Why DPRK Withdrew from the Armistice Agreement? Who’s Belligerent? NK? US?

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Why DPRK Withdrew from the Armistice Agreement? Who’s Belligerent? NK? US?

38th ParallelKorean Armistice Agreementus imperialism

Stephen Gowans (4M).- Why has North Korea withdrawn from an armistice agreement that has kept overt hostilities on the Korean peninsula at bay since 1953? Does the withdrawal portend an imminent North Korean aggression? Hardly. North Korea is in no position to launch an attack on its Korean neighbour, or on the United States, at least not one that it would survive.

North Korean forces are dwarfed by the US and South Korean militaries in size, sophistication and fire-power. The withdrawal serves, instead, as a signal of North Korean resolve to defend itself against growing US and South Korean harassment, both military and economic.

US provocations 

For decades, North Korea has been subjected to the modern form of the siege. .The aim of the siege is to reduce the enemy to such a state of starvation and deprivation that they open the gate, perhaps killing their leaders in the process and throw themselves on the mercy of the besiegers. [1]

North Korea withstood the siege, and even flourished, during the years it was able to trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’s socialist countries. But with the demise of Soviet socialism, the country has bent, but not broken, under the pressure of US-led sanctions of mass destruction.

Sanctions against North Korea are multi-form, and include a trade blockade and financial isolation. Significantly, no country in history has been menaced by such wide-ranging sanctions for so long. North Korea is, as then US president George W. Bush once remarked, the most sanctioned nation on earth. [2] Sanctions, military harassment (which I.ll come back to in a moment), and the US nuclear threat.

Washington has threatened North Korea with nuclear annihilation on countless occasions. [3] [It has] forced the North Koreans to bulk up militarily, build ballistic missiles, and test nuclear devices in order to survive.

Led by Washington, the UN Security Council has authored a number of resolutions to deny North Korea rights of self-defense and other rights that other countries are free to exercise: The rights to build ballistic missiles; to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty; to launch satellites; to sell arms abroad; and to transfer nuclear technology to other countries.

These are rights that every permanent member of the UN Security Council exercises freely. They are also rights that many other countries enjoy with impunity.

On top of besieging North Korea, Washington and South Korea have for decades kept up a campaign of unrelenting military harassment in the form of regular war games. The latest war games began March 1 and will last for two months.

Undertaken as practice in mobilizing US troops and military hardware from abroad for rapid deployment to the Korean peninsula, the war games this year have activated not only US and South Korean military, but British, Canadian, and Australian forces, as well.

While labelled “defensive,” the war games force the North Koreans onto a permanent war footing. It can never be clear to North Korean generals whether the latest US-South Korean mobilization is a drill or preparation for an invasion. The effect is to force Pyongyang to maintain its military on high alert, an exhausting and expensive exercise.

The view propagated by Western officials and, in train, the Western mass media, is that the sanctions are aimed at correcting North Korea’s bad behavior and that the war games are carried out to deter North Korean aggression. But what’s called “bad behavior,” [i.e.,] “the building of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles” is Pyongyang’s reaction to the US-led permanent state of siege.

A tiny country with a military budget dwarfed by South Korea’s and the United States’ [4] is not credibly an offensive threat to Washington and Seoul, but the United States and South Korea are unquestionably offensive threats to the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.)

After the UN maneuvered the Security Council to slap still more sanctions on North Korea, and began its latest round of war games, the Wall Street Journal, revealing its chauvinist leanings, alerted the world that “North Korea [had] moved to further stoke tensions with South Korea.” [5] On the contrary, the United States had further stoked tensions with North Korea.

A dead letter

There are three reasons to regard the armistice agreement as existing in form alone, and not substance.

First, the purpose of the agreement was to set the stage for a permanent peace. Despite North Korea repeatedly asking Washington to enter into a peace agreement, none has been struck. After one North Korean entreaty for peace, then US secretary of state Colin Powell said .”We don’t do non-aggression pacts or treaties, things of that nature.” [6]

Second, the agreement was to be followed by the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the Korean peninsula. The Chinese withdrew, as did most members of the UN forces. But US forces, which have remained in South Korea for the last 60 years, have become a permanent fixture on the peninsula. Incredibly, South Korean forces remain under US command.

Third, the agreement prohibits “the introduction into Korea of reinforcing combat aircraft, armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition.” The US violated the agreement by introducing nuclear weapons into South Korea in 1958. And it’s questionable whether the war games-related deployment of massive amounts of US military hardware to Korea doesn’t violate the agreement, as well.

What Washington wants from North Korea 

On March 11, U.S. national security adviser Tom Donilon announced publicly that what Washington wants from North Korea is open markets and the country’s integration into the US-led system of global capitalist exploitation. At least, that’s what he meant when he said, “I urge North Korea’s leaders to reflect on Burma’s experience.” [7]

Burma (Myanmar) turned its self-directed, locally-, and largely publicly-owned economy into a capitalist playground for foreign investors.

