Mapping U.S. Imperialism

By The Mapping Project

Republished from Monthly Review.

The greatest threat looming over our planet, the hegemonistic pretentions of the American Empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger, and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads.

–Hugo Chavez

The United States Military is arguably the largest force of ecological devastation the world has ever known.

–Xoài Pham

Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, and fulfill it or betray it.

–Frantz Fanon

U.S. imperialism is the greatest threat to life on the planet, a force of ecological devastation and disaster impacting not only human beings, but also our non-human relatives. How can we organize to dismantle the vast and complicated network of U.S. imperialism which includes U.S. war and militarism, CIA intervention, U.S. weapons/technology/surveillance corporations, political and economic support for dictatorships, military juntas, death squads and U.S. trained global police forces favorable to U.S. geopolitical interests, U.S. imposed sanctions, so-called “humanitarian interventions,” genetically modified grassroots organizations, corporate media’s manipulation of spontaneous protest, and U.S. corporate sponsorship of political repression and regime change favorable to U.S. corporate interests?

This article deals with U.S. imperialism since World War 2. It is critical to acknowledge that U.S. imperialism emanates both ideologically and materially from the crime of colonialism on this continent which has killed over 100 million indigenous people and approximately 150 million African people over the past 500 years.

The exact death toll of U.S. imperialism is both staggering and impossible to know. What we do know is that since World War 2, U.S. imperialism has killed at least 36 million people globally in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the Congo, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Chad, Libya, East Timor, Grenada, Honduras, Iran, Pakistan, Panama, the Philippines, Sudan, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Somalia, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Palestine (see Appendix).

This list does not include other aspects of U.S. imperialist aggression which have had a devastating and lasting impact on communities worldwide, including torture, imprisonment, rape, and the ecological devastation wrought by the U.S. military through atomic bombs, toxic waste and untreated sewage dumping by over 750 military bases in over 80 countries. The U.S. Department of Defense consumes more petroleum than any institution in the world. In the year of 2017 alone, the U.S. military emitted 59 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, a carbon footprint greater than that of most nations worldwide. This list also does not include the impact of U.S. fossil fuel consumption and U.S. corporate fossil fuel extraction, fracking, agribusiness, mining, and mono-cropping, all of which are part and parcel of the extractive economy of U.S. imperialism.

U.S. military bases around the world. (Photo: Al Jazeera)

One central mechanism of U.S. imperialism is “dollar hegemony” which forces countries around the world to conduct international trade in U.S. dollars. U.S. dollars are backed by U.S. bonds (instead of gold or industrial stocks) which means a country can only cash in one American IOU for another. When the U.S. offers military aid to friendly nations, this aid is circulated back to U.S. weapons corporations and returns to U.S. banks. In addition, U.S. dollars are also backed by U.S. bombs: any nation that threatens to nationalize resources or go off the dollar (i.e. Iraq or Libya) is threatened with a military invasion and/or a U.S. backed coup.

U.S. imperialism has also been built through “soft power” organizations like USAID, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization of American States (OAS). These nominally international bodies are practically unilateral in their subservience to the interests of the U.S. state and U.S. corporations. In the 1950s and ‘60s, USAID (and its precursor organizations) made “development aid” to Asian, African, and South American countries conditional on those countries’ legal formalization of capitalist property relations, and reorganization of their economies around homeownership debt. The goal was to enclose Indigenous land, and land shared through alternate economic systems, as a method of “combatting Communism with homeownership” and creating dependency and buy-in to U.S. capitalist hegemony (Nancy Kwak, A World of Homeowners). In order to retain access to desperately needed streams of resources (e.g. IMF “loans”), Global South governments are forced to accept resource-extraction by the U.S., while at the same time denying their own people popularly supported policies such as land reform, economic diversification, and food sovereignty. It is also important to note that Global South nations have never received reparations or compensation for the resources that have been stolen from them–this makes the idea of “loans” by global monetary institutions even more outrageous.

The U.S. also uses USAID and other similarly functioning international bodies to suppress and to undermine anti-imperialist struggle inside “friendly” countries. Starting in the 1960s, USAID funded police training programs across the globe under a counterinsurgency model, training foreign police as a “first line of defense against subversion and insurgency.” These USAID-funded police training programs involved surveillance and the creation of biometric databases to map entire populations, as well as programs of mass imprisonment, torture, and assassination. After experimenting with these methods in other countries, U.S. police departments integrated many of them into U.S. policing, especially the policing of BIPOC communities here (see our entry on the Boston Police Department). At the same time, the U.S. uses USAID and other soft power funding bodies to undermine revolutionary, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist movements, by funding “safe” reformist alternatives, including a global network of AFL-CIO managed “training centers” aimed at fostering a bureaucratic union culture similar to the one in the U.S., which keeps labor organizing loyal to capitalism and to U.S. global dominance. (See our entries on the AFL-CIO and the Harvard Trade Union Program.)

