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By Michelle Xie | December 2, 2021 | Originally published in Breaking the Chains Bio: Christine Hong is Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an executive board member of the Korea Policy Institute. She has spent time in North Korea, including as part of a North American peace delegation. Breaking The Chains (BTC): How did women fit into the Korean War, and what roles did they play, both roles in resistance but also burdens and attacks that singled out women? Christine Hong (C): What was imperialist action on the part of the United States was experienced by the Korean people as a total war. One of the predictable outcomes of the Korean War is that it can be forgotten in a U.S. context, even though it was absolutely central to the rehabilitation of a U.S. total war economy. But, on the Korean side, it can’t ever be forgotten. It is the lived, ongoing reality for people North and South of the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone] on the Korean peninsula. The North Koreans and the Chinese People’s Army were fighting a revolutionary war that was total in nature. There was no part of Korean society that wasn’t targeted. Curtis LeMay, the American general, openly conceded and boasted about destroying 20 percent of Korean society. He viewed this as a singular accomplishment, but there are statistics that suggest that it was even worse than what he indicated. There are some Chinese statistics that indicate that 30 percent of North Korea was destroyed. That is utterly indiscriminate in nature. There were an estimated 4 million Koreans killed, some people say 5 million. The vast majority of the dead were civilians. The United States, in waging a total war on the Korean peninsula, did not discriminate in terms of the logic of the target, between soldiers and civilian women and children. It was accordingly the case that North Korean women played a role in fighting what they profoundly understood, and is seldom understood in U.S.-based scholarship, as a people’s war for liberation. That’s also true of North Korean children. We are in an era where it’s understood that children should not go to war, but if you go to North Korea to the Fatherland Revolutionary War Museum, you see that children did things like placing pieces of wood studded with nails on the road to try to deter forces from coming forward. Why was this? Was it because North Korea was weaponizing its children? No, it was because the destruction was so indiscriminate that every single demographic of society had to fight in this war. So the question of how women fit into the Korean War is multiple-fold. I think it’s also important to recognize that a people’s war is very different in political philosophy from an imperialist war. Even the very problematic white American feminist, Susan Brownmiller, who wrote a book called “Against Our Will,” in which she makes a bunch of racist claims, actually concedes this very interesting point about the U.S. war in Vietnam. She indicates that the North Vietnamese did not rape women — virtually not at all — in sharp contrast to U.S. forces and the South Vietnamese. That illustrates very different principles about revolutionary warfare, which is basically that a people’s war is fought by a people’s army, and the soldiers of a people’s army are not separate from the people — you do not wage a campaign of sexualized terrorism against the very population that you are from. On the other hand, imperialist warfare is characterized by an invading force that has no connection to the people. It might have its collaborationist forces that are drawn from local populations, but there isn’t that identification with the people. That is a crucial distinction. Few people understand the continuity that existed between the Japanese imperial system of sexual slavery and what ensued, which was the U.S. “comfort women” system. A couple of years ago, there was a group of South Korean lawyers and activists who were working in solidarity with former camptown [local communities formed around occupation army installations] military prostitutes from South Korea. They had won in a Seoul district court a ruling that found that the South Korean government was guilty of massive human rights violations against these women for illegally detaining them for being suspected of having venereal disease. Well, of course the system of militarized prostitution around U.S. military installations in South Korea was not done by the South Korean government alone, which was in the first instance a puppet government of the United States. We have to recognize that the system of camptown military prostitution was jointly administered by the U.S. army. According to these lawyers and activists who actually scoured the Library of Congress here in the United States, the United States entered into this system in which women who were military prostitutes were described as “wianbu.” “Wianbu” is the Korean term for “ianfu”; “ianfu” is the Japanese term for comfort women. The United States continued a system of organized, racialized, imperialist sexual exploitation of Korean women, even after Japan was defeated, and, in a number of cases, actually singled out North Korean women who were known to be party [communist] members. They were targeted for rape, which was wielded as a political weapon of terror and warfare. BTC: In July 1953, an armistice was signed by the U.S., North Korea and China. Why has a peaceful settlement not yet been achieved? C: It’s such an urgent question. The question of why there has been no peace on the Korean peninsula even though that is the overwhelming desire of the Korean people both on the peninsula and within the diaspora has to be understood in terms of the geostrategic utility of a divided Korea. In the very first instance, it was two junior U.S. army officers, Charles Bonesteel and Dean Rusk, who drew a line through the middle of the map bisecting the Korean peninsula after the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. That bisection of the Korean peninsula precipitated a war of national reunification. That was predictable. Partitions are never bloodless affairs. The armistice called hot fighting to an end, but did not in any way, shape, or form conclusively or legally end the Korean War itself. The Korean War is ongoing to this day, and we have a perpetual war system in place. It’s important to realize that that armistice called for all foreign forces to depart from the Korean peninsula within a reasonable amount of time, and it also urged that the three signatories, North Korea, China and the United States, would turn to the negotiating table within three months’ time to hammer out a permanent peace agreement. China left the peninsula within a short period of time. The United States to this day militarily occupies the Southern part of the peninsula. The United States has roughly 30,000 forces. It has about 80 military installations. Even those military installations that aren’t under formal U.S. name can be used, according to mutual defense agreements, at the whim and will of the United States. The United States maintains command control over the South Korean army at times of heightened warfare. The United States has historically practiced the largest war exercises in the world on the Korean peninsula. These are a combination of actual live-fire drills as well as virtual exercises, which simulate the invasion and occupation of North Korea, and in a classic counterintelligence move, the decapitation of North Korea’s leadership. They also simulate a nuclear first strike against North Korea. If you think historically about the Korean War and about the supposed post-Cold War period (the Korean peninsula has never been post-Cold War), the purpose of all of this geostrategically has been the encirclement of China. It still remains the goal today. BTC: In the U.S., we see all kinds of propaganda demonizing North Korea. Recently, North Korea tested two short-range missiles, firing them into the sea — the New York Times calls this a “significant provocation.” Can you talk more about this and myths we are told about North Korea? C: A nuclear North Korea has been viewed as irrational, menacing, and liable to strike out at any moment. This is really a camera obscura inversion of the truth. The dominant discourse around North Korea is akin to the inversions that we see around Palestine and Israel to some degree. In the post-9/11 era, the convenient North Korea boogeyman has justified the acceleration of U.S. military designs throughout Asia and the Pacific, throughout not just the George W Bush, but the Obama era, when there was the accelerated deployment of the THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] system to different sites throughout the Pacific. It was justified in the name of defending against a nuclear-armed North Korea. When we see North Korea as the enemy, what does that prevent us from seeing? North Korea is not an imperialist power that has ever attacked other countries. Imperialist wars usually involve intervention across national borders. North Korea has never done that. It has never attacked its neighbors in the way that the United States has waged wars throughout Asia. The language of provocation always ascribes to North Korea the status of being out of bounds for simply taking measures to defend itself. What the Black Panther Party clearly saw was self-defense in North Korea; the United States sees unreasonable actions. The assumption is that North Korea should consent to its potential extermination by the United States, as though that would be the reasonable stance to take. This also demonstrates the unevenness and asymmetry of the politics around non-proliferation. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty specifies not just that would-be nuclear powers should not take the road of nuclearization. It’s that existing nuclear powers actually have to destroy their arsenals and denuclearize. The United States has taken zero steps toward denuclearization. There has been no shortage of apocalyptic designs that U.S. war planners have cooked up for North Korea. During the Korean War, General MacArthur wanted to create between China and North Korea a radioactive zone by using nuclear weapons — a zone of cobalt — where he envisioned that no life could live for a hundred years or more. North Korea has ceaselessly, throughout the duration of its existence, been placed in the crosshairs of a nuclear U.S. war machine. That is the key backdrop for understanding why North Korea has dedicated so much of its national resources to take to the nuclear path. Instead of viewing this as a rational measure of self-defense, a form of deterrence that buys the possibility of North Koreans being able to live, this is viewed so flippantly and superficially as being incomprehensible. The rhetoric that is adopted by the United States is that it needs to defend itself against North Korea, when the historical truth of the matter is that the United States waged a war of destruction, having complete mastery over the skies, raining ruin from above. BTC: As socialists, feminists and anti-imperialists, what’s the most important task for us to take up in a global movement? C: The tasks are multiple. It just so happens to be that I am in education, so I think one of the most critical tasks that I can undertake is working collectively with a number of other organizers, activists and activist-scholars to create a political educational curriculum and to center political education in what we do. The task of de-imperialization begins with de-mobilization. Countries around the world feel the military boot of the United States, but why is it that those of us who live in the belly of the beast can turn a blind eye to U.S. military imperialism? There are connections between the U.S. war machine and police power. U.S. police power has a certain trajectory in the United States, but is one and the same as U.S. war power, because that police power is the waging of war on domestic populations. When we talk about the militarization of the police that presupposes that the United States is waging a series of invisible wars abroad. We need to foster a more broad-based anti-imperialist approach to abolition.

By Ramsay Liem | December 2, 2021 Legacies of the Korean War is an online collection of audio, video and print interviews with Korean Americans who survived the Korean War or were raised in families with survivors, curated by a collaboration of scholars and filmmakers. For many years, memory of these experiences was suppressed, pushed to the margins of official Korean War histories and silenced within Korean American communities fractured by Cold War divisions. But as survivors age and pass away and second and third generation Korean Americans seek to understand their historical origins, these often-painful memories stand as testaments not only to the generational trauma of war, but also to the strength and heart of the Korean American community. Koreans throughout the diaspora share the horror with those in the homeland of a Korean War fought to an impermanent standstill in 1953 and ever threatening to re-erupt in a nuclear age. As President Donald Trump put it to Senator Lindsay Graham in 2017: “If there’s going to be a war to stop [Kim Jong Un], it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here.” This brazen display of chauvinism betrays a nativist assumption that no one ‘over there’ is also here, notably nearly 2 million Korean Americans many with family ties to Korea and others who are direct survivors of the Korean War or their descendants. The memories and scars of Koreans in the diaspora deserve to be lifted from obscurity and attest to the stake that all Americans have in an urgent resolution to a 20th Century Korean War that has plagued regional and global security for seven decades. Toward this end the Korea Policy Institute will feature the story of a contributor to the Legacies collection in this and future issues of its newsletter, beginning with Insook Won. Insook Won was on the cusp of her teenage years when full scale fighting broke out in Korea. The youngest of five children, her story is emblematic of a painful post World War II period when the United States with cooperation from the Soviet Union divided Korea at the 38th parallel. That geographic imposition intensified civil tensions between left and right leaning Koreans grappling with post war reconstruction amidst the intrusion of a U.S. occupying government in the south and ubiquitous Soviet presence in the north. Caught in this ideological struggle, Insook Won suffered the deaths of two older brothers sympathetic to communist ideals during the early months of the Korean War. Years later following her emigration to the United States, she reflects on how this still unresolved ideological division has shaped the family story she has been able to tell. This legacy of the Korean War is not hers alone. A video excerpt of Insook Won’s story and transcriptions of the full interview can be found here. The Legacies of the Korean War team welcomes reactions to and questions about the Legacies of the Korean War project. Please send your comments to info@legaciesofthekoreanwar.org. Ramsay Liem, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Boston College, Legacies of the Korean War, and KPI Associate.

By Vernadette Gonzalez | November 19, 2021 | Originally published by Hawai‘i International Film Festival (HIFF) In 2015, an assembly of women who wanted to take a walk, raised a stir on the Korean peninsula. Their intention was simple, gather, talk, and sew—to create community through the simplest of acts, and to make imaginable a vision of peace on a land torn apart for generations by the violence of Japanese colonialism, American militarism, and Korean statecraft. Deann Borshay Liem’s CROSSINGS, a documentary about the peacemakers who organized the controversial action of not only entering North Korea but also crossing the DMZ to call for a peace treaty does not shy away from the diplomatic complexities and tactical missteps of this historic undertaking, but keeps a steady hand on the heart of the story, which is the power of women’s voices in building peace. This crossing, is of course, anything but simple, nor are the women naïve and inexperienced. After being stymied and threatened by the South Korean government, the U.S. military, and human rights activists, Christine Ahn, the event’s main organizer, asks “What are we doing that is so threatening?” The film lays out the answer: Liem makes clear from the beginning that while built on hope, the symbolic act of the walk was daring in its rejection of an armistice as adequate. Motivated by personal experiences of how war’s burdens fall heaviest on women, the women were pragmatic and purposeful, informed by work in peace building which have has both sustained them and demanded sacrifices big and small. Their call for peace makes imaginable something different than a mere ceasefire coupled with and escalating militarization. While they understand that peace is not easy, they also lay bare just how much effort it takes to wage war. Liem’s film lingers over the quilt that comes to symbolize the stitching together of the stories, dreams, and voices of Korean women and peace activists around the world. There is something powerful and compelling in the images of hands pulling needle and thread through cloth to create a tangible repository of the determination, creativity, and power of women’s work. The film itself is a kind of quilt, too. In it, Liem pieces together stories of activist predecessors who called for unification and peace, the testimonials of North Korean women recounting the horrors of the Korean War, the brief but superficial and staged glimpses into the lives of North Korean women, the delegate’s struggles with how their feminism translates in a foreign cultural milieu. The work of peace, the film implies, is not always beautiful or evenly stitched, but it is durable. The quilt—that most domestic and feminized object—made by suturing together cloth of different textures and colors, is juxtaposed with the long-open wound that is the demilitarized zone, with solutions that are steeped in division, borders, and military posturing. The contrast is stark, and the worlds imagined could not be more different. Liem tracks the aftermath of the crossing—a story of dashed hopes for peace waylaid by the puffed up posturings of US-South Korean military exercises and dangerous bloviations of heads of state. Abandoning possible talks that might have paved the way to peace, former President Trump crows, “Sometimes you just have to walk.” Sometimes you just have to walk. Despite the postponement of their hopes for peace, the women who took an entirely different kind of walk in 2015 turned this advice—of abandonment and renunciation—on its head. Instead, they continue to walk their talk, building a global campaign for a Korean peace that that is calling a new future into being. Sometimes the most powerful actors are not the ones armed with guns and tanks, but the ones who wield an imagination of a world that is absent of both, a world otherwise. For updates on Crossings, visit www.mufilms.org Vernadette Gonzalez is a Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She writes about cultures of U.S. militarism, tourism, and wayward women.

Edited by Jae-Jung Suh | November 8, 2021 | Originally published in Asia-Pacific Journal This is the Table of Contents for The Special Issue: A Longue Durée Revolution in Korea: March 1st, 1919 to the Candlelight Revolution in 2018 The year 2019, the centennial of the March 1st, 1919, witnessed an outpouring of historical scholarship assessing the complex set of events since “the starting point of Korea’s modernity in earnest.”1 Among a flood of conferences and publications that ensued, one group of scholars stood out for its attempts to stand above a nationalist historiography and situate what it calls the “March 1st revolution,” rather than the more widely used “March 1st Movement,” within a regional and global time. Its scholarship was unique in highlighting the sui generis nature of Koreans’ historical experiences without falling into the trap of nationalist historiography while at the same time bringing to relief common challenges shared by East Asia and the world during the modern period. It did so by engaging 1919 in a dialogue with 2018, the year of massive public protests. To its eyes, the “candlelight revolution,” in which Korean citizens not only brought down the corrupt and reactionary President Park Geun-Hye but also ushered in a “spring of peace” on the peninsula, and the “March 1st Revolution of 1919” were part and parcel of a longue durée revolution that wrestled with what Paik Nak-chung once called the “double project of modernity” of adapting to and overcoming modernity.2 For over a century, Koreans in the South have been going through a capitalist revolution while at the same time struggling to find an alternative that would resolve many of its contradictions; and Koreans in the North have experimented with socialism to tackle the same double project of modernity. Their unification will have to be not only a completion of a nation-state building but also a synthesis of their experiences that helps them move beyond modernity. This special issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal presents three articles representative of this historiography.3They are an English translation of chapters from Paengnyŏnŭi pyŏnhyŏk (100 Years of Revolutionary Change) edited by Baik Youngseo (白永瑞). The volume brought together leading Korean historians to reflect upon the significance of the March 1st "Revolution" from the vantage point of the recent “candlelight revolution” as well as to shed light on the contemporary changes as part of the century-old and still unfolding revolution. The introductory essay, by Suh, offers a critical overview of the century of history wars in Korea to situate the following three articles in the context of Korean historiography. The second article, by historian Bruce Cumings, discusses Japan’s colonization of Korea in the world system where the Empire of Japan sought to transform East Asia into a core-semiperiphery-periphery relationship. Korea was modernized to the extent that its capitalist development fitted its status as a semi-periphery; and its limits and deformities also grew from its structural position. In the first half of the twentieth century when the Great Britain and the United States, as great powers of the Asia Pacific, accepted Japan only as a lower partner, Japan aspired to rise toward global stature “like a moth toward a flame.” In the following article, Baik Youngseo, a historian of Chinese modern history who a leading Korean proponent of an East Asia discourse who has sought to transcend national boundaries in twentieth century East Asian historiography without reproducing the limits of Japan’s earlier East Asia History school, develops Cumings’ argument further by drawing parallels and differences between the March 1st and the May Fourth movements. Baik elaborates on how new subjects of the Korean and Chinese movements emerged out of their colonial and semicolonial experiences. He also engages in a learned discussion of how the Korean vision of kaebyŏk (a great opening of a new heaven and earth), having emerged out of Koreans’ revolutionary experiences, is full of potential to tackle the “double project of modernity.” In the last article, Paik Nak-chung characterizes both the March First and the candlelight movements as “the unfinished revolution, a revolution in progress” for their goal to establish a democratic, independent, and egalitarian nation state remains unfulfilled. The modern project remains incomplete and still in progress. The candlelight demonstrations were a continuation of the revolution that began a century ago, the unfinished revolution that has yet to be completed in a way that will revolutionarily transform the division system in the whole Korean peninsula. Paik argues that the thawing of the inter-Korean and the U.S.-North Korea relationships, which immediately followed the candlelight demonstrations, must be seen as part of the revolution. It remains to be seen how the longue durée revolution might unfold in the coming months as the term of the Moon administration, ushered in by the “Candlelight Revolution,” draws near its end. The self-claimed “candlelight government” has carried out important reforms although its reforms fall short of revolutionary changes.4 No matter how one evaluates the developments of the past several years, everyone will agree that we have yet to see the kaebyŏk. It is with an anticipation of a next stage of the “incremental and cumulative” revolution that we present this special issue. Korea’s Modern History Wars: March 1st 1919 and the Double Project of Modernity – Jae-Jung Suh Korea, A Unique Colony: Last to be Colonized and First to Revolt – Bruce Cumings The 1919 Independence Movement in Korea and Interconnected East Asia: The Incremental Unfolding of a Revolution – Baik Youngseo On “Eradicating the Vestiges of Pro-Japanese Collaborators” – Paik Nak-Chung Notes 1 Im Hyoung-Taek, “3.1undong, han’guk kŭnhyŏndaeesŏ tasi mutta,” Paengnyŏnŭi pyŏnhyŏk: 3.1esŏ ch’otbulkkaji (One Hundred Years of Change百年の変革: From 3/1 to the Candlelight), edited by Paek Yŏngsŏ (Baik Youngseo), (Seoul: Ch’angbi, 2019), 48. 2 Capitalist modernity presents many late capitalist developers such as South Korea, most of whom have experienced colonial and/or neocolonial exploitation with challenges of both adapting to capitalism and overcoming its contradictions. Paik Nak-chung, “The Double Project of Modernity,” New Left Review 95, September/October 2015, 65～66. 3 They are selected from an anthology, Paengnyŏnŭi pyŏnhyŏk: 3.1esŏ ch’otbulkkaji (One Hundred Years of Change: From 3/1 to the Candlelight), edited by Paek Yŏngsŏ (Baik Youngseo), (Seoul: Ch’angbi, 2019). A Japanese translation is available. 百年の変革: 三・一運動からキャンドル革命まで, 白永瑞：編, 青柳 純一：監訳 (東京: 法政大学出版局, 2021). 4 While it sought to “democratize the economy” by, for example, improving the protection of stockholders’ interests, penalizing unfair practices in contractor-subcontractor relationship, and limiting labor flexibility, not only did it fail to fully implement its policies and institutionalize them, but it also stopped short of seriously addressing such issues as irregular workers and even reversed some of its earlier policies. 김경필."문재인 정부 전반기의 경제민주화: 계획, 실천, 과제." 경제와사회 (2020): 278-301; 윤홍식."문재인 정부 2년 반, 한국 복지체제 : 개발국가 복지체제의 해체와 과제." 비판사회정책 66 (2020): 131-174. Jae-Jung Suh is professor of political science and international relations at the International Christian University in Tokyo and an Asia-Pacific Journal Contributing editor. His publications include Origins of North Korea’s Juche, Power, Interest and Identity in Military Alliances, “From Singapore to Hanoi and Beyond: How (Not) to Build Peace between the U.S. and North Korea,” and“Missile Defense and the Security Dilemma: THAAD, Japan’s ‘Proactive Peace,’ and the Arms Race in Northeast Asia”.

