.  These August war games are smaller than the March-April ones but still large.  This one included some 20,000 US and 50,000 South Korean troops.  And this year, for the first time, they were combined with a separate 18 day live-fire exercise involving US and Japanese forces on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. North Korea responded to these threatening maneuvers by first firing a missile over Hokkaido on August 29, the day after the completion of the US-led exercises.  Then on September 3, it conducted its sixth and largest test of a nuclear weapon.  And finally, on September 15, it tested a new intermediate-range missile to demonstrate its ability to hit the major US air base in Guam. There are 75 days from September 15 to November 28; this is an important interval.  The reason is that the US had publicly called upon North Korea to halt its missile testing for at least 60 days to show its good will. For example, in August, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a group of reporters that “The best signal that North Korea could give us that they’re prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches . . . We’ve not had an extended period of time where they have not taken some type of provocative action by launching ballistic missiles. So I think that would be the first and strongest signal they could send us is just stop, stop these missile launches.”  And in October, Joseph Yun, the U.S. State Department’s top official on North Korea policy, told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations “that if North Korea halted nuclear and missile testing for about 60 days, that would be the signal the United States needs to resume direct dialogue with Pyongyang.” As we have seen, the North Koreans did refrain from missile launches and weapon tests for more than 60 days.  But, what did the US do during that time to encourage North Korea? On September 23 the Pentagon sent B-1B Lancer bombers, nicknamed “the swan of death,” to fly over international airspace just off the coast of North Korea, the first time since the Korean War that a U.S. bomber flew over North Korea’s east coast. Then for five days, starting October 16, the US conducted joint naval exercises with South Korea that included the nuclear aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, three nuclear submarines, Aegis destroyers and more than 40 other battleships and numerous fighter aircraft. In November, the US conducted more navel drills.  This time it was a four-day exercise involving three aircraft carriers–the USS Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Nimitz–and their multiship strike groups in the waters between South Korea and Japan.  This was the first time all three aircraft carriers were together in the Western Pacific in a decade.  South Korean and Japanese warships also participated in the exercise. Also in November, President Trump placed North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which meant new sanctions.  And finally, again in November, the US announced yet another war game to be scheduled for the period December 4-8 involving US, Japanese, and South Korean forces.  Called Vigilant Ace, the military announced that this exercise would include “enemy infiltration” and “precision strike drills” and involve 8 air bases, 12,000 soldiers, and 280 aircraft, including the two stealth fighters, the F-22 and the F-35.  This was to be the first time that the F-22 and F-35 would be used in war games on the Korean peninsula. So, after waiting 75 days, and observing US actions, all of which were hostile, North Korea not surprisingly responded with the launch of its most powerful ICBM, showing the US that it could target even its capital if attacked.  But by presenting this missile launch without the appropriate context the media made it appear as just another example of North Korea’s recklessness and hostility. Sadly, we have a lot of work to do. Martin Hart-Landsberg is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon; Adjunct Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences, Gyeongsang National University, South Korea; and Adjunct Professor at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Korea Policy Institute and the steering committee of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned About Korea, a co-editor of Critical Asian Studies, and has served as consultant for the Korea program of the American Friends Service Committee. Follow his blog, Reports from the Economic Front. #Trump #MartinHartLandsberg #Nuclearweapons #Asia #NorthKorea

RT Deutsch Interview with Gregory Elich |November 30, 2017 Published originally on RT Deutsch and  gregoryelich.org Q: President Donald Trump put North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that allows the United States to impose more sanctions and risks inflaming tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. How could Trump‘s policy affect China‘s and Russia‘s ties to Pyongyang? What effect will this have on North Korea? A: The Trump administration’s policy has already had a severe impact on Russian and Chinese relations with North Korea, and this latest measure only deepens the freeze. It didn’t have to be this way, as both Russia and China sought regional economic integration with North Korea. Russia had signed a deal with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to modernize its rail system, in exchange for access to mineral resources. There was also the Rajin-Khasan Railway project, which would have benefited North and South Korea, as well as Russia and China. For its part, China had been expanding joint economic projects with North Korea, which also would have led to increased economic integration. Imagine how different the situation would look today, had the Trump administration chosen to support Russia’s and China’s efforts. Instead, Washington’s harsh rhetoric and punitive actions prompted North Korea to fast-track its missile and nuclear weapons program. That, in turn, has provided Trump with the pretext for further ramping up tensions. The immediate effect on North Korea of being designated a state sponsor of terrorism is somewhat limited, in that the nation is already facing draconian sanctions. However, the inclusion of Chinese companies in the sanctions can be considered a shot across China’s bow. It is a message to China that it can either cooperate with the U.S. on increasing pressure on North Korea or face economic punishment through more sanctions on Chinese firms. Trump has also announced that the terror designation is only the opening step in a series of further actions he intends to take against North Korea. Q: From a Japanese perspective this was very welcomed. For Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the fear of being attacked by a North Korean rocket is a convenient one. The people´s minds are in favor of Abe and his attempt to change the constitution that allows Japan to engage in a war and invest in the military. What is to your understanding of the Japanese role in the conflict? A: Because Trump and Abe are of like mind when it comes to North Korea, Abe is in effect playing the role of echo chamber for Trump, validating the latter’s thoughts and plans. No doubt, it is for this reason that Trump communicates with Abe on the subject far more often than he does with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. At a time when it is vital that Trump take into account dissenting viewpoints and consider the complexities of the situation, the relationship with Abe is instead encouraging Trump’s conviction that he has little or nothing to learn from those who may differ with him. It has long been Washington’s goal, predating Trump, for Japan to change its constitution so that it could directly support U.S. military operations. The Trump administration is pushing hard to establish a U.S.-Japan-South Korea military alliance that would not only confront North Korea but also serve as a sort of Asia-Pacific counterpart to NATO. That coalition could act as one in any military adventures the U.S. chooses to launch in future years. Q: This decision was made when a high-level envoy from Beijing returned from Pyongyang. Officially, the Chinese visit to the neighboring country was made in conjunction with the 19th party congress, which manifested Xi Jinping‘s second five-year term. But without publicly being said it looked according to the press as an effort from China to reestablish or reconfirm ties with Pyongyang and discuss the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. What is your understanding of Chinese-North Korean relations? What kind of leverage does China have on North Korea today? A: China and North Korea are not commenting on the content of those talks, so one can only speculate as to their exact nature. I would like to think that Chinese envoy Song Tao’s visit to Pyongyang aimed to improve relations and engage in discussions on the basis of mutual respect on how to find a way out of the impasse that the U.S. has imposed. But I suspect it is more likely that the visit was driven by China’s wish to avoid Washington’s wrath and that the message was for North Korea not to do anything to embolden Trump further and to consider giving into his demands. China’s primary goals are peace on the Korean Peninsula and to maintain good economic relations with the United States, a significant trade partner. It views Washington’s reaction to North Korea’s nuclear program as a potential threat to both of those goals. Since it is not possible to influence U.S. behavior in a significant way, Chinese officials have continually attempted to dissuade North Korea from pursuing its nuclear program, and this has placed a strain on relations. The widespread view in the U.S. that China can and does have leverage over North Korea is based on a profound misunderstanding. The most salient aspect of the DPRK’s political philosophy is pride in its independence and the determination to choose its path. No one is going to be able to dictate what it should do. Ironically, if anything, the UN sanctions that have sharply curtailed economic ties between China and North Korea have only reduced what little influence China may have had. Q: During the last vote on sanctions against North Korea, China and Russia used their rights for a veto. They feared that sanctions against North Korea would cause a humanitarian disaster. Does the Western world fail to interpret the real domestic situation in North Korea when they decide to use sanctions as a tool to pressure the leadership? A: On the contrary, not only does the United States take into account the economic harm sanctions can cause, it is counting on that. The aim of sanctions is to inflict collective punishment on a nation’s entire population. The same was true of any of the sanctions campaigns the U.S. waged against other countries in the past. In effect, it is war by non-military means, and humanitarian considerations don’t factor. China and Russia have voted in favor of all UN sanctions against North Korea that the United States has submitted, but their veto capability allowed them to negotiate a reduction in the severity of sanctions. Even so, the final versions of UN sanctions as passed have been quite extreme. Q: The South Korean president said his goal is to reestablish diplomatic channels with Pyongyang. How can this be achieved? What has been done so far? Are those attempts undermined by the U.S.? A: Moon Jae-in was elected in part because of his vow to improve relations with North Korea. After taking office, he has mostly backtracked on those pledges. Moon has voiced strong support for Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on North Korea and remarked favorably on Trump’s belligerent rhetoric. He has also repeatedly said that now is not the time for dialogue with North Korea. Moon has limited himself to proposing talks with North Korea on relatively minor matters, such as resuming meetings of divided families and reestablishing military and government hotlines. The North Koreans have rejected those proposals, accusing Moon of insincerity, due to his advocacy for increasing sanctions and building up military pressure. I see no prospect of Moon achieving any progress on reestablishing diplomatic channels with North Korea as long as he continues to offer total support to Trump’s reckless policy. As to why Moon’s position has shifted so dramatically after taking office, one can only guess. There may have been some behind the scenes pressure from the United States, or Moon may feel that if he gives Trump everything else he asks, he may have enough influence to dissuade Trump from attacking North Korea. Certainly, on more than one occasion Moon has said that the U.S. cannot launch a war on the Korean Peninsula without South Korea’s agreement. It is notable, though, that no one in Washington is making the same claim. Q: Trump wanted to form an alliance between Japan, Seoul, and Washington against North Korea. But this failed due to the never-ending dispute about Seoul‘s fear of more retaliation from China. The deployment of THAAD damaged South Korean-Chinese relations severely. How much does Seoul follow American orders? A: By foisting the unwanted THAAD on South Korea, the United States did cause a significant rift between China and South Korea. Recently, however, South Korea has prioritized repairing relations with China and substantial progress has been made along those lines. I don’t think the United States is going to relent on efforts to establish a U.S.