U.S. imperialism intentionally fosters divisions between different peoples and nations, offering (relative) rewards to those who choose to cooperate with U.S. dictates (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Colombia), while brutally punishing those who do not (e.g. Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela). In this way, U.S. imperialism creates material conditions in which peoples and governments face a choice: 1. accommodate the interests of U.S. Empire and allow the U.S. to develop your nation’s land and sovereign resources in ways which enrich the West; or, 2. attempt to use your land and your sovereign resources to meet the needs of your own people and suffer the brutality of U.S. economic and military violence.

The Harvard Kennedy School: Training Ground for U.S. Empire and the Security State

The Mapping Project set out to map local U.S. imperialist actors (involved in both material and ideological support for U.S. imperialism) on the land of Massachusett, Pawtucket, Naumkeag, and other tribal nations (Boston, Cambridge, and surrounding areas) and to analyze how these institutions interacted with other oppressive local and global institutions that are driving colonization of indigenous lands here and worldwide, local displacement/ethnic cleansing (“gentrification”), policing, and zionist imperialism.

A look at just one local institution on our map, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, demonstrates the level of ideological and material cooperation required for the machinery of U.S. imperialism to function. (All information outlined below is taken from The Mapping Project entries and links regarding the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Please see this link for hyperlinked source material.)

The Harvard Kennedy School of Government and its historical precursors have hosted some of the most infamous war criminals and architects of empire: Henry Kissinger, Samuel Huntington, Susan Rice (an HKS fellow), Madeleine Albright, James Baker, Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and Larry Summers. HKS also currently hosts Ricardo Hausmann, founder and director of Harvard’s Growth Lab , the academic laboratory of the U.S. backed Venezuelan coup.

In How Harvard Rules, John Trumpbour documents the central role Harvard played in the establishment of the Cold War academic-military-industrial complex and U.S. imperialism post-WWII (How Harvard Rules, 51). Trumpbour highlights the role of the Harvard Kennedy School under Dean Graham Allison (1977-1989), in particular, recounting that Dean Allison ran an executive education program for Pentagon officials at Harvard Kennedy (HHR 68). Harvard Kennedy School’s support for the U.S. military and U.S. empire continues to this day. HKS states on its website:

Harvard Kennedy School, because of its mission to train public leaders and its depth of expertise in the study of defense and international security, has always had a particularly strong relationship with the U.S. Armed Forces. This relationship is mutually beneficial. The School has provided its expertise to branches of the U.S. military, and it has given military personnel (active and veteran) access to Harvard’s education and training.

The same webpage further notes that after the removal of ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) from Harvard Kennedy School in 1969, “under the leadership of Harvard President Drew Faust, the ROTC program was reinstated in 2011, and the Kennedy School’s relationship with the military continues to grow more robust each year.”

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In particular, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs provides broad support to the U.S. military and the objectives of U.S. empire. The Belfer Center is co-directed by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter (a war hawk who has advocated for a U.S. invasion of North Korea and U.S. military build ups against Russia and Iran) and former Pentagon Chief of Staff Eric Rosenbach. Programs within HKS Belfer Center include the Center’s “Intelligence Program,” which boasts that it “acquaints students and Fellows with the intelligence community and its strengths and weaknesses for policy making,” further noting, “Discussions with active and retired intelligence practitioners, scholars of intelligence history, law, and other disciplines, help students and Fellows prepare to best use the information available through intelligence agencies.” Alongside HKS Belfer’s Intelligence Program, is the Belfer Center’s “Recanati-Kaplan Foundation Fellowship.” The Belfer Center claims that, under the direction of Belfer Center co-directors Ashton Carter and Eric Rosenbach, the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation Fellowship “educates the next generation of thought leaders in national and international intelligence.”

As noted above, the Harvard Kennedy School serves as an institutional training ground for future servants of U.S. empire and the U.S. national security state. HKS also maintains a close relationship with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As reported by Inside Higher Ed in their 2017 review of Spy Schools by Daniel Golden:

[Harvard Kennedy School] currently allows the agency [the CIA] to send officers to the midcareer program at the Kennedy School of Government while continuing to act undercover, with the school’s knowledge. When the officers apply–often with fudged credentials that are part of their CIA cover–the university doesn’t know they’re CIA agents, but once they’re in, Golden writes, Harvard allows them to tell the university that they’re undercover. Their fellow students, however–often high-profile or soon-to-be-high-profile actors in the world of international diplomacy–are kept in the dark.

Kenneth Moskow is one of a long line of CIA officers who have enrolled undercover at the Kennedy School, generally with Harvard’s knowledge and approval, gaining access to up-and-comers worldwide,” Golden writes. “For four decades the CIA and Harvard have concealed this practice, which raises larger questions about academic boundaries, the integrity of class discussions and student interactions, and whether an American university has a responsibility to accommodate U.S. intelligence.”