By Jia Hong & Ju-Hyun Park | October 20, 2021 | Originally published in Truthout Members of the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union, a KCTU affiliate, gather in front of the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Sejong City, South Korea, on June 23, 2021, to demand improved working conditions and expand public health care. [KCTU] On October 20, at least half a million workers in South Korea — from across the construction, transportation, service, and other sectors — are walking off their jobs in a one-day general strike. The strike will be followed by mass demonstrations in urban centers and rural farmlands, culminating in a national all-people’s mobilization in January 2022. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the country’s largest labor union umbrella with 1.1 million members, is organizing these mobilizations in a broad-based front with South Korea’s urban poor and farmers. The 15 detailed demands of the strike can be summarized as fitting within three basic areas: Abolish “irregular work” (part-time, temporary or contract labor with little or no benefits) and extend labor protections to all workers; Give workers power in economic restructuring decisions during times of crisis; Nationalize key industries and socialize basic services like education and housing. South Korea Today: Overworked and Job-Insecure Today, South Korea ranks third in highest annual working hours and as of 2015 it was third in workplace deaths among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Over 40 percent of all workers are considered “irregular workers.” As in the U.S., many of these irregular workers labor in the gig economy, beholden to tech giants’ apps. With an economy and society dominated by corporate conglomerates known as chaebol, South Korean people face increasingly bleak prospects. The top 10 percent of earners claimed 45 percent of total income in 2016, real estate speculation has led to a housing crisis, and privatization in education and health care are expanding disparities. As South Korea undergoes blowback from the effects of COVID-19 on the global economy, these crises have only sharpened. Behind the shiny electronics and cars that chaebol like Samsung, Hyundai or LG are known for lie countless stories of exploitation. Earlier this year, cleaning staff for LG Twin Towers (the company’s skyscraper headquarters) camped outside the company building for 136 days in the coldest winter months to protest layoffs and exploitative workplace conditions. LG hired goons to pour water into the workers’ tents as they slept. One worker exclaimed, “What did we do wrong? Imagine this giant conglomerate comes and floods your bedroom. Can you sleep?!” Exploitation and unsafe conditions are consistent across industries. Coal miners at Korea Coal, a government-owned coal mining corporation, are suffering health conditions from breathing in coal dust and overwork. One coal miner recounted the plight of irregular workers: “The government reduced the labor force by half, so our unit now has to do the job of two units. So everyone is ill. There’s no one here who is not sick. Our wages need to increase but have stayed the same. We work the same as regular workers, but we don’t even get half the pay.” How We Got Here: Demystifying South Korea’s Rise Often hailed as a “miracle on the Han river,” the story of economic development in South Korea has always had its winners and losers. Forty years of U.S.-backed right-wing dictatorships set the political conditions for the growth of South Korean industry. That story is for another time, but a general description still paints a chilling picture: participation in the Vietnam War, the separation of families and sale of children through the trans-national adoption system, state management of a sex industry catered to occupying U.S. troops, and decades of martial law and anti-communist state terror all played their part in the rise of the chaebol. The confrontation between labor and capital brewing in South Korea today is another chapter in this bloody history. South Korean workers have thrown down the gauntlet, and we should all pay close attention. Since the Chun Doo-hwan dictatorship in the 1980s, neoliberal reforms have gradually stripped away South Korea’s protectionist policies, opening its markets and resources to foreign investors at the expense of workers. By the mid-1990s, South Korea received a rush of $100 billion in foreign loans. When the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis hit, the economy quickly deflated as foreign capital withdrew. With national bankruptcy looming, South Korea was forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance. But the IMF loan came with strings attached: Structural adjustment policies dismantled hard-won worker protections, public corporations were privatized, and domestic markets were pried open for foreign capital, which returned to devour cheap Korean assets. By 2004, up to 44 percent of South Korea’s total stock market capitalization was owned by foreigners, mostly from the U.S., the E.U. and Japan. The 1997 crisis and its aftermath ultimately led to mass layoffs, the “irregularization” of South Korean workers and the doubling of poverty rates in a single decade. Despite an ostensible democratic transition in the late 1980s, the South Korean people have no ownership of South Korea’s economy. The average household’s debts amount to almost double their annual income. Sixty-four chaebols claim 84 percent of the GDP, yet provide only 10 percent of jobs. In fact, the average South Korean has less say in government than U.S. corporations, which have power under the 2007 U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement to legally contest laws they find unfavorable. Taking Back the Future: South Koreans on Strike The half a million South Korean workers who are walking off their jobs are demanding the abolition of all forms of “irregular” work. They also demand an end to loopholes in labor laws that permit employers to cheat their employees out of basic rights, such as the right to organize, access to benefits and compensation for work injuries. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and a new government effort to build a “digital” economy, workers are also demanding that future economic restructuring decisions be jointly determined by labor and management. Workers aren’t just demanding the government make changes for them; they’re fighting for more power to determine these changes themselves. They’re also demanding their fair share. Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising demand by far is the push to nationalize troubled industries that have been laying off workers en masse — including the airline, automobile manufacturing and shipbuilding industries. After decades of austerity, the KCTU is challenging the state to take responsibility and guarantee housing, health care, elder care, child care and education for all. Its demands for social reforms include increasing public housing units from 5 percent to 50 percent of all available housing, making college-preparatory classes free for all, and for the state to hire at least a million care workers to ensure free elder care and child care for all families. “The government uses taxpayer money to bail out troubled companies,” says Lee Jeong-hee, the director of policy for KCTU. “It should play a greater role to guarantee fairness and protect the common people.” As labor struggles rock Korea and the world this “Striketober,” opportunities arise to build towards an international class struggle to confront the international exploitation of workers. Everywhere, the working masses are making history, demanding a different future. South Korean workers see COVID-19 as a turning point. This ongoing pandemic nearly halted the movement of people and created bottlenecks in the global supply chain — and workers worry how the economic effects of the climate crisis and digital transformation of industries could leave them on the losing end of a new economy. “In times of crisis, the forces that successfully respond to the demands of the times will lead the new era,” says Lee. The KCTU’s demands exceed improving the conditions of its members — they are fighting for workers’ power as a class and demanding their share of the wealth they create. And for this, the workers expect to pay a heavy price. The South Korean state has already responded with preemptive repression, jailing KCTU President Yang Kyung-soo and at least 30 other union organizers, according to Lee. As strikers walk out of their jobs, Lee expects the government and companies to respond, as they have in the past, by jailing other union leaders and fining and suing workers for their activities. South Korean workers have thrown down the gauntlet, and we should all pay close attention. While the dynamics at play in the KCTU strike are particular to Korea, the plight of precarious workers under the weight of neoliberalism is a global struggle. As labor struggles rock Korea and the world this “Striketober,” opportunities arise to build towards an international class struggle to confront the international exploitation of workers. Everywhere, the working masses are making history, demanding a different future. U.S. observers must not treat the struggle in South Korea as a distant concern. The conditions South Korean workers face today are the consequence of more than 70 years of capitalist development in the shadow of U.S. military and financial hegemony. Given the United States’ imperialist position in the world economy, and its long and violent history in Korea, solidarity from U.S. workers is especially important. When we asked how to support KCTU from overseas, Lee asked us to spread the word. The international spotlight may protect some workers against retaliation by employers and the government and push the workers’ demands forward. Jia Hong is a member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development. Ju-Hyun Park is a genderqueer writer of the Korean diaspora. Their work has previously appeared in The Fader and Public Radio International. Ju-Hyun is a member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development. Follow them on Twitter: @hermit_hwarang.

By Gregory Elich | September 12, 2016 Originally published in ZoominKorea By this time next year, the Yongsan Army Garrison in Seoul will be in the final stage of closing down, as U.S forces shift farther south and consolidate around Pyeongtaek. South Korea intends to convert the site into a series of six parks, but there are unresolved concerns regarding alarming levels of toxic contamination. In the decade after an oil leak became known in 2001, cleanup efforts by the Seoul Metropolitan Government removed nearly 2,000 tons of oil-contaminated underground water from areas outside of Yongsan.[1] U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) claimed that it rectified the problem at its source in 2006, yet the level of petroleum hydrocarbon pollution in nearby groundwater continued to grow, multiplying by a factor of nearly thirteen times over the last four years.[2] The measured level of contamination outside Yongsan now stands at well over eight thousand times the Korean government safety standard. It can only be presumed that the situation inside the base is substantially worse. Among the more harmful chemicals found in surrounding groundwater are benzene, toluene, and xylene. Benzene is a natural component of crude oil, and scientists working with the Lymphoma Program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia performed a statistical analysis which found “significantly higher” rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma near facilities “that released benzene into the surrounding air or water.”[3] According to the World Health Organization, “Benzene is a well-established cause of cancer in humans.”[4] Toluene can serve as a solvent and is also used in making aviation fuel. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports, “Effects such as incoordination, cognitive impairment, and vision and hearing loss may become permanent with repeated exposure, especially at concentrations associated with intentional solvent abuse. High levels of toluene exposure during pregnancy, such as those associated with solvent abuse, may lead to retardation of mental abilities and growth in children. Other health effects of potential concern may include immune, kidney, liver, and reproductive effects.”[5] The New Jersey Department of Health warns, “Repeated exposure may cause liver, kidney and brain damage.”[6] Xylene is a hydrocarbon that naturally occurs in petroleum, and affects the central nervous system. One study found that xylene “disturbs the action of proteins essential to normal neuronal function,” and long-term exposure can lead to “impaired concentration and short-term memory.”[7] Certainly, a major cleanup effort is needed to make the area suitable for park visitors. The first order of business is to identify the full extent of contamination. Yet, for more than ten years, USFK repeatedly rejected requests by the South Korean national government and the Seoul city government for permission to conduct an onsite inspection.[8] It was not until last year that U.S. Forces Korea relented, allowing Korean inspectors to enter Yongsan and test the soil and groundwater.[9] The results of that inspection remain under wraps. Green Korea United, Lawyers for a Democratic Society, and other civic groups filed a suit in the Seoul Administrative Court, asking for the release of the ministry’s report on its inspection of Yongsan. The Ministry of Environment opposed the request, citing what it termed “diplomatic issues,” an apparent reference to the perceived need to cater to the sensitivities of the U.S. military. The court ruled in favor of the civic groups, which produced no result, as the Ministry of Environment is expected to lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court.[10] Civic groups demanding the release of information on pollution at Yongsan US military base in Seoul. Who will ultimately pay for the cleanup of toxic contamination at Yongsan remains to be seen, but if the past is any guide, then it can be expected that the Korean people will shoulder the entire burden. Among other bases that the United States failed to clean up is Camp Casey, the future home of a university, with pollution covering 42 percent of its area.[11] In addition to the usual presence of hydrocarbons at U.S. bases, many also exhibit elevated levels of cadmium, which the U.S. Occupational and Health Administration reports is “highly toxic and exposure to this metal is known to cause cancer.”[12] To date, the United States has not paid to decontaminate any base it has vacated, and the South Korean government has acquiesced every time. The most recent two conservative administrations have taken an odd stance on the matter, ultimately agreeing each time after long negotiations that the polluter bears no responsibility. Responding to criticism last year, Environmental Minister Yoo Seong-kyu asserted, “Who carries out the cleanup efforts is a secondary issue.”[13] Efforts to persuade U.S. military officials to adopt a responsible attitude have been futile. Korean environmental activists noted that oil leaks at the various bases “are continually caused by the same reasons,” yet nothing is ever done to address the issue. “It costs less to prevent pollution than to take care of pollution after it has happened,” they point out.[14] True enough, but who pays for preventive measures is not the same party that covers the cost of cleanup. For the U.S. military, it is clearly more cost effective to do little or nothing, since remediation costs are invariably borne by the Korean people. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and South Korea, as signed in 1966, did not include an environmental provision, and it was not until 2001 that an amendment addressed the issue.[15] That amendment committed the United States to “promptly undertake to remedy contamination caused by United States Forces in Korea that poses a known, imminent and substantial endangerment to human health.”[16] In practice, this phrase, often referred to by its acronym, KISE, has been a bone of contention between U.S. and South Korean environmental officials. It is instructive to consider how the document’s promise that the United States would “work together” with South Korea on environmental issues has played out in practice. There is no agreed upon standard on pollution remediation, and each case is separately negotiated between U.S. and Korean officials. It has been the Korean Ministry of Environment’s position that its standards ought to apply, whereas American officials insist on KISE as the sole determining factor in assessing cleanup responsibility. Over a three-year period ending in 2007, the SOFA Joint Committee surveyed 41 military sites that had been closed down. Investigations were limited to 105 days per location, of which only sixty days were given for onsite inspections. Moreover, the U.S. side proved unwilling to cooperate on surveys and consultations. The Korean firms selected to conduct the investigations were not provided with full data on the sites until near the end of the scheduled thirty-day period for assessment of records. When an extension was requested for onsite inspections, the Koreans were firmly rebuffed.[17] Despite such constraints, inspectors identified dangerous levels of carcinogenic substances at all but one of the 23 military bases that had been recently returned, at levels generally measuring far above Korean safety standards. The United States points to Article IV of the SOFA, which stipulates that it “is not obliged…to restore the facilities and areas” to their original condition, asserting therefore that it bears no responsibility for cleanup.[18] However, in the agreed minutes amended to the SOFA in 2001, the United States “confirms its policy to respect relevant Republic of Korea Government environmental laws, regulations, and standards.”[19] It appears that while the United States had promised to “respect” Korean environmental laws, it does not feel compelled to adhere to them. KISE remains the standard. U.S. military officials assert that there are no relevant health issues among its personnel. Therefore, it cannot be said that any U.S. bases meet the KISE guidelines. But this is not how carcinogens typically work. It can take years, or even decades, for exposure to toxic substances to produce cancer. Tours of duty for U.S. personnel tend to be relatively short, and it is unlikely that U.S. officials checked the medical records of former personnel who served in Korea to ascertain their health status. Plainly put, there would have to be immediate or near-immediate lethality or severe illness among large numbers of personnel before the United States would concede the need to fund cleanup efforts. In meetings with their South Korean counterparts, American environmental subcommittee members argued that no remediation can be done unless the standard of KISE is met, and none of the returned bases qualified. Counter-arguments that contamination levels far exceeded Korean environmental standards fell on deaf ears. Eventually, to placate its Korean partners, the U.S. side offered to implement eight remediation actions over a six-month period. The U.S. side chose the eight activities, without prior agreement by the Koreans, and in the end declared that it had completed its responsibilities. It was a sop, leaving myriad issues of contamination unaddressed. Korean environmental officials were particularly annoyed at the bioslurping that was performed at pilot sites, as this method had only a peripheral and temporary impact.[20] Bioslurping is a technique whereby oil is vacuum-pumped from soil and the top of the water table. It has the advantage of having a lower cost than alternative measures, although it fails to treat residual soil contamination. It can be a useful approach, but not where the source continues to pollute. In such cases, areas processed by bioslurping are quickly re-contaminated. Once USFK returned the 23 bases to Korea, the Ministry of Environment conducted a desultory one-month inspection, focusing only on confirming whether or not the U.S. side had completed the eight cleanup actions. The ministry found that it had not. USFK had failed even to remove the oil in the water that resulted from the bioslurping operation.[21] The South Korean government acquiesced to the U.S. position, even though soil and groundwater pollution remained largely untouched. South Korean officials were not given the opportunity to review and assess cleanup operations while they were taking place, as American officials felt they were only doing the Koreans a favor.[22] South Korean technicians test for toxic chemicals at Camp Carroll. In 2011, claims by former U.S. servicemen that they had helped bury around 250 drums of Agent Orange at Camp Carroll in Chilgok in 1978 triggered an investigation. But when inspection results indicated that trace amounts of the defoliant found fell well within safety levels, the issue was considered closed and mostly forgotten. By limiting attention to the question of whether or not dioxin was still buried in the camp, other important matters went unexplored.[23] Although USFK maintains that dioxin was never present at Camp Carroll, it admitted that it had buried other toxic substances at the camp. These were later dug up and removed, along with 40 to 60 tons of contaminated soil.