-South Korea-Japan military alliance, as this is one of its key geopolitical goals in the Asia-Pacific. The main roadblock now is that the majority of South Koreans find such an alliance unpalatable, given the historical memory of brutal colonial domination by Imperial Japan. But what the South Korean people may want is not a consideration for U.S. officials, and I anticipate that in the end the U.S. will get its alliance. There are many ways for the U.S. to impose its will on South Korea. Q: Is there a military solution for the US in North Korea. If not, how can diplomacy be successful on the issues of the Korean Peninsula? A: The first thing that must be said is that any talk of a solution is regarding a problem that is entirely artificial. It is the United States that manufactured the situation by sanctioning North Korea and repeatedly carrying out war exercises in the region, in which it practiced the bombing and invasion of the DPRK. And it is the United States that demonstrated through launching a series of unprovoked attacks on essentially defenseless nations that only a nuclear deterrent can offer protection to North Korea. Now that North Korea has made substantial progress towards achieving an effective nuclear deterrent, the United States has a simple solution to the supposed concern over nuclear missiles being fired at U.S. territory or bases: don’t attack North Korea! U.S. officials know very well that there is no chance of North Korea launching a first strike. It would be suicidal for the DPRK to do so. The real threat to the United States is the example that North Korea is setting. If it can complete development of a nuclear deterrent, it would prevent the United States from being able to attack it. Other small nations facing U.S. hostility could take note of that example. The last thing U.S. officials want to see is for target nations being able to defend themselves. Consequently, Washington considers it a priority to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear program. Unfortunately, the Trump’s administration’s idea of “diplomacy” is to continue applying sanctions until North Korea capitulates. Only after North Korea gives the United States what it wants – nuclear disarmament or at least substantial progress in that direction – would the Trump administration consider talks. And what would be left to talk about if the U.S. gets what it wants as a precondition? Why, more demands on North Korea, relating to other matters. Sanctions wouldn’t be lifted on the DPRK until it not only dismantles its nuclear program but also much of its conventional forces as well. It would also need to implement a host of political and economic demands. This is a long way from North Korea’s desire for diplomacy based on mutual “action for action.” The DPRK wants the normal give and take and compromise of diplomacy. Since the Trump administration rules out diplomacy, it is unlikely to happen. Trump has narrowed down the options to war or a sanctions-induced humanitarian disaster that compels North Korea to surrender to U.S. demands without receiving anything in return. The big question is how long Trump is willing to wait for that humanitarian disaster before he wants to resort to war. His military advisors have informed him of the enormous consequences of the military option, but how much of that matters to Trump? We don’t know, but the indications are not encouraging. Perhaps the best that one can hope for is for the status quo to continue until the next U.S. president takes office. There is no reason to expect Trump’s successor to be any more inclined to diplomacy, but one can hope that he or she will at least be less open to the military option. Unfortunately, by backing the United States to the hilt on North Korea, Moon Jae-in has only succeeded in training Trump to disregard him and South Korea’s interests. This is unfortunate because were South Korea to oppose Trump vigorously and prioritize improving relations with North Korea, it could be a game changer. Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific. His website is https://gregoryelich.org Follow him on Twitter at @GregoryElich #Trump #GregoryElich #KoreanWar #Nuclearweapons #NorthKorea

Noam Chomsky. (Flickr/ Andrew Rusk) By C.J. Polychroniou | June 26, 2018 Originally published in Truthout. After 18 months of Trump in the White House, American politics finds itself at a crossroads. The United States has moved unmistakably toward a novel form of fascism that serves exclusively corporate interests and the military, while promoting at the same time a highly reactionary social agenda infused with religious and crude nationalistic overtones, all with an uncanny touch of political showmanship. In this exclusive Truthout interview, world-renowned linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky analyzes some of the latest developments in Trumpistan and their consequences for democracy and world order. C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, I want to start by asking for your reading of what took place at the Singapore summit, and the way this event was covered in the US media. Noam Chomsky: It’s reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark. What was important was what didn’t happen. Unlike his predecessors, Trump did not undermine the prospects for moving forward. Specifically, he did not disrupt the process initiated by the two Koreas in their historic April 27 [Panmunjom] Declaration, in which they “affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord” (repeat: on their own accord), and for the first time presented a detailed program as to how to proceed. It is to Trump’s credit that he did not undermine these efforts, and in fact made a move toward facilitating them by cancelling the US-South Korean war games, which, as he correctly said, are “very provocative.” We would certainly not tolerate anything of the sort on our borders – or anywhere on the planet – even if they were not run by a superpower which not long before had utterly devastated our country with the flimsiest of pretexts after the war was effectively over, glorying in the major war crimes it had committed, like bombing major dams, after there was nothing else to bomb. Beyond the achievement of letting matters proceed, which was not slight, no “diplomatic skills” were involved in Trump’s triumph. The coverage has been quite instructive, in part because of the efforts of the Democrats to outflank Trump from the right. Beyond that, the coverage across the spectrum illustrates quite well two distinct kinds of deceit: lying and not telling relevant truths. Each merits comment. Trump is famous for the former, and his echo chamber is as well. Liberal commentators exult in totting up and refuting Trump’s innumerable lies and distortions, much to his satisfaction since it provides the opportunity for him to fire up his loyal — by now almost worshipful — base with more evidence of how the hated “Establishment” is using every possible underhanded means to prevent their heroic leader from working tirelessly to defend them from a host of enemies. A canny politician, Trump surely understands well that the base on which he relies, by now almost the entire Republican Party, has drifted to a surreal world, in part under his influence. Take the major Trump-Ryan legislative achievement, the tax scam — “The US Donor Relief Act of 2017,” as Joseph Stiglitz termed it. It had two transparent aims: to enrich the very wealthy and the corporate sector while slamming everyone else, and to create a huge deficit. The latter achievement — as the main architect of the scam Paul Ryan helpfully explained — provides the opportunity to realize the cherished goal of reducing benefits that serve the general population, already very weak by comparative standards, but still an unacceptable infringement on the prerogatives of the 1%. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates [3] that the law will add $1 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Virtually every economist generally agrees. But not 80 percent of Republican voters, of whom half believe that the deficit will be reduced by the gift their leader has lavished upon them. Or consider something vastly more significant, attitudes toward global warming (apologies for the obscenity: climate change), which poses a severe threat to organized human life, and not in the distant future. Half of Republicans believe that what is plainly happening is not happening, bolstered by virtually the entire leadership of the Party, as the Republican Primary debates graphically revealed. Of the half who concede that the real world exists, barely half think that humans play a role in the process. Such destructive responses tend to break through the surface during periods of distress and fear, very widespread feelings today, for good reason: A generation of neoliberal policies has sharply concentrated wealth and power while leaving the rest to stagnate or decline, often joining the growing precariat. In the US, the richest country in history with unparalleled advantages, over 40 percent [4] of the population don’t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone. And this is happening in what’s called a “booming economy.” Productivity has risen through the neoliberal period, even if not as much as before, but wages have stagnated or declined as wealth is funneled to a few bulging pockets. Distress is so severe that among white middle-aged Americans, mortality is actually increasing, something unheard of in functioning societies apart from war or pestilence. There are similar phenomena in Europe under the “business first” (“neoliberal”/”austerity”) assault. Returning to forms of deceit, one technique is simply lying, honed to a high art by the Maestro. Another technique is not telling parts of the “whole story” that matter. To illustrate, consider the analysis of “Trump’s claims about the North Korea deal” [5] by the expert and highly competent fact-checker of The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler. His article originally ran under the title of “Not the Whole Story,” with the title presented in extra-large letters to emphasize the ignominy. Kessler’s acid (and accurate) critique of Trump’s distortions and inventions opens by declaring (again correctly) that “North Korea has a long history of making agreements and then not living up to its obligations,” citing the most crucial case, the September 2005 US-North Korea agreement (under six-power auspices), in which, in the official wording, “The DPRK [North Korea] committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards.” As Kessler points out, the North Koreans did not live up to these promises, and in fact, soon returned to producing nuclear weapons. Obviously, they can’t be trusted. But this is “Not the Whole Story.” There is a rather significant omission: Before the ink was dry on the agreement, the US undermined it. To repeat the unwanted facts from our earlier discussion of the matter [6], “the Bush administration broke the agreement. It renewed the threat of force, froze North Korean funds in foreign banks and disbanded the consortium that was to provide North Korea with a light-water reactor. Bruce Cumings, the leading US Korea scholar, writes that ‘the sanctions were specifically designed to destroy the September pledges [and] to head off an accommodation between Washington and Pyongyang’.” The whole story is well-known to scholarship, but somehow doesn’t reach the public domain. Kessler is a fine and careful journalist. His evasion of “the whole story” appears to be close to exceptionless in the media. Every article on the matter by The New York Times security and foreign policy experts is the same, as far as I’ve seen. The practice is so uniform that it is almost unfair to pick out examples. To choose only one, again from a fine journalist, Washington Post specialist on Korea Anna Fifield writes [7] that North Korea “signed a denuclearization agreement” in 2005, but didn’t stick to the agreement (omitting the fact that this was a response to Washington’s breaking the agreement). “So perhaps the wisest course of action,” she continues, “would be to bet that it won’t abide by this one, either.” And to complete the picture with a banned phrase, “So perhaps the wisest course of action would be to bet that [Washington] won’t abide by this one, either.” There are endless laments about the deceitfulness and unreliability of the North Koreans; many are cited in Gareth Porter’s review of media coverage [8]. But it would be hard to find a word about the rest of the story. This is only one case. I don’t incidentally suggest that the deceit is conscious. Much more likely, it’s just the enormous power of conformity to convention, to what Gramsci called hegemonic “common sense.” Some ideas are not even rejected; they are unthinkable. Like the idea that US aggression is aggression; it can only be “a mistake,” “a tragic error,” “a strategic blunder.” I also don’t want to suggest this is “American exceptionalism.” It’s hard to find an exception to the practice in the history of imperialism. So far, at least, Trump has kept from disrupting the agreement of the two Koreas. Of course, all of this is accompanied by boasts about his amazing deal-making abilities, and the brilliance of his skillful tactics of threatening “fire and fury” in order to bring the dictator to the negotiating table. There are many accolades by others across the spectrum for this triumph — which is about on a par with the standard claims that Obama’s harsh sanctions forced Iran to capitulate by signing the joint agreement on nuclear weapons, claims effectively refuted by Trita Parsi (Losing an Enemy). Whatever the factual basis, such claims are necessary to justify harsh measures against official enemies and to reinforce the general principle that what we do is right (with occasional tragic errors). In the present case too, there is good evidence that the truth is almost the opposite of the standard claims, and that the harsh US stance has impeded progress toward peaceful settlement. There have been many opportunities in addition to the 2005 agreement. In 2013, in a meeting with senior US diplomats, North Korean officials outlined steps toward denuclearization. One of those who attended the meeting, former US official and Stimson Center Senior Fellow Joel Wit reports that [9], “Not surprisingly, for the North Koreans, the key to denuclearization was that the United States had to end its ‘hostile policy’.” While the US maintains its threatening stance, the North Korean