In addition to the CIA, HKS has direct relationships with the FBI, the U.S. Pentagon, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, NERAC, and numerous branches of the U.S. Armed Forces:

• Chris Combs, a Senior Fellow with HKS’s Program on Crisis Leadership has held numerous positions within the FBI;

• Jeffrey A. Tricoli, who serves as Section Chief of the FBI’s Cyber Division since December 2016 (prior to which he held several other positions within the FBI) was a keynote speaker at “multiple sessions” of the HKS’s Cybersecurity Executive Education program;

• Jeff Fields, who is Fellow at both the Cyber Project and the Intelligence Project of HKS’s Belfer Center currently serves as a Supervisory Special Agent within the National Security Division of the FBI;

• HKS hosted former FBI director James Comey for a conversation with HKS Belfer Center’s Co-Director (and former Pentagon Chief of Staff) Eric Rosenbach in 2020;

• Government spending records show yearly tuition payments from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for Homeland Security personnel attending special HKS seminars on Homeland Security under HKS’s Program on Crisis Leadership;

• Northeast Homeland Security Regional Advisory Council meeting minutes from February 2022 list “Edward Chao: Analyst, Harvard Kennedy School,” as a NERAC “Council Member”; and

• Harvard Kennedy School and the U.S. Air force have created multiple fellowships aimed at recruiting U.S. Air Force service members to pursue degrees at HKS. The Air Force’s CSAF Scholars Master Fellowship, for example, aims to “prepare mid-career, experienced professionals to return to the Air Force ready to assume significant leadership positions in an increasingly complex environment.” In 2016, Harvard Kennedy School Dean Doug Elmendorf welcomed Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James to Harvard Kennedy School, in a speech in which Elmendorf highlighted his satisfaction that the ROTC program, including Air Force ROTC, had been reinstated at Harvard (ROTC had been removed from campus following mass faculty protests in 1969).

Harvard Kennedy School’s web.

The Harvard Kennedy School and the War Economy

HKS’s direct support of U.S. imperialism does not limit itself to ideological and educational support. It is deeply enmeshed in the war economy driven by the interests of the U.S. weapons industry.

Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, L3 Harris, General Dynamics, and Northrup Grumman are global corporations who supply the United States government with broad scale military weaponry and war and surveillance technologies. All these companies have corporate leadership who are either alumni of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (HKS), who are currently contributing to HKS as lecturers/professors, and/or who have held leadership positions in U.S. federal government.

Lockheed Martin Vice President for Corporate Business Development Leo Mackay is a Harvard Kennedy School alumnus (MPP ’91), was a Fellow in the HKS Belfer Center International Security Program (1991-92) and served as the “military assistant” to then U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Ashton Carter, who would soon go on to become co-director of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center. Following this stint at the U.S. Pentagon, Mackay landed in the U.S. weapons industry at Lockheed Martin.  Lockheed Martin Vice President Marcel Lettre is an HKS alumni and prior to joining Lockheed Martin, Lettre spent eight years in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The U.S. DoD has dished out a whopping $540.82 billion to date in contracts with Lockheed Martin for the provision of products and services to the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and other branches of the U.S. military. Lockheed Martin Board of Directors member Jeh Johnson has lectured at Harvard Kennedy School and is the former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for carrying out the U.S. federal government’s regime of tracking, detentions, and deportations of Black and Brown migrants. (Retired) General Joseph F. Dunford is currently a member of two Lockheed Martin Board of Director Committees and a Senior Fellow with HKS’s Belfer Center. Dunford was a U.S. military leader, serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Commander of all U.S. and NATO Forces in Afghanistan. Dunford also serves on the board of the Atlantic Council, itself a cutout organization of NATO and the U.S. security state which crassly promotes the interests of U.S. empire. Mackay, Lettre, Johnson, and Dunford’s respective career trajectories provide an emblematic illustration of the grotesque revolving door which exists between elite institutions of knowledge production like the Harvard Kennedy School, the U.S. security state (which feeds its people into those elite institutions and vice versa), and the U.S. weapons industry (which seeks business from the U.S. security state).

Similar revolving door phenomena are notable among the Harvard Kennedy School and Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman. HKS Professor Meghan O’Sullivan currently serves on the board of Massachusetts-based weapons manufacturer Raytheon. O’Sullivan is also deeply enmeshed within America’s security state, currently sitting on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and has served as “special assistant” to President George W. Bush (2004-07) where she was “Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan,” helping oversee the U.S. invasions and occupations of these nations during the so-called “War on Terror.” O’Sullivan has openly attempted to leverage her position as Harvard Kennedy School to funnel U.S. state dollars into Raytheon: In April 2021, O’Sullivan penned an article in the Washington Post entitled “It’s Wrong to Pull Troops Out of Afghanistan. But We Can Minimize the Damage.” As reported in the Harvard Crimson, O’Sullivan’s author bio in this article highlighted her position as a faculty member of Harvard Kennedy (with the perceived “expertise” affiliation with HKS grants) but failed to acknowledge her position on the Board of Raytheon, a company which had “a $145 million contract to train Afghan Air Force pilots and is a major supplier of weapons to the U.S. military.” Donn Yates who works in Domestic and International Business Development at Boeing’s T-7A Redhawk Program was a National Security Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2015-16. Don Yates also spent 23 years in the U.S. Air Force. Former Northrop Grumman Director for Strategy and Global Relations John Johns is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy’s National and International Security Program. Johns also spent “seven years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Maintenance establishing policy for, and leading oversight of the Department’s annual $80B weapon system maintenance program and deployed twice in support of security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The largest U.S. oil firms are also closely interlocked with these top weapons companies, which have also diversified their technological production for the security industry–providing services for pipeline and energy facility security, as well as border security. This means that the same companies are profiting at every stage in the cycle of climate devastation: they profit from wars for extraction; from extraction; and from the militarized policing of people forced to migrate by climate disaster. Exxon Mobil (the 4th largest fossil fuel firm) contracts with General Dynamics, L3 Harris, and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin, the top weapons company in the world, shares board members with Chevron, and other global fossil fuel companies. (See Global Climate Wall: How the world’s wealthiest nations prioritise borders over climate action.)