[24] Records show that some barrels of toxic substances were shipped to Utah, without indicating their final disposition.[25] What became of the remainder is unclear, and the lack of military records hints at improper disposal procedures. As Stars and Stripes reported, “Nobody knows where they were taken.”[26] Could it be that some of the barrels were disposed of elsewhere in Korea or dumped in the sea? Green Korea United feels the investigation was handled in a superficial manner, as boring had extended less than ten feet below the surface. Steve House, one of the former servicemen who had been involved in the burial of dioxin, reports that the substance was dumped in a trench and covered by twenty to thirty feet of soil. The investigators failed to dig deeply enough, so if there had been any substantial leakage into the ground from the buried drums, it would not have been discovered. In another curious omission, investigators interviewed none of the former officers in charge of the burial operation.[27] According to the U.S. Army, its internal investigation found no trace of Agent Orange. Environmental expert Steve Brittle, who was later shown a copy of the Army’s report, pointed out that two components of Agent Orange were present. “They weren’t entirely truthful, let’s be honest. The testing says what it says,” he observed. “They found it. They found what would reasonably be considered a cooled off version. Time has worn it down, but it’s still there.”[28] Generally overlooked is what the investigators did find in abundance: volatile organic compounds in the water near the camp exceeding 900 times safe levels for drinking water.[29] Worrying measurements of trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, used for metal degreasing, were discovered.[30] Both substances are classified as carcinogenic.[31] An earlier inspection uncovered high levels of heavy metals and pesticides in water samples, as well as toluene in soil recorded at more than twelve times the allowable level.[32] Environmental Compliance Supervisor Tom Curry noted that the groundwater at Camp Carroll was contaminated with trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene. In all, more than one hundred toxic substances were buried on the base in 1978. “The more contaminants you have, the worse the water has got to be for public health,” Curry pointed out. “No one should be drinking this water,” Brittle says. Concerning the several children living nearby who developed leukemia, Brittle adds, “I would say there’s a 99 percent likelihood that their leukemia was caused by these chemicals. I would be concerned for the people who are drinking water from those wells.”[33] Camp Carroll quickly became a non-issue in the U.S. media — not that it ever held any particular prominence — once the question of Agent Orange was dismissed. Koreans residing near the camp were not so sanguine and questioned why they were witnessing abnormally high rates of cancer. Suspicions ran high, and as one resident put it in a meeting, “The USFK disposed defoliants, which is an outright criminal act. Who in the world lets the accused do the investigation?”[34] The case of Camp Hialeah in Busan is typical. Leading up to the base’s turnover to the Busan city government in 2006, the Ministry of Environment was only allotted the standard 105-day investigation period, leaving one-quarter of the base unexamined. As so often, U.S. military officials rejected Korean requests to extend the inspection period.[35] What the investigation did manage to uncover in its limited period of access was disturbing enough, and the resulting report has never been made public. Opposition assemblywoman Lee Mi-kyung was informed by a government source, however, that a groundwater sample contained petroleum residue at 481 times the legal limit, and several carcinogenic substances were also measured at well above safety standards.[36] After four years of fruitless negotiations over the issue of who would pay for remediation of toxic contamination at Camp Hialeah, the Korean government agreed that it would foot the bill.[37] In every case, USFK has succeeded in evading responsibility for the pollution it has caused, based on the dubious standard of KISE. Ten years ago, an estimate placed the cost of cleaning the 59 camps to be returned by 2008 to the level of Korean standards at more than half a billion dollars.[38] If one factors in the bases handed back since that time, the overall total could double that amount. It may be too much to expect the Park Geun-hye administration to put the needs of its people ahead of U.S. interests, but it can be hoped that a new government in 2017 will exhibit more care for its citizens. Overcoming U.S. obstinacy will present a challenge, but one that must be met. Yongsan would be a good place to start. Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He 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. His website is https://gregoryelich.org Notes [1] Kim Rahn, “Underground Water Pollution Serious Near US Bases in Seoul,” Korea Times, June 7, 2016. [2] Kim Gi-beom, “Pollutants from Yongsan Base Neglected: Pollution in Surrounding Areas Increases 13-Fold,” Kyunghyang Shinmun, March 22, 2016. [3] “Higher Cancer Incidences Found in Regions Near Refineries and Plants that Release Benzene,” Science Daily, July 29, 2013. [4] “Exposure to Benzene: A Major Public Health Concern,” World Health Organization, 2010. [5] CAS#: 108-88-3: “Public Health Statement for Toluene,” Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. [6] “Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet: Toluene,” New Jersey Department of Health, August 1998, Revision November 2007. [7] Reena Kandyala, Sumanth Phani C Raghavendra, and Saraswathi T Rajasekharan, “Xylene: An Overview of its Health Hazards and Preventive Measures,” Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, January-June, 2010. [8] Heejin Han and Yooil Bae, “Reality Revealed: U.S. Military Bases, Environmental Impact, and Civil Society in South Korea.” Chapter in Proving Grounds: Militarized Landscapes, Weapons Testing, and the Environmental Impact of U.S. Bases (pp. 211-238). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015. [9] Jung Min-ho, “US Bases Inspected for Oil Pollution,” Korea Times, March 2, 2015. [10] Kim Se-jeong, “Court Orders Discharge of Findings of Yongsan U.S. Base Pollution,” Korea Times, June 17, 2016. Ock Hyun-ju, “Court Orders Release of Information on U.S. Military Base Pollution,” Korea Herald, June 16, 2016. [11] Lee You Ju-hyun, “US Refusing to Cover Decontamination Costs for Five Military Bases Slated for Return,” Hankyoreh, November 3, 2014. [12] “Safety and Health Topics: Cadmium,” United States Department of Labor/Occupational Safety and Health Administration. [13] Sohn Ji-Young, “Minister Shuns Concerns Over Base Cleanup Cost,” Korea Herald, March 18, 2015. [14] Working Group for Environmental Research on Damage Caused by the U.S. Military, “Report on Environmental Damage Caused by U.S. Military Bases in South Korea,” October, 2008 [15] Young Geun Chae, “Environmental Contamination at U.S. Military Bases in South Korea and the Responsibility to Clean Up,” Environmental Law Reporter, January 2010. [16] “Memorandum of Special Understandings on Environmental Protection,” Status of Forces Agreement, 2001. [17] Young Geun Chae, “Environmental Contamination at U.S. Military Bases in South Korea and the Responsibility to Clean Up,” Environmental Law Reporter, January 2010. [18] “Facilities and Areas and the Status of United States Armed Forces in Korea,” July 9, 1966. [19] “Amendments to the Agreed Minutes of July 9, 1966 to the Agreement under Article IV of the Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States of America and the Republic of Korea, Regarding Facilities and Areas and the Status of United States Armed Forces in the Republic of Korea, as Amended,” January 18, 2001. [20] Young Geun Chae, “Environmental Contamination at U.S. Military Bases in South Korea and the Responsibility to Clean Up,” Environmental Law Reporter, January 2010. “Report on Environmental Damage Caused by U.S. Military Bases in South Korea,” The Working Group for Environmental Research on Damage Caused by the U.S. Military, October, 2008. [21] “Report on Environmental Damage Caused by U.S. Military Bases in South Korea,” The Working Group for Environmental Research on Damage Caused by the U.S. Military, October, 2008. [22] Young Geun Chae, “Environmental Contamination at U.S. Military Bases in South Korea and the Responsibility to Clean Up,” Environmental Law Reporter, January 2010. [23] Mark McDonald, “Dioxin Traces Found Near U.S. Base in South Korea,” New York Times, June 16, 2011. [24] Ashley Rowland, “Report: Buried Chemicals on Camp Carroll Removed in 1979-80,” Stars and Stripes, May 23, 2011. [25] Kelly L. Derricks, “Agent Orange: Camp Carroll Soldier Accepts One Last Mission,” Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance, July 20, 2015. [26] Ashley Rowland and Yoo Kyong Chang, “Agent Orange Allegations Putting Strain on Local Community,” Stars and Stripes, June 7, 2011. [27] Kelly L. Derricks, “Agent Orange: Camp Carroll Soldier Accepts One Last Mission,” Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance, July 20, 2015. [28] Tammy Leitner, “Military: Investigation into S. Korea Agent Orange is Over,” CBS 5, January 26, 2012. [29] “Task Force Says Traces of Defoliant Found at US Military Camp in South Korea,” Yonhap, September 9, 2011. [30] “Pollutants Found at US Base in S.Korea – Possible Agent Orange,” The Watchers, August 8, 2011. [31] CAS#: 79-01-6: “Toxicological Profile for Trichloroethylene (TCE),” Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, January 21, 2015. CAS ID #: 127-18-4: “Tetrachloroethylene (PERC),” Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, March 3, 2011. [32] “Probe in 2004 Found Traces of Dioxin in US Base in South Korea,” Yonhap, June 24, 2011. [33] Tammy Leitner, “Military: Investigation into S. Korea Agent Orange is Over,” CBS 5, January 26, 2012. [34] Heejin Han and Yooil Bae, “Reality Revealed: U.S. Military Bases, Environmental Impact, and Civil Society in South Korea.” Chapter in Proving Grounds: Militarized Landscapes, Weapons Testing, and the Environmental Impact of U.S. Bases (pp. 211-238). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015. [35] “South Korea, US Talks on Returning Army Bases Stalled over Pollution Dispute,” Yonhap, September, 2008. [36] Lee Tae-hoon, ‘Gov’t Hid Toxic Case at US Base,” Korea Times, October 6, 2011. [37] Jung Sung-ki, “S.Korea to Pay for Cleanup of US Base in Busan,” Korea Times, January 14, 2010. [38] Maj. Linda Moschelle, “Environmental Issues on Returns of Facilities and Areas in the Republic of Korea,” Presentation, USFK, July 27, 2006. #AsiaPacificpivot #GregoryElich #KoreanWar #USMilitaryBases

By Tim Beal | August 11, 2021 | Originally published in Monthly Review In August 1945, Washington’s view of the world was utterly transformed in line with the “gunboat diplomacy” dictum of Lord Palmerston—countries have no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests.1 Countries that had been enemies, such as the United States and Germany, or the United States and Japan, were, once conquered, considered on the way to becoming friends. Once their friendliness was firmly established, they were elevated to allies.2 In the case of Germany, this process involved denazification. No such purge was undertaken in Japan, where the emperor was not hanged but “democratized,” and a new constitution, usually known as the Peace Constitution, was written for the Japanese.3 Those allies not considered friendly were transmogrified into enemies. The main enemy was the Soviet Union, which had done so much to bring about victory but was now seen as an impediment to what Henry Luce had termed “the American Century.”4 Thus, the war against fascism was transformed into what was to be called the Cold War. U.S. imperialism, subdued somewhat by post-First World War isolationism, came into full flower. Washington implemented this sea change in many ways, and one of them was the division of the Korean Peninsula. The Palmerstonian Calculation and the Division of Korea Location is the curse of the Korean Peninsula, although it has the potential to be a blessing. It is the place where four great powers meet and contest—Russia, Japan, China, and the United States. Many writers, especially Americans, leave the United States out of that list, thus vitiating their analysis.5 The peninsula has been a conduit of culture from the Asian mainland, mainly China, to Japan, but it has also been the route of invasion—once by the Mongols, but mostly by Japan. In August 1945, with the Pacific War rapidly coming to an end and the Soviet Army mopping up Japan’s famed Kwantung Army, the United States decided it needed a buffer in Korea to protect conquered Japan from its main ally. It is frequently stated that the division of the Korean Peninsula was a joint enterprise by the United States and the Soviet Union—“the United States and the Soviet Union had each granted themselves control over one half of Korean territory.”6 This is quite misleading. The division was a U.S. initiative to which Joseph Stalin acquiesced. This is a crucial point because it establishes the foundation for understanding the U.S. motivation for the division as well as its consequences. The actual operation of deciding on a dividing line and presenting it to the Soviet Union is usually portrayed as a rushed, even amateurish business, with the United States taken aback by the speed of the Soviet advance with colonels Charles Bonesteel and Dean Rusk (later secretary of state) using a map from National Geographic in the course of “frantic deliberations” to choose the thirty-eighth parallel.7 This was less than the United States wanted but it gave them the majority of the population and the capital, Seoul. Stalin accepted the proposal without demur, to the surprise of the officials then and U.S. scholars since.8 The surprise was because Stalin’s acceptance contradicted the central myth of the Cold War, which started in 1945 before the hot one even ended—namely, that it was a matter of the United States and allies responding to Soviet, and later Chinese, expansionism. The myth was a case of psychological projection. Soviet incursions beyond its borders—the construction of the satellite system in Eastern Europe in particular—were primarily defensive, and while some assistance was given to socialist movements in Europe and anticolonialism elsewhere, especially in Asia and Africa, this was limited and cautious.9 The expansionism in reality emanated from Washington, which since 1945 has built up a huge network of subordinate states, bases, and what is euphemistically called a “forward defense” perimeter as close as possible to the borders of adversaries, in particular the Soviet Union/Russia and China.10 While defense is used to obscure the essentially aggressive nature of U.S. imperialism, this perimeter also provides what Jim Mattis describes as “defense in depth.”11 Motivation The immediate reason for the division of the Korean Peninsula was to protect, militarily, politically, and perhaps ideologically, the war prize of Japan from the Soviet Union. The United States was in no mood to share Japan with even its close allies in the Pacific War—Britain, Netherlands, Australia, France, and the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek, let alone its principal adversary, the Soviet Union. A foothold on the Korean Peninsula consolidated the U.S. strategic position in the Western Pacific. From Korea, the United States could keep an eye on newly conquered Japan, and on China, as yet not “lost.” The U.S. relationship with Chiang had been fractious but the United States could reasonably consider it “owned China,” hence the insistence that those parts Japan had seized, in particular Taiwan and the islands in the South China Sea, be returned. Later, in Palmerstonian fashion, it would decide that they were not really part of China after all.12 After the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, Taiwan (still under Chang Kai-shek), Japan, and South Korea would become the three cornerstones of the U.S.-forward military presence in Asia. Although the bases in Taiwan had to be relinquished in 1979 as part of the establishment of diplomatic relations with the PRC, those in Japan and South Korea remain and are considered essential to U.S. strategy in Asia.13 The giant Camp Humphreys base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, is not merely the largest U.S. overseas base in the world, but it is also the one closest to Beijing.14 Significantly, most of the cost is borne by South Korea, another illustration of the exploitative nature of imperialism.15 The occupation of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula thus afforded the United States both protection of Japan and a platform from which to project power. Over time, South Korea has provided further services and the division of the peninsula has served the United States well. Consequences The consequences of the division of the peninsula were momentous, and are still with us. The American Military Government swept aside the Korean People’s Republic—“a polyglot assemblage of communists, anarchists, trade unionists, Christian socialists, and social democrats”—that had been declared in Seoul in September 1945 and instead parachuted in Syngman Rhee from Hawai‘i.16 Had the Koreans been left to arrange their own affairs in an undivided land, no doubt there would have been political turmoil and some bloodletting to assuage decades of Japanese colonialism, but it is unlikely that there would have been anything like the carnage that actually ensued nor the intractable problems of division. With no popular support or political base, Rhee utilized the state apparatus left behind by the Japanese and he is remembered today mainly for his massacres, such as that on the island of Jeju.17 In the north, Kim Il-sung, who had waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese, pursued a policy of anticolonial cleansing and social revolution, the two being linked. The result was two versions of Korea, diametrically opposed and each claiming legitimacy. Many consider that the Korean War was, in some form, inevitable given the situation that division had produced; Bruce Cumings, for instance, sees it as a civil war that began in the 1930s, if not earlier.18 However, it was the division of Korea, and the U.S. geopolitical objectives of which it was an instrument, that transformed that struggle. What began in June 1950 as a Korean civil war soon became a war of U.S. imperialism against Korean nationalism and, then, with Chinese intervention, the first Sino-U.S. war. A new and terrible world was born. Ramifications First, there was, of course, the devastation visited on the people and the land of Korea. Millions died, were injured, and displaced. Bombing, far more extensive and undiscriminating than that on Europe or Japan, obliterated the homes, cities, and farms of the north.19 Curtis LeMay, head of Strategic Air Command, commented, seemingly nonchalantly, that his bombers had killed some 20 percent of the population.20 The ramifications of the Korean War extended far beyond the peninsula itself. It provided stimulus to the global economy, especially in East and Southeast Asia, and set three of the four “little dragons” or “Asian tigers” (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) on the way to rapid economic growth, with the fourth, South Korea, joining them during the Vietnam War. It rescued Japan from economic stagnation and put it on the road to both its “economic miracle” and remilitarization. Chinese Intervention: Revisionism and the New Realism Although there has been considerable revisionist criticism within China of its intervention in the Korean War, especially during the now fading rapprochement period when Dengist dreams of a benign United States facilitating China’s peaceful rise held sway, at the time it was a source of pride that the Chinese People’s Volunteers had fought the world’s most powerful military to a standstill. It provided a stimulus to nation-building and enhanced the legitimacy of the PRC as a capable and powerful country. It prevented the United States from attacking, via Taiwan, and made it tread carefully in Vietnam.21 Mao Zedong is attributed with describing the closeness of the relationship between China and North Korea at the time of the Korean War as that between “lips and teeth.”22 Over time, the relationship between the two grew conflicted, with both sides having problems. The conventional opinion was expressed by Alan Romberg in 2009 when he claimed that the lips-and-teeth relationship had long since “certainly faded into nothingness.”23 This was superficially correct and many saw it as evidence that China would not object to South Korea taking over the North, absorbing it, somewhat similar to what happened in Germany.24 This was mistaken for two reasons. First, if South Korea were an independent country, then China would probably reluctantly accept its absorption of the North. But South Korea has limited sovereignty and is subordinate to the United States in many ways, not least of which is the U.S. wartime control of its military. Second, there is no reason to suppose that there would be no resistance, so