When Myanmar’s military took power in a 1962 coup, it nationalized most industries and brought the bulk of the economy under government control, which is the way it stayed until three years ago. Major utilities were state-owned and health-care and education were publicly provided. Private hospitals and private schools were unheard of.

Ownership of land and local companies was limited to the country’s citizens. Companies were required to hire Myanmar workers. And the central bank was answerable to the government. In other words, Myanmar’s economy, inasmuch as it markets, labor and natural resources were used for the country’s self-directed development, was very much like North Korea’s.

And like North Korea, Myanmar was an object of US hostility, subject to sanctions, and targeted by US-orchestrated low-level warfare.

Bowing to US pressure, Myanmar’s government began in the last few years to sell off government buildings, its port facilities, its national airline, mines, farmland, the country’s fuel distribution network, and soft drink, cigarette and bicycle factories.

The doors to the country’s publicly-owned health care and education systems were thrown open, and private investors were invited in. A new law was drawn up to give more independence to the central bank, making it answerable to its own inflation control targets, rather than directly to the government.

To top it all off, a foreign-investment law was drafted to allow foreigners to control local companies and land, permit the entry of foreign telecom companies and foreign banks, allow 100 percent repatriation of profits, and exempt foreign investors from paying taxes for up to five years. What’s more, foreign enterprises would be allowed to import skilled workers, and wouldn’t be required to hire locally.

With Myanmar signaling its willingness to turn over its economy to outside investors, US hostility abated and the sanctions were lifted. President Obama dispatched then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to meet with Myanmar’s leaders, the first US secretary of state to visit in more than 50 years.

William Hague soon followed, the first British foreign minister to visit since 1955. Other foreign ministers beat their own paths to the door of the country’s military junta, seeking to establish ties with the now foreign investment-friendly government on behalf of their own corporations, investors, and banks.

And business organizations sent their own delegations, including four major Japanese business organizations, all looking to cash in on Myanmar’s new opening. Announcing the easing of US sanctions, then US secretary of state Hilary Clinton enthused, “Today we say to American business: Invest in Burma!” [8]

That, then, is what the United States wants for North Korea: for a US secretary of state to one day announce. Today we say to American business: “Invest in North Korea!”

Effects, not causes 

US Propaganda. Reversing Reality, Dehumanizing the Enemy.

In the US view, North Korea is a militaristic, aggressive state, bent on provoking South Korea and its American overlords and setting the peninsula aflame, for reasons that are never made clear. Pyongyang must, therefore, be deterred by sanctions and displays of US military’s resolve.

Yet North Korea has never pursued an aggressive foreign policy, hasn’t the means to do so, and unlike the United States and South Korea, has never sent troops into battle on foreign soil. (South Korea hired out its military to the United States as a mercenary force to battle nationalists seeking independence in Vietnam.)

By contrast, the DPRK’s militarism, expressed in its Songun (military first) policy, is defensive, not aggressive, mercenary or imperialist.

It is a misconception that the incursion of North Korean forces into the south in 1950, marking the formal start of the Korean War, was an invasion across an international border.

The boundary dividing the two Koreas had been drawn unilaterally by the United States in 1945, and never agreed to by Koreans.

The Korean War was a civil war in which sovereigntists, and collaborators with the Japanese, now with the Americans, battled over control of their country, aided by foreign militaries. Had the United States not intervened the country would have been re-united under a socialist government committed to independence.

The US view, far from providing an accurate account of North Korea and its relationship with the United States, turns reality on its head.

The reality is that US public policy, including foreign policy, is largely shaped by corporations, banks, and elite investors, through lobbying, the funding of think tanks, and placement of corporate officers, Wall Street lawyers, and ambitious politicians dependent on the wealthy for campaign financing and lucrative post-political job opportunities, into key positions in the state.

US foreign policy seeks to protect and enlarge the interests of the class that shapes it, by safeguarding existing, and securing new, foreign investment opportunities, opening markets abroad for US goods and services, and ensuring business conditions around the world are conducive to the profit-marking imperatives of US corporations.

From the perspective of the goals of US foreign policy, North Korea’s publicly-owned, planned economy commits the ultimate sin: it reserves North Korean labor, markets and natural resources for the country.s own welfare and self-development.

Accordingly, US foreign policy aims to reduce North Korea to such a level of deprivation and misery that the people overthrow their leaders and open the gate, or the leaders capitulate and heed Donilon’s urging to follow Myanmar’s capitulatory path.

All attempts to resist integration into the US-superintended global capitalist system are deceptively presented by the United States as evidence of North Korea’s bellicosity, rather than what they are: acts of self-defense against an imperialist predator.