leadership — “not surprisingly” — has sought “to develop a nuclear arsenal as a shield to deter the US while they moved to develop the economy.” The North Korean government, in June 2013, “issued an important new pronouncement that it was open to negotiations on denuclearization,” Wit writes, adding that, “The Obama administration dismissed it at the time as propaganda.” He adds further that “the North Koreans have given a great deal of thought to denuclearization and almost certainly have a concrete plan of action for the upcoming [Singapore] summit, whether the White House does or not.” In fact, at the 2013 meetings, “the North Korean officials actually laid out a concrete plan to achieve denuclearization,” Wit reports. Not the only case. China’s “double freeze” proposal, supported by Russia, Germany and others, has been on the table for years, rejected by Washington — until the Singapore summit. Trump’s diplomacy, such as it is, has been subjected to withering attack, especially by liberal opinion: How could the US president agree to meet on friendly terms with a brutal dictator? How could he fail to demand that North Korea end its human rights violations, which are indeed horrendous? Willingness to look at “the whole story” suggests some other questions, of course unasked — in fact, unthinkable: How could Kim agree to meet on friendly terms with the head of the state that world opinion overwhelmingly regards as the greatest threat to peace? How could North Korea fail to demand that the US end its human rights violations, also horrendous? Has North Korea done anything remotely like invading Iraq, the worst crime of this century? Or destroying Libya? Has it been condemned by the ICJ [International Court of Justice] for international terrorism (“unlawful use of force”)? And a lot more that is easy enough to reel off. It made perfect sense for North Korea not to bring up US crimes as a condition for moving forward. The proper goal of the meeting was to expedite the efforts of the two Koreas to pursue the directions outlined in their April 27 Declaration. And the argument cuts both ways. Interestingly enough, while Trump seeks to appease his political doppelgänger in Pyongyang, he has succeeded in alienating most of the US’s major Western allies, including Canada, France and Germany. Is this the consequence of his alleged foreign policy doctrine “We are America, bitch” [10]? There are extensive efforts to try to discern some coherent doctrine that guides Trump’s behavior, but I suspect it’s a fool’s errand. A very good predictor of Trump policy is [his fixation on] … reversing anything associated with the despised “Kenyan Muslim” he replaced: in foreign policy, tearing up the successful Iran deal and accepting the long-standing possibilities for addressing the serious North Korea crisis (proclaiming to have created an astonishing breakthrough). Much the same is true of other actions that look like random shots when the driving forces are ignored. All of this has to be done while satisfying the usual Republican constituencies: primarily the business world and the rich. For Trump, that also means unleashing the more brutal wing of the Republican Party so that they can dedicate themselves even beyond the norm to the interest of private wealth and corporate power. Here the technique is to capture the media with attention-grabbing antics, which can be solemnly exposed while the game goes on — so far, quite effectively. Then comes the task of controlling the so-called “populist” base: the angry, frightened, disillusioned white population, primarily males. Since there is no way for Trumpism to deal with their economic concerns, which are actually being exacerbated by current policy-formation, it’s necessary to posture heroically as “standing up” for them against “malevolent forces” and to cater to the anti-social impulses that tend to surface when people are left to face difficult circumstances alone, without institutions and organizations to support them in their struggles. That’s also being done effectively for the time being. The “We are America, bitch” posture appeals to chauvinistic instincts and the white supremacy that is a deeply rooted feature of American culture and is now exacerbated by concern that whites might even become a minority. The posture can also delude working people into believing that their tough-guy protector will bring back the world they’ve lost. Such propaganda exercises cannot, of course, target those actually responsible for the plight of the victims of neoliberal globalization. On the contrary, attention has to be diverted away from corporate managers who largely shape state policy while establishing complex global supply chains to maximize profit at the expense of working people. More appropriate targets are desperate people fleeing horrors for which we are largely responsible: “foreigners” who have been “robbing us” with the connivance of “treacherous liberals” and other assorted devils that can be conjured up in periods of social breakdown. Allies, friends, who cares? There is no need for policies that are “coherent” in any traditional sense. Consequences don’t matter as long as the primary goals are met. After months of harsh rhetoric against China’s trade practices, Trump has decided to impose tariffs of $50 billion on Chinese imports, prompting Beijing, subsequently, to declare that the US has embarked on a trade war and to announce in turn that it will retaliate with similar measures against US imports. First, isn’t it true that China is merely practicing today the same sort of mercantilist policies that the US and Great Britain practiced in the past on their way to global ascendancy? Second, is the targeting of tariffs expected to have any impact either on China’s economy or on the size of the US trade deficit? And lastly, if a new era of protectionism is about to take off, what could the consequences of such development be for the reign of global neoliberalism? Several questions arise. First, what is Trump’s motive? If it were concern about China’s economic management and trade policies, he wouldn’t be going out of his way to alienate allies with tariffs and insults but would be joining with them to confront China on the issues of concern. If, however, the driving force is what I discussed earlier, then targeting both China and allies with abuse and tariffs has a certain logic: It may play well in the rust belt, contributing to the delusion that our hero is fighting to ensure jobs for working people — though it’s a tricky strategy, because it harms other parts of his loyal base, mainly farmers, and also, though more subtly, because it imposes a new tax on consumption, which is what tariffs amount to. As for China’s economic policies, yes, they are similar to those that have been used by developed societies generally, beginning with Britain and then its former North American colony. Similar, but more limited. China lacks the means available to its predecessors. Britain stole superior technology from India, the Low Countries [11], Ireland, and by force and severe protectionism, undermined the Indian economy, then the world’s most advanced along with China. The US, under the Hamiltonian system [12], resorted to high tariffs to bar superior British goods, and also took British technology in ways barred by the current US-initiated global trading system. Economic historian Paul Bairoch describes the US as “the mother country and bastion of protectionism” into the 1920s, well after it had become far and away the richest country in the world. The general practice is called “kicking away the ladder” by economic historians: first use the practices to develop, then bar others from following. Earlier, Britain’s economic development relied on large-scale piracy, now considered by its former practitioner to be the most heinous of crimes. Keynes wrote that the booty of English pirates, like the famed and admired Sir Francis Drake, “may fairly be considered the fountain and origin of British foreign investments.” Piracy was also a standard practice in the American colonies. Both British and US economies also relied crucially on the most hideous system of slavery in human history. Cotton was the oil of the industrial revolution, providing the basis for manufacturing, finance, commerce, retail. Such practices are not available to China. Like Britain before it, the US called for “free trade” when it recognized that the playing field was tilted properly in its direction. After World War II, when the US had incomparable power, it promoted the “liberal world order” that has been an enormous boon to the US corporate system, which now owns about half of the global economy, an astonishing policy success. Again, following the British model, the US hedged its commitment to “free trade” for the benefit of domestic private power. The British-dominated “free trade” system kept India as a largely closed protectorate. The US-dominated system imposes an extreme patent system (“intellectual property”) that provides virtual monopoly power to major US industries. The US government also provides huge subsidies to energy industries, agribusiness and financial institutions. While the US complains about Chinese industrial policy, the modern high-tech industry has relied crucially on research and development in the publicly subsidized sector of the economy, to such an extent that the economy might fairly be regarded as a system of private subsidy, private profit. And there are many other devices to subsidize industry. Procurement, for example, has been shown to be a significant device. In fact, the enormous military system alone, through procurement, provides a huge state subsidy to industry. These comments only skim the surface. Britain abandoned laissez-faire when it could no longer compete with Japanese competition, part of the background for World War II in the Pacific. Some in the US are having similar qualms today, concerns that Trump is cynically exploiting. But not the powerful corporate sector that relies crucially on the US-designed global economic order. The corporate sector relies so extensively on the global economy it has designed that it is sure to use its enormous power to try to head off a major trade war. The Trump tariffs and the retaliation might escalate, but it’s likely that the threat will be contained. Trump is quite right, however, in proclaiming that the US would “win” a limited trade war, given the scale of the US economy, the huge domestic market and unique advantages in other respects. The “We are America, bitch” doctrine is a powerful weapon of intimidation. The Trump administration is moving full speed ahead with its intent on cracking down on unauthorized entries to the country by separating immigrant children from their parents. More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents during the last seven weeks, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought recently to justify Trump’s immigration policy by citing a verse from the Bible. What can one say about an advanced Western society in which religion continues to crowd out reason in shaping public policy and public attitudes? And didn’t the Nazis, although they were no believers, also use Christianity to justify their immoral and criminal acts? The immigration policy, always grotesque, has descended to levels so revolting that even many of those who foster and exploit xenophobia are running for cover — like Trump, who is desperately trying to blame it on the Democrats, and like the First Lady, who is appealing to “both sides of the aisle” [13] to come together to stop the obscenity. We should, however, not overlook the fact that Europe is crawling through much the same gutters. One can quote scripture for almost any purpose one likes. Sessions doubtless knows that “all the law” hangs on two commandments: loving God and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” But that is not the appropriate thought for the occasion. It is true, however, that the US is unique among developed societies in the role of religion in social life, ever since the Puritans landed. Recently, Trump stated that he had the absolute right to pardon himself (after he had already said that he could shoot someone on New York’s 5th Avenue and not lose any support), while his lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said the president could even commit murder in the Oval Office and still not be prosecuted for it. Your thoughts? After praising Kim [Jong Un] effusively as a strong leader who “speaks and his people sit up at attention,” Trump added: “I want my people to do the same.” When the predictable reaction followed, he said he was kidding. Maybe. I hope we don’t have an opportunity to find out. While it is clear that the country is well on its way to becoming a pariah nation, the Democrats continue to focus their attention primarily on Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia and unethical behavior, all the while trying to outflank the president on the jingoist front, adopting new restrictions for the 2020 elections so they can keep away the likes of Bernie Sanders, and of course, playing masterfully the fundraising game that works in a plutocracy. With all this in mind, how would you describe the nature of contemporary US politics? Much as in Europe, the centrist political institutions in the United States, which have long been in the driver’s seat, are in decline. The reasons are not obscure. People who have endured the rigors of the neoliberal assault — austerity in the recent European version — recognize that the institutions are working for others, not for them. In the US, people do not have to read academic political science to know that a large majority, those who are not near the top of the income scale, are effectively disenfranchised, in that their own representatives pay little attention to their views, hearkening rather to the voices of the rich, the donor class. In Europe, anyone can see that basic decisions are made by the unelected Troika, in Brussels, with the northern banks peering over