any takeover would have to be done with some (and probably a great deal of) military force. That would mean U.S. control; a U.S. general standing on the banks of the Yalu looking over the new frontier between the United States and China. The Chinese general on the other side would not be too pleased with that. Moreover, a unified Korea under Seoul’s administration might well generate irredentist claims to the loyalty, and perhaps the land, of the 2.5 million ethnic Koreans in China.25 Given that the United States utilizes the class imperialist strategy of fomenting ethnic and religious divisions to fragment adversaries—Xinjiang and Tibet in the case of China—these claims would have U.S. support. That the wartime lips-and-teeth relationship between China and North Korea would subsequently fray should come as no surprise. It is a very common phenomenon; with the common enemy gone, or in abeyance, then natural divergences of interest will reemerge. Both Koreas have problems with patrons, but there are important differences between the two. North Korea has two patrons: the Soviet Union/Russia and China. This has given North Korea the advantage of attempting to play one against the other, as well as the disadvantage of being under pressure to declare allegiance, as during the Sino-Soviet schism.26 South Korea has but one patron: the United States. This means that North Korea is fiercely independent while South Korea remains a client of the United States. There are strong but rather unexplored parallels between the deteriorating Sino-Soviet relationship in the 1950s and that between North Korea and China in more recent years. The Soviet Union wanted to relegate Chinese nationalist aspirations, notably over Taiwan, with what it saw as the need to forge a less threatening relationship with the United States. Similarly, China has been anxious to avoid antagonizing the United States or giving it any reason or pretext for interrupting its “peaceful rise” and has been willing to sacrifice North Korean concerns over U.S. hostility. Many commentators misinterpret the Chinese position on North Korea. Because Washington and Beijing often say the same thing, they presume that the Chinese are doing it for the same reason as the Americans. U.S. policy toward North Korea is part of a global strategy to preserve hegemony, which includes the need to contain and depower China. In contrast, China wants peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula to avoid conflict with the United States and has been willing both to sacrifice North Korean interests and to compromise on strategic principles, notably by supporting U.S. initiatives in the UN Security Council condemning and sanctioning North Korea. This was predicated on the naive belief, dating back to Deng Xiaoping, that the United States would allow its peaceful rise. Events have confounded that dream and, as a result, China is becoming more resistant to U.S. pressure.27 Both China and North Korea may chafe, for different reasons, at the lips-and-teeth relationship, but neither can escape it. It is somewhat like an arranged marriage, in this case determined by geography and history, which cannot be dissolved despite all the problems. The Korean Peninsula is vitally important to the United States because it is on the border with China. The peninsula is even more important to China precisely because of its location, which was brought home by the Korean War. The Consolidation of U.S. Imperialism The effect of the Korean War on the United States was the most consequential in global terms. Because the Soviet delegate was boycotting the UN Security Council in protest of the U.S. blocking of the new Chinese government from the China seat, the United States was able to get the United Nations to endorse its expeditionary force, called even today the UN Command despite being completely U.S. controlled.28 This manipulation of the United Nations was replicated in 2006 with the beginning of UN sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear deterrent program. The Korean War was a godsend to the U.S. security establishment. It was the hot war that was needed to firmly bed down the Cold War, both functionally and in the popular imagination. It provided an economic stimulus that soon became addictive and established the permanent war economy.29 The military-industrial complex, about which Dwight Eisenhower of all people warned in his valedictory speech, became a central feature of U.S. society.30 This complex encompasses not merely the military and armaments manufacturers, but also the security and intelligence communities, and all those in politics, media, think tanks, academia, and so on, who make a living out of war and the fear of it. The military-industrial complex complements imperialism in informing and driving U.S. foreign policy, and much of U.S. society. The Korean War was thus the genesis of the “forever wars” that presidents promise to abolish but never do.31 Despite its success in promoting militarization, the Korean War was the first war that the United States did not win. It ended in a military stalemate, resulting in an armistice—a suspension of fighting—but neither victory nor peace. For the public, it became the “forgotten war” and for militarists a good reason to increase military expenditure. Despite overwhelming advantages in technology and industrial might, the Pentagon found China to be a formidable power. The fear of kinetic war with China meant that war was to be continued by other means—namely, diplomatic (attempting to keep it out of the UN Security Council and Taiwan in) and economic, with the embargo lasting into the 1970s and continuing sanctions, varying in intensity since 1950 but increasing greatly in recent years as fear of China’s rise has mounted in Washington.32 The Korean War also led the United States to intervene directly in the Chinese Civil War. Washington had bankrolled Chiang and provided him with war materiel (that usually ended up in the hands of the Communists), but now his bolthole on Taiwan was to be protected, producing a running sore in U.S.-China relations. In his pathbreaking 1952 Monthly Review Press book The Hidden History of the Korean War, I. F. Stone highlighted the close cooperation, perhaps collusion, between Chiang and Rhee, especially in spring 1950 in the buildup to war.33 Both needed U.S. support against their more powerful and popular domestic foes, the Communists. The war anchored U.S. imperialism to the Korean Peninsula and made its continued antagonistic division a necessary part of the U.S. forward position against China. The Korean Peninsula The war completed the construction of the two parts of Korea as separate, adversarial states, competing for legitimacy and each in a relationship, albeit of different characteristics, with patrons—the United States, PRC, and USSR. At the same time, they must be viewed as a symbiotic entity. Neither would have received the same level of aid had the other not existed. Had the North prevailed and unified the peninsula under its control, then, in time, the United States would have come to terms with it, as it would later do with a unified Vietnam. North Korea North Korea has seldom been out of the U.S. headlines, especially in recent decades, and it is lodged firmly in the mindset of the foreign policy community. Why it occupies such a prominent position requires explanation beyond the usual cliches. Clearly, the failure of the Korean War rankles, but that of the Vietnam War was more embarrassing and, in China, more consequential. North Korea is clearly no direct danger to the United States, nor to its hold on the South. After the outflanking landing at Inchon, there was little likelihood of the North reigniting the war and pushing down the peninsula as in the mid–1950s. With the United States controlling the sea and air, and showing no real signs of abandoning its beachhead on the Asian mainland, such North Korean efforts would be futile even if they were feasible. Similarly, the hysteria in recent years about North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, probably but not certainly capable of striking the U.S. mainland, is preposterous; its bizarreness nicely captured by the story of defense secretary Jim Mattis sleeping in his gym clothes in expectation of an attack.34 Threatened retaliation, which would be suicidal if needed to be carried out, is one thing, but gratuitous suicide by launching a missile strike is another.35 These constructions have more to do with the dynamics of U.S. domestic politics, helped along of course by a hungry military-industrial complex, than with reality. Nevertheless, perception and belief, however irrational, are very important, and all presidents come into office believing there is a need to “do something about the North Korean threat.” In fact, North Korea does present U.S. imperialism with two main challenges. One is the example it gives to others. If it were to be destroyed like Iraq or Libya, then that would serve as a warning to others. But its defiant resilience for seventy years demonstrates the limits of U.S. power rather than its ineluctability. The recent development of a nuclear deterrent amplifies that. Furthermore, if North Korea can utilize this deterrent to ward off attack but force the United States into accepting peaceful coexistence, that would provide a very dangerous message to others, starting with Iran. Then there is the question of China. Vanquishing North Korea and extending U.S. power to the Chinese border might be tempting, but even if achieved would undercut the justification for U.S. presence in Korea and the whole forward military position in Northeast Asia, the core hard power underpinning U.S. strategy toward Asia.36 The United States needs North Korea as a perceived threat to vindicate and consolidate its control over South Korea. Early indications are that the Joe Biden administration will continue the uncompromising policy of the past, demanding unilateral nuclear disarmament from Pyongyang with nothing substantial in exchange.37 This is not surprising since tension on the Korean Peninsula is a crucial component of the anti-China strategy. The reaction from Pyongyang is predictable and presumably anticipated and desired. First vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui issued a statement on March 18, 2021, as the first Biden-era military exercises were coming to a close, reiterating that “no DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]-U.S. contact and dialogue of any kind can be possible unless the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy towards the DPRK.”38 South Korea Although greatly overshadowed by North Korea both in elite consciousness and media coverage, South Korea is really the focus of U.S. interest in the peninsula. Being perceived as the subservient “good twin,” in contrast to the defiantly independent “evil twin” to the north, it attracts less attention. This perception of obedience is not quite accurate—Rhee openly defied the United States, especially during Korean War armistice negotiations, and twenty years later Park Chung-hee began a clandestine nuclear weapons program.39 Roh Moo-hyun dreamed of moving toward “autonomy,” but current president Moon Jae-in shows no such independence of spirit.40 Irrespective of presidents, South Korea is a client state with limited sovereignty created by the United States to serve its interests. The United States has direct “wartime control” over the Republic of Korea’s military and, despite promises, this is likely to continue, perhaps through the UN Command.41 That is no minor prize. The Republic of Korea has a standing army of about six hundred thousand troops plus a huge reservoir of trained military manpower.42 Its military expenditure in 2019 was tenth in the world at $40 billion.43 Typical of U.S. “allies,” it does not have a self-reliant capability, but because of the policy of interoperability it is dependent on the United States for key control functions. It cannot wage war on its own, but is a formidable ancillary to U.S. military might.44 Despite the brouhaha about the North Korean threat and the need for U.S. presence, the military strength of South Korea alone is far greater than that of the North.45 Its military budget may be over thirty times that of the North.46 However much its proponents may internalize the myth of defending South Korea against the North, this construct is essentially a pretext for a forward position against China. South Korea was an important adjunct to the United States in Vietnam, providing three hundred thousand troops—second only to the United States itself.47 It has subsequently supplied largely symbolic contingents to the wars in the Middle East. In what way the South Korean military might be used in a war against China is an open question, but no doubt strategists in Washington are working on it in private.48 South Korea is also a very lucrative market for U.S. arms sales. In the ten years up to 2019, it accounted for one quarter of U.S. sales and in some years it was the largest purchaser.49 Although occasionally the military attempts to buy weapons that are more appropriate for their needs, political pressure usually wins out and some 80 percent of its purchases are American.50 The Republic of Korea as a nominally sovereign middle power has considerable diplomatic importance in Northeast Asia and on the world stage, for instance at the United Nations. These contingent benefits to the United States are undergirded by a more permanent one. The reason that Washington established itself on the Korean Peninsula in 1945 was above all its strategic location, which still holds, with China now the major focus. U.S. presence in South Korea provides it with bases, notably Camp Humphreys and Osan Air Base. In addition, there is the Jeju Naval Base, which is ostensibly a South Korean facility but would provide facilities for the U.S. Navy in the case of heightened tension with China. Although bases are principally an asset from which to project power, they are also gaining in importance as places to facilitate the receiving of reinforcements. As a global empire with a relatively slim standing military but substantial logistic capability, the ability to shift forces around the world is crucial. For at least a couple of decades, the focus has been shifting to the ability to bring in reinforcements as needed, not least to South Korea.51 What is known as Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration plays an important role in U.S. military strategy and is a key component of the joint U.S.-Republic of Korea military exercises.52 The U.S. military presence in South Korea allows it to deploy and manage assets that benefit from being close to the target. Notable here are the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense units that are ostensibly there to protect South Korea from North Korean missiles. There are good reasons to consider this bogus.53 Probably the main military function of THAAD deployment in Korea is the X-band radar system, which the Chinese fear would enable the United States to detect missile launches from deep inside China and feed the information into the U.S. missile defense system.54 That, in turn, helps the United States to develop a first strike capability against China. U.S. experts tend to downplay the surveillance capability of the THAAD radar, but Chinese ones do not, and that is the important point because it is they who influence Chinese policy.55 A wider concern of the Chinese, and something that U.S. strategists celebrate, is that the deployment of THAAD, against protests in South Korea and retaliation from China, strengthens the U.S. hold over South Korea and advances the U.S. dream of forging a close-knit alliance between it and its two clients in Northeast Asia—South Korea and Japan.56 This strategy is hampered by the ongoing antagonism of South Korea toward Japan, but it remains a key tenet of U.S. policy.57 The deployment of THAAD led to extensive and continuing popular protest, though that did not deter the Moon administration from complying with the U.S. decision.58 The protests have tended to focus on environment and health concerns overlooking the security implications; THAAD increases the danger of South Korea being a target of Chinese retaliation in time of war. Of course, retaliation can happen in time of peace and China’s response to THAAD was swift, restrained but forceful. It might be seen as a precursor to the steps taken against Australia in 2020, a calibrated warning that threats to China’s security (South Korea) or interfering in China’s internal affairs and undermining its territorial integrity (Australia) in service of U.S. strategy would incur costs. One estimate put the cost to South Korea at over $15 billion by 2019 alone.59 In a pattern replicated with Australia, the government-level economic retaliation was accompanied by a consumer boycott, with tourism and Lotte department stores in China being notable victims.60 The THAAD affair highlights the dilemma facing South Korea, and one shared by many countries around the world, of being forced to choose between its national interest and the demands of U.S. grand strategy. Perhaps nowhere in the world is this dilemma more acute and consequential than in South Korea. President Park Geun-hye, the daughter of Park Chung-hee who was ousted by the Candlelight Revolution and is currently in jail, accepted the deployment of THAAD despite Chinese concerns; the Moon Jae-in administration agonizes more, then capitulates.61 To take but one instance, the Pyongyang Declaration that Moon signed with Kim Jong-un on April 27, 2018, promised that: “The two sides will make joint efforts to defuse the acute military tensions and to substantially remove the danger of a war on the Korean Peninsula.… The two sides agreed to completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain including land, sea and air.”62 It is difficult to see war exercises with the United States as not violating these sentiments, yet the following month, the United States and South Korea were conducting joint air drills that the North regarded as practicing “a preemptive air strike at the DPRK.”63 While the military exercises were toned down following the Singapore Summit between Donald Trump and Kim in June 2018, the military pushed back and continued at a more subdued, but still provocative, level, with 120 airstrikes in 2020 alone.64 The COVID-19 pandemic imposed its own constraints, but as the military learned to find ways around it and the Trump administration was ending, they have been making a comeback. So much so that Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister, who is in charge of relations with South Korea, issued a warning (in a very clunky official translation) that Moon’s dreams of pursuing détente while remaining subservient to the United States was doomed to failure: “Whatever and however the south Korean authorities may do in the future under their master’s instructions, those warm spring days three years ago, which they desire so much, won’t come easily again.”65 The standard argument to justify the military exercises is that they are necessary to deter North Korea, but given the huge disparity in power, this holds no water. They fulfill various functions but the main one is that they are a good way to ramp up the tension while blaming Pyongyang, hence proving the necessity of the U.S. presence in Korea. Ultimately, the military exercises and indeed the whole U.S.-South Korea “alliance” is about China. In an attack on Trump’s negotiating with Kim Jong-un in 2018, two Australian strategists dismissed North Korea as a “dangerous distraction,” hampering concentration on the real enemy, China. South Korea’s role was clear: “The United States still remains preeminent in Asia, thanks in large part to its regional alliances. Defense networks are a cost-effective force multiplier.”66 South Korea is a force multiplier in so many ways. It has a large, well-equipped, and trained standing military, and a vast reservoir of reservists, all accustomed to following U.S. orders. It provides a base for power projection and surveillance close to China. It is on the Asian mainland, thus complementing Japan, which, like Taiwan, is an unsinkable aircraft carrier. The much-touted necessity to defend South Korea provides a cover for the U.S. forward military position. Diplomatically, it is a substantial middle power, with a large economy and role in international trade, and can be deployed to consolidate U.S. power in international fora. Its leading role in the manufacture of semiconductor chips (along with Taiwan) is an important component of U.S. economic struggle with China.67 A key aspect of that strategy is to force the South Korean economy to decouple from China, and be entirely part of a U.S.-dominated trading and supply chain system.68 As a bonus, it provides a lucrative market for the U.S. armaments industry. South Korea is thus far too valuable for the United States to relinquish its presence and control willingly, and indeed establishment U.S. commentators do not even conceive of the possibility.69 Tension and the threat of war, and the manufactured perception of North Korea as an aggressor that only the United States can keep at bay, underpins its forward military presence in Asia centered on confrontation with China, with South Korea as a key node. Reinforcing this was the clear purpose of the first visit of “Biden’s enforcers”—secretary of state Anthony Blinken and National Security Agency Jake Sullivan—to Seoul in March 2021, during the military exercises.70 The Centrality of Korea in U.S.