Stephen Gowans via The 4th Media

Related articles: 

Korea Crisis: US criminal propensity justifies North Korea’s nukes

DPR-Korea´s Military on Highest Alert – Massive US-Led Military Exercise prompts Mobilization

Myanmar, Gas and the Soros-Funded Explosion of A Nation State.

Have Your Say – Use The Comments at the Bottom of the Page and take Part in International Dialog. 

Notes

1. Tim Beal. Crisis in Korea: America, China and the Risk of War. Pluto Press, 2011, p. 180.

2. U.S. News & World Report, June 26, 2008; The New York Times, July 6, 2008.

3. For more on US threats of nuclear annihilation against North Korea see Stephen Gowans, .Why North Korea needs nuclear weapons., what’s left, February 16, 2013.

4. The combined US-South Korean 2010 military budget was $739B (US, $700B; South Korea, $39K), 74 times greater than North Korea’s $10B expenditure. For more see Stephen Gowans, .Wars for Profits: A No-Nonsense Guide to Why the United States Seeks to Make Iran an

International Pariah,. what’s left, November 9, 2011.

5. Alastair Gale, .Kim’s visit to bases raises tension., The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2013.

6. New York Times, August 14, 2003.

7. Alastair Gale and Keith Johnson, .North Korea declares war truce .invalid.., The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2013.

8. On Myanmar’s transition to open markets and free enterprise see Stephen Gowans, .Myanmar learns the lesson of Libya,. what’s left, May 20, 2012.

About the Author

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North Korea Declares State of War after US Simulated Nuclear Attack with B-2 Stealth Bomber

Korea CrisisNorth Korea

International Media and Governments, including Russia, Cover-Up True Reasons for Korea Crisis

Christof Lehmann (nsnbc),- The Democratic Peoples´Republic Korea has declared a state of war with its southern neighbor. The North Korean leader Kim Yong-Un has signed a decree, putting the country´s strategic missile command on highest alert. The measures were taken after an unprecedented provocation by the USA, flying B-2 strategic, long-distance  stealth bombers over a distance of 10,000 Km, to practicing for a nuclear attack on the North. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov addressed the USA, warning it to stop the provocations in a situation, which could easily get out of hand. Russia however, along with other Security Council members, fails to address the true reasons for the Korea Crisis.

Subsequent to the simulated nuclear attack by the US strategic bomber command, with a highly sophisticated B-2 strategic stealth bomber, the military high command of the Democratic Peoples´ Republic Korea, which has previously warned, that the ongoing, one months military exercises in the region may be a precursor and cover for mounting an actual attack on the country, has seen itself forced to put its strategic missile command on highest alert to counter the perceived and very real risk of a nuclear attack on North Korea.

However, the North Korean Statement, that North Korea has entered a “state of war” which almost all eastern and western mainstream media and top diplomats interpret as bellicose positioning by North Korea, is more an assessment of the actuality and the situation, as it is a bellicose threat.

With tensions between the USA, South Korea and the DPRK being high, and in a situation, in which the USA, South Korea and allied forces continue exercises, which the North Korean military leadership repeatedly has described as reckless and dangerous, it is principally just a recognition of the fact that the country is in a state of war. Rather than being a “declaration of war” it is a recognition of a fact.

According to the DPRK´s state news agency KCNA, a statement from the country´s military high command reads “From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering a state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly…. The situation in the Korean peninsula, which is neither peace nor war, has come to an end”.

The statement, as bellicose as it may sound when quoted out of context, is also a recognition of facts because the North and the South of Korea have technically been in a state of war since 1950. No peace treaty has been signed between the North and the South when armed hostilities ended in 1953. The only agreement signed was an armistice agreement, which both the Republic of South Korea and the USA have violated hundreds of times. The event that prompted the DPRK to declare the armistice agreement null and void earlier this year was the deployment of nuclear armed US aircraft carriers and nuclear armed submarines, with a strike capability of at least 100 nuclear weapons, into theater of the military exercises.

While reactions from the USA are ambiguous. A spokesperson of the US national security council, Caitlin Hayden stated on one hand that the DPRK has a long history of “bellicose rhetoric”, while she also stated, that the USA is taking the threats seriously.

Russia´s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned, that the situation, with the DPRK´s ballistic missile forces on high alert, targeting American bases, could easily spiral out of control. Lavrov emphasized that the Russian position on the situation is, that both the USA and the DPRK bear responsibility for the recent, substantial escalation of tensions, and called on both sides to “stop flexing their military muscle”.

The Russian Foreign Minister referred to the recent round of sanctions against the DPRK, saying, “We are concerned that alongside the adequate, collective reaction of the UN Security Council, unilateral action is being taken around North Korea that is increasing military activity”. The unilateral action Sergei Lavrov has referred to, are US plans to upgrade its missile defense against the DPRK, the joint US-South Korean contingency plan in the event of an attack, as well as the recent and ongoing military exercises with unprecedented nuclear attack drills.