their shoulders. In the US, respect for Congress has long been hovering in single digits. In recent Republican primaries, when candidates emerged from the base, the Establishment was able to beat them down and obtain their own candidate. In 2016, that failed for the first time. True, it’s not far from the norm for a billionaire with enormous media support and almost $1 billion in campaign funding to win an election, but Trump was hardly the choice of the Republican elites. The most spectacular result of the election was not the Trump phenomenon. Rather, it was the remarkable success of Bernie Sanders, breaking sharply with US political history. With no support from big business or the media, Sanders might well have won the Democratic nomination had it not been for the machinations of Obama-Clinton party managers. Similar processes are apparent in recent European elections. Like it or not, Trump is doing quite well. He has the support of 83 percent of Republicans [14], which is without precedent apart from rare moments. Whatever their feelings may be, Republicans dare not cross him openly. His general support in the low 40s is not far from the norm, about the same as Obama’s going into his first midterm. He is lavishing gifts on the business world and the wealthy, the authentic constituency of the Republicans (with the Democrat leadership not far behind). He has thrown enough crumbs to keep the Evangelicals happy and has struck the right chords for racist/white supremacy elements. And he has, so far, managed to convince coal miners and steel workers that he is one of them. In fact, his support among union members has increased to 51 percent. It is hardly in doubt that Trump cares almost nothing about the fate of the country or the world. What matters is me. That’s clear enough from his attitude toward global warming. He is perfectly well aware of the dire threat — to his properties. His application for a seawall [15] to protect his Irish golf course is based explicitly on the threat of global warming. But pursuit of power impels him to lead the race to destruction, quite happily, as is evident from his performances. The same holds of other serious, if lesser, threats, among them the threat that the country may be isolated, despised, declining — with dues to pay after it’s no longer his concern. The Democrats are now torn between a popular base that is largely social democratic and a New Democrat leadership that panders to the donor class. Under Obama, the party was reduced to shambles at the local and state level, a particularly serious matter because the 2020 elections will determine redistricting, offering opportunities for gerrymandering even beyond today’s scandalous situation. The bankruptcy of the Democrat elite is well-illustrated by the obsession with alleged Russian meddling with our sacred elections. Whatever it might amount to — apparently very little — it cannot begin to compare with the “meddling” of campaign funding, which largely determines electoral outcomes, as extensive research has shown, particularly the careful work of Thomas Ferguson [16], which he and his colleagues have now extended to the 2016 elections. As Ferguson points out, when Republican elites realized that it was going to be Trump or Clinton, they responded with a huge wave of last-minute money that not only led to Clinton’s late October decline but also had the same effect on Democratic candidates for Senate, “virtually in lock step.” It is “outlandish,” Ferguson observes, that former FBI Director James Comey or the Russians “could be responsible for both collapses” in the final stage of the campaign: “For the first time in the entire history of the United States, the partisan outcome of Senate races coincided perfectly with the results of every state’s presidential balloting.” The outcome conforms very well to Ferguson’s well-supported “Investment theory of party competition.” But facts and logic matter little. The Democrats are bent on revenge for their 2016 failure, having run such a rotten campaign that what looked like a “sure thing” collapsed. Evidently, Trump’s severe assault against the common good is a lesser matter, at least to the party elite. It’s sometimes been noted that the US not only regularly meddles in foreign elections, including Russian ones, but also proceeds to subvert and sometimes overthrow governments it doesn’t like. Horrifying consequences abound, to the present, from Central America to the Middle East. Guatemala has been a horror story since a US-backed coup overthrew its elected reformist government in 1954. Gaza, declining in misery, may become unlivable by 2020, the UN predicts [17], not by acts of God. In 2006, Palestinians committed a grave crime: They ran the first free election in the Arab world, and made the “wrong” choice, handing power to Hamas. Israel reacted by escalating violence and a brutal siege. The US reverted to standard operating procedure and prepared a military coup, pre-empted by Hamas. In punishment for this new crime, US-Israeli torture of Gaza sharply increased, not only with strangulation but also regular murderous and destructive US-backed Israeli invasions, on pretexts that quickly collapse on examination. Elections that come out the wrong way plainly cannot be tolerated under our policy of “democracy promotion.” In recent European elections, there has been much concern about possible Russian meddling. That was particularly true of the 2017 German elections, when the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) did surprisingly well, winning 94 seats in the Bundestag, the first time it had won seats. One can easily imagine the reaction had Russian meddling been detected behind these frightening results. It turns out that there was indeed foreign meddling, but not from Russia. AfD hired a Texas media firm (Harris Media) known for support of right-wing nationalist candidates (Trump, Le Pen, Netanyahu). The firm enlisted the cooperation of the Berlin office of Facebook, which provided it with detailed information about potential voters for use in microtargeting those who might be receptive to AfD’s message. It may have worked. The story seems to have been ignored, apart from the business press [18]. If the Democratic Party cannot overcome its deep internal problems and the slow expansion of the economy under Obama and Trump continues without disruption or disaster, the Republican wrecking ball may be swinging away at the foundations of a decent society, and at the prospects for survival, for a long time. C.J. Polychroniou is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. He is the author of several books, and his articles have appeared in a variety of publications. #Trump #NoamChomsky #PanmunjeomDeclaration #USDPRKSummit #NorthKorea

By Suzy Kim | Aug 19, 2018 This article originally appeared in Perspectives Daily, the American Historical Association’s online newsmagazine. The June 12 summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un was a historic moment—for the first time a sitting US president met with the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, since its founding in 1948. It was remarkable to see the Stars and Stripes standing next to the DPRK flag, and to see the two leaders shake hands in acknowledgement of each other as equals rather than as sworn enemies. Reactions in the United States to this history-in-the-making have ranged from cautious optimism to cynical skepticism. But what these apprehensions indicate is the crumbling of the so-called liberal order under the weight of its own contradictions. Nicholas Kristof, regular columnist for the New York Times, represents the spectrum of reactions well, concluding that Trump was “outfoxed” and “hoodwinked” by Kim. Explaining why the summit made him uncomfortable despite his preference for diplomacy, Kristof wrote, “There was also something frankly weird about an American president savaging Canada’s prime minister one day and then embracing the leader of the most totalitarian country in the world.” In fact, there’s been an odd convergence of reactions that have united hardline Republican hawks like John Bolton with liberal Democrats like Chuck Schumer, who signed a letter warning Trump against any deal that did not include concessions from North Korea regarding its nuclear program. The letter insisted on “anywhere, anytime” inspections of all suspected sites of weapons of mass destruction, a probable nonstarter for a North Korea already wary of American threats and encroachment to its sovereignty. For liberals siding with Bolton, their position has much to do with Roger Cohen’s argument that Trump is envious of Kim Jong Un and his absolute authority as dictator. Trump’s failings as a leader, they say, are similar to Neville Chamberlain’s—the British prime minister who tried to negotiate with Hitler to thwart World War II. In making this anachronistic comparison, they, like Cohen, believe that Trump has “saluted evil” and gone back on “more than seven decades of American stewardship of the world after the defeat of evil in 1945.” For many, including Kori Schake of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Trump’s rapprochement with North Korea signals “a turning point in world history: the end of the liberal order.” The liberal order, according to Schake, began at the conclusion of World War II when “America established a set of global norms that solidified its position atop a rules-based international system . . . promoting democracy, making enduring commitments to countries that share its values, protecting allies, advancing free trade and building institutions and patterns of behavior that legitimize American power by giving less powerful countries a say.” Even while acknowledging that “America doesn’t always get it right,” Schake claims that “the results speak for themselves” since it’s been over 70 years without great-power conflict. Without any hint of irony or contradiction, she describes the numerous wars that have been waged by “democracies” since World War II as “enlarging the perimeter of security and prosperity, expanding and consolidating the liberal order.” Drawing on aggregate data in the abstract such as growth in the global economy, she neglects to define what “security and prosperity” mean or scrutinize on whom these are bestowed and at whose expense. Schake is oblivious to the harm done in the name of maintaining the liberal order, not only domestically in terms of racist, sexist, and classist exclusionary policies, but also internationally, least of which include the millions of lives lost in Asia, upward of 70 percent civilian deaths during the Korean War, not to mention the Vietnam War (and most recently the Iraq War). Tellingly, the NBC television show Saturday Night Live ran a comedy sketch soon after Trump’s election in which a group of New Yorkers watching the election results respond in markedly contrasting ways. White liberals reacted with utter horror that the election was a “nightmare scenario” and “the most shameful thing America has ever done,” while African Americans were hardly surprised, shaking their heads at the utter lack of historical awareness of institutional racism, structural inequalities, and foreign interventionism. Asia Institute founder and director Emanuel Pastreich argues that US foreign policy has been unequivocally a form of gunboat diplomacy in which US military power is used to benefit multinational corporations. While previously there was at least an attempt to hide the government-corporation nexus, this collusion has now become blatant under Trump’s presidency. These are the foundations upon which the liberal order stands. What the majority of liberals fail to acknowledge is just how similar Trump’s message of unilateralism and America First (what one White House official recently characterized as the “We’re America, Bitch” doctrine) is to the idea of American exceptionalism that has defined American identity since the end of World War II. The “indifference to democracy and human rights and cultivation of dictators” is not a “new world” Trump is creating, as Schake claims; it has undergirded the United States’ superpower status since 1945. While Schake raises alarm bells that “America will be seen as—and may even become—no different from Russia and China,” it is this very idea of American exceptionalism that has led to the Trump Doctrine. While leadership does matter for both people in the United States and elsewhere, reactions to the summit have overwhelmingly concentrated on the individual personalities of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. This focus on the individual is one of the very tenets of liberalism, and in that sense, Trump—despite criticisms to the contrary—is the very product of the liberal order. By contrast, Kim Jong Un’s first words at the summit—that few in America noticed—focused on the collective past despite the infamous personality cult in North Korea. He said: “It was not an easy path to get here. The past held us back, and the mistaken biases and habits shielded our eyes and ears, but we have overcome all of these to come here” (emphasis mine). Kim Jong Un is having to end a war that was fought by his grandfather; it has taken three generations to get here. Reactions to the summit in the United States are a kind of mourning at the disintegration of the Pax Americana and the pride of American exceptionalism with it. But this feeling of loss at the end of the liberal order should be put into proper perspective. The last 70 years hold a very different significance for Korea, which was divided into two separate states in 1948 precisely to uphold that liberal order. The Republic of Korea as the bulwark against the Communist North was founded exactly 70 years ago on August 15, 1948, followed by the DPRK the following month. It’s long overdue for Korea to be able to chart its own future. It’s time to bid farewell to the liberal order. Suzy Kim is associate professor of Korean history at Rutgers University, and author of Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (Cornell Univ. Press, 2013). She was guest editor of the special issue “(De)Memorializing the Korean War” in Cross-Currents: East Asian History & Culture Review (2015). #Trump #KoreaPeace #KimJongUn #DPRK #KoreanWar #Nuclearweapons #NorthKorea