-China Confrontation For the United States, the Pacific War was essentially over China. For Japan, the objectives were wider. It wanted China but also needed the resources of Southeast Asia, notably oil and rubber. With Japan’s defeat, the United States thought it had won the battle over China, but in 1949 it discovered it had “lost China” and a hunt followed to find those traitorous Americans responsible, fueling McCarthyism.71 If some Americans had lost China, it followed that there might be some to regain it. The prime candidate for that role was Douglas MacArthur, who was eager to use the Korean situation to extend the war to China. The U.S. military establishment stamped on that: “In the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy,” its chairman, general Omar Bradley, said.72 The “right enemy” at the time was the Soviet Union. China in time became the right enemy and the underlying driver of U.S. Asia policy. For a couple of decades, the battle line shifted to Southeast Asia, with lurid, if ahistorical and subsequently invalidated, visions of “Chinese expansionism” being the cause of the anticolonialist movement.73 Nevertheless, Korea was a continuing, and sometimes important, element in what came to be called “the containment of China.” Park Chung-hee’s support for the United States in Vietnam was valuable to the United States and profitable for the South Korean economy, providing the basis for South Korea’s “economic takeoff in the mid–1960s.”74 All the while, North Korea, whatever it might do or not do, was portrayed as a belligerent threat necessitating the massive U.S. political and military presence in Korea, on China’s doorstep. Whenever there were moves to lessen that presence, as with Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, they were foiled. 75 The actual number of U.S. troops in South Korea has declined over time—military power is decreasingly measured in troop levels—but the U.S. strategic presence continues unabated. In 1899, secretary of state John Hay issued his famous “Open Door Policy” calling for “equality of treatment of all foreign trade throughout China.”76 He did so in confidence that U.S. commercial superiority was such that it had nothing to fear from foreign competitors in the China market, and presumably completely discounted any competition from Chinese industry. A century and a bit later, the situation was completely transformed. Not merely had the United States lost unquestioned superiority over its rivals, but competition from China itself was becoming increasingly successful. This was accompanied by China’s challenge to U.S. hegemony. The two concerns—commercial and geopolitical—were conflated and the United States increasingly had to resort to political power to buttress its failing competitiveness, actions against Huawei being a prime example. Inevitably, U.S. thoughts turned to war. Some warned against it—it was a Thucydides Trap that could be avoided if recognized, argued Graham Allison.77 Others have discounted it entirely, even arguing “There Will Not Be a New Cold War.”78 Others see it looming while yet others unpack the mechanics of it.79 And in the shadows, in the corridors of the Pentagon and throughout the huge U.S. military apparatus, others no doubt are laying plans, which their counterparts in China are seeking ways to defeat. Whether war might be curtailed, limited, or catastrophic, there is general consensus that the three most likely places where a war between the United States and China might start are the South China Sea, Taiwan Straits, and Korean Peninsula. Because of the conflicting territorial claims between the littoral states, the United States sees the South China Sea as a useful way of forming an anti-China alliance. However, its main military interest, and the reason for the Freedom of Navigation Operations, is to set a precedent and build capability for interdiction. Much of China’s imports, especially oil, pass through here and it is the transit route for Chinese ballistic submarines to get to the safety of the deep waters of the Pacific.80 A clash here is probable but unlikely to develop into war—for the United States the dangers outweigh the benefits, and for China the issue is important but not existential. A war over Taiwan can only happen with the endorsement and participation of the government in Taipei. However, Taiwan has de facto independence, which the PRC tolerates with pragmatism, and the additional benefits of de jure status are greatly outweighed by the costs and dangers so that is unlikely to be forthcoming.81 The Korean Peninsula is different again. As with Taiwan, the United States has to interact with a client government. However, while the dream of “retaking the Mainland” died in Taiwan decades ago, that of reunifying Korea under Seoul has not. The Moon Jae-in administration clearly wants to improve relations with the North and to maintain friendly ties with China, but it is politically weak. President Moon has been unable to stand up to the United States, which has been decisive.82 There was a considerable degree of détente in 2018 following the opening of Kim Jong-un’s peace offensive and his offer to send a team to the South Korean-hosted Winter Olympics, but ultimately the U.S. state stepped in and quashed cooperation between the two Koreas. This was obscured somewhat at the time by Trump’s fantasies of negotiating with Kim Jong-un. In a very real sense, both Moon and Trump were defeated by John Bolton and the forces he exemplified—the “octopus” that is the U.S. state.83 At the same time, the THAAD affair is an example, albeit a prominent one, of U.S. use of South Korea as a pawn against China. This process looks set to intensify under the Biden administration whose first high-level meeting with Seoul was to reiterate its role in the U.S. anti-China alliance.84 The United States is not the only opposition to détente with the North with which Moon has to contend. Naturally less visible to outside observers, but surely potent nonetheless, is the huge South Korean military establishment and the National Intelligence Service (formerly the Korean CIA), which have had intimate ties with their U.S. counterparts over many decades. Also influencing public opinion and more visible because they have to work front of house are the right-wing parties (such as the main conservative People Power Party) and the media, notably Chojoongdong, the trio of ultra-conservative papers Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and Dong-A Ilbo.85 While the visible face of South Korean conservatism is virulently anti-North Korea, its position on China is slightly more ambivalent. Chosun Ilbo, for instance, frequently complains about U.S. pressure to join its anti-China campaign without regard for South Korean interests.86 Nevertheless, there appears to be more appetite for war with the PRC in South Korea than in Taiwan, precisely because the reward—conquering of the North—is feasible. It may be far less feasible than the hawks in Seoul anticipate, but the United States and South Korea do have great military superiority. North Korea can retaliate but ultimately not defend itself against attack. However, fantasies about China’s acceptance of a U.S.-led invasion of North Korea are common and dangerous.87 In the case of the Taiwan Straits, there is a direct war with China, but in Korea there is the worrying possibility that decision makers may convince themselves that war with China can be avoided. However, there is also another possibility. It may not be a case of stumbling into war with China—thinking one is swallowing a minnow but finding that one is choking on a whale—but a deliberate decision. If strategists in Washington decide on a war against China, and there has been no shortage of talk about that, then precipitating it through a crisis on the Korean Peninsula makes admirable sense. There is the substantial South Korean military, already under U.S. command and used to U.S. control. South Korea hosts huge U.S. bases and has facilities for rapidly bringing in and deploying reinforcements, and both have been well practiced. In addition, Japan under Shinzo Abe had long signaled an enthusiasm for intervening in conflict in Korea and there is no reason to suppose Yoshihide Suga is less enthusiastic.88 In either case, the Korean Peninsula is the most likely place for the eruption of the second U.S. war with China. Hypocrisy, Irrationality, Deep Rationality, and the Contextualization of U.S.-Korea Policy The literature on U.S.-Korea policy displays dazzling pyrotechnics of hypocrisy. That representatives of the world’s most potent nuclear power, and the only one to have actually used nuclear weapons, can condemn with high moral dudgeon North Korea for developing a small nuclear deterrent, in response to the U.S. threat moreover, is truly astounding. That such hypocrisy garners applause and repetition rather than ridicule is a telling compliment to the power of U.S. global perception management. However, beyond hypocrisy, and mirroring it, there lies irrationality. Much of the discussion of the issues just does not make sense and there is little in the way of rational explanation. For instance, we are frequently told that North Korea is a threat, even an existential one, to the United States, South Korea, and “the region.”89 Yet, we are also told that a North Korean attack on the United States or South Korea would clearly be suicidal and futile, as Colin Powell expressed: “It would be suicidal for North Korea to attack the US.… If North Korea attacked the US, the US would immediately strike back, and the North Korean regime would be no more.”90 How can both statements hold? Why would North Korea commit suicide for no purpose? The threat of retaliation as a deterrent, even if it were suicidal if carried out, does make sense, but that is quite another matter, seldom discussed.91 One way of attempting to resolve this contradiction is to claim that Kim Jong-un (or his father Kim Jong-il before him) is irrational. “We are not dealing with a rational person,” claimed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.92 Senator John McCain called him a “crazy, fat kid.”93 More informed observers realize this will not work and thus produce more convoluted explanations and prescriptions that ultimately are no more satisfactory.94 A better approach is to move beyond U.S. myopia and analyze U.S.-Korea policy in terms of “deep rationality.” That is, the underlying reasons for behavior not articulated by the actors, perhaps out of prudence, but also quite likely because they are not aware of them themselves. Imperialism is the central characteristic of U.S. foreign policy, but is neither mentioned nor admitted by the establishment. They are socially conditioned not to recognize imperialism even as they practice it. Three aspects are relevant here. First, the “North Korea threat” is a domestic political construction, created over decades and with deep purchase in both elite and popular opinion, but has no solid base in reality. It is more properly the subject of political psychology, with its roots in the failure to prevail in the Korean War and thereafter, rather than geopolitics. As a perception, it may seem to determine decision-making (it certainly affects it), but ultimately the reasons for U.S. policy lie elsewhere. Second, North Korea’s nuclear deterrent, whose efficacy is uncertain, is in itself no danger to the United States unless the United States launches an invasion. If the United States is perceived in Pyongyang to be about to do just that, then that might prompt an attempt at a preemptive strike. In either case, the initiative really lies with Washington; no war then no retaliation. The real issue is global proliferation—a meaningful concern despite tending to be hidden behind a wall of self-serving obfuscation. The spread of nuclear weapons to small countries is portrayed as a danger to the world, and the U.S. crusade against proliferation a noble one. In fact, the possession of a nuclear deterrent by countries threatened by more powerful ones is peace enhancing, as Kenneth Waltz argues in the case of Iran.95 The North Koreans claim, probably rightly, that their deterrence has kept the peace in Korea.96 This forms the basis of the U.S. objection to proliferation. It is an equalizer that helps redress the imbalance of power between it and those countries it wishes to attack, such as Iraq and Libya. If North Korea is successful in forcing the United States into peaceful coexistence, then that would give a “bad” example to other countries, such as Iran. Third, U.S. desire to defend, maintain, and hopefully enlarge its hegemony against major challengers is key. In the early days, the major challenger was the Soviet Union, as now it is China with Russia being relegated to an important but minor role, especially in East Asia. We have seen how important Korea is in U.S. confrontation with China. “Korea” is in fact a dyad and the relationship between the two is a crucial part of U.S. strategy. Antagonism between the two is to be welcomed and détente to be feared and prevented. North Korea has to be kept belligerent to justify U.S. military presence in South Korea (and to a lesser extent in Japan), and to keep South Korea in line so it may be better harnessed to the anti-China program. Palmerston would have recognized U.S. achievements in utilizing the Korean Peninsula in its confrontation with China and the challenges it faces. He was, after all, foreign secretary when Britain launched the First Opium War against China in 1839. The war led, among other things, to the British seizure of Hong Kong and the “Century of Humiliation,” which still reverberate in China today.97 Palmerston’s “gunboat diplomacy” was successful because Britain had gunboats and China did not. Now China does.98 The United States has supplanted Britain and Blinken has succeeded Palmerston. Although the balance of power in its various facets, from the military to soft power, still favors the United States, the gap is closing. The United States and China are two whales, one declining in power and the other rising, different in characteristic and in motivation but both huge. This poses great danger for Korea, which is caught in the line of fire, because, as proverb has it, when the whales fight, the shrimp gets its back broken.99 Notes Susan Ratcliffe, ed., Oxford Essential Quotations, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016), s.v. “Lord Palmerston 1784–1865, British statesman; Prime Minister, 1855–8, 1859–65.” Jean-Pierre Lehmann, “Role Reversal: How Japan Became America’s Ally and China Fell from Grace,” East Asia Forum, May 4, 2014. Hibiki Yamaguchi et al., “What Role Did the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Soviet Entry into the War Play in Japan’s Decision to Surrender in the Pacific War? Conversations with Tsuyoshi Hasegawa,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, September 15, 2019. Henry R. Luce, “American Century,” Life, February 17, 1941. Oriana Skylar Mastro, “Dynamic Dilemmas: China’s Evolving Northeast Asia Security Strategy,” Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies, October 7, 2016. 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The U.S. position on the South China Sea and Taiwan is both fraudulent and sometimes risible. “Thus the United States for the past 21 years has been in the anomalous, but little-understood position of recognizing as the government of China a régime whose almost exclusive territorial base it refuses to acknowledge to be Chinese territory” (Jerome Alan Cohen, “Recognizing China,” Foreign Affairs, October 1971). Lutz, “US Bases and Empire.” Lee Soon-hyuk and Jung Nam-ku, “USFK to Become More ‘Flexible,’” Hankyoreh, February 4, 2012; Joseph Hincks, “Inside Camp Humphreys, South Korea: America’s Largest Overseas Military Base,” Time, July 12, 2018. Jon Letman, “USAG Humphreys: The Story Behind America’s Biggest Overseas Base,” Diplomat, November 6, 2017. Kornel Chang, “Independence without Liberation: Democratization as Decolonization Management in U.S.-Occupied Korea, 1945–1948,” Journal of American History 107, no. 1 (2020): 77–106. 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Ambassador Kim Song, Permanent Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the United Nations at the General Debate of the 75 th Session of the UN General Assembly.” DPRK Permanent Representative to UN, 29 September 2020. https://estatements.unmeetings.org/estatements/10.0010/20200929/azzQgcBAMYqv/WaUGJrE2AJvT_en.pdf “Statement of DPRK Foreign Ministry Spokesman.” MFA DPRK, 24 December 2017. http://www.mfa.gov.kp/en/statement-of-dprk-foreign-ministry-spokesman-2/ Stone, I F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1952. “The struggle over chips enters a new phase.” The Economist, 23 January 2021. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/01/23/the-struggle-over-chips-enters-a-new-phase Taoka, Shunji. “Withdrawal of U.S. Forces from South Korea is Long Overdue: Examining the Military Balance on the Korean Peninsula.” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 15 November 2019. https://apjjf.org/2019/22/Taoka.html Teng, Jianqun. “Why Is China Unhappy with the Deployment of THAAD in the ROK?” China Institute of International Studies, 1 April 2015. http://www.ciis.org.cn/english/2015-04/01/content_7793314.htm Tepperman, Jonathan. “Can Biden End America’s Forever Wars?” Foreign Policy, 19 November 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/19/can-biden-end-americas-forever-wars/ Waltz, Kenneth N. “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb.” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2012). Watts IV, Robert C. “‘Rockets Red Glare:’ Why Does China Oppose THAAD in South Korea, and What Does It Mean for U.S. Policy?” Naval War College Review Spring 2018, 79-108. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26607047 “Who Will Protect Korean Chipmakers in U.S.-China Wars?”. Chosun Ilbo, 19 May 2020. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2020/05/19/2020051902221.html Woodward, Bob, and Mary Louise Kelly. “Interview With Bob Woodward, Part 1.” NPR, 14 September 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/14/912791401/interview-with-bob-woodward-part-1 Work, Clint. “Peace in Korea won’t eliminate the need for American troops.” Washington Post, 25 September 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/09/25/peace-korea-wont-eliminate-need-american-troops/ Xu, Yan. “Korean War worth the cost for China.” Global Times, 27 October 2020. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/586414.shtml Yamaguchi, Hibiki, Fumihiko Yoshida, Radomir Compel, and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. “What role did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Soviet entry into the war play in Japan’s decision to surrender in the Pacific War? Conversations with Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.” The Asia Pacific Journal – Japan Focus, 15 September 2019. https://apjjf.org/2019/18/Yamaguchi-Yoshida-Compel.html Yang, Seung-sik. “U.S. Pushes Korea to Join Its Wars Overseas.” Chosun Ilbo, 30 October 2019. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2019/10/30/2019103001315.html Yang, Sheng, and Han Zhang. “China commemorates war against US aggression in Korea.” Global Times, 19 October 2020. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1203984.shtml Yonhap. “Chinese visitors halved this year over THAAD dispute ” Korea Times, 13 December 2017. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2017/12/141_240834.html ———. “Lotte’s China dream shattered.” Korea Times, 11 May 2018. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2018/05/694_248838.html Yoo, Kang-moon, and Ji-won Noh. “US wants to expand the UNC’s mission to direct crisis management on the Korean Peninsula.” Hankyoreh, 5 September 2019. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/908601.html Yoo, Kang-moon, and Min-hee Park. “Trilateral security cooperation collapses amid SK-Japan row.” Hankyoreh, 23 August 2019. http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/906880.html Zakaria, Fareed. “We think North Korea is crazy. What if we’re wrong?” Washington Post, 6 July 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/we-think-north-korea-is-crazy-what-if-were-wrong/2017/07/06/d13044b0-6286-11e7-a4f7-af34fc1d9d39_story.html Zhao, Tong. “How (and How Seriously) Does U.S. Missile Defense Threaten China?” Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, 29 June 2020. https://carnegietsinghua.org/2020/06/29/how-and-how-seriously-does-u.s.-missile-defense-threaten-china-pub-82122 Zhu, Zhiqun. “The ‘Guyana incident’ and lessons for Taiwan’s international space.” East Asia Forum, 4 March 2021. https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2021/03/04/the-guyana-incident-and-lessons-for-taiwans-international-space/ Tim Beal is a retired New Zealand academic who has written extensively on Asia with a special focus on the Korean Peninsula. Recent publications include the entry on Korea for The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (New York: Springer, 2019). He has also written some chapters for a forthcoming collection: Immanuel Ness and Stuart Davis, eds., Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy (Leiden: Brill, 2021).