“The situation could simply get out of control” said Sergei Lavrov, when addressing journalists on Friday. Lavrov called for the resumption of the six-party discussion of North Korea´s nuclear arsenal within the framework of the country´s international obligations.

There are however, also problems with the Russian position. According international law, the DPRK is not prohibited from developing nuclear weapons capabilities. Likewise, it was perfectly legitimate for the DPRK to develop satellite technology and to launch a satellite. The problem with the Russian position is, that the rounds of sanctions against the DPRK, following the DPRK´s satellite launch and nuclear test are, although they have been approved of by the UN security Council, are illegal. The mere fact that the security council has adopted a resolution with the concurrent vote of all of its permanent members, does not imply, that the resolution has primacy over international law.

Russia, China and the USA avoid addressing the real causes of the crisis. Neither the Russian, the Chinese, the US-American nor any European government has so far addressed the actual causes of the Korea Crisis. In fact, both Russia, China and the USA seem to do their best to cover them up. The recent round of sanctions against the DPRK, which triggered the crisis, which violate international law and further isolate the country, are primarily motivated by Russian, Chinese as well as US ambitions to obstruct the development of North Korea´s national economy and the opening of the country´s economy to foreign markets and investors.

Contrary to the image which is systematically conveyed in both western and many eastern mainstream media, the young Korean head of state, Kim Yong-Un has studies in Schweitz, he is well versed in economic theory, he is burning to modernize the North Korean economy and to open it for selected Asian and European partners, and, to make matters worse for the USA, Russia and China, he has the support of the country´s military as well as the support of the Communist Party of Korea.

During his new years speech, the young North Korean head of state promised, that the government will turn the DPRK into a regional economic powerhouse. The DPRK has, over the last years, had consultations with among other, German scientists, economists, political leaders, and corporations, and developed a realistic plan that really could turn the country into a regional economic powerhouse.

Rather than adopting the Chinese model, the DPRK is working on emulating the Vietnamese model for developing a modern market economy and in close cooperation with German advisers. In his new years speech, Kim Yong-Un explained, that the DPRK would open its economy for Asian as well as European partners, including South Korea, Japan and Germany.

The USA is vehemently opposed to the development of a thriving market economy in the DPRK, knowing that a modern market economy in the North would be a substantial step forward in the direction of the creation of a realistic basis for the peaceful re-unification of the divided country. South Korea is the most valuable basis for the United States regional hegemony and its pivot against Chinese interests. Any development that potentially could lead to a re-unification of the divided country is, from a US-foreign policy and geo-political perspective unacceptable. Any development of this nature will naturally be opposed by the USA, and be opposed with all possible means.

China is, even though it has problems admitting it, opposed to the development of a modern and strong national and market economy in the DPRK. During his new years speech, Kim Yong-Un explained, that there was a need for adjustments in the trade balance between China and the DPRK. China could, so Kim Yong-Un, not continue to merely perceive the DPRK as a neighbor from where it can buy cheap resources.

In case the DPRK, together with German partners, makes progress in research and development and in the establishment of an industry, which can produce high technology products in North Korea, China would have a serious competitor or partner, rather than a provider of cheap natural resources as a neighbor. According to some estimates, the development has, over the course of the last two years, resulted in a reduction of Chinese – North Korean trade with more than 10, according to some analysts up to 20 %.

Also Russia is not particularly fond of the idea of a DPRK, which is developing into a strong market economy. According to some experts and analysts, Russian corporations within research and development as well as high technology, who are currently having lucrative joint venture contracts with Germany, would perceive a developing DPRK as a dangerous competitor rather than as a potential partner.

The diplomatic tensions between Russia and the EU, and in particular Germany, which have developed since the onset of the crisis in Syria, and which have culminated after the EU has adopted the EU´s Third Energy Packet, is one more reason for the Russian governments and Russian industry and finance to oppose the development of the DPRK´s national economy and its high tech industries in cooperation with Germany. 

Analysts, including the author of this article, perceive the latest two rounds of sanctions against the DPRK, based on the legitimate development of satellite technology and a satellite launch, and based on the underground nuclear test earlier this year, as a joint Chinese, Russian, US-attempt to stall the development of the DPRK´s economy. Each of them have their particular reasons. Both Russia and China rely on the DPRK for strategical reasons, to prevent a further military expansion of the USA´s regional hegemony, but both so it seems, would like to keep the DPRK dependent and under developed.

It is within this context, that this years US military exercises are taking place. It is within this context, that the USA has held its unprecedented exercise with B-2 Strategic Bombers, practicing a surprise nuclear attack on the people of the DPRK,- It is within the context of a USA , which is the sole nation who has ever used nuclear weapons in anger against largely undefended cities, killing tens of thousands instantaneously and hundreds of thousands from radiation and other consequences;-  It is within the context of a USA, which will use all necessary means, with all options being on the table, to prevent the development of a national economy in the North, which would create the foundation for a peaceful re-unification;- And it is within the context of both Russia and China having played along with the USA, in enforcing even more genocidal, inhumane, devastating and utterly illegal sanctions against the DPRK for their own reasons, that the head of state of the Democratic Peoples´ Republic Korea has made the statement, that the country is in a state of war.