The Harvard Kennedy School and U.S. Support for Israel

U.S. imperialist interests in West Asia are directly tied to U.S. support of Israel. This support is not only expressed through tax dollars but through ideological and diplomatic support for Israel and advocacy for regional normalization with Israel.

Harvard Kennedy School is home to the Wexner Foundation. Through its “Israel Fellowship,” The Wexner Foundation awards ten scholarships annually to “outstanding public sector directors and leaders from Israel,” helping these individuals to pursue a Master’s in Public Administration at the Kennedy School. Past Wexner fellows include more than 25 Israeli generals and other high-ranking military and police officials. Among them is the Israeli Defense Force’s current chief of general staff, Aviv Kochavi, who is directly responsible for the bombardment of Gaza in May 2021. Kochavi also is believed to be one of the 200 to 300 Israeli officials identified by Tel Aviv as likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court’s probe into alleged Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza in 2014. The Wexner Foundation also paid former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak–himself accused of war crimes in connection with Israel’s 2009 Operation Cast Lead that killed over 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza–$2.3 million for two studies, one of which he did not complete.

HKS’s Belfer Center has hosted Israeli generals, politicians, and other officials to give talks at Harvard Kennedy School. Ehud Barak, mentioned above, was himself a “Belfer fellow” at HKS in 2016. The Belfer Center also hosts crassly pro-Israel events for HKS students, such as: The Abraham Accords – A conversation on the historic normalization of relations between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel,” “A Discussion with Former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo,” “The Future of Modern Warfare” (which Belfer describes as “a lunch seminar with Yair Golan, former Deputy Chief of the General Staff for the Israel Defense Forces”), and “The Future of Israel’s National Security.”

As of 2022, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center is hosting former Israel military general and war criminal Amos Yadlin as a Senior Fellow at the Belfer’s Middle East Initiative. Furthermore, HKS is allowing Yadlin to lead a weekly study group of HKS students entitled “Israeli National Security in a Shifting Middle East: Historical and Strategic Perspectives for an Uncertain Future.” Harvard University students wrote an open letter demanding HKS “sever all association with Amos Yadlin and immediately suspend his study group.” Yadlin had defended Israel’s assassination policy through which the Israeli state has extrajudicially killed hundreds of Palestinians since 2000, writing that the “the laws and ethics of conventional war did not apply” vis-á-vis Palestinians under zionist occupation.

Harvard Kennedy School also plays host to the Harvard Kennedy School Israel Caucus. The HKS Israel Caucus coordinates “heavily subsidized” trips to Israel for 50 HKS students annually. According to HKS Israel Caucus’s website, students who attend these trips “meet the leading decision makers and influencers in Israeli politics, regional security and intelligence, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, [and] the next big Tech companies.” The HKS Israel Caucus also regularly hosts events which celebrate “Israel’s culture and history.” Like the trips to Israel they coordinate, HKS Israel Caucus events consistently whitewash over the reality of Israel’s colonial war against the Palestinian people through normalizing land theft, forced displacement, and resource theft.

Harvard Kennedy School also has numerous ties to local pro-Israel organizations: the ADL, the JCRC, and CJP.

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Support for Saudi Arabia

In 2017, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center announced the launch of “The Project on Saudi and Gulf Cooperation Council Security,” which Belfer stated was “made possible through a gift from HRH Prince Turki bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia.” Through this project, Harvard Kennedy School and the HKS Belfer Center have hosted numerous events at HKS which have promoted Saudi Arabia as a liberalizing and positive force for security and stability in the region, whitewashing over the realities of the Saudi-led and U.S.-backed campaign of airstrikes and blockade against Yemen which has precipitated conditions of mass starvation and an epidemic of cholera amongst the Yemeni people.

The Belfer Center’s Project on Saudi and Gulf Cooperation Council Security further normalizes and whitewashes Saudi Arabia’s crimes through its “HKS Student Delegation to Saudi Arabia.” This delegation brings 11 Harvard Kennedy School students annually on two-week trips to Saudi Arabia, where students “exchange research, engage in cultural dialogue, and witness the changes going on in the Kingdom firsthand.” Not unlike the student trips to Israel Harvard Kennedy School’s Israel Caucus coordinates, these trips to Saudi Arabia present HKS students with a crassly propagandized impression of Saudi Arabia, shoring up support for the “Kingdom” amongst the future leaders of the U.S. security state which HKS seeks to nurture.

THE MAPPING PROJECT’S Mission

The vast network outlined above between the Harvard Kennedy School, the U.S. federal government, the U.S. Armed Forces, and the U.S. weapons industry constitutes only a small portion of what is known about HKS and its role in U.S. imperialism, but it is enough.