August 4, 2021 NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 4, 2021 CONTACTS: Christine Hong: cjhong@ucsc.edu Monica Kim: mkim687@wisc.edu Crystal Baik: crystal.baik@ucr.edu American Studies Association Joins Growing Call for End to Korean War LOMA LINDA, CA, August 4, 2021 – On August 2, 2021, the American Studies Association (ASA), an academic organization with over 5,000 members in the United States and around the world, announced its support for a resolution calling for an end to the Korean War. Against the perception that the conflict ended in 1953, the organization noted the war’s status as one of the U.S.’s longest-running forever wars. It also committed to organizing one of its “freedom schools” around the unresolved war with the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective, a group of U.S.-based academics, organizers, and activists who initiated the resolution. As ASA President-Elect Cathy Schlund-Vials stated, “the resolution’s critical engagement and pedagogical investments with what has all-too-often been cast as a ‘forgotten war’ should be at the forefront of what we do as an association, programmatically and otherwise.” Although its 1951 founding coincided with the battle phase of the Korean War, a war of U.S. intervention in which an estimated 4 million Koreans were killed, ASA’s shift to a more critical position on U.S. power did not take place until the Vietnam War era. Following 9/11, the organization has taken notable stances against U.S. foreign policy, including support in 2013 of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In its unanimous endorsement of the current resolution, ASA’s executive council follows on the heels of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) membership, which in June 2020 voted in favor of a resolution, also introduced by the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective, urging the United States to “formally end the Korean War, and replace the 1953 Armistice Agreement with a permanent peace agreement.” “Few people in the United States are aware that the Korean War is not over, yet its irresolution negatively impacts the lives of millions of people on the Korean peninsula, in the diaspora, and throughout Asia and the Pacific,” collective member Christine Hong, chair of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz, stated. Although the July 27, 1953 Korean War armistice recommended that the United States, North Korea, and China negotiate a permanent peace agreement in three months’ time, the Korean War persists today in the ongoing division of Korea, the continued U.S. military occupation of South Korea, the U.S.-led sanctions regime against North Korea, and the unabating militarization of the larger region. As collective member Crystal Baik, professor of gender and sexuality studies at UC Riverside, pointed out, for Koreans, the costs of ongoing war are stark: “militarized atrocities and continued separation from family and loved ones, [as well as] militarized sexual violence and ecological devastation.” In 2020, the Korean War’s seventieth year, the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective inaugurated a broad-based teaching initiative whose focus on critical approaches to the Korean War contrasts with how the war is typically taught in K-12 and university classrooms. The aim of the initiative is to foster critical consciousness through political education about the far-reaching toll of a war most commonly memorialized as “forgotten” within the United States. As part of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea, some of the initiative’s founding members had earlier brought together over eighty scholars principally in the United States in a 2010-13 teaching initiative on the Korean War. Those scholars committed to teaching at least one class per year on the Korean War. The current Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective, which brings together scholars, both graduate students and university faculty, who work in critical ethnic studies and critical Asian studies, makes an “even more sustained educational intervention,” as collective member Monica Kim, the William Appleman Williams Chair in International History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, stated. The syllabus traces “the ongoing Korean War and its ramifications beyond the Korean peninsula,” and is thematically structured, as Kim observed, around “empire, colonialism, race, and militarism.” The reach of the current initiative is also far broader. As Baik stated, “Many of us who are a part of this teaching initiative are Korean diasporic scholars and also belong to activist, cultural, and community organizing spaces, so we understand how critically important it is that this initiative reaches and is used by a large audience.” Intended for implementation in academic and activist spaces, “the teaching initiative is designed for those who may already teach the Korean War, as well as those who are interested in exploring vital connections between seemingly disconnected spaces, communities, and geographies.” The public syllabus project will be launched at a virtual event hosted by the Center for Racial Justice at UC Santa Cruz on Friday, September 10, 2021, and it will be housed on the Korea Policy Institute website. Future events featuring the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective are scheduled for Yale University this fall and UC Irvine and Johns Hopkins University in the upcoming year. *** ASA Resolutions: https://www.theasa.net/about/advocacy/resolutions-actions/resolutions ASA Resolution on the Korean War: https://theasa.net/sites/default/files/ASA-Resolution-on- the-Korean-War.pdf Korea Policy Institute: https://www.kpolicy.org/ Center for Racial Justice, UC Santa Cruz: https://crjucsc.com/ ### ASA resolution calling for a decolonizing peace and a formal end to the Korean War Whereas the Korean War broke out in the same early Cold War moment that the American Studies Association (ASA) formed as a scholarly organization dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of U.S. history, culture, and politics, thus entailing critical reflection on how the Cold War conditioned knowledge production within the U.S. academy about the massive deployment of U.S. war and police power; Whereas the ASA, especially in the wake of 9/11, has taken powerful and principled stances against imperialism, the militarization of U.S. universities, and academic collusion with the national security state, emerging as a vital arena for scholarship on and activist organizing against past, present, and ongoing forms of racial and colonial violence: Whereas 2020 marked the seventieth year of the unresolved Korean War, an asymmetrical war of U.S. aggression precipitated by the 1945 U.S. decision to divide Korea at the 38th parallel without consulting the Korean people and undermining the Korean people’s long struggle against Japanese colonial rule and historic efforts to realize democratic self-governance; Whereas the United States, the primary Korean War belligerent and the world’s greatest nuclear proliferator and detonator, has refused to sign onto a permanent peaceful settlement, despite the temporary July 1953 armistice recommendation that the major signatories--the United States, North Korea, and China--negotiate peace terms within three months’ time, in contrast to North Korea’s numerous requests to end the Korean War; Whereas without a peace agreement, war can resume at any time in Korea, which stands to destroy the lives of 80 million people on the peninsula in addition to many other Asian and Pacific Islander peoples, and in this era of a nuclear-armed North Korea to inflict catastrophe within the United States and on a planetary scale; Whereas the ongoing state of war and division in Korea has exacted a massive human toll by keeping millions of families separated, including roughly 100,000 Korean Americans, by legitimating an exploitative system of international adoption, by authorizing a punitive and unrelenting regime of U.S.-driven sanctions that predictably harms North Korean public health and human security, by subjecting the peoples of Korea and the region to the constant threat of nuclear war, and by perpetuating an arms race that diverts resources from human needs and justifies the proliferation of garrison states; Whereas U.S. military empire in Asia and the Pacific exploits the pretext of a menacing North Korea and the sub-imperial complicity of regional client-states, as in the South Korean deployment of over 300,000 soldiers to fight alongside U.S. forces in the U.S. war in Vietnam and in the strategic incorporation of sites like Diego Garcia, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Hawai‘i, and Okinawa into its “forward-deployed” posture against North Korea; Whereas the Korean War, as a structure of permanent war, exacts an imperial toll, justifying monstrous trillion-dollar “defense” budgets--in 2015, 54% of the federal discretionary budget-- enabling the United States to wage endless wars and maintain troops abroad, the contamination, resource exploitation, and seizure of Indigenous lands, and the militarization of poor, non-white peoples within its army, correlating to unemployment, austerity programs that deny access to decent education, healthcare, and housing, and the militarization of the police; Whereas the Korean War, the longest-running U.S. conflict, enabled the United States to consolidate its global military-imperial dominance, inaugurating the U.S. military-industrial complex and justifying its base expansion, while continually justifying U.S. power projection in the region, its encirclement of China, and the ever-expanding U.S. military budget; Whereas contrary to U.S. government and corporate media claims, U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea continue, rehearsing the collapse, invasion, and occupation of--as well as nuclear first strikes against--North Korea, according to the Pentagon’s operation plans; Whereas the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula must be understood as imposing a commensurate obligation on the United States, given its history of repeatedly threatening North Korea with nuclear decimation and in violation of the 1953 Armistice deploying nuclear warheads to South Korea from 1958 to 1991, thereby requiring the elimination of all nuclear threats to the peninsula; Whereas only a genuine peace agreement among the main parties to the Korean War, reflective of the Korean people’s struggle for decolonization, self-determination, liberation, and reunification, can reduce the risk of nuclear and conventional war in Korea; Whereas the leaders of North and South Korea at the historic summit at Panmunjom on April 27, 2018 “solemnly declared before the 80 million Korean people and the whole world that there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun,” and pledged to work together for independent unification, and in September 2018, signed an historic military agreement to cease all hostile acts and have taken concrete steps to transform the so-called demilitarized zone (DMZ) into an actual peace zone; Whereas, since the historic 2018 summit between North Korea and the United States, diplomacy has stalled, escalating threats of war, intensifying the possibility that North Korea will cease its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear weapons testing and full-scale U.S.-South Korea war exercises will resume; Be it resolved that the ASA: Supports the Korean people who have long fought for peace and the self-determined unification of the Korean peninsula and considers ending the Korean War a necessary step in the decolonization of South Korea; Enacts solidarity with the peoples of Asia, the Pacific, and North America who have long waged anti-militarism struggles against the projection of U.S. war power in and militarized expropriation of their homelands; Calls on the United States to abolish its seven-decade policy of hostility and sweeping sanctions that isolate North Korea and aim to inflict widespread humanitarian catastrophe on its people, formally end the Korean War, and replace the 1953 Armistice Agreement with a permanent peace agreement; Demands that the United States to stop all military exercises that deploy or introduce its strategic assets on the Korean peninsula, abolish its nuclear umbrella over South Korea, Asia, and the Pacific, and meet its own obligations to create a nuclear-free world; Initiates critical reflection on and collective action regarding the complicity of U.S. universities within the military-industrial complex and our role as socially engaged scholars to analyze the structural moorings of our own conditions of possibility; and Encourages students and scholars to engage in a research and teaching initiative, commenced Fall 2020, that emphasizes critical approaches to and collective inquiry about the Korean War, with a focus on the racial, sexual, colonial, and sub-imperial violence of U.S. war power as well as peoples’ struggles for decolonization. Resources: The Korea Policy Institute (Teaching Initiative page under construction) The Unending Korean War (2015 special issue of positions: asia critique) Jeremy Kuzmarov, “The Korean War: Barbarism Unleashed,” United States Foreign Policy History and Resource Guide, 2016 Social Text/Periscope: Korea and Demilitarized Peace, December 2018 Korea Policy Institute Readers (2019, 2020) 제국의 제재: Sanctions of Empire (Nodutdol zine, 2020) White Terror, “Red” Island: A People’s Archive of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising and Massacre Historical Documents: The Cairo Declaration, November 26, 1953 John Muccio letter to Dean Rusk, July 26, 1950; see also, Sahr Conway-Lanz, “Beyond No Gun Ri: Refugees and the U.S. Military in the Korean War,” Diplomatic History (January 2005) The Korean War Armistice Agreement, July 27, 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty, October 1, 1953 Status of Forces Agreements (1966, 1991, 2001) Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at 60th Anniversary of the Korean War Armistice,” July 27, 2013

By Tim Beal | July 31, 2021 | Originally published in Portside Para-demolition bombs being dropped on supply warehouses and dock facilities at a port in Wonsan, North Korea by the Fifth Air Force's B-26 Invader light bombers (ca. 1951). USAF (photo 306-PS-51(10303)), public holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 541959., Public Domain, Link. Bombing is perhaps the epitome of modern military power and imperial might, both in symbolism and significance. Consider the medieval knight resplendent in his armor that protected against the enemy, most of whom were poorly equipped peasants. The richer he was, the better the armor, giving a sense of invulnerability and wealth, expressed in ornateness. It is not surprising that of all the artifacts of war that litter the grand houses and museums of Europe, it is the suit of armor that is most prominent. Bombs are different. There is no armor to protect you from bombs themselves; it seems that one can only dig a hole and cower in it. The silver plane high above, beautiful in its way but evil in its consequences, raining bombs onto the hapless people below, is the supreme symbol of invincible power. From the early twentieth century onward, bombing in various forms became the destructive signature of war. A bomber crew could cause far more casualties and devastation than they could as a team on the ground. Guns can kill many in a short period of time, tanks can pulverize, but nothing matches bombing, especially, but not exclusively, nuclear bombing. The mode of aerial bombing has expanded over time, from planes to ballistic and cruise missiles to drones, but the objective has remained constant: to deliver the most effective destructive power. Sometimes, it is mass destruction, sometimes it is more selective, but always the aim is to wreak annihilation at minimal danger to the perpetrator. Similarly, the threat of bombing has become the most potent instrument of coercive messaging, replacing the gunships of the nineteenth century. In the Korean War, the United States dispatched solitary B-29 bombers to Pyongyang on simulated nuclear bombing missions designed to cause terror.1 Today, when Washington wants to intimidate Pyongyang (and Beijing), it again brings out the bombers—now B-52s, B-1s, and B-2s.2 The Korean War, which broke out on June 25, 1950, can be considered the epicenter of bombing as an instrument of war. The Korean War did not begin in 1950 (1945 is a better date) nor has it ended—but that is a story for another time. More people were killed by bombs in the Second World War and more bombs were dropped in Indochina subsequently. Nevertheless, the Korean War occupies a special place. For one, it was the first—and, so far, the last—time since 1945 that the United States seriously considered using atomic weapons during the course of an imperial war. In Vietnam, it seems to have been discussed, but was probably quickly discounted on grounds of practicability: the Vietnamese considered it unlikely, the Soviet Union had achieved thermonuclear parity (the combination of hydrogen bombs and delivery systems), and even China, bordering Vietnam, by then had rudimentary nuclear weapons.3 But the Korean War had General Douglas McArthur who was eager to extend the war to China. He was very much a child of empire—his father had been Governor-General of the Philippines, the first major U.S. overseas colony. While his desire for a war with China was considered too dangerous by Harry Truman, it was no doubt shared by many—his dismissal was a major political event of the early 1950s. In fact, the establishment viewed the wars in Korea and Vietnam as ways to contain China. The continued confrontation with North Korea too is, in geopolitical terms, essentially about China. Moreover, the war against Japan can been seen as a struggle over China; Japan lost to the Unites States, which, in 1949, “lost China,” as the McCarthyite criticism of the State Department put it.4 Thomas Hippler, in his study Governing from the Skies: A Global History of Aerial Bombing, dates the beginning of aerial bombing to 1911, when an Italian aviator named Giulio Gavotti dropped a rudimentary bomb (he had to pull the safety pin out with his teeth) on an Ottoman encampment in Libya. The locale was, as Hippler notes, pregnant with irony. The Italians were wresting Libya from the declining Turkish empire, with the agreement of Britain and France. A hundred years later, when Hippler wrote his book, imperialism was back in Libya, this time with Britain and France doing the bombing under U.S. supervision in what has been called Hillary’s War, and with U.S. “humanitarian intervention” (a ploy invented by Richard Holbrooke) replacing the Italian’s “civilizing mission” as the pretext. Repercussive ironies continued after 2011. The destruction of Libya unleashed a flood of refugee migrants into Europe and jihadists into Syria. The empowerment of jihadists in Libya and displacement into Syria horrified Michael Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency—the war, he argued, qualified Hillary Clinton “for government housing, though not in the White House.” The falling out with this side of the U.S. establishment seems to have led to the sting operation against Flynn that unraveled in 2020.5 Meanwhile, the Turks are back in Libya as part of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman dream, this time as bombers, but using drones instead of planes. The same sordid motives for over a century, but with changing technology. Long dreamed of by novelists such as Victor Hugo and H. G. Wells, as new technology developed, aerial bombing captured the imagination of military strategists in the interwar period. Not only did it leap over the static trench lines of the First World War, restoring mobility to war, but it also had two more important consequences. First, it led to “total war,” where the economy and people of the other side could be attacked with unprecedented ferocity. Second, it involved the populace far beyond formal front lines. Jane Austen’s characters went about their business oblivious to the war being fought in their name across the English Channel, but the inhabitants of London and Berlin in the 1940s were very much aware and involved. Total war was mirrored by people’s war. This duality undercut the advocates of airpower who argued that terror would break the morale of the enemy; in many cases, it did the reverse. That was not the only problem. The enemy sometimes became adept at limiting the effectiveness of bombing—Londoners slept in deep stations of the underground system, Koreans built facilities deep below the surface (and still do), Vietnamese moved people and material under a jungle canopy (which the U.S. tried to destroy with chemical weapons), Serbs produced decoy tanks for the United States to bomb. And air defenses made bombing a hazardous occupation in peer-to-peer war. The joke in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is that a bomber pilot could only be sent home if he was insane, but if he wanted to go home because of how dangerous his task was, he was sane, and thus forced to further take on missions. The best wars from this point of view were imperialist ones, where the enemy had no defenses—the other main, initial, and continuing reason for the utility of bombing. The standard problem facing empires has been that imperialists were usually greatly outnumbered by the subjugated, who again were often spread over vast areas. Air power—“governing from the skies,” in Hippler’s phrase—seemed to offer a safe, cost-effective way of controlling them. Winston Churchill, with his predilection for dropping poison gas on “uncivilized tribes,” was a leading, but by no means only, enthusiast for such measures.6 Sven Lindqvist in his History of Bombing neatly brings together imperialist fantasies and realities in a marriage of convenience that links the early days of aerial bombing and today: Pilot as policeman, bomb as baton—this thought was developed early by R. P. Hearne in Airships in Peace and War (1910). Punitive expeditions are costly and time-consuming. It can take months for them to reach their goal. But punishment from the air can be carried out immediately and at a much lower cost. “In savage lands the moral effect of such an instrument of war is impossible to conceive,” writes Hearne.