The only point in which the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is correct, is that the situation could easily get out of control. How about a Russia that would stop fanning the flames, and how about a Russia that does not repeat its Libya blunder at the UN Security Council against the DPRK.

Related articles:

The North Korea (DPRK) – Situation; Exclusive Interview with Dr. Kiyul Chung

Korea Crisis: US criminal propensity justifies North Korea’s nukes

DPR-Korea´s Military on Highest Alert – Massive US-Led Military Exercise prompts Mobilization

Why DPRK Withdrew from the Armistice Agreement? Who’s Belligerent? NK? US

 

About the Author

Christof Lehmann - Dr. Christof Lehmann is the founder and editor of nsnbc. He is a psychologist and independent political consultant on conflict and conflict resolution and a wide range of other political issues. His work with traumatized victims of conflict has led him to also pursue the work as political consultant. He is a lifelong activist for peace and justice, human rights, Palestinians rights to self-determination in Palestine, and he is working on the establishment of international institutions for the prosecution of all war crimes, also those committed by privileged nations. On 28 August 2011 he started his blog nsnbc, appalled by misrepresentations of the aggression against Libya and Syria. In March 2013 he turned nsnbc into a daily, independent, international on-line newspaper.

http://nsnbc.me/2013/03/30/north-korea-declares-state-of-war-after-us-simulated-nuclear-attack-with-b-2-stealth-bomber/

US protection racket root of Korea conflict

In a file picture taken on April 15, 2012, SA-3 ground-to-air missiles are displayed during a military parade in Pyongyang.

Mon Apr 1, 2013 6:13AM

By Finian Cunningham

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the only way of properly interpreting the recent weeks of threat and counter-threat of all-out war in Korea is to recall scenes from the classic Mafia movie, The Godfather. You know the drill. The mobster goes around the neighborhood demanding loyalty, respect and tributes “for protection”. If the residents don’t conform to the racket, then the boss arranges self-fulfilling violence to rain down on those who dare to reject his magnanimous “protection”.

Related Interviews:

• ‘N Korea wants freedom from US empire’
• ‘US liable for likely global nuclear war’

The best way to understand the seemingly reckless, recurring threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula is this: the East Asian region is being run like a Mafia protection racket. And the criminal Mafia is the US.

The conflict emanates from Washington and is perpetuated by Washington. Why? To justify what would otherwise be seen as simply outrageous US militarism in the Asia Pacific hemisphere, and in particular a criminally aggressive agenda towards the main geopolitical targets of Washington - China and Russia.

Korea’s conflict is not primarily about North and South “enemy states”. It is, as it has been for the past 68 years since the end of World War II, about Washington using military force to criminally assert its hegemony on the global stage.

But you wouldn’t know this from a casual reading of the Western news media. No, we are told over and over again that the US is “protecting” South Korea and its other Asian allies. The military presence of the US is “serving” as a “deterrent” to aggression from a “sinister” North Korea. In this depiction, the US is the good guy, while North Korea is the menacing reprobate that is a scourge on everybody’s well-being and security. Kim Jong-un is the embodiment of the Axis of Evil.

That so-called “quality” news media such as the BBC, New York Times and Guardian can get away with seriously presenting this situation in terms portraying the US as a benevolent force is an astounding feat of reality inversion and brainwashed mind control. The irony is that such media implicitly mock North Korea as a Stalinist “Big Brother” state, where critical thought and expression‎ are forbidden. Yet, these media display the very same habit of mental conformity that they disparage North Korea for.

As noted above, the only way of properly interpreting the recent weeks of threat and counter-threat of all-out war in Korea is to recall scenes from the classic Mafia movie, The Godfather. You know the drill. The mobster goes around the neighborhood demanding loyalty, respect and tributes “for protection”. If the residents don’t conform to the racket, then the boss arranges self-fulfilling violence to rain down on those who dare to reject his magnanimous “protection”.

The exact same arrangement applies in Korea under the tutelage of the US. The Peninsula was unilaterally partitioned in 1945 by Washington into North and South statelets because the US could not abide the fact that the Korean population at that time was strongly anti-imperialist and yearning for socialist democracy. That egalitarian sentiment helped the Koreans resist the occupying Japanese imperialists prior to and during World War II.

Tellingly, in order to assert its hegemony over Korea and the Asia Pacific, the US worked the neighborhood over assiduously in order to defeat the popular movement for independence and democracy that the Korean people exhibited so boldly. Washington achieved this by installing pro-Japanese collaborators as the rulers of newly formed South Korea. Think about that one. The US fought a war allegedly to defeat fascism and imperialism, only to immediately collude with the same political forces to defeat Korean democracy.