The Mapping Project demonstrates that the Harvard Kennedy School of Government is a nexus of U.S. imperialist planning and cooperation, with an address. The Mapping Project also links HKS to harms locally, including, but not limited to colonialism, violence against migrants, ethnic cleansing/displacement of Black and Brown Boston area residents from their communities (“gentrification”), health harm, policing, the prison-industrial complex, zionism, and surveillance. The Harvard Kennedy School’s super-oppressor status – the sheer number of separate communities feeling its global impact in their daily lives through these multiple and various mechanisms of oppression and harm – as it turns out, is its greatest weakness.

A movement that can identify super-oppressors like the Harvard Kennedy School of Government can use this information to identify strategic vulnerabilities of key hubs of power and effectively organize different communities towards common purpose. This is what the Mapping Project aims to do–to move away from traditionally siloed work towards coordination across communities and struggles in order to build strategic oppositional community power.

Appendix: The Death Toll of U.S. Imperialism Since World War 2

A critical disclaimer: Figures relating to the death toll of U.S. Imperialism are often grossly underestimated due to the U.S. government’s lack of transparency and often purposeful coverup and miscounts of death tolls. In some cases, this can lead to ranges of figures that include millions of human lives–as in the figure for Indonesia below with estimates of 500,000 to 3 million people. We have tried to provide the upward ranges in these cases since we suspect the upward ranges to be more accurate if not still significantly underestimated. These figures were obtained from multiple sources including but not limited to indigenous scholar Ward Churchill’s Pacifism as Pathology as well as Countercurrents’ article Deaths in Other Nations Since WWII Due to U.S. Interventions (please note that use of Countercurrents’ statistics isn’t an endorsement of the site’s politics).

• Afghanistan: at least 176,000 people

• Bosnia: 20,000 to 30,000 people

• Bosnia and Krajina: 250,000 people

• Cambodia: 2-3 million people

• Chad: 40,000 people and as many as 200,000 tortured

• Chile: 10,000 people (the U.S. sponsored Pinochet coup in Chile)

• Colombia: 60,000 people

• Congo: 10 million people (Belgian imperialism supported by U.S. corporations and the U.S. sponsored assassination of Patrice Lumumba)

• Croatia: 15,000 people

• Cuba: 1,800 people

• Dominican Republic: at least 3,000 people

• East Timor: 200,000 people

• El Salvador: More than 75,000 people (U.S. support of the Salvadoran oligarchy and death squads)

• Greece: More than 50,000 people

• Grenada: 277 people

• Guatemala: 140,000 to 200,000 people killed or forcefully disappeared (U.S. support of the Guatemalan junta)

• Haiti: 100,000 people

• Honduras: hundreds of people (CIA supported Battalion kidnapped, tortured and killed at least 316 people)

• Indonesia: Estimates of 500,000 to 3 million people

• Iran: 262,000 people

• Iraq: 2.4 million people in Iraq war, 576, 000 Iraqi children by U.S. sanctions, and over 100,000 people in Gulf War

• Japan: 2.6-3.1 million people

• Korea: 5 million people

• Kosovo: 500 to 5,000

• Laos: 50,000 people

• Libya: at least 2500 people

• Nicaragua: at least 30,000 people (U.S. backed Contras’ destabilization of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua)

• Operation Condor: at least 10,000 people (By governments of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. U.S. govt/CIA coordinated training on torture, technical support, and supplied military aid to the Juntas)

• Pakistan: at least 1.5 million people

• Palestine: estimated more than 200,000 people killed by military but this does not include death from blockade/siege/settler violence

• Panama: between 500 and 4000 people

• Philippines: over 100,000 people executed or disappeared

• Puerto Rico: 4,645-8,000 people

• Somalia: at least 2,000 people

• Sudan: 2 million people

• Syria: at least 350,000 people

• Vietnam: 3 million people

• Yemen: over 377,000 people

• Yugoslavia: 107,000 people

South Korean Dictator Dies, Western Media Resurrects a Myth

By K. J. Noh

General Chun Doo Hwan was the corrupt military dictator that ruled Korea from 1979-1988, before handing off the presidency to his co-conspirator General Roh Tae Woo.  Chun took power in a coup in 1979, and during his presidency he perpetrated the largest massacre of Korean civilians since the Korean war. He died on November 23rd, in pampered, sybaritic luxury, impenitent and arrogant to the very last breath.  

Many western media outlets have written censorious, chest-beating accounts of his despotic governance and the massacres he perpetrated (here, here, here, and here)-- something they rarely bothered to do when he was actively perpetrating them in broad daylight before their eyes.  Like the light from a distant galaxy--or some strange journalistic time capsule--only after death, decades later, do "human rights violations" in South Korea burst out of radio silence and become newsworthy.

Better late than never, better faint than silent, better partial than absent, one could argue.  Still all of them miss out on key facts, spread lies through omission.  A key dimension of Korean history and politics looks to be buried with his death. A little background history is necessary to elucidate this.

The Sorrows of the Emperor-Dictator

The imperial president, Park Chung Hee

Chun's predecessor and patron, the aging South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, had ruled the country as an absolute totalitarian despot for 18 years, but he knew in his bones that his days were numbered. He had survived two violent assassination attempts, mass civil protests, and even opprobrium from his American puppet masters, despite serving them loyally by sending 320,000 South Korean troops to Vietnam. Even Park's closest advisors were worried about the fragility of his rule.