… The appearance of the airship would strike terror into the tribes. And in addition, one could avoid “the awful waste of life occasioned to white troops by expeditionary work.” The air force could simply patrol the land as the navy patrolled the sea. When necessary, bombers could mete out a “sharp, severe, and terrible punishment,” which would nevertheless be more humane than a traditional punitive expedition. For the bombs would affect only the lawbreakers, and would leave the innocent unharmed. This was of course pure fantasy. Hearne’s idea demanded a precision that did not exist. When the French sent six planes to perform police actions in Morocco in 1912, the pilots chose large targets—villages, markets, grazing herds—otherwise their bombs would miss. And when the Spaniards began bombing “their” part of Morocco the next year, they used German cartouche bombs, filled with explosives and steel balls, bombs that were , especially made not to focus their effect, but to spread it to as many living targets as possible.7 These themes resonate today: the need to limit casualties among “our” troops, who are not necessarily white, though the people who control them usually are; the pretense that “precision bombing” differentiates between the “lawbreakers” and the “innocent.” The media routinely report Pentagon claims that U.S. airstrikes are the most precise in history, an assertion contradicted not merely by the estimates of observers, but also by photographs of the devastation.8 Those villagers in Morocco probably had a better chance of surviving bombs than inhabitants of contested areas of Mosul a century later. Greater precision lagged a long way behind the exponential growth in destructive power. And always, despite the hypocrisy, there was little concern for those who were being killed from a distance, usually a safe one for the perpetrators. However, it was in Europe that bombing garnered the most attention, overshadowing the Japanese invasion of China between 1937 and 1945, and the colonial wars elsewhere. Ironically, by the war’s end in 1945, it was the Japanese who appeared to have suffered the most civilian casualties from bombing, followed by Germany. The German bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica in 1937 is widely seen as ushering in the new era of terror bombing, etched in public consciousness by Pablo Picasso’s painting of the same name. Unlike airstrikes in support of surface forces (then Stukas and Panzers, now strikes against ISIS and allies in Iraq and Syria), this bombing targeted the enemy hinterland in an attempt to destroy both economic infrastructure and popular morale. The Germans continued this with the Blitz against Britain, but before long it was the British, then the Americans, who developed strategic bombing with immensely greater destructiveness. The bombing of Guernica took some 153 lives, but that of Hamburg (six days in 1943) killed about 43,000 and Dresden (three days in 1945) about 25,000. Dresden overshadows Guernica as a symbol both of the horror and the crime of war. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five brings out the horror, but Dresden was more than that. The city had no great military significance and the war in Europe was nearly over; the bombing was an opening shot for the next one. It was a message to the Soviet Union of the might and ruthless determination of U.S. power; the “American Century,” with violence as a defining characteristic, had arrived. The message to the Soviet Union was replicated a few months later in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.9 Japan’s defeat was inevitable, surrender was imminent, but the Soviet army was sweeping through Manchuria as arranged at the Yalta Conference, mopping up Japan’s elite Kwantung Army and heading toward Korea and perhaps Japan. It has been suggested by Gar Alperovitz and others that the United States deliberately stalled Japan’s surrender by insisting on the abolition of the Emperor system, with its implication that Hirohito might be hanged as a war criminal, in order to allow time for the atom bomb to be tested.10 Once the efficacy of the bomb was confirmed, the insistence that the Soviets enter the war against Japan was regretted, but it was too late—the division of Korea with the United States holding the southern part as a forward base in Asia (which it still is) can be seen as an attempt to rectify that. Thus, the “atomic age.” which seemingly established U.S. global dominance, began. However, it was not realized at the time, and perhaps not widely today, that the U.S. development of nuclear weapons was in fact the harbinger of the end of U.S. invincibility. Although the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was horrendous, and highly symbolic, it was essentially the climax of an onslaught of conventional bombing, especially firebombing, which together inflicted unparalleled destruction: Throughout the spring and summer of 1945 the US air war in Japan reached an intensity that is still perhaps unrivaled in the magnitude of human slaughter. That moment was a product of the combination of technological breakthroughs, American nationalism, and the erosion of moral and political scruples pertaining to the killing of civilians, perhaps intensified by the racism that crystallized in the Pacific theatre.11 Atomic bombs could kill more people in a shorter period of time and needing fewer planes and pilots than any other device, with the added horror of the aftereffects of radiation, invisible like COVID-19. Moreover, a full-fledged nuclear war could destroy the planet. Nevertheless, for the victims of any sort of bombing, these considerations are irrelevant. Mark Selden argues that initially, unlike Germany, Japan, and Britain, the United States had concentrated on military targets, but by 1944 joined Britain in the terror bombing of Germany and then took that further into Japan.12 Once the scruples had been abandoned, U.S. technological preeminence provided the instrument for mass destruction on a completely new scale. Carpet bombing became the U.S. way of war in the country’s two great post-1945 wars in East Asia. Extensive carpet bombing on the scale of those wars is no longer fashionable as it is not seen as cost effective, but the capability remains.13 The second of these wars, what the Vietnamese call “the American War,” has attracted more attention. Despite the carnage, the war ended in ignominious defeat, so much so that the United States has attacked a number of countries since then partly in an attempt to exorcise the “Vietnam syndrome.”14 Korea was different. It was the first war that the United States did not win. It ended in a stalemate—an armistice—that continues until today. Kinetic fighting was suspended, but the war continues (though only by one side) by what is conveniently but simplistically called sanctions. Neither a shameful defeat nor a victory, it was buried and became “the Forgotten War.” Even Hippler overlooks it, with sixty-one references to Vietnam but none to Korea. The failure to prevail in Korea deeply rankled Washington, and North Korea became an object of obsessive hatred. Outside Korea, and to some extent also China, the vast number of Korean casualties were largely forgotten. Due to the limitations of bombing technology and the efficacy of air defenses, the damage in Europe, although devastating, had been limited. Even in the more vulnerable Japan, destruction was incomplete: Kyoto, for instance, was spared due to its cultural significance and other cities were left untouched because clean targets were thought to be necessary for testing the efficacy of atomic bombs. Not so in Korea. One North Korean source gives some statistics: More than 428,000 bombs were dropped on Pyongyang alone, the number more than that of Pyongyang citizens at that time. At the time, the US had completely reduced the whole territory of Korea into ashes by showering bombs of nearly 600,000 tons, 3.7 times greater than those dropped on Japan during the Pacific War, even using napalm bombs prohibited by the international conventions. The US massacred more than 1,231,540 civilians in the northern part of Korea during the three-year war.15 The figures are plausible and corroborated by, among others, Blaine Harden, a virulently anti-North Korean journalist writing in the Washington Post: The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.16 In his autobiography, Curtis LeMay (whose mantra was “bomb them back into the Stone Age”) “offered this observation,” as John Dower wryly put it: “We burned down just about every city in North and South Korea both.… We killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes, with the inevitable additional tragedies bound to ensue.”17 The word genocide is much bandied about, but it surely fits here. Although there are no definitive internationally comparative statistics, it seems certain that the U.S. bombing was, in terms of the percentage of the population, the deadliest in history.18 And, cruelly, all these crimes were committed in the name of the United Nations, whose imprimatur the United States had been able to capture because the Soviet delegation was boycotting the UN Security Council at the time and so could not veto it. The China seat was still held by Chiang Kai-shek, who had fled from the mainland and was ensconced in Taiwan; the other members of the Security Council, both permanent (the United Kingdom and France) and temporary, were subservient allies. Then, as later regarding sanctions against North Korea, the voice of justice was not raised but stifled by realpolitik. In the early 1950s, the people of North Korea were attacked with bombs; today sanctions and other forms of non-kinetic war are the instrument. While not as lethal as high explosive and napalm sanctions, economic sanctions still inflict great suffering, as manifested in malnutrition statistics, for example.19 The United Nations, which at its inception promised to save “succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” soon became complicit in visiting that scourge on Koreans. When there are wars between established nation-states, and even in the case of imperialist wars, the aggressor can usually be readily identified, but civil wars tend to erupt because both sides claim suzerainty over the whole territory. To a large extent, this was what happened in Korea in June 1950, though U.S. historian Bruce Cumings, in his preface to I. F. Stone’s iconoclastic Hidden History of the Korean War, agrees that a U.S.-orchestrated provocation is a possibility and notes that the State Department had made preparations to involve the United Nations if (or when) fighting broke out. However, even as a civil war, Korea has to be situated within a wider geopolitical framework that includes the post-1945 anticolonial movement, particularly strong in Asia, as well as the concomitant establishment of “the American Century,” the expansion of the U.S. imperium and its containment of the Soviet Union, and subsequently China. This geopolitical imperative is still the major driver of U.S. Korea policy and is the basic reason why it is unlikely that Joe Biden will accept a peace deal for the Korean peninsula, and why Donald Trump did not either, despite his narcissistic pirouettes.20 Within this broader context, the specific U.S.-North Korea confrontation has yielded one of those ironic outcomes that history often dishes out, and one that brings us back to bombing. The lingering hybrid war that the United States has conducted against North Korea over decades has brought about a major transformation in the power relationship between imperialism and its victims. In 1945, the atomic bomb was the prerogative of the mightiest—only the United States could harness the scientific, technological, and economic resources. However, the U.S. nuclear monopoly was soon lost, initially to the Soviet Union, then to China, and then to others. The concomitant development of intercontinental ballistic missiles meant that the United States was no longer either invincible or unattackable. Neither Germany nor Japan had been able to transcend the wide oceans and strike the continental United States, but intercontinental ballistic missiles changed that. Worse was to come with North Korea’s development of nuclear capability. Here was a small country that, while unable to instigate war against the United States—a preposterous myth given the huge disparity in military power—was able to threaten retaliation if attacked again. To start a war against the United States would invite inevitable destruction, but to deter through a credible promise of retaliation is something quite different.21 Kenneth Walz has argued that a nuclear-armed Iran would produce stability, but so far, despite Trump’s abrogation of the nuclear deal, Iran has not pursued that option.22 However, the North Korean example is a potent one. The importance the United States places on nonproliferation is not, despite the rhetoric, out of concern for humanity, but rather from a well-founded fear that nuclear weapons may become the great equalizer. If Giulio Gavotti knew that the enemy would be able to retaliate by dropping a bomb on his hometown, he may well have desisted. Where would imperialism be if the ‘‘uncivilized tribes’’—on whom it has, with little compunction, been dropping bombs for over a century—could return the favor? That potential equalization puts Korea at the center of the murderous history of bombing. Notes Gavan McCormack, “Sunshine, Containment, War: Korean Options,” Asia-Pacific Journal 1, no. 2 (2003). “S. Strategic Bombers in Provocative Show of Force,” Zoom in Korea, August 19, 2016. Marjorie Cohn, “S. Nearly Used Nukes During Viet Nam War,” CounterPunch, June 11, 2014; “Telegram from Pyongyang to Bucharest, TOP SECRET, No. 76.047, Regular,” February 19, 1968, available from the History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive. John Kifner, “John Service, a Purged ‘China Hand,’ Dies at 89,” New York Times, February 4, 1999. Paul Craig Roberts, “The Case of General Michael Flynn: The Use of Law as a Political Weapon,” Global Research, May 20, 2020. Giles Milton, “Winston Churchill’s Shocking Use of Chemical Weapons,” Guardian, September 1, 2013. Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2003), section 75. Missy Ryan, “After Bloody Insurgent Wars, Pentagon Launches Effort to Prevent Civilian Deaths,” Washington Post, February 4, 2019. Gar Alperovitz, ““Obama’s Hiroshima Visit Is a Reminder that Atomic Bombs Weren’t What Won the War,” Huffington Post. December 6, 2017. Gar Alperovitz, “Hiroshima: Historians Reassess,” Foreign Policy 99 (1995). Mark Selden, “A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities & the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq,” Asia-Pacific Journal 5, no. 5 (2007). Mark Selden, “American Fire Bombing and Atomic Bombing of Japan in History and Memory," Asia-Pacific Journal 14, 23, no. 4 (2016). Micah Zenko, “Ted Cruz and the Myth of Carpet Bombing,” Council on Foreign Relations, February 29, 2016. Stephen Zunes, “The US Invasion of Grenada,” Global Policy Forum, October 2003. Korean Committee for Solidarity with the World People Societies for Friendship with the Asia-Pacific People, “67th Anniversary of Outbreak of Korean War,” e-mail, Pyongyang, North Korea, June 24, 2017, available at timbeal.net.nz. Blaine Harden, “The U.S. War Crime North Korea Won’t Forget,” Washington Post, March 24, 2015. John Dower, “Terror Is in the Eye of the Beholder,” TomDispatch, May 4, 2017; Thomas E. Ricks, “‘Mission with LeMay’: Perhaps the Worst Military Memoir I’ve Ever Encountered,” Foreign Policy, March 28, 2013. Charles K. Armstrong, “The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950–1960,” Asia-Pacific Journal 7, no. 0 (2009). Edith M. Lederer, “UN Investigator: 11 Million North Koreans Are Undernourished,” Associated Press News, October 22, 2019. Tim Beal, “The Angler and the Octopus: Kim Jong-un’s Ongoing Peace Offensive,” Monthly Review 71, no. 6 (November 2019). Tim Beal, “Hegemony and Resistance, Compellence and Deterrence: Deconstructing the North Korean ‘Threat’ and Identifying America’s Strategic Alternatives,” Journal of Political Criticism 21 (2017). Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb,” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 4 (2012). Tim Beal is a retired New Zealand academic who has written extensively on Asia with a special focus on the Korean peninsula. His most recent work is the entry on Korea for The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (Springer Publishing, 2019).

By Ramsay Liem | July 27, 2021 | Originally published in Peace Voice July 27, 2021 marks the 68th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, a battlefield truce that temporarily halted combat during the Korean War. That pause continues to define the state of relations between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) to this day. Absent a peace agreement the armistice maintains a tenuous hold on mutual U.S. – North Korean hostilities that erupt periodically as in Trump’s 2017 threats of “fire and fury” over the North’s nuclear program. Yet for most Americans July 27 is just another day. Like the Korean War itself, the armistice signing is largely forgotten or was never really known. But for Koreans who survived the war and now reside in the United States, forgetting is more complicated. Years ago, I began one of the first projects to interview elders about their lives dating to the war and collaborated with scholars, artists, and filmmakers to create public memory spaces for healing, public education, and reconciliation. Some of the most paradoxical memories that people shared were about the original armistice day, July 27, 1953. H. Kim: “I did hear news - of course I heard. But I heard it carelessly. Because it was hard to live, very very hard, I didn’t remember everything.” A. R. Menzie: “The signing of armistice, we didn't even know the war ended…” These non-remembrances were extremely perplexing. I had expected great joy at the cessation of horrific fighting that resulted in three million civilian casualties much like the sentiments people associated with August 15, 1945, the date of Korea’s liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. H. Kim: “I was so happy, um.. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy when Independence Day came and you know, I didn’t eat for days and…I was out in the streets, rejoicing.” T. Kim: “1945, August 15 … so that was big, big event, but armistice signed in 1953. I—I don't think that was big event because nobody really knew.” The first Korean War armistice day was just another 24 hours of an endless purgatory of capricious death, ruined livelihoods and futures, and dashed hopes for post-colonial nation building promised at the collapse of the Japanese empire. M. Lee: “There is no conception [that] the war is over, cease-war or not, there is no such conception at all. Just everything is broken…” For some, Armistice Day was associated with family separation. J. Chun was a teenager living in Kaesong in southern Korea when war broke out. One day he left home to find his father who had gone further south looking for more secure shelter. By chance his father began his return to Kaesong just as he set out and they missed each other. A short time later armistice talks began in Kaesong and a cordon was drawn blocking civilian movement into and out of the city. “That’s the end of it…I cannot see my father and my family anymore. He couldn’t get out, I couldn’t get in.” Forced to survive on his own he suffered a second blow from the armistice negotiations. As part of the agreement, the border between northern and southern Korea was redrawn. Kaesong, originally in the South, suddenly became part of the North and was now permanently closed to him. It was the final nail in his coffin. Yet, even he, twice victimized by the war, could barely recall armistice day, just another moment of enduring hardship. “Wow, I don’t…I don’t…’53…I don’t remember right now. I’m not sure where I heard about that.” This story and others like it open a window into a forgotten war and its painful truths: scorched earth warfare by U.S.-led United Nations Forces that nearly erased life and property in northern Korea, the destruction of irrigation dams threatening the starvation of millions and constituting a war crime, and an outright confession that “over a period of three years or so… killed off — what — 20 percent of the population.” (Air Force General Curtis Lemay). This unrestrained violence occurred a mere 5 years after the U.S.-led partitioning of Korea at the close of WWII and creation of an occupying military government in the ‘liberated” south. The partition exacerbated right wing - left wing animosities among Koreans and heightened the likelihood of all-out civil conflict. A year of North - South border clashes erupted in all-out war on June 25, 1950 abetted in the south by U.S. led UN forces and in the north by China and to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. Five years following the armistice signing the United States introduced tactical nuclear weapons into the South in direct violation of Article II, A, 13, d. of the agreement, marshalled decades of steadily hardening sanctions against the North, established a large permanent military presence in the South – 28,500 soldiers today, and introduced the largest annual war games in the Asian theater. The United States currently holds wartime control of U.S. and South Korean troops under a Combined Forces Command. Collective forgetting of this tortured and ongoing history has consequences. It creates a public susceptible to a popularized narrative of North Korea as a failed, paranoid state ruled by a bizarre, ruthless family dynasty with irrational hatred toward the United States and capable today of threatening the U.S. mainland with ICBMs. Nowhere in this scenario is there any acknowledgement of the seven decades of mutual U.S.-North Korean hostility let alone an unfinished war held in check by a mere military truce. Absent this tortured context, U.S. insistence that North Korea fully disclose and dismantle its nuclear program as a condition for sanctions relief and consideration of a peace agreement appears measured and rational when in fact it amounts to a demand for complete surrender. Total capitulation by North Korea would never have been accepted in 1953 and it will not be today. U.S. administrations have adopted variations of this stance for 68 years with no meaningful progress in resolving hostilities with North Korea. To the contrary the impasse has only intensified to the point where renewed fighting, by accident or intention, would have catastrophic global consequences. The Biden administration has an opportunity to demonstrate a genuinely new era of statesmanship on the world stage by supporting passage of important congressional initiatives calling for a binding peace agreement with North Korea, humanitarian assistance to the North, and support of Korean American reunification with family members in the DPRK. Each offers a meaningful step toward resolving a forgotten truce in a forgotten war that has persisted for nearly seven decades. Failing to adopt them would align the current administration with its 16 predecessors since the armistice signing and sustain the threat of a catastrophic conflict. It should also raise serious questions in a mindful public whether or not framers of U.S. foreign policy have ever seriously entertained ending hostilities with North Korea, a perceived threat that justifies a permanent U.S. military foothold on the Korean peninsula and Asian mainland. This prospect is eminently plausible in light of the Biden administration’s escalating competition with the People’s Republic of China and the geostrategic value of a forward base in Korea. Though little known, the Korean Armistice Agreement and the war it holds in abeyance are a “still-present-past.” Their grip on contemporary U.S. Korea policy remains virtually uncontested because the truths of American self interest in the country’s longest war have been largely erased from public memory. July 27, 2021 is not ‘just another day.’ The current administration and especially the public at large need to take note of this anniversary date and recognize that the tortured history it signifies persists to this day. In fact, the Armistice Agreement itself called for negotiations forthwith to achieve a peace settlement in recognition of the impermanence of a truce. That requisite has languished since 1953. The time to fully abide it is now. Ramsay Liem is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Affiliated Faculty, Center for Human Rights and Social Justice, Boston College and is also president of the Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation that fosters understanding of U.S.-Korea relations.