The dropping of the atomic bombs by Washington on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was part and parcel of American efforts to demarcate a postwar hegemony in the Asia Pacific to the Soviet Union and China - and this is why Korea was also fractured into two alien states that were then precipitated into war between 1950-53.

That war - in which a third of the northern Korean population were exterminated by American indiscriminate carpet-bombing and napalm incineration - has never officially ended. The armistice signed in 1953 under Washington’s dictate is technically only a ceasefire. For decades, North Korea’s demand for a full peace treaty has been repeatedly rejected by Washington and its South Korean client state. In other words, Washington has retained the implicit prerogative to resume its aerial bombardment of the North Korean population at any time it chooses. That constitutes a constant threat, or a policy of state terrorism by Washington.

The threat from the US towards the Korean population has and continues to include nuclear annihilation. During the Korean War, the US air force would regularly fly nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over the Peninsula. People on the ground would recognize the aircraft, but they did not know what the operational intent was. Can you imagine the terrorism that this conveyed? - barely five years after the US vaporized the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and at the same time that US military were compelling Koreans to live in caves as the only way of escaping mass destruction from conventional bombing.

This same thuggish behaviour by the US government is consistent with its authorization during this past week for the flying of nuclear-capable B-2 and B-52 bombers over the Korean Peninsula. The dropping of “inert bombs” by these aerial monsters has to be seen as a heinous calculation in Washington aimed at heightening the terrorism.

Yet, absurdly, the Western propaganda organs, otherwise called news, portray this American state terrorism as “protection”.

The New York Times, for example, quoted one so-called “expert” as explaining North Korea’s response to the latest American provocation by saying: “The North Korean populace has to be regularly reminded that their country is surrounded by scheming enemies. Otherwise, they might start asking politically dangerous questions.”

The laugh about this brain-washed expert thinking, and the New York
Times promoting it, is that the people of Korea are indeed surrounded by a scheming enemy - the US - and if the wider international public and media were to start thinking about that fact then there would be “politically dangerous questions” such as: what gives the US the right to conduct annual military “war games” off and on the Korean Peninsula for the past six decades, including the deployment of nuclear annihilation?

The people of Korea, North and South, deserve and desire peace. Despite the antagonism and belligerence highlighted in the Western propaganda media, the majority of people of North and South Korea have in fact no wish for war. The consensus among ordinary Koreans is for peace and a democratic resolution to decades of conflict imposed on their homeland from outside. But they won’t obtain that reasonable condition as long as Washington continues to run its “protection racket”.

And, unfortunately, the American government will not, cannot stop its criminal behaviour - because domination, aggression and terrorism are the hallmarks of Washington’s Mafia regime.

FC/HMV

Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio. More articles by Finian Cunningham

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/01/296007/us-protection-racket-root-of-korea-unrest/

Prosecutable US Crimes against Humanity in Korea

by Jay Janson / March 30th, 2013

While staring at the New York Times front page photo of the bat-winged nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth Bombers up in the blue sky on their first non-stop long-range mission from the US on their way to a practice sortie to end in a mock bombing drop of inert munitions on a range off South Korea’s coast, I ponder.

The thought that ‘enough is enough’ will apparently never arise in the mind-set of those commanding the first planet-encompassing space-age military, blown up now to an uncontrollable magnitude and fueled by an uninterrupted flow of trillions of dollars by ledger line pre-occupied elite of the speculative investment banking community; a community possibly still being led by multi-war promoting confidants of ninety-eight year old David Rockefeller.¹

Former president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak dutifully bought loads of new US weapons of mass destruction. Does he ever remember watching his two tiny siblings begin to slowly die before his eyes during a US bombing raid on his family’s farm? As the nuclear capable black bat wings make their run over her beloved Korea, does the new President, Park Geun-hye, keep in mind her father’s point blank assassination by the head of the, allegedly American overseen, Korean CIA?

Following is a short history of homicidal crimes against humanity bitterly suffered in the Land of the Morning Calm from savage attack, conquest, and manipulation by the most recent of the many mindlessly brutal white colonial empires to one degree or another descendent from the barbaric Goths and savage raid-or-trade Vikings.

