After half a century of Pentagon war crimes
Why U.S. wants 'regime change' in North Korea
By Pat Chin
The global movement against war on Iraq keeps growing. At
the same time, the people in South Korea continue to demand an
end to U.S. occupation of their land and the right to live in
friendship with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in
the north.
It is in this context that the Bush administration has been
forced, at least for the moment, to moderate its bellicose
language against the DPRK.
The DPRK has been demanding direct talks with the U.S.
government over its defense and energy concerns, even as the
Bush regime is preoccupied with preparing a colossal war of
neocolonial conquest on Iraq. The North Koreans say they won't
back down from their plans to resume building a nuclear reactor
until Washington agrees to sit down and talk about signing a
permanent peace treaty, with a pledge that it won't attack the
country and won't obstruct normalization between north and
south.
Bush only last year had virtually threatened war on North
Korea when, in his State of the Union address, he called it
part of an "axis of evil" that had to be stopped, through
pre-emptive military action, from using "weapons of mass
destruction." Iraq was also cast as part of this evil troika,
along with Iran.
The Koreans had every reason to be alarmed. From 1950-53
they had suffered a catastrophic invasion by the U.S. The
Korean War was halted by a cease-fire armistice, but there has
never been a peace treaty. Thus, the White House can claim the
legal authority to attack the DPRK at any time without consent
from Congress or the United Nations Security Council--not that
legality has ever stopped the war machine.
The idea that socialist North Korea presents a threat to the
world is ridiculous. Born from the Korean people's decades-long
struggle against Japanese colonialism, it is the DPRK that has
been under nuclear threat from the U.S. for more than 50
years.
In this period, the U.S. has manufactur ed nearly 70,000
nuclear weapons, at the cost of $5 trillion. (See the book
"Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear
Weapons Since 1940, edited by Stephen I. Schwartz.) It has
deployed thousands of them within reach of the Korean
peninsula.
But last November, when the DPRK raised the prospect of
resuming its own nuclear program, the Bush White House canceled
oil shipments to that energy-starved country and threatened
economic sanctions. Now, it has dispatched U.S. Deputy
Secretary of State James Kelly to the Korean peninsula in a
rush of diplomatic activity, while insisting there will be no
negotiations with the DPRK.
The crisis for the Bush administration came to a head after
North Korea said it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non
proliferation Treaty--a pact aimed primarily at preventing
smaller, oppressed nations from acquiring the means to defend
themselves--and expelling inspectors from the International
Atomic Energy Agency.
On Jan. 10, North Korea's UN ambassador, Pak Gil Yon, denied
that the DPRK is producing nuclear weapons but stressed that
the socialist state, which has been under nuclear threat for
over 50 years, is keeping that option open as a sovereign right
of self-defense.
Back in October 1994, the DPRK had stopped construction on
two graphite nuclear reactors and allowed UN inspectors into
the country as part of an "Agreed Framework" between the DPRK
and the U.S. government. The Clinton White House--which claimed
that the graphite reactors could be used to produce plutonium
for nuclear weapons--agreed, along with South Korea, Japan and
the European Union, to help North Korea build two light-water
reactors for generating electricity. It was supposed to keep
the country supplied with fuel oil until the new reactors were
online.
The Clinton administration had erroneously assumed that
North Korea was about to collapse after the demise of the
Soviet Union and years of severe weather that disrupted
agricultural production and the food supply. Eight years later,
there's been no collapse. But neither has the U.S.-led
consortium built the new reactors. Then, last November, at the
start of the usual bone-chilling Korean winter, Washington and
Tokyo announced they were stopping all oil shipments to North
Korea.
This is what led the DPRK to declare its sovereign right to
resume construction on the original reactors, which the Bush
administration propaganda machine presents as a threat to the
entire region.
What was the Korean War about?
Many in the U.S. are familiar with the anti-colonial nature
of the Vietnamese struggle and the brutal atrocities committed
by the Pentagon against national liberation fighters and
civilians alike. But little is known here about the roots of
the Korean War. There was no big anti-war movement after the
U.S. invaded Korea. The conflict erupted during the height of
the Cold War, when fierce McCarthyite witch hunts left
progressives on the defensive.
Massacres like the one at Vietnam's Mylai village, as well
as widespread torture, merciless carpet bombing and the use of
napalm and other chemical weapons, left 2 million Vietnamese
dead. However, the communist-led anti-colonial forces finally
triumphed.
In Korea, too, there was a long struggle for national
liberation. The movement against colonial domination started
after Japan annexed the peninsula in 1910. A liberation force
developed in the 1930s led by Kim Il Sung, who later became the
first president of the DPRK.
In 1945, after World War II ended in Japan's surrender,
Washington hurried troops to South Korea under the guise of
protecting the population. But the real reason was to prevent
the liberation forces in the south, which had widespread
support, from taking power as they had done in the north. It
was, in fact, a bid to establish a beachhead near China while
protecting the class rule of the south Korean landlords and
merchants, who had collaborated with the brutal Japanese
occupation.
The Pentagon occupied South Korea, and later South Vietnam,
to push back anti-colonial movements there led by communists
who--horrors!--had won broad support by addressing the problems
of the peasantry and the poor.