Park Chung Hee had been a former Japanese military collaborator during Japan’s colonization of Korea. A US-installed puppet Syngman Rhee had smashed socialism in the South through genocide--a method later to be replicated in Indonesia's "Jakarta method".

Park Chung Hee (in Sunglasses) and Cha Ji Chul (right; in camo), 1961 during their coup.

But the puppet-genocidaire Rhee was in turn toppled by student protests in 1960, and the integration of South Korea into a US-led security structure and capitalist order looked precarious due to popular hatred of the US. Into this foment, Brigadier General Park took power in a vicious putsch. Park was a totalitarian fascist groomed within the Japanese military system, where he had conducted counterinsurgency against Korean independence fighters in Manchuria. (One of them, a legendary guerrilla leader called Kim Il Sung, would escape his clutches and become a life-long nemesis). He had then been trained and cultivated by the US during the 1950's, attending military school in the US. When Rhee was deposed, Park rapidly took power, pledging fealty to the US and total war against communists. Having already proven his anticommunist credentials through a massive treachery, betrayal and slaughter, he was welcomed by the Kennedy Administration. This established the Junta’s legitimacy, while maintaining the continuity of US colonial “hub and spoke” architecture in the region.

Park Chung Hee as Japanese Military Officer

Park nominally assumed the presidency through an election but then tightened his regime until he attained the powers of the Japanese Emperor, whom he had worshipped and admired during Japanese rule. He formally rewrote the constitution after the Japanese imperial system, legally giving himself the powers of Showa-era Sun God.  This, along with his dismissal of colonial atrocities to normalize relations with Japan, in obeisance to the US strategic design for the region, resulted in massive civil insurrection against him.  These protests were barely put down with mass bloodshed, torture, disappearances, and terror.  But even among his inner circle, doubts were voiced about his extreme despotic overreach.   

The Insurance Policy: Ruthless and Cunning

From the earliest days of his rule, Park Chung Hee had cultivated high ranking officers to key positions, as loyal retainers in an insurance policy in case a coup happened against him.  A secret military cabal, later to be called "Hanahwe" [also, “Hanahoe”; "the council of one"], a group of officers within the 1955, 11th class of South Korea's Military Academy, had signaled their total fealty to Park during Park's military coup in 1961.  As a result, Hanahwe members were rapidly brought in-house, rewarded with powerful roles within the military government, and formed a deadly, elite Praetorian guard within the labyrinthine power structures of the Park Administration. 

Park Chung Hee with Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963

Two of them were the leaders of this secret-society insurance policy.   One of them, Chun Doo Hwan, would be referred to as the "ruthless one", known for his amoral brutality and utter lack of conscience.  He would later be called "the slaughterhouse butcher".  The other was Roh Tae Woo, Chun's military blood brother, the "cunning one", known for his strategic, tactical, and political cunning.

Power players, left to right: Roh Tae Woo, Chun Doo Hwan, Cha Ji-Chul

Together, “Ruthless and Cunning” would prove their mettle in Vietnam, auditioning as understudies for the US Imperial war machine, and proving their bona fides by operating a rolling atrocity machine, the SK 9th Infantry "White horse" Division, where Chun’s 29th regiment would cut its teeth on brutal massacres against Vietnamese civilians. Psychopathic and Amoral, they would form a two-headed hydra, ensuring Park's rule against enemies within and without.  A third member of Hanahwe, Jeong Ho Yong, would also cut his teeth in the 9th Division in Vietnam, as would the Capital Mechanized "Fierce Tiger" Division, and various Marine and Special warfare brigades.  All would gain recognition and favor with the US military brass in Vietnam, where South Korean troops would eventually outnumber US troops on the ground.  They would also play key roles in future Korean history.  

Sex, Whiskey, and Guns: High Deductibles

Park's insurance policy kicked in when his KCIA chief pumped him full of bullets at a whiskey-sodden orgy gone bad in late autumn of 1979.  Two young women--a nervous college student and a popular singer--had been procured to serve the sexual whims of the president at a luxurious KCIA "safehouse" that had been set up for such routine vernal assignations.  During the pre-coital dinner banquet, with expensive whiskey serving as lubricant, a heated argument arose between the KCIA Chief, Kim Jae Kyu and Chief Presidential Bodyguard, Cha Ji Chol, about how to put down massive civil protests against Park's rule in Pusan and Masan. Cha Ji Chol proposed the "Pol Pot option" arguing that a massacre of 30,000 civilians would subdue civilians and put the genie back in the bottle.  This was accompanied by insults at Kim for not having implemented such "effective" measures.   Kim Jae Kyu, incensed either at the casual brutality or at the blatant criticism, put an abrupt end to the debate by drawing his pistol and shooting Cha and Park. "I shot the heart of the beast of the (Yushin) dictatorship", he would later claim.  Park's insurance policy would rapidly kick in at that point, although the deductible would be his own life.  

