A peace treaty with Korea?

It has been quite clear for some time now that the people living in the southern half of Korea, which is still occupied by 37,000 U.S. troops more than five decades after the Korean War, want those troops out and want an end to the official state of war that still exists between the U.S. and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north.

Yet, in the fictional world created by Washington, its troops remain to “protect” the people of South Korea from the north.

Furthermore, no politician from the south is supposed to say anything in public contradicting this fiction.

So when Roh Moo-Hyun, the president of South Korea, violated this unwritten rule recently, it was a major “diplomatic incident.”

Roh met with George W. Bush at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Summit, held in Australia during the first week of September.

At a photo op after their private meeting, Roh asked Bush to state publicly his position on signing a peace treaty with the DPRK. A visibly miffed Bush answered that an end to the Korean War—which is still officially in force—would come after “Kim Jong Il verifiably gets rid of his weapons programs and his weapons.” Then, as Roh pressed him to be “clearer,” Bush snapped that the session was over.

A number of media, including the U.S. business news service Bloomberg, viewed Roh’s audacity as due to the fact that he faces an election soon and was playing to the audience at home—which was a tacit admission that most people in South Korea want the U.S. to sign a peace treaty and get out. Roh has also faced strong opposition at home for going along with the Bush administration and sending South Korean troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush’s logic—that what is holding up a treaty is the north’s development of nuclear weapons—doesn’t make a bit of sense. Washington has had 54 years to sign an agreement to end the war. During all but the last couple of years, the DPRK had no nuclear weapons and no program to make any. It was constantly being threatened with attack by the most powerful nuclear power on earth.

A couple of years ago, the DPRK announced that its scientists had been able to produce a small number of bombs. The U.S., by contrast, has some 10,000 nuclear warheads on ships, submarines, planes and bases all over the world.

Furthermore, the DPRK has every reason to need a strong defense. It is the aggrieved party—it was invaded by the U.S. in 1950 and for three years the Pentagon bombed the DPRK mercilessly to try to break the country. But its leaders stood firm.

Yet, according to Bush, the country that was invaded, divided and occupied must dismantle its defenses, while the invader continues to wage wars anywhere it wants. Such an argument comes from the height of imperialist arrogance.

In fact, shortly before Bush spoke the DPRK had officially invited Washington to send observers to inspect its nuclear facilities and see that it is indeed dismantling its weapons program, in accord with an agreement made in February at six-party talks.

Some Asian media—especially in South Korea and China—are interpreting what happened at the APEC forum as confirmation that in fact Washington has shifted its position to one of being ready to talk about a peace treaty. But Bush doesn’t want to say publicly what his negotiators say privately.

As much as Bush wants to make it appear that the ball is in Pyongyang’s court, the opposite is true and the world knows it. What is holding up a change on the Korean peninsula that would allow the people of the north and south to collaborate amicably and move toward reuniting all the families torn apart for at least two generations is the U.S. government’s refusal to give up its imperial ambitions.