77 year-old Park Seong-hwan sits in front of the pictures of family taken in North Korea, in his appartment in Seoul, South Korea on July 14, 2018. (Photo by Woohae Cho/Getty Images) By Simone Chun | August 22, 2018 Originally published in Common Dreams and Counterpunch. This past July marked the 65th anniversary of the armistice that halted the Korean War. In addition to leaving nearly 5 million dead, injured, or missing, this bloody conflict forcibly separated nearly 10 million Korean families on either side of the 38th parallel. Since the 1980s, a mere 20 face-to-face reunions have been held under tightly controlled conditions, with the last such event occurring in 2015. These reunions are infrequent one-time events–no one has ever been given a second chance to see their relatives on the other side of the border. Family members who have been separated since the war are given a single opportunity to see long-lost loved ones for a few short hours, after which they must once again separate. In South Korea, the majority of the over 132,000 separated family members are 80 or older, and more than half of those applying for reunions between 1988 and 2018 have died without ever having had the chance to see their loved ones in the across the border. At this point, in order for all surviving separated family members to be able to see their relatives in the North at least once before they perish, a minimum of 7,300 reunions must occur per year. As a result of the 2018 Panmunjom declaration, North and South Korea agreed to hold an additional reunion in August of this year. South Korea uses a lottery system to randomly select a small number of surviving family members for reunion events, and this year’s event will include only 98 elderly survivors from South. A journalist who was in attendance during the public screening for the initial participant pool described the Red Cross office where the event was held as “a sea of tears” echoing with the cries of grief-stricken elderly survivors who did not make the list.  One 95-year old man, recognizing this as his final opportunity to see his loved ones, begged the government to open the demilitarized zone for a single month so that all separated family members would have the chance to see their loved ones at least once. “I don’t remember how many times I applied.  President Moon and Chairman Kim can meet. Why can’t I meet my family in the North?” A 90-year-old woman refused to leave the building, pleading to be allowed to see the 3-year old daughter she left in North Korea over 68 years ago. When I visited South Korea in May as part of an international peace delegation, I met a female peace activist whose elderly mother, a farmer in a South Korean border town, was separated from her family during the war.  She gave me a special gift: a handmade scarf upon which was inscribed a poem written by her mother.  While working the fields, her mother would gaze at her hometown across the border—easily visible on a clear day—wondering ceaselessly about the family she left behind more than six decades ago. The Thousand-Mile River Lee Bum-og The narrow river separating us may as well be a thousand miles wide I can see a home to which I cannot return The Han River that meets the Imjin and the Yaesung flows to the ocean It is said that humans are highest order of creation But we are more wretched than any beast Birds fly to their homes and return To my eyes, birds scorn humans.How can there be a half-century of separation between brothers and sisters, between parents and children?Amid the rain of bombs, I fled to save my life The friends who fled have all dispersed here and there With silvery hair they are soon to depart this world. Can those who still live ever feel the soil of home beneath their feet? Her searing poem depicts her life in a divided Korea as a state of permanent longing that is coming to a bitter end. For her and tens of thousands like her, every day counts. It is absolutely essential that we work to prioritize the regularization of North-South family reunions and the establishment of permanent venues in both North and South Korea for this purpose. Dr. Simone Chun serves on the Steering Committee of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned About Korea and is a Korea Policy Institute Associate and a member of the Korea Peace Network. #KoreaPeace #SeparatedFamilies #KoreanWar #SouthKorea #PanmunjeomDeclaration #NorthKorea

By Ajamu Baraka | September 30, 2018 Originally published in Black Agenda Report. The critics had already signaled their strategy for derailing any meaningful move toward normalizing relations between the United States and North Korea. Right-wing neoliberals from CNN, MSNBC and NPR are in perfect alignment with the talking points issued by U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the Democrat Party that took the position that anything short of the North Koreans surrendering their national interests and national dignity to the United States was a win for North Korea. For much of the foreign policy community, corporate media pundits and leaders of the two imperialist parties, the issue is North Korean de-nuclearization. But for the people in Korea and throughout the global South, the real issue has always been the unfinished business of ending the war and beginning the de-colonization of the Korean peninsula. The interrelated issues of respecting the dignity and sovereignty of the North Korean nation and engaging in an authentic process of de-colonization are precisely why the U.S.-North Korean initiative will fail without a major intervention on the part of the people in the United States demanding that their leaders commit to diplomacy and peace. There should be no illusions about U.S. intentions. If U.S. policymakers were really concerned with putting a brake on the North Korean nuclear-weapons program, they would have pursued a different set of policies. Such policies would have created the necessary security conditions to convince the North Koreans that a nuclear deterrence to the United States was unnecessary. The fact that those conditions were not created were less a result of the evil intentions of the North Koreans than it reflected the need to maintain the justification for continued U.S. military deployment in South Korea and in the region. Being able to point to North Korea as a threat to regional security has provided the justifications for U.S. power projection in the region and the ever-expanding U.S. military budget. With the growing power of China over the last few decades, the threat of North Korea allowed the United States to continue a physical presence right at the underbelly of China. That is why the “agreed framework” under Clinton was not implemented and then jettisoned by the Bush administration. It is also why the Obama administration’s so-called strategic patience was really about a series of increasingly provocative military exercises and no negotiations. Full Spectrum Dominance and the Psychopathology of White Supremacy Korea has historically played a significant role for the U.S. imperial project since the end of the Second World War. The emergent forces U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower identified as the military/industrial/complex are still present, but are now exercising hegemonic power, along with the financial sector within the U.S. state. Those forces are not interested in a diplomatic resolution of the Korean colonial question because their interests are more focused on China and maintaining U.S. regional hegemony in East Asia. The tensions in Korea have not only provided them the rationale for increased expenditures for various missile defense systems but also for bolstering public support for the obscene military budgets that are largely transferred straight to their pockets. That is why the historic record is replete with the United States sabotaging negotiated settlements with the North, but then pointing to North Korean responses to those efforts as evidence of North Korean duplicity. In addition to the material interests and hegemonic geopolitical objectives, the social-psychological phenomenon of inculcated white supremacy is also a factor and has buttressed imperial policies toward that nation for years. For example, the psychopathology of white supremacy invisibilizes the absurdity and illegitimacy of the United States being in a position to negotiate the fate of millions of Koreans. The great “white father” and savior complex is not even a point of contestation because it is not even perceived–the rule of whiteness through the dominance of the Western capitalist elite has been naturalized. Therefore, it is quite understandable that for many, the summit is the space where the North Koreans are essentially supposed to surrender to the United States. It is beyond the comprehension of most policymakers and large sectors of the public that North Koreans would have ever concluded it is not in their national interest to give up their defenses to a reckless and dangerously violent rogue state that sees itself beyond the law. And it is that strange white-supremacist consciousness that buys into the racist trope that it was Trump’s pressure that brought North Korea to the table. The white-supremacist colonial mentality believes the natives will only respond to force and violence. As U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the good old boy from South Carolina, argues “The only way North Korea will give up their nuclear program is if they believe military option is real.” But as Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s first vice minister for foreign affairs and former nuclear-program negotiator pointed out in relationship to the reasons why North Korea stayed with the process: “The U.S. is miscalculating the magnanimity and broad-minded initiatives of the DPRK as signs of weakness and trying to embellish and advertise as if these are the product of its sanctions and pressure.” Unfortunately, the white-supremacist world-view renders it almost impossible to apprehend reality in any other way. That is why it is inevitable that the Trump administration—like the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations—will mis-read the North Koreans. The North Korea issue is a classic example of why it is impossible to separate a pro-peace, anti-war position from the issue of anti-imperialism. The concrete, geopolitical objectives of U.S. imperialist interests in the region drives the logic of regional dominance, which means peace, de-colonization and national reconciliation for Korea are counter to U.S. interests. And while we must support the U.S. state’s decision to halt military exercises, we must recognize that without vigorous pressure from the people to support an honest process, the possibility of conflict might be ever more alive now as a result of the purported attempt at diplomacy. The nature of the North Korean state is not the issue. What is the issue is a process has begun between the two Korean nations that should be respected. Therefore, de-nuclearization should not be the focus—self-determination of the Korean peoples must be the center of our discussions. On that issue, it is time for activists in the United States to demand the United States get out of Korea. The peace and anti-war movement must support a process that will lead to the closure of U.S. military bases, the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the elimination of the nuclear threat. In short, U.S. based activists must support an end to the Korean war and the start of the de-colonization of South Korea. Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. #KoreaPeace #NorthKorea #Nuclearweapons #selfdetermination

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (right) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in (left) gesture as they watch a gymnastic and artistic performance at the May Day Stadium on September 19, 2018, in Pyongyang, North Korea. By Christine Ahn | September 30, 2018 Originally published in Truthout. A historic opportunity to end the seven-decade Korean War is suddenly within reach. The world witnessed world-class peacemaking between North and South Korea last week at the third inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in declared “a Korean Peninsula free of war” and “a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.” But peacemaking between the two Koreas alone is not enough: The success of this process also rests on progress between Washington and Pyongyang, and particularly on the signing of a peace treaty to end the Korean War. To a packed audience of 150,000 North Koreans wildly cheering on their feet on September 20 at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, President Moon affirmed, “We have lived together for 5,000 years and been separated for 70 years. We must live together as one people.” At their summit, Kim and Moon announced a long list of actionable steps they will take to improve relations, from establishing a reunion center for divided families to reopening the Mt. Kumgang tourism center and the Kaesong industrial zone — two inter-Korean development projects from the previous Sunshine Policy years that were shut down as relations worsened between the two Koreas during the previous two hardline administrations. The defense ministers also agreed in a separate military agreement to reduce military tensions by downsizing the number of guards near the Military Demarcation Line, the border dividing North and South Korea in the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) established by the Armistice Agreement in 1953. The Korean leaders also agreed to de-mine a village in the DMZ surrounding the border between North Korea and South Korea. As part of the Pyongyang Declaration by the two Koreas to transform the Korean