As with the Vietnam War, the Korean War was a continuation
of an earlier anti-colonial struggle--the Koreans against the
Japanese, the Vietnamese against the French. After defeating
these colonial predators, both countries then faced new
aggression in the form of the U.S. military machine, which
cloaked itself in democratic phrases.
The Korean War, which broke out in 1950, saw U.S. troops and
forces of the Syngman Rhee dictatorship in the south pitted
against the Korean People's Army and southern partisans who
fought to free their country of foreign domination.
But while the U.S. claimed to be defending the civilians in
the south, it in fact carried out heartless bloodbaths wherever
it suspected the people were sympathetic to the revolution in
the north. Fighter jets and battleships off the coast
deliberately shelled and strafed civilians--many of them
refugees. Many homes were burnt to the ground.
During this time, the U.S. also mercilessly bombed the
north. All buildings over two stories high were systematically
leveled. People were forced to live and work in caves or
underground shelters. No town was left untouched.
Germ warfare was also unleashed against the DPRK, South
Korea and the People's Republic of China, which had sent 1
million volunteers to Korea to help repel the invasion.
Lee Wha Rang wrote on Jan. 27, 1999, that "At least 36 of
the captured American flyers 'confessed' to dropping biological
bombs on targets in Korea and China. This lot included Col.
Frank H. Schwable, chief of staff, 1st Marine Air Wing. These
officers were repatriated in 1953 and recanted their
confessions soon after their return, under threat of
court-martial.
"The confessors disclosed where the biological weapons were
manufactured (Terre Haute, Ind.), the command structure of germ
warfare (Unit 406 based in Japan), types of germs (the types
developed by Japanese germ warfare units) and details on the
bombing tactics." (www. kimsoft.com/1997/us-germx.htm. See
also, "The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets of the
Early Cold War and Korea," by Stephen Endicott and Edward
Hagerman.)
After three years, fierce resistance stalled the war. At
least 3 million Koreans had been killed, 1 million of them
non-combatants.
Massacres of civilians
One of the best-known civilian massacres in the south took
place in the township of Nogun-ri shortly after the start of
the Korean War in 1950. The Associated Press broke the story of
the atrocity on Jan. 12, 1999, after interviewing survivors and
GIs. The U.S. soldiers said they had fired on refugees under
official orders.
The slaughter started when U.S. fighter jets strafed a large
group of refugees fleeing an area of heavy fighting. About 100
people were deliberately machine-gunned. Another 300 who sought
shelter under a railway underpass were killed by ground troops
over the next three days. U.S. military occupation of the south
kept this story suppressed for almost 50 years.
Civilian deaths were the target of an investigation in May
2002 by the Korea Truth Commission. "We traveled hundreds of
miles all over South Korea," explains a KTC report dated June
23, 2002. "At each of 12 sites we visited, we heard survivors
recount their painful experiences as if they had happened
yesterday. We were also shown structural damage to buildings
and tunnels. And we investigated three mass gravesites."
(www.iacenter.org/ktc_delegation-rpt. htm)
In the small village of Sacheon in Gyeongsangnam-do
province, for example, 100 people were killed and another 100
injured on Aug. 2, 1950, after four U.S. fighter jets fired on
hundreds of refugees who had gathered along a riverbank.
In Chongtong-ri village, members of the KTC delegation were
told of another August attack. Four U.S. fighter jets bombed
and strafed the entire village, killing 53, injuring 40, and
incinerating 100 houses. One 81-year-old survivor asked the
delegation angrily, "Why has it taken 50 years? We want
compensation for our suffering! When are we getting it?"
In South Korea's Ham Ahn County alone over 30 massacre sites
have been located. There are hundreds all over the
peninsula--in cities, villages, towns, under railroad trestles,
on plains and in the mountains.
A delegation from North Korea, which was prepared to testify
about the even greater destruction meted out there by the
Pentagon, was prevented by Washington from attending the June
23, 2001, Korea International War Crimes Tribunal in New York
that heard testimony about these massacres. At that event, the
judges found the U.S. guilty of war crimes against the Korean
people. (http://www.iacenter.org/ktc
verdict.htm, Jan. 12, 2003)
Although many Koreans have known the truth for decades, it's
been only over the past few years that they have dared to speak
about the murderous carnage committed during the Korean War by
U.S. imperialism.
Thanks to the courageous work of groups like the Korea Truth
Commission, a voluminous mountain of convincing evidence has
been gathered. This, coupled with the revelation that official
orders were given to fire on refugees, exposes the lie that the
U.S. invaded Korea to protect the South Korean people. It
instead confirms the racist and imperialist nature of the
carnage, in which all Koreans were seen as potential
enemies.
Today, people around the world are recognizing that the Bush
administration's threats to attack Iraq are motivated by
imperialism's designs on the oil riches of the region.
Tomorrow, the threats could shift to Korea, but the underlying
causes will remain the same: Corporate America's insatiable
appetite for domination and control of the world's resources,
and its fear and hatred for those who resist its dictates.
Reprinted from the Jan. 23, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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