Enter the Praetorian Guard: Tigers, Horses, and Dragons

After Park's death, Oct 26th, Lt General Chun Doo Hwan, the head of the Armed Forces Defense Security Command (DSC)--Park's institutional Praetorian Guard--rapidly took matters in hand.  Chun would rapidly take over, first the investigation of the assassination, then key army positions, and then the government.  Some historians marvel at the rapidity with which Chun consolidated power and how quickly he disciplined loose factions within Park's old guard.  This ignores the rhizomatic base of Hanahwe deep within the executive and in all branches of the military, and the institutional powers baked into the DSC to preserve loyalty and deter subversion and coups. 

Chun, using his statutory powers, and good dose of military firepower, arrested key military leaders for the assassination, and then on Dec 12th, 1979 instigated a coup, supported by Hanahwe comrade Roh Tae Woo, now division commander of the 9th “White Horse” Division. Roh withdrew the elite unit away from its critical position on the DMZ to the Capital, where they were joined by another Vietnam/Hanahwe classmate, general Jeong Ho Yong.  These troops, with another Vietnam-veteran division, the Capitol Mechanized "Tiger" Division, and various special warfare brigades, fought the old guard in the streets before rapidly subduing them. Not long after this class reunion, Chun would declare martial law and appoint himself president with a new constitution and fill all key military ranks with his Hanahwe classmates.

A "Splendid Holiday" turns sour

Mass protests broke out again after Chun’s declaration of Martial Law on May 17th, 1980.  In the city of Gwangju, hundreds of students protested. 

Chun's response was to send a crack division of special warfare troops to smash heads, assault bystanders, and shoot protestors, in an operation named "Splendid Holiday". Beatings, rapes, and mass killings were the order of the day; “blood flowed like rivers in the streets”.

Mass Protest in Gwangju, May 1980

However, in an extraordinary turn of events, stunned protestors, instead of capitulating at the terror, responded by storming police armories and requisitioning weapons, taxis, buses, and improvised explosives, to fight the elite troops to a standstill. Despite the deployment of helicopter gunships and Armored Vehicles, 3000 Special Warfare Paratroopers, along with 18,000 riot troops, found themselves driven out of the city. In this, the liberation of Gwangju stands out as one of the most astonishing feats of civil resistance of the 20th century.

Riot Troops and Paratroopers assault protestors and bystanders in Gwangju

This victory was not to last, however. After the rebels surrendered thousands of arms as a gesture of good faith to seek amnesty, Chun's administration would assault the city with 2 armored divisions and 5 special forces brigades. An untold number of civilians--excess death statistics note 2300 individuals--would be slaughtered, searing Gwangju into the historic annals of atrocity and infamy.

Anti-government protests would go underground, and re-erupt 7 years later, when Chun's presidency, which had been awarded the Olympics found it inconvenient to perpetrate another massacre in front of the international press in the run up to the Olympics.  Chun would accede to protestors' demands for a direct election, the outcome of which conveniently passed the presidency to his Hanahwe second, General Roh Tae Woo.

The missing factor:  Who let the dogs out?  

The above are the basic historical outlines, acknowledged by most journalists and historians.  But what they miss out, is the platform and permissions that circumscribed these historic events.  In particular, two questions arise: Under what authority did Chun initiate his coups? And how did he subdue Gwangju?  The answer leads back to the same place.  

South Korea has never had a policy independent of the US--it has always been a vassal neo-colony. This was demonstrated when the US placed THAAD missiles on Korean soil, ignoring the explicit orders of President Moon Jae-In by coordinating secretly with the South Korean military. Even US Ambassador Donald Gregg, acknowledged openly before Congress that the US-South Korea relationship had historically been a Patron-Client relationship.

This is because the Southern state of Korea, from its inception, was created deliberately by the US after liberation to thwart a popular, indigenous socialist government (the Korean People's Republic) from taking sovereign power over the entire peninsula.

Since its occupation in 1945 by the US military government, South Korea has always been constrained and controlled by the US. Its politics and culture, even where it might be nominally independent, has been thoroughly colonized by the US. For example, in the early 90's, a fractious intra-party conflict broke out between two Cabinet factions of the Liberal Kim Young Sam presidency.  The “irreconcilable” fight was between cliques who had studied political science at UC Berkeley and those who had studied at Yale.  Such were boundaries of South Korean discourse and the overarching nature of US influence.

This state of affairs is most true of the South Korean military, which was cloned from the US military during the US occupation of 1945-1948, and which has been continuously under US control (Opcon) since July14th, 1950. 

A young Chun Doo Hwan at US Army Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg (1950’s)

Key leaders such as Park, Chun, Roh were trained and indoctrinated into US military practices and culture and had close personal connections with the US military.  Chun, for example, had attended the US Psychological Warfare school and Special Warfare school in Fort Bragg, Ranger school at Fort Benning, and Airborne training at the US Army infantry school before receiving commissions to lead Special Warfare forces.  He then in Vietnam fighting under US MACV command before ascending to key positions in the ROK military.