1871, June 10 — Adm. Rodgers, commanding five warships and a landing party of over 1,230 men armed with Remington carbines and Springfield muskets attack Choji Fortress of Kanghwa-do, and proceed to occupy the whole island (116.8 sq mi), killing 350 Korean defenders of the island while losing only three of their own, withdrawing to China when the Korean army sends in reinforcement armed with modern weapons. This war known in Korea as Sinmi-yangyo and as the 1871 US Korea Campaign in America.²

1905 — US President Theodore Roosevelt cuts all relations with Koreans, turns the American legation in Seoul over to the Japanese military, deletes the word “Korea” from the State Department’s Record of Foreign Relations and places it under the heading of “Japan,” approving of what will be a brutal, too often murderous, forty year occupation, during much of which, Koreans are forbidden even to speak their language; an unconstitutional act of the US president, said to have been in exchange for acceptance of the continuing US occupation of the Philippines by Japan, recognized as a half-brother empire of the European colonial powers.³

1918 — President Woodrow Wilson officially recognizes Korea as territory of the Japanese Empire, refuses to receive delegations from Korea and Vietnam demanding restoration of sovereignty, delegations mistakenly hopeful for Wilson having proclaimed before both houses of Congress, as an addendum to his ‘Fourteen Points“ of a day earlier, “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action…. that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them;” a promise become known in the third world as an infamous, cruel and preposterous lie (the Japanese occupiers were deadly in punishing all those involved in the country-wide March 1st Korean Independence Movement).

1945, September 8 — US State Department officials, arrive in Korea with the US Army, disband the government of the Korean People’s Republic created September 6, in Seoul, by delegates from local peoples’ offices from all provinces throughout the peninsula formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10), proceed without any Korean authorization whatsoever, to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops and establishing a military government, flying in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur’s private plane), Singman Rhee, to head it; eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that will include collaborators, and will outlaw all strikes, declare the KPR and all its activities illegal and begin a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea.⁴

1946-1949 — The US in effect declares war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee’s special forces and secret police take the lives of some 200,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea; on the Island of Cheju alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents are murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north invade the South. [Wikipedia]

1950, June 28 — The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea’s ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.

1953-2013 — The US using its control over international financial institutions and its power over the financial policies of most of the nations on Earth, keeps in place economy crippling sanctions and trade blockades (only loosening them slightly from time to time in attempts to halt the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea production of nuclear weapons as it faces a US, constantly condemning it in intense belligerency, massively armed with ever new nuclear weapons. (US sanctions obviously violate Principle VI c. Crimes Against Humanity: “inhuman acts done against any civilian population.”)

1945-2013 — The US Government, under control of its speculative investment banking elite, uses the gigantic world-wide reach of its likewise controlled US media cartel to manufacture an upside-down reality regarding US business and government intentions in Korea (and elsewhere), by blocking, slanting, omission, disinformation, misinformation and a virulent demonization of a nation once bombed flat, twice over, by US war planes; a six-decade propaganda campaign surely prosecutable as a media crime against peace under Principle VI c. of the universally signed on to Nuremberg Principles in the UN Charter.⁵

2010 May — An example of ‘sentence 8’ is the Russian Navy derided, and Chinese government ignored story of a old North Korean torpedo having cut in half a modern South Korean warship in an area where days before, US-ROK live fire exercise war games were menacingly taking place off the coast of North Korea; detailed investigation by Japanese found that a US minesweeper, known to have left the day before, might have been practicing with the newest US spider mine weapon, entirely capable, as most modern mines are indeed capable of, blowing a small warship into two pieces; though a discredited and fabulous US accusation, this media doctored widely broadcasted UN backed accusation has however, become accepted as fact by most of the entire Western media audience and will continue on into the future as the truth until the day it can no longer be of interest).⁶

2013 March — A second example of US media crimes against peace, is the present startling situation, as offered in US TV and print media, namely, that of the somewhat tiny nation, North Korea (size of US State of Pennsylvania), threatening the greatest military power the world has ever seen, possessing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, with a nuclear attack, not for the sake of the bravely warning of its defense and retaliation power to ward of a feared attack from US planes and ships which periodically fire heavy weapons of mass destruction within earshot of its capital Pyongyang as part of frequent military exercises off its coast; the whole world is constantly ‘informed’ of what a madcap menace its leader is, by a Pentagon fed US media, which at the same time is justifying US bombings, invasions, occupations of some three dozen other small nations.