The Cases of Alex Saab, Meng Wanzhou, Mun Chol Myong By Stansfield Smith | May 31, 2021 | Originally published in Orinoco Tribune The US uses economic sanctions as a weapon against states which choose a development path independent of US global domination. Sanctions can take the form of blocking a nation’s financial and trade transactions, not allowing financial institutions to process them. The US can also freeze the assets of another country. The US uses sanctions as a tool to overthrow governments that do not kow-tow to it. Sanctions are a weapon of war on civilians. They destroy the economy of a country (“make the economy scream”) by causing hyperinflation, unemployment, preventing the import of necessities such as food, medicine, and equipment to keep infrastructure and industries running. They drive capital flight from countries as corporations and financial institutions seek to distance themselves and avoid being targeted themselves. These result in deadly consequences for the civilian population. US sanctions have both a world reach and crippling effect because most trade and currency exchange between countries takes place with US dollars and the allied euro. Since the dollar is the world reserve currency, financial and trade transactions typically go through the US banking system. This enables the US to block money transfers for the smallest transaction and to confiscate billions of dollars held by targeted governments and individuals. By controlling the international financial system, Washington can demand banks in foreign countries accept US restrictions or face sanctions themselves. However, according to the United Nations, US sanctions are unilateral coercive measures that violate international laws. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly called on all states not to recognize or apply unilateral coercive measures, such as those employed by the US. Every year since 1992 it has condemned the US blockade of Cuba; Washington’s response has been to worsen it. The 120 member Non-Aligned Movement has condemned sanctions on Venezuela. Despite this, the US continues to freely flaunt the UN by imposing these unilateral sanctions on a variety of countries, the most severe being against Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela. US sanctions contributed to 40,000 deaths in Venezuela just between 2017 and 2018, and to the deaths of 4,000 North Koreans in 2018, most of them children and pregnant women. In the early 1990s, US sanctions against Iraq led to the deaths of as many as 880,000 children under five due to malnutrition and disease. The US even brazenly threatened to sanction judges of the International Criminal Court if they dare investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan. National Security Advisor John Bolton bullied them: “We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system… We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.” This turned out to be no idle threat. The US recently has recently taken its unilateral coercive measures to an even more ominous level by charging and attempting to extradite foreign businesspeople who have been abiding by international law rather than these US coercive measures. The cases of Alex Saab, a Venezuelan, and Meng Wanzhou from China’s Huawei tech giant and Mun Chol Myong from North Korea are each charged with violating US sanctions even though all are non-US citizens living outside the US, conducting business outside the US. All are being politically persecuted for acting in the interests of their own countries and not the US. The Case of Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab The Obama administration began unilateral sanctions against Venezuela in 2015 with the utterly baseless claim that Venezuela poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the US. As Reuters noted at the time, “Declaring any country a threat to national security is the first step in starting a US sanctions program.” Saab, a Venezuelan businessman, is a special envoy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, holding diplomatic immunity. He was on route to Iran to acquire basic food, medicine and medical equipment much needed for the people of Venezuela. He was detained, in effect kidnapped, in Cape Verde on June 12, 2020 during a stopover, and has been held since that time, first in prison and now under house arrest. Saab points out that his “illegal detention is entirely politically motivated.” The US charged Saab with money laundering. “Money laundering” in this and the two other cases, means nothing more than making international trade transactions, which must generally pass through the US controlled SWIFT financial system which processes all dollar transactions. In this way, the US can impose its unilateral sanctions on the trade any country undertakes with nations the US sanctions or blockades, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, or Russia. ”Money laundering” is the charge or threat the US uses to enforce its unilateral coercive measures on the rest of the world. Saab explained, “I have worked since 2015 to ensure the supply of basic food and medicine and other items to supply the government’s social welfare food program (CLAP). Since April 2018 I have been working as a servant of the State, as a Special Envoy and not as a private businessman.” In other words, he was arrested for not adhering to US sanctions on his people in his missions of buying food for the Venezuelan people suffering under these sanctions. Saab said in a recent interview, “For seven months…from the first day of my abduction, they tortured me and pressured me to sign voluntary extradition declarations and bear false witness against my government.” He refused, stating “President Maduro has shown incredible leadership in the face of unprecedented sanctions and dirty political tricks from the US. I am honored to be able to assist President Maduro in any way I can, as he seeks to ensure the well-being of the people of Venezuela.” In jail he was kept in the dark for 23 hours a day, “lying on the concrete [floor].” He partially lost his eyesight. “I was forbidden to speak to anyone inside the prison, and everyone else was forbidden to speak to me… I have lost 25 kilos [55 pounds].” On March 25, 2021, courts in Switzerland, determining there was no evidence that Saab committed any irregularity, formally closed its two-year investigation against him for money laundering through Swiss banks. Soon after the Swiss statement, on March 31, the US Treasury Department withdrew the sanctions that President Trump had issued on a group of companies allegedly linked to Alex Saab. While the Cape Verdean authorities approved his extradition to the US, the court of justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), declared his detention illegal and therefore he could not be extradited. African Bar Association likewise ruled that the diplomatic envoy should not be incarcerated. Nevertheless, the US under President Biden demands Cape Verde keep Saab under house arrest pending extradition. The case of North Korean businessman Mun Chol Myong For the first time in history, on March 20, 2021 a North Korean businessman Mun Chol Myong was extradited to the United States from Malaysia to face charges of “money laundering,” “conspiracy,” and supplying goods to North Korea in violation of US law. Mun was arrested in Malaysia in May 2019 shortly after a Washington DC federal judge issued a warrant for his arrest. He spent nearly two years fighting extradition, pointing out that the case was politically motivated, used as leverage in possible nuclear negotiations between the US and North Korea. His actual “crime,” in the eyes of the US rulers, was supplying needed goods to North Korea in a manner that circumvented the US sanctions and US instigated UN sanctions. The US authorities, as of March 22, 2021, have not indicated what goods he is said to have exported to North Korea. According to an indictment by the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Mun and his unnamed “co-conspirators” used “front” companies and bank accounts registered to false names on behalf of North Korean entities that were barred from SWIFT. The FBI claims that by concealing that their transactions were for the benefit of North Korea, Mun deceived US financial institutions into processing more than $1.5 million in transactions which they would have otherwise not processed. John Demers, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division commented, “He is the first North Korean intelligence operative [the US calls North Korean diplomats and international businesspeople “intelligence operatives”]—and the second ever foreign intelligence operative—to have been extradited to the United States for violation of our laws.” Note that a top Justice Department official is claiming foreigners who have never been in the US can be extradited here for violating “our laws.” Demers then ludicrously claims Mun’s export of goods to North Korea was a national security threat to US people: “We will continue to use the long reach of our laws to protect the American people from sanctions evasion and other national security threats.” Assistant Director Alan Kohler Jr. of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, added ominously, ”We hope he will be the first of many.” The US has enforced sanctions, or blockade, against North Korea since 1950, at the start of the US war on Korea. The sanctions have been designed to cut the country off from international trade and cripple its economic and social development. The US claims present-day sanctions were enacted because of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, which is a perfectly legitimate self-defense program by a country targeted by the US’ own nuclear weapons. North Korean Charge d’Affaires Kim Yu Song in Malaysia condemned the extradition as an “unpardonable crime” and the product of a US-led sanction program, “which seeks to deprive our state of its sovereignty, peaceful existence and development,” and is “isolating and suffocating” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The Case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou The most infamous (1) of the three cases is that of Meng Wanzhou, who has been Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Chair of the Board of Huawei for the past 25 years. She faces charges of bank fraud for allegedly misleading HSBC, a British bank, about Huawei business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break illegal US sanctions against Iran. On August 22, 2018, a US District Court in New York issued an arrest warrant for Meng, and Canada’s RCMP then arrested her in Vancouver on December 1, 2018. She has now been under house arrest there for almost two and half years. The Chinese government has called the detention “lawless, reasonless and ruthless, and it is extremely vicious.” The Trump administration relied on two Reuters articles in 2012 and 2013 to accuse Huawei of violating these US sanctions on Iran. The US imposed sanctions shortly after Iran’s 1979 revolution. The present US sanctions are claimed to be in response to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, even though the country has not been developing nuclear weapons. All UN-approved measures against Iran were ended with the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Agreement) of 2015, and the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran was in compliance with the deal. Thus, the justification for US sanctions on Iran has no basis and violates international law, because the sanctions that Meng is alleged to have circumvented are illegal according to the UN Security Council. Moreover, both the US and its principal Middle East ally Israel possess stockpiles of nuclear weapons. As with North Korea, Iran would have the right to protect itself from US or Israeli nuclear attack by developing its own weapons. It is the height of hypocrisy that the only country that has used nuclear weapons actually sanctions other countries for allegedly developing them. K.J. Noh wrote: “Most people understand that Meng is not guilty of anything other than being the daughter of Ren Zeng Fei, the founder of Huawei. Huawei, as a global technological powerhouse, represents Chinese power and Chinese technical prowess, which the United States is hell-bent on destroying. In a maneuver reminiscent of medieval or colonial warfare, the US has explicitly offered to release her if China capitulates on a trade deal—making clear that she is being held hostage. This constitutes a violation of the UN Convention on Hostages.” In court Meng’s defense pointed out, first, that the US government has deliberately misstated evidence and withheld evidence from the Canadian Court. Second, the Trump administration is using her as a “bargaining chip.” Third, Meng’s defense denied Washington’s jurisdiction to indict a Chinese national for her activities outside of US soil. “There is no connection… None of [Meng’s] alleged conduct occurred either in whole or in part in the United States. Nor did they have any effect there,” said her lawyers. It is also highly unusual for Washington to pursue criminal charges for sanctions violations against an individual rather than a corporation. Where an executive is carrying out corporate policy, one would expect individuals not to be charged, rather, the corporation would be fined. As Jeffrey Sacks noted: JP Morgan Chase paid $88.3 million in fines in 2011 for violating US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody. And JP Morgan Chase was hardly alone in violating US sanctions. Since 2010, the following major financial institutions paid fines for violating US sanctions: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan Chase, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans-Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered, and Wells Fargo. None of the CEOs or CFOs of these sanction-busting banks was arrested and taken into custody for these violations. In all of these cases, the corporation—rather than an individual manager—was held accountable. The likelihood is that Saab, Mun, or Meng would receive about as “fair” a trial as that inflicted on the Cuban 5 or Simon Trinidad. These are political cases, disguised as criminal cases, with the crime being violation of US sanctions laws, illegal in a UN court, by non-US citizens living outside the US. Consequently, ignoring US sanctions would be the legal course of action; adhering to them is illegal. The US is flaunting recognized world law by charging the three for legal business between nations that violates illegal US measures. All three represent the interests of governments the US seeks to crush, and all three detentions are the equivalent of hostage taking. These cases open the door for the United States to charge and extradite any person in the world for “organized crime, money laundering or financing of terrorism,” when they engage in perfectly legal international trade which the US declares violate its own unilateral sanctions on countries. As UN Human Rights rapporteur Alfred de Zayas wrote, powerful “rogue States” such as the US, “deliberately… breach international law and do it with impunity.” Note (1) The first was Xu Yanjun, allegedly a member of Chinese Ministry of State Security, who was arrested in Belgium. Stansfield Smith is a Chicago based anti-imperialist activist. He was active for over a decade in the Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5. His work is now on ChicagoALBASolidarity.wordpress.com. He has written on Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and on North Korea for Counterpunch and others.

By Simone Chun | May 21, 2021 | Originally published in Truthout Noam Chomsky recently argued that the Biden administration’s foreign policy remains committed to maintaining U.S. global hegemony through sanctions and nuclear weapons. Nowhere else in the world is this more evident than in the Korean Peninsula, where the U.S. is pressuring its “ally” South Korea into the front lines of a long-simmering confrontation with China, and where a nuclear standoff between the U.S. and an increasingly isolated North Korea remains a real possibility. On the early morning of May 13, residents of the central farm town of Seongju, South Korea, joined in protest against the deployment of the latest battery of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in their backyard. Chained together to form a human barrier, they physically blocked the road to the nearby U.S. base. Two thousand South Korean police forcibly dispersed them — the second time in a month they had clashed with residents protesting the missile system — injuring dozens, including women and elderly farmers. In the wake of the ensuing public relations fiasco, South Korea’s Defense Minister reportedly admitted that the forcible removal of the villagers blocking the base was in response to a request by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. The South Korean government had hoped that acceding to Austin’s request would help secure President Joe Biden’s support for resuming the inter-Korean peace process. The timing of this incident, just a week before South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s planned May 21 visit to Washington for his first summit with Biden, may foreshadow what is to come. Moon believes it is time to take action on North Korea, and is expected to press Biden to engage in diplomacy with Pyongyang. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the stalled denuclearization talks with the North are expected to top the summit’s agenda, odds of a breakthrough at this point seems slim. Biden will likely tout the U.S.-South Korea alliance, which is the cornerstone of U.S. regional containment policy, and whose framework, according to historian Bruce Cumings, is based on two pillars: isolating North Korea from the rest of the world while pressuring South Korea to serve as a forward base for the U.S.’s ongoing East Asian operations. This “alliance” reduces South Korea to the status of an occupied frontline outpost, saddling it with the burgeoning cost of supporting the massive U.S. military presence on its soil, depriving it of the authority to craft independent state policy and subordinating its military to U.S. command in the event of conflict. Framed by the neocolonial subtext that favors maintenance of this one-sided status quo, inter-Korean diplomacy is dismissed as a high-risk endeavor, leaving the two Koreas in a state of perpetual war. This containment policy also manufactures and perpetuates the myth of the North Korean threat, a decades-long adjunct of U.S. domestic politics accorded credibility in great part by a relentless propaganda campaign. Like Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy, Biden’s priority appears to be to subsume South Korea within global network of strategic U.S. outposts under the mantle of multilateralism, forcing a permanent military occupation on its people in order to further hem in China. Biden’s Policy Centers on Containing the “Enemy” The first pillar of containment that Cumings describes is clearly evident in Biden’s new North Korea policy, which was announced earlier this month after a lengthy review. Drafted by top-level officials with ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex, the administration’s plan is being presented as a “calibrated, practical approach to diplomacy with the North with the goal of eliminating the threat to the United States.” Despite minor tactical differences, however, Biden’s policy amounts to little more than a repackaging of the failed approaches of previous U.S. administrations toward Pyongyang. There has been no mention of security guarantees for North Korea, implementing a peace treaty to end the 70-year-old war or reassessing sanctions that primarily target the civilian sector. In fact, in spite of North Korea’s unilateral 2018 moratorium suspending nuclear weapons tests, Washington has not only refused to reciprocate, but has added hundreds of more brutal sanctions against the North. A senior U.S. official told the Washington Post that the Biden administration intends to “maintain sanctions pressure” for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, further eroding any realistic prospect for achieving a diplomatic solution, the Strategic Competition Act currently under consideration in Congress recommends maintaining “sustained maximum economic pressure” against North Korea indefinitely. Adding to the chorus of hostility, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the objective of any talks would be “complete denuclearization,” adding that “the diplomatic ball is in [North Korea’s] court.” It goes without saying that the United States does not plan to commit to a reciprocal abandonment of its own nuclear weapons as part of any such negotiations. Biden’s policy amounts to little more than a repackaging of the failed approaches of previous U.S. administrations toward Pyongyang. While ratcheting up tensions with the North has done little to enhance prospects for diplomacy, it has enabled an administration heavily influenced by the U.S. military-industrial complex to rationalize an $18 billion defense package to develop a new interceptor program nominally designed to counter North Korean and Iranian missiles. U.S. Still Won’t Allow South Korea to Make Its Own Decisions The second pillar Cumings describes, the coercion of South Korea to subordinate itself to American national security interests, was brazenly summed up by former president Trump’s declaration that Seoul can do “nothing without our approval.” While the present administration may not trumpet this viewpoint quite as openly, it is clearly evident in Biden’s North Korea policy. Much of the current administration’s foreign policy team consists of Obama-era hardliners, including Secretary of State Blinken, who served as deputy secretary and national security adviser under Obama and has long advocated anti-China policies. It is therefore worthwhile to review the Obama administration’s legacy of pressuring South Korea to implement policies detrimental to North-South amity in furtherance of Washington’s broader anti-China strategy. In the aftermath of Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test in 2016, the Obama administration pressured South Korea to close the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where some 120 South Korean manufacturers had employed over 50,000 North Koreans for over a decade. That same year, the administration pressured South Korea into joining the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), which mandates that the U.S.’s most hardened East Asian outposts, South Korea and Japan, share defense technology and tactical strategy with the U.S. in support of wartime military operations in the East Asian theater. Additionally, South Korea is still subordinated to the OPCON (Operational Control) provisions first instituted by the U.S. during the Korean War. These provisions, which specify “authority to perform functions of command over subordinate forces,” dictate that the South Korean military may operate independently only in peacetime, and is subject to full U.S. control in the event of war. The Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), a nonprofit and nonpartisan international research and policy organization, notes that “apart from South Korea, only fragile states like Afghanistan and Iraq have entirely put their forces under foreign command in modern times.” While OPCON is nominally scheduled to be returned to the South Korean military next year, the ISDP bluntly states that the notion that “OPCON will be completed [in 2022] is not a given. Several significant roadblocks can impede or completely stop the transfer’s progress in the coming years.” In this context, the GSOMIA, lauded by former Secretary of State Mark T. Esper as “an effective tool for the United States, Korea and Japan … in times of war,” represents an additional incremental erosion of South Korean sovereignty. Under this agreement, South Korea is not only obliged to surrender military control to the U.S. in the event of war, but it is also forced to throw in its lot with Japan, with which it is still at odds over acceptance of responsibility for crimes committed by Japanese troops during their brutal 35-year occupation of Korea. For this reason, the majority of South Koreans oppose the GSOMIA as a further detriment to their sovereignty. In 2017, the Obama administration forced through the initial installation of the controversial THAAD anti-missile system despite nationwide protests and fierce opposition by local residents, unleashing a five-year war on the small rural community in which the battery was deployed. Biden is widely expected to follow Obama’s footsteps and pressure President Moon Jae-in into the installation of additional THAAD batteries as well as the forward deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missiles on South Korean soil. In March of this year, the Biden administration, following in the footsteps of its predecessors, pressured Seoul into bearing a heavier burden for hosting the 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea through a defense cost-sharing deal. In addition to being bound to spending billions every year on U.S. military hardware (South Korea is the 4th largest importer of U.S. weapons), Koreans will have to make excessive contributions to the living costs of the U.S. troops stationed on their soil, covering 92 percent of the $10.7 billion cost of the new U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek, and providing additional rent-free land for the network of U.S. military bases and exclusive military leisure and entertainment facilities throughout South Korea. In his summit with Moon, Biden has an unprecedented opportunity to end decades of hostility, division and occupation. Noting that Washington continues to pressure Seoul into purchasing American weapons and bearing the costs of its garrisons without making any genuine effort to resolve tensions on the Korean Peninsula, former presidential adviser Moon Chung-in stressed the need to free the Korean peninsula from its “geopolitical trap” by ending U.S.-South Korea alliance in its present form. It’s Time to End the Containment Policy To sum up, the basic framework of the U.S.’s foreign policy in the Korean Peninsula has remained unchanged throughout successive U.S. administrations. Its goal remains to “contain the North and to restrain the South.” Unless Biden changes this approach, his North Korea policy will be a non-starter. Forcing South Korea to join an anti-China bloc under the framework of the U.S. Indo-Pacific plan will alienate the majority of South Koreans who do not feel a clear and present threat from China, their premier trade partner, and forcing yet another Cold War on a nation that has yet to overcome the legacy of destruction and division left by the last one. The alternative is to end the root cause of the decades-long stalemate — the U.S.’s containment policy. According to a recent survey, over 70 percent of Americans support a peace agreement with North Korea, and an even number of South Koreans support lifting sanctions against the North in favor of diplomacy. Meanwhile, 73 percent of South Koreans believe that Biden should restart talks with North Korea. In his summit with Moon, Biden has an unprecedented opportunity to end decades of hostility, division and occupation. By taking the historic step of supporting inter-Korean engagement and reconciliation and working toward a peace treaty to finally end the 70-year-old Korean War, Biden could help free Koreans from the tragic cycle of division, occupation and hostility that continues to define them as a nation. Dr. Simone Chun has taught at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, 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 Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea’s steering committee. She participated in an international women’s delegation of peace to Korea organized by Women Cross DMZ and Nobel Women’s Initiative. Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.