Peninsula “into a land of peace free from nuclear weapons and nuclear threats,” Kim committed to “permanently dismantle the Dongchang-ri missile engine test site” in the presence of international inspectors, and “the permanent dismantlement of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon.” But this would depend on “corresponding measures” by the United States “in accordance with the spirit of the June 12 US-DPRK Joint Statement.” Trump last month canceled Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to North Korea, saying North Korea had not made “sufficient progress” toward denuclearization. North Korean leaders, however, say the United States hasn’t honored its end of the Singapore Declaration in which the first two items were to improve relations and establish a peace process. Denuclearization came third, and the repatriation of the remains of US service members was a last added item. Pyongyang has already made several concessions: It has halted missile and nuclear tests, begun to dismantle the Sohae missile launch site and destroyed the Punggye-ri nuclear test in the presence of foreign journalists, released three detained Americans, and repatriated the remains of US service members from the Korean War. The United States, meanwhile, has halted one joint military exercise after Trump’s spontaneous announcement at the press briefing following his meeting with Kim. But these joint exercises could easily be resumed. North Korea has made clear that denuclearization will require a peace process that includes concrete steps toward a Peace Treaty, as promised in the 1953 Armistice Agreement signed by the United States, North Korea and China. James Laney, a former US ambassador to South Korea under Clinton, has argued, “A peace treaty would provide a baseline for relationships, eliminating the question of the other’s legitimacy and its right to exist. Absent such a peace treaty, every dispute presents afresh the question of the other side’s legitimacy.” But North Korea is unlikely to unilaterally surrender its nuclear weapons without improved relations. We knew that the Clinton and Bush administrations were close to waging a pre-emptive strike on Pyongyang, but now Bob Woodward’s book Fear has also confirmed that even President Obama weighed a first strike on North Korea. Kim has seen what happened to Iraq, Libya and Iran, not to mention his own country’s experience of a devastating US bombing. Most Americans have no idea that in just three years, the Korean War claimed over 4 million lives. The US dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea, more than it did in the rest of the Asia-Pacific in WWII combined, and it used 33,000 tons of napalm in Korea — more than in Vietnam. Curtis LeMay, a US Air Force general in the Korean War, testified, “We burned down just about every city in North Korea and South Korea … we killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes.” The US’s indiscriminate bombing campaign leveled 80 percent of North Korean cities, killing one out of every four family members. The bombing of homes was so devastating that the regime urged its citizens to build shelter underground. On July 27, 1953, the Korean War ended in a stalemate with a ceasefire. Military commanders from the US, North Korea and China signed the Armistice Agreement and promised within 90 days to return to negotiate a peace settlement. Sixty-five years later, we are still waiting for that Peace Treaty to end the Korean War. A peace treaty would end the state of war between the United States and North Korea, taking the threat of a military conflict off the table. A ceasefire — a temporary truce — is what has defined the US-North Korean relationship. One tangible step that the Trump administration can take that the North Koreans would view as a “corresponding measure” is to declare an end to the Korean War. Joseph Yun, the former State Department envoy to North Korea during the Obama and Trump administrations, has said “the end-of-war declaration has to be done.” In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun, Yun said, “I don’t agree that [the US] would lose any significant item by saying the war has come to an end.” This would demonstrate the US commitment to improve relations and establish trust as a key toward normalizing relations between the two countries. “I think the opening reciprocal liaison offices would be a strong signal to North Korea that the United States is willing to change the relationship and willing to take steps towards normalization,” Yun said. Henri Féron, a legal scholar at Columbia Law School, has argued that “a peace treaty is a versatile instrument that can be tailored to further US and South Korean interests in addressing the security challenges posed by North Korea.” Féron adds that several UN organs have called for the replacement of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, “including the General Assembly, the President of the Security Council, the Secretary-General and even the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in [North Korea].” Despite tremendous progress by the two Koreas toward formally ending the Korean War with tangible steps toward reunification, Vincent Brooks, Commander of the US Forces in Korea, recently blocked an application by South Korea to allow a train to travel across the military demarcation line to test the rail lines from Seoul to Sinuiju. Brooks is also head of the “UN Command which oversees the armistice,” which many have come to believe is the United Nations. Perhaps in an effort to deflect pressure on the UN for blocking progress between the two Koreas, in a September 17 Security Council briefing, Under-Secretary General Rosemary DiCarlo clarified, “Notwithstanding its name, the “United Nations Command” is not a United Nations operation or body, nor does it come under the command and control of the United Nations. Furthermore, it was not established as a subsidiary organ of the Security Council and is not funded through the United Nations budget.” The US also tried to block the opening of a diplomatic office in Kaesong. According to the Chosun, a conservative paper in South Korea, an unnamed US official warned, “If the [South] Korean government opens a liaison office in Kaesong, [South] Korea will risk violating sanctions that have drawn North Korea back to the negotiating table.” But the Koreans plowed forward and on September 14 opened the liaison office, which will facilitate year-round communication between Seoul and Pyongyang. While the prospect of undoing 70 years of mistrust and propaganda may seem daunting and impenetrable, it isn’t. The greatest enemies to peace are apathy and the belief that we can’t overpower those wanting perpetual war. It was the Korean War, after all, which inaugurated the Cold War and the military industrial complex. According to Korea historian Bruce Cumings, “The Korean conflict was the occasion for transforming the United States into a very different country than it had ever been before, one with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army and a permanent national security state at home.” Korea expert Gregory Elich wrote in the Monthly Review, “As Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Truman, put it, the Korean War ‘came along and saved us.’ It made possible the quadrupling of the defense budget under Truman, and brought about final approval of National Security Council Report 68, which triggered the Cold War and militarized American policy.” The Korean War also cemented the idea of the US as the world’s police officer. We must help bring closure to the longest-standing US conflict now. President Moon is in office for just over three years, and South Koreans’ desire for a formal end to the Korean War is our greatest asset. Eight of 10 South Koreans support the Pyongyang Summit. As James Clapper, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Obama administration told journalist Tim Shorrock from The Nation, “The two Koreas have every right to move ahead like they are, even if people here [in Washington] don’t like it.” Even The New York Times editorial board is now arguing that “ending the formal state of war 65 years after the fighting ceased should not be that difficult, even if the ultimate goal — ridding the world of the threat from North Korea’s nuclear arsenal — remains elusive.” Americans should stand with Koreans to help end the war with a Korea Peace Treaty and unite the Korean peninsula. It is the just and moral thing to do. Christine Ahn is the founder and international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing for peace on the Korean peninsula. #KimJongUn #peacetreaty #PyongyangDeclaration #ChristineAhn #MoonJaein

THE U.S. WAR ON NORTH KOREA AND PROSPECTS FOR PEACE SCREENING OF MEMORY OF FORGOTTEN WAR, WITH FILMMAKER IN PERSON, +  ROUNDTABLE   DISCUSSION When: Friday,November 9,2018. Doors open at 6 p.m. Free & open to the public. Where: Southface Institute,Home Depot Training Center,241 Pine St. NE; Atlanta, GA 30308 The Korean War,the first hot war of the Cold War,has not yet ended. Not simply a problem “over there,” the unending Korean War is an intimate and everyday condition of the American past and present.An asymmetrical war during which the United States perpetrated a “bombing holocaust” on North Korea, the Korean War has continuously informed U.S.regime-change policy toward North Korea for the past several decades. As a mode of imperial consciousness, the disavowal of the ongoing war normalizes the fact that the unending Korean War serves as the necessary condi­tion for a U.S.militarized presence in Northeast Asia and justifies renewed U.S.war as a “solution” to an unfinished war of intervention. This roundtable brings together anti-war activists,cultural workers,and politically engaged schol­ars to address not only the looming spectacle of renewed U.S.war on North Korea but also the un­ending Korean War that hovers illegibly below the surface in the United States. The panelists on this roundtable will point to the urgency of a call to knowledge in critical opposition to current calls to arms or for a “militarized peace.” SPEAKERS  INCLUDE: Christine Hong, University of California, Santa Cruz – Monica Kim, New York University – Hyun Lee, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development – Deann Borshay Liem, Filmmaker Sponsored by the Korea Policy Institute, ANSWER Coalition, Georgia WAND,and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. For further information, please contact cjhong@ucsc. edu. #KoreaPeace #DPRK #KoreanWar #MonicaKim #DeannBorshayLiem #Armistice #ChristineHong #HyunLee #NorthKorea

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un arrives at Dang Dong station in Vietnam’s Lang Son Province on Feb. 26. (EPA/Yonhap News) February 26, 2019 Press Release Washington, DC – As President Trump arrives to Hanoi, Vietnam, Rep. Ro Khanna, along with eighteen Democratic Members of Congress, have introduced a resolution calling for a final settlement of the Korean War, now officially in its 68th year. The resolution — which is backed by former President and Nobel Peace Laureate Jimmy Carter and a range of Korean-American and pro-diplomacy organizations — urges the Trump Administration to provide a clear roadmap to achieve a final peace settlement while highlighting the importance of reciprocal actions and confidence-building measures between the parties. “Historic engagement between South and North Korea has created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to formally end this war,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. “President Trump must not squander this rare chance for peace. He should work hand in hand with our ally, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, to bring the war to a close and advance toward the denuclearization of the peninsula.” “I commend this important resolution that will help bring this nearly 70 year conflict to a close,” said President Jimmy Carter. “I have visited North Korea several times to talk with their leadership and study the best path forward for peace. Ending the threat of war is the only way to ensure true security for both the Korean and American people and will create the conditions to alleviate the suffering of the ordinary North Koreans who are most harmed by ongoing tensions.” Co-led by prominent progressive Reps. Andy Kim, Barbara Lee, Pramila Jayapal, Deb Haaland, and Jan Schakowsky, the resolution calls on the Trump Administration to make greater efforts to include women in the peace process, citing the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017 which Trump signed into law.  Women’s rights icon Gloria Steinem, founder of the peace group Women Cross DMZ, published an op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday in support of the resolution. The resolution clarifies that ending the war does not necessitate a withdrawal of US troops from Korea or an acceptance of North Korea as a legitimate nuclear power. The resolution calls on the Administration to continue the repatriation of servicemember remains, and expand cooperation to achieve reunions of divided Korean and Korean-American families and facilitate people-to-people exchanges and humanitarian cooperation. Rep. Khanna has been a consistent voice for diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula. Shortly after Trump threatened “fire and fury” against North Korea, Khanna was joined by over 70 Congressmembers on his bipartisan “No Unconstitutional Strike on North Korea Act”, which would reinforce existing law prohibiting an unauthorized and unprovoked strike on North Korea. He has also been critical of those in both parties who have sought to restrict flexibility in negotiations, instead urging support for the diplomatic approach of our South Korean ally and its President, Moon Jae-in. Rep. Khanna will travel to Atlanta next week to sit down with Pres. Carter to discuss developments on the Korean Peninsula and solicit guidance from the Nobel Laureate about how the next generation of policymakers can best pursue a pro-diplomacy agenda for America. Current original cosponsors (18): Pramila Jayapal, Mark Pocan, Barbara Lee, Deb Haaland, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jan Schakowsky, Raúl Grijalva, Bobby Rush, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Tulsi Gabbard, Adriano Espaillat, Andy Kim, Rashida Tlaib, Judy Chu, José Serrano, Gwen Moore The resolution is endorsed by organizations including the National Association of Korean Americans, Ploughshares Fund, Women Cross DMZ, Korean Americans in Action, United Methodist Church – Global Ministries, Win Without War, Peace Action, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), Just Foreign Policy, Beyond the Bomb, and Physicians for Social Responsibility. #Trump #KoreaPeace #KimJongUn #DPRK #USDPRKSummit #NorthKorea