1. Demonic David Rockefeller Fiends Dulles Kissinger Brzezinski – Investor Wars Korea thru Syria. History of David Rockefeller led global arrangements of financial-political control thru public information management culminating in “The International Community’ (formerly, “The Free World’, earlier The Colonial Powers), arraying covert agencies and military of US-NATO-UN, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, in war on Syria and Iran. China and Russia’s pathetic resistance after having acquiesced to the destruction of Libya. [↩]
2. During the last years of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea’s isolationist policy earned it the name the “Hermit Kingdom”, primarily for protection against Western imperialism before it was forced to open trade beginning an era leading into Japanese colonial rule. A Brief History of the US-Korea Relations Prior to 1945, Korea Web Weekly [↩]
3. Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy, New York Times, James Bradley, 12/5/2009. See also the
   Taft-Katsura Agreement. [↩]
4. The Unknown Truth About Korea: U.S. Sanctioned Death Squads and War Crimes, 1945-1953, S Brian Willson. [↩]
5. Manufacturing Consent, Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky.
   Obama Calls on U.N. to Punish North Korea Over Rocket, but WHO PUNISHES THE U.S.? Commercial media feeding frenzy on the space missile launch by North Korea at the same time whipping up fear of Iran. Obama has harsh words for North Korea, as earlier for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela and Iran, which received a kind invite to talk mixed in with such severe public criticism as to make the invitation unacceptable. So far, Obama, both as president and as commander-in-chief belies change to serious diplomacy. [↩]
6. N. Korean Torpedo Accusation Fizzles: Strong Probability of US Mine Strike Investigated
   The self-righteous scowling countenance of Mrs. Clinton reminded us of a serious Colin Powell pointing to photos of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction trucks, of Adelai Stevenson’s photo evidence that planes that bombed Cuba were not U.S. planes, of Robert McNamara on the Gulf of Tonkin attack on innocent U.S. warships, of the John Foster Dulles proving that communists, not capitalists, were out to conquer the world.
   See also Kim Petersen, “Independent Media as Mouthpiece for Centers of Power,” Dissident Voice, 28 May 2010.
   NY Times, AP Consistently Leaving Out Debunking Info on “N. Korean Torpedo’ Claim. [↩]

Jay Janson, spent eight years as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and also toured, including with Dan Tai-son, who practiced in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh,and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. Everyone in the orchestra lost family, "killed by the Americans" they would mention simply, with Buddhist un-accusing acceptance. Jay can be reached at: tdmedia2000@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Jay.

This article was posted on Saturday, March 30th, 2013 at 8:00am and is filed under Crimes against Humanity, History, Imperialism, Korea.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/03/prosecutable-us-crimes-against-humanity-in-korea/

North Korea: timeline of escalating threats

North Korea's announcement Saturday that it had entered a "state of war" with South Korea was the latest in a long line of escalating threats and postures adopted by all sides in the current crisis on the Korean peninsula. Below is a timeline of key threats and actions dating from the North's long-range rocket launch in December 2012.

A screen shows the Unha-3 (Milky Way 3) rocket being launched from a launch pad at the West Sea Satellite Launch Site, at North Korea's satellite control centre in Cholsan county, North Pyongan province Photo: REUTERS

Agence France-Presse in Seoul

9:51AM GMT 30 Mar 2013

16 Comments

Dec 12, 2012: North Korea successfully launches three-stage rocket and places satellite in orbit. Seoul, Washington and UN condemn launch as a covert ballistic missile test.

Jan 22, 2013: UN Security Council passes a resolution condemning North Korea's rocket launch and tightens existing sanctions.

Jan 24: North Korea's National Defense Commission says it will proceed with a "high-level nuclear test".

Jan 25: North Korea threatens "physical counter-measures" against rival South Korea.

Feb 12: North Korea conducts a third nuclear test.

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Feb 26: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un oversees a live-fire artillery drill aimed at simulating an "actual war".

March 1: South Korea and US launch annual "Foal Eagle" joint military exercise.

March 5: North Korea says it will scrap armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

March 7: North Korea threatens a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike against the United States and South Korea. The United Nations adopts tougher sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear test.

March 8: North Korea announces the voiding of non-aggression pacts with South Korea and severs a government hotline with Seoul. Kim Jong-Un tours frontline island units and vows "all-out war".

March 11: South Korea and US launch annual "Key Resolve" joint military exercise.

March 12: Kim Jong-Un threatens to "wipe out" South Korean island of Baengnyeong.

March 15: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announces plans to bolster US mainland defenses against a possible North Korean missile strike.

March 18: US Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter promises to provide South Korea with every military resource under the US nuclear umbrella.

March 19: US publicises flights by nuclear-capable B-52 bombers over South Korea as part of "Foal Eagle" exercise.

March 21: North Korean army threatens strikes against US military bases in Japan and Guam in response to B-52 flights.

March 22: South Korea and US sign new pact providing for a joint military response even to low-level provocation by North Korea.

March 26: South Korean President Park Geun-Hye warns North Korea its only "path to survival" lies in abandoning nuclear and missile programmes. North Korea's military puts its "strategic" rocket units on a war footing, with fresh threat to strike targets on the US mainland, Hawaii and Guam and South Korea.

March 27: North Korea cuts last remaining military hotline with South Korea.

March 28: The United States deploys two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers on "deterrence" missions over South Korea. Hagel says US ready for "any eventuality."

March 29: Kim Jong-Un, vowing to "settle accounts," orders missile units to prepare to strike US mainland and military bases in the Pacific.

March 30: North Korea declares it had entered into a "state of war" with South Korea.

Edited at telegraph.co.uk by Sarah Titterton

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9962442/North-Korea-timeline-of-escalating-threats.html