This dependency is starkest regarding military operational control, which the US still maintains in “wartime” to this day. ROK divisions cannot move or act independently without explicit orders from the top of the military command chain, or unless explicit permission is granted to be released from this operational control. The head of the military command chain at the time of Gwangju was General John A Wickham Jr, the head of the UNC/CFC command.  Wickham would have been subordinate to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

In other words, SK troops do not get to commit massacres on their own.  They need a hall pass from the US to engage in any military maneuvers or actions.  The US military granted them such a hall pass to travel down to Gwangju, knowing that this plan that would likely result in the slaughter of students and citizens.  The released units under the Special Warfare Command, a lethal killing machine, are all divisions with a deep integration with and long history of serving the US.

Chun Doo Hwan with Ronald Reagan, 1981

The US claims that it was utterly in the dark and in no position to refuse the release of Opcon demanded by South Korea: that the Koreans snatched up Opcon, like a bully stealing lunch money, and then went on to commit mass atrocities that the US could only sit by and watch in slack-jawed innocence. These are after-the-fact re-workings of history by creative lawyers ignorant of military realities. Militaries are instituted to have unity of command, and Chun was a US-trained, known actor in a specific chain of command, with close ties to the US brass.  The notion that a partially established coup junta of a client state could simply Swiss-cheese US military command structure and snatch Opcon to commit massacres at will strains credibility.  The absurd official portrayals of the US Military brass as hapless damsels before roguish generals is refuted by official records and smacks of satire or desperation.   

Protestors running from Troops, Gwangju, 1980

In fact, Journalist Tim Shorrock  using the declassified "Cherokee files", has detailed well the discussions that happened at the time of Gwangju: top US officials in the Carter administration 1) knew of the brewing crackdown and 2) greenlighted military action, knowing full well the costs.  According to Shorrock’s meticulous reporting:

[Troops] were sent with the approval of the US commander of the US-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham…That decision, made at the highest levels of the US government….exposed how deeply the Carter administration was involved in the planning for the military coup of 1980….the Carter administration had essentially given the green light to South Korea’s generals to use military force...

This action was authorized to avoid a second "Iran" debacle, where another US-placed despot had been overthrown by popular revolt to US consternation, humiliation, and loss.  Not only did the US greenlight the massacre by US-familiar Vietnam-veteran divisions, the US deployed the USS Coral Sea to support the flank of Chun's military during the retaking of the city and heightened surveillance support with AWACS. In other words, the Gwangju massacre was a US-enabled-and-supported operation, done with explicit US knowledge and coordination.

Pentagon lawyers have argued that they had previously "released opcon" to the Korean military, so that these massacres were not done under direct US control. That is a distinction without a difference, akin to a pit bull owner saying that they took their beast off the leash, and therefore are not responsible for the deadly consequences.  The ROK military was a US-trained-and-coordinated combatant force; some units involved had served directly under the US I Corps in Vietnam only years prior to Gwangju.  The very fact that the US released opcon, knowing full well their capacities, military histories, and what was on the cards, makes the whole argument a poor exercise in plausible deniability.  No one who has the smallest understanding of how armies work would fall for "the pit bull ate my homework" excuse.   

The US has also argued that the Special Warfare division was exempt from opcon at the time.  This, too, is a legal fiction--Special Warfare Troops, of all ROK troops, are the most tightly integrated and bound to US command, where they have a long history of training, coordinating, and working with and as proxies for the US military. (The US maintains this pretense because SWF are designed to infiltrate into NK, where the necessity to avoid US command responsibility requires a legal fiction of "independence").

The same could also apply for Chun's coups as well.  The Dec 12th coup involved the movement of the Vietnam-veteran 9th division, far away from its position guarding the DMZ to attack the incumbent government, along with maneuvers of the Capital Mechanized Division and Special warfare troops.  The May 20th coup also involved large troop maneuvers to threaten and dissolve the Korean parliament.  South Korea is a small, crowded peninsula, bristling with arms and military bases on hair trigger alert, surveilling and monitoring every inch of its territory for military movement.  To assert that the US command was aware of the coups is not conspiracy that presumes US omniscience.  It's simply assuming clear signaling on a crowded dance floor to avoid inadvertent collisions.  It's inconceivable that such a massive troop maneuver would not have been signaled up the chain at minimum to avoid a friendly fire incident.  

Return OPCON, Restore Peace

So where do these facts leave us? 

As the media stir up the flies around Chun's sordid past, they also seek to bury with his body the fact that South Korea's military is an appendage of the US military, and that its warts, chancres, and tumors are grown from within the US body politic. Exorbitant atrocities such as the Bodo League Massacres, or the Gwangju Massacre, accrue to the secret debit account of the US imperial ledger, where human rights violations vanish off the books, and where moral debt and karmic interest are never calculated or reconciled.  

Despite a confusing, bifurcated organizational structure (Independent command control vs. Subordinated operational control; Peacetime Opcon vs. Wartime Opcon), the bare political fact is that South Korea's military falls effectively under US control, not simply in “wartime”, but whenever it is politically expedient or strategically necessary. This card was obvious when the ROK military simply defied Moon’s moratorium on THAAD missile installation and took its orders from the US, not even bothering to notify the Korean president that the missiles had been delivered in-country.  Subsequent investigation revealed that the South Korean military claimed a confidentiality agreement with the US military as the reason to hide the information from South Korea