By Tim Shorrock | March 4, 2019 Originally published in the Nation.com South Koreans are learning the hard truths expressed in the protest music of Phil Ochs from the darkest days of the Cold War. “When it comes to times like Korea, there’s no one more red, white, and blue” than the American liberal, he sang in one of his most biting verses. Decades later, with the two Koreas on the brink of ending a war that ripped their country apart and triggered the massive US military intervention of 1950, the liberals and Democrats who earned Ochs’s derision may be undermining the best chance for peace on the peninsula in a generation. As US diplomats prepare for the second summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un next week in Hanoi, senior Democrats in the House and Senate, joined by a few Republicans, have been sounding alarm bells, warning that South Korean President Moon Jae-in is moving too fast in reconciling with North Korea by seeking a premature lifting of sanctions on the nuclear-armed state. They are also expressing strong reservations about the US and South Korean negotiations with Kim and warning Trump not to budge on his “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign until Kim has completely dismantled North Korea’s nuclear-weapons and missile program. Kim temporarily halted the program nearly 500 days ago by suspending all testing of his “nuclear force.” The congressional actions have been fueled by a steady stream of pessimistic and often misleading studies from Washington think tanks, eagerly embraced by US media hostile to the peace process, alleging that Kim is “playing” Trump and that both Moon and Trump may stop short of demanding North Korea’s immediate denuclearization by embracing a more incremental approach. In recent days, word has been circulating in Washington that Trump’s team in Hanoi, led by State Department special envoy Stephen Biegun, may loosen some US sanctions in return for North Korea’s closing down of its huge nuclear complex at Yongbyon, which South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper describes as “the center and symbol of North Korea’s nuclear development program.” Other reports claim that the two countries may set up liaison offices in their respective capitals as the bilateral talks move forward. Those attempts at a compromise, in turn, have set up an internecine battle inside the Trump administration, with hard-liners like John Bolton, who is visiting South Korea this weekend, trying to head off Biegun’s diplomacy. But Trump is sticking to his guns. “I’m in no particular rush” as long as the North’s test suspension remains in place, Trump told reporters at the White House on February 19. That same day, President Moon told Trump in a 35-minute phone call that South Korea was ready to use economic incentives, including connecting inter-Korean roads and railroads and other projects, to “reduce the burden” on the United States in forging an agreement with North Korea. “Seoul is ready to reboot inter-Korean exchanges with an early resumption of joint economic projects,” a presidential official at the Blue House told reporters. Top Democrats, however, oppose such moves. Last week, Senator Bob Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, joined Republican Ted Cruz in sending a strongly worded letter to Trump that directly attacked President Moon’s push for closer economic ties with North Korea. They urged the White House to rein in the US ally by committing “the full weight of the U.S. government to ensuring the integrity of the sanctions regime.” Senator Menendez is also the author of a resolution, now under consideration in the Senate and House, promoting the trilateral military alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea, which is highly unpopular among Koreans. It comes as Tokyo and Seoul are locked in a bitter dispute over Japan’s use of “comfort women” as sex slaves during World War II and its refusal to provide restitution to thousands of Koreans forced to labor in Japanese mines and factories during that time. The resolution, which was introduced in the House by Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is widely seen in Seoul as a way to pressure President Moon to back off and settle the dispute. The most dramatic moment of congressional impatience with South Korea came last week, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with a high-level delegation of South Korean lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties. The group, which was led by Representative Moon Hee-sang, the speaker of South Korea’s National Assembly, came to Washington to seek support for the inter-Korean peace process started by President Moon during the “Olympic Truce” of January 2018. According to Korean reporters who were briefed on the meeting, the session was uncomfortable from the start and had to be extended “as the talks grew intense.” Pelosi, citing her own visit to Pyongyang in 1997, reportedly told her visitors not to trust the North and asserted (apparently with prodding from Representative Na Kyung-won, the floor leader of the right-wing opposition Liberty Korea Party) that North Korea’s “real goal isn’t its own denuclearization but South Korea’s demilitarization.” At one point, Pelosi insisted that last June’s summit in Singapore—the first-ever meeting between a US president and a North Korean leader—was “nothing but show.” The implication was that the South Koreans, who have had extensive discussions on economic, political, and military issues with their Northern counterparts over the past year, are naive and don’t understand the threat to their own country. Representative Moon, in an interview with Fox 11 in Los Angeles, said he responded to Pelosi that the second summit in Hanoi “is of great importance to the Korean people and it will determine the fate of our country. That’s how important it is.” The US congressional pressure on South Korea to end its dispute with Japan also contributed to the tension. The issue of Japan’s wartime crimes is particularly sensitive for Representative Moon, who recently suggested that the Japanese emperor apologize to his country for its war crimes against Koreans. Later, he called Japan a “brazen thief” for demanding that he retract his comments. After hearing Pelosi express her concern about the dispute between South Korea and Japan, Speaker Moon told Korean reporters that the House speaker was essentially lobbying for Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party government in Tokyo. “I think Japan told her to have a word with [us] before the meeting, or in other words, scold us,” he said, according to the Joongang Daily. Pelosi’s press office did not return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment and clarification. Still, Pelosi’s comments rattled many Koreans, who are hoping for a successful summit so they can proceed with their plans to eliminate tensions with the North. “Reconciliation and peace between North and South Korea is a gravely historic matter that should be for the Korean people to decide,” Simone Chun, a Korean scholar and activist who has spoken to congressional staffers about the peace process, told The Nation. “It cannot be allowed to be reduced to a bargaining chip in the struggle for one-upmanship between Republicans and Democrats.” Chun was also critical of Representative Na of the Korean opposition party for raising fears during her visit to Washington about a North Korean nuclear attack and opposing an end-of-war declaration at the upcoming summit. “What Pelosi did was to legitimize the ultra-right-wing views expressed by Na,” she said. Hwang Joon-bum, the Washington correspondent for Hankyoreh, South Korea’s largest progressive daily, wrote an op-ed about the House speaker’s remarks. “Pelosi is just one person who reflects the dominant viewpoint in the American political establishment, the mainstream media and think tanks,” he said. “There was never any chance” that the lawmakers’ tour “would reverse the deep-rooted distrust of North Korea and the antipathy to Trump both inside and outside of the US political establishment.” The US critics, he added, “aren’t impressed by North Korea’s suspension of nuclear and missile testing since Nov. 2017, its willingness to demolish its Yongbyon nuclear facility and [Kim Jong-un’s] focus on an economic line.” Daniel Jasper, the public-education-and-advocacy coordinator for Asia of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), said in an interview that he hoped Democrats would start seeing the Trump-Kim talks through Korean eyes. “We are urging Democratic leadership to see the peace process for what it is—a Korean-led effort to end a 70-year-old war,” Jasper told The Nation. “Changing from the view that the current situation is a nuclear standoff to the view that this situation is the result of an un-ended war is essential to understanding what types of reciprocal actions are pragmatic and necessary, as well as why diplomacy is needed in the first place. We remain hopeful that the Democrats will rise above partisanship and political calculations to support the overall goal of peace.” AFSC, which established its first operations in North Korea in 1980, works with four cooperative farms in the country to raise productivity and implement sustainable agricultural practices, Jasper said. But the Menendez letter showed little appreciation for South Korea’s efforts to help the North improve its economy. Menendez and Cruz listed a series of South Korean actions they consider troublesome, including moves by Korean banks to “pursue investments and operations” in the North and the participation of “multiple business executives” in President Moon’s summit in Pyongyang last September to discuss reopening the Kaesong Industrial Zone just north of the DMZ and tours of Mount Kumgang, a tourist site beloved by South Koreans. They also complained about President Moon’s recent calls to lift sanctions on the North “as soon as possible” and plans by both Koreas to break ground on a new cross-border rail project “within this year.” They added that North Korea’s “opacity” and its “well-documented efforts of evading sanctions” makes it impossible to ensure “that economic engagement with the North—regardless of intent to contribute to positive diplomatic progress on denuclearization—would not violate U.N. Security Council resolutions or be used for illicit activities prohibited by U.S. sanctions.” Meanwhile, in another move that could constrain both South Korea and the United States in their negotiations with the North, Representative Tom Malinowski, a newly elected Democratic congressman from New Jersey, joined Republican Representative Mike Gallagher in introducing a bill that would restrict the US government and the Pentagon from reducing US troops in South Korea from their current level of about 28,000 to 22,000 or less unless the secretary of defense could assure Congress it would not have an “adverse” impact on US security. The bill, H.R. 889, states that a “withdrawal or significant reduction” of US forces, which could happen eventually if a peace deal is reached, “may risk upsetting the military balance” in the Asia region. It also uses language similar to the Menendez letter concerning the US alliance with Japan, saying that the trilateral ties between the United States, Japan, and South Korea “form the bedrock of regional stability.” Malinowski, a former director of Human Rights Watch, was the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor during the Obama administration. In 2017, he wrote an article for Politico titled “How to Take Down Kim Jong Un” that essentially called for a campaign that would “lead to the end” of the North Korean regime “and its reason to exist as a country.” The Democratic Party’s current approach was established last June, one week before the Singapore summit, in a letter to Trump from Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and signed by Senators Menendez, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Sherrod Brown, Mark Warner, and Patrick Leahy. It laid out a series of demands, including North Korea’s “dismantlement and removal” of its chemical and biological weapons, which are not currently part of the talks, and urged the White House to “maintain a tough approach to China” throughout the peace process. The Schumer letter also rejected any incremental steps by the US government in its dealings with Kim. “Any deal that explicitly or implicitly gives North Korea sanctions relief for anything other than the verifiable performance of its obligations to dismantle its nuclear and missile arsenal is a bad deal,” the Democratic senators declared. Chun, the scholar-activist, said in a recent e-mail to peace activists that the Schumer letter “completely overlooked the recent progress toward peace evinced by the inter-Korean summit and the Panmunjom Declaration and discounted the overwhelming support for the peace process by Koreans. It also offers no alternative vision for peace on the Korean Peninsula and considers Korean interests only insofar as they serve the narrow political agenda of the Democratic Party.” After the Schumer letter went out, according to activists who spend time on Capitol Hill, Representative Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders told their caucus “not to speak supportively” of the Singapore summit, which happened to coincide with a week of advocacy on Korea by peace groups. “Many of our folks lobbying on the Hill were stunned at how hostile many Dems were,” one activist told The Nation. But now, with the Trump-Kim negotiations in full swing, a few Democrats are ready to take a new approach. A group of lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan to announce an action next week to express support for the Korea peace process and call on the United States to finally end the Korean War through a peace agreement. That would be most welcome, said Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action and national coordinator of the Korea Peace Network. “Democrats should support diplomacy, and remember the most important president in this process is Moon Jae-in, not Donald Trump,” Martin said. “Moon’s persistent leadership toward reconciliation and diplomacy with North Korea represents the fervent desire of the Korean and Korean-American people for peace. Members of Congress from both parties should understand that and support it, skepticism about Trump and Kim notwithstanding.” Tim Shorrock is a Washington, DC–based journalist and the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, and  a Korea Policy Institute Associate. #DPRK #KoreaPeace #Sanctions #USDPRKSummit

President Trump and Leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam (White House Twitter photo via Yonhap news) By Simone Chun & Kevin Martin Originally published on Truthout The second summit meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, inspired hope for real progress in negotiations with North Korea, and an agreement on concrete steps toward denuclearization that has thus far proven elusive. While the talks ended with no agreement, diplomacy is still the only way forward. There are troubling reports that U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton may have played a negative role in scuttling a potential deal by inserting an eleventh-hour demand to address North Korea’s biological and chemical weapons. However, U.S. positions on sanctions relief, humanitarian exemptions to sanctions, denuclearization and steps toward inter-Korean reconciliation have been far too rigid since last year’s Singapore Summit. Fixing that is not rocket science. While no declaration announcing the end of the Korean War emerged from the Hanoi summit, that goal is still alive, and still crucial. While such a declaration could be seen as little more than a symbolic gesture, its benefits are actually quite concrete. Not only would it immediately relieve tensions and reduce the risk of renewed conflict, it would also provide the basis for further negotiations to conclude a formal peace agreement to finally and officially end the Korean War. Securing a final peace agreement is critical not only for reducing the risk of war, but also for advancing the goal of denuclearization, since the ongoing state of war is North Korea’s primary rationale for pursuing and maintaining a nuclear deterrent. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has already voiced his support for this type of declaration. Far from mere symbolic gestures, the end of war declaration and a formal peace agreement are both versatile diplomatic instruments that can be tailored to support U.S. interests while also mitigating North Korea’s security concerns. While we don’t know all the details as to why the hastily organized summit did not deliver an agreement, President Trump did express approval of North Korea’s offer to permanently close its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon. While he mentioned his desire to address other nuclear facilities, shutting down the Yongbyon facility, a centerpiece of North Korea’s nuclear program, would be an excellent first step toward complete denuclearization. The price tag need not be too high; perhaps some sanctions relief for food, medicine and easing restrictions on non-strategic economic activity, and the opening of liaison offices (a step below embassies) in Pyongyang and Washington. That package should be able to come together soon, and wouldn’t necessarily require another summit. Next, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, who has been tireless in his pursuit of peace and reconciliation, must play an enhanced, facilitating role, with China’s leader Xi Jinping perhaps joining in. In addition to nuclear diplomacy, deepening inter-Korean cooperation would foster a degree of economic interdependence between North and South Korea that would make the two Koreas more secure — economically, politically and militarily — and would help remove North Korea’s justification for maintaining a nuclear arsenal. It would aid in North Korea’s economic development. And because increased economic ties and security for North and South Korea mean increased security for the U.S., multilateral diplomacy and engagement is a win for everyone. The fact that no agreement emerged from Hanoi to open liaison offices or interest sections in each other’s capitals was a missed opportunity. This should be promptly rectified: Opening these offices would foster the type of ongoing dialogue necessary to keep diplomacy on track and advance the goals of peace and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. gains no advantage in denying this recognition to the North, and it loses a key chance at diplomacy. Negotiations can’t just be about the Trump-Kim “bromance.” The alternative to these steps toward peace is unthinkable. A war on the Korean peninsula would likely result in the deaths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Meanwhile, a war on the Korean peninsula would substantially depress U.S. economic performance both in the region and globally. South Korea is the United States’ seventh largest export market and sixth largest supplier of imports. A prolonged conflict on the Korean peninsula would also significantly increase U.S. federal debt, which is already larger than our annual Gross Domestic Product. While it would have been unrealistic to expect a comprehensive, final deal in Hanoi, hopes were raised for concrete progress toward that goal. As talks continue, it is worth remembering that while an end to economic sanctions, a permanent end to the Korean War, a peace agreement and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula would rightly benefit Koreans, all of these steps are also in the best interests of U.S., regional and global security. Regardless of understandable concerns about the harmful policies and actions of both President Trump and Chairman Kim in other realms, Americans of all political stripes and their representatives in Congress should support the continued pursuit of peace through diplomacy. Thankfully, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), along with 18 original cosponsors, just introduced legislation articulating support for the nascent peace process and offering a common-sense vision for progress in negotiations. Congress is right to get involved in support of a productive and thoughtful diplomatic process. A sustainable peace will require active participation of a broader circle of champions and cheerleaders. As the great peace advocate A.J. Muste observed, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” Copyright © Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission. Dr. Simone Chun has taught at Northeastern University in Boston, and served as an associate in research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. She is an active member of the Korea Peace Network, and a member of the steering committee of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. She served as an international women’s delegation of peace to Korea organized by Women Cross DMZ and Nobel Women’s Initiative. Kevin Martin is president of Peace Action, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization with over 200,000 supporters nationwide. He also serves as coordinator of the Korea Peace Network, a coalition of peace groups, arms control groups and Korean-American activists working for peace on the Korean Peninsula. #Trump #KoreaPeace #KimJongUn #DPRK #USDPRKSummit

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump in Vietnam Feb. 28, 2019. (Vietnam News Agency) By Jeffrey Lewis | March 9, 2019 Originally published on NPR.org A bipartisan consensus seems to be forming that President Trump was right to walk away from the deal offered by Kim Jong Un at the two leaders’ summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. The consensus is a strange one, given that the deal itself was exactly the same as what had been reported to be North Korea’s position heading into the negotiation, a position that many commentators had praised. North Korea would offer to shut down facilities at its Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center that were involved in making plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. In exchange, North Korea asked the United States to lift sanctions that had been imposed on its civilian economy since 2016. Of course, North Korea would retain its nuclear weapons, long-range missiles and many other facilities after such an agreement. And the United States and other countries would also retain many sanctions on North Korea. The agreement on offer was hardly the disarmament that the president had hoped for, but it would have been another step away from the taunts and threats of 2017 and toward some other future. That was the deal the U.S. should have taken. For the North Koreans, the logic of the offer was obvious. The United Nations had tightened existing sanctions in 2016 in response to a series of tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. North Korea has now stopped such tests, closed its nuclear test site, partially dismantled a rocket-engine test stand and offered to dismantle some of the facilities at Yongbyon. Surely an adjustment in sanctions was warranted. Trump and his team disagreed. One State Department official explained that North Korea must not merely end testing but also give up all the weapons developed on the basis of those tests. “Testing was part of a process of developing nuclear weapons, and the weapons themselves need to be on the table,” the official explained. “It’s not the testing of the weapons; it’s the actual presence of the nuclear weapons — and, by the way, likewise in the case of missile testing, the ICBMs as well that are central to this discussion.” The U.S. position — that North Korea must unilaterally abandon its nuclear capabilities in exchange for promises of some different future — is a kind of American fantasy about power that is more suited to an action movie than the reality of international negotiations. Let’s be clear: During 2017, North Korea tested a series of new missiles, including two different intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that can reach the United States. One of those missiles, the Hwasong-15, can deliver a nuclear-weapon-size payload all the way to Mar-a-Lago. North Korea also tested a thermonuclear weapon that exploded with a force 10 times stronger than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By any measure, North Korea’s leverage over the course of 2017 increased dramatically as it acquired the ability to grievously harm the United States. We can be angry about this, but our rage is impotent. Attempting to remove Kim from power as we did with Saddam Hussein or Moammar Gadhafi would be sheer madness. And so, why would the United States expect North Korea to willingly trade away that advantage in its entirety? Why would North Korea, having completed the development of a nuclear deterrent that puts it in a class with countries like China, India, Pakistan and Israel, simply apologize and turn over these capabilities in exchange for a couple of McDonald’s and a Trump Tower Pyongyang? It is obvious, or it should be, that North Korea has a strong hand to play. Why is that so hard to see from inside the Beltway? I suspect that part of the problem has to do with a kind of embarrassment. Time and again, the United States has walked away from diplomatic agreements with North Korea. In fairness, the North Koreans have been no angels. But the U.S. has seldom stuck around long enough to work through the difficulties and differences. Each time, North Korea has increased its nuclear capability. In 2002, the United States walked away from the 1994 Agreed Framework that froze North Korea’s plutonium production, only to see North Korea conduct its first nuclear test in 2006. The United States tried again but abandoned Six-Party Talks in 2008 over concerns about verification, only to watch North Korea conduct more nuclear tests. And in 2012, the U.S. walked away from another tentative deal over a North Korean rocket launch, only to see Pyongyang spend the past few years testing ever more weapons, including its ICBM and thermonuclear weapon to arm it. Each time the United States walked, a lot of people in Washington promised that patience and pressure would produce a better deal than the one squandered. And each time they were wrong. Like a gambler racking up debt, the U.S. foreign policy community has consistently taken its chances at the roulette table rather than cutting its losses and admitting the obvious: North Korea has the bomb. But that’s apparently the one thing that remains taboo in Washington. Even now, the United States cannot recognize what seems pretty obvious. We can’t admit failure because it requires not merely changing our policy but admitting that we’ve been wrong. It’s far easier to pretend that a better deal is just around the corner. It isn’t. Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) is a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and author of a novel about how a nuclear war with North Korea might begin, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States. #Trump #KoreaPeace #KimJongUn #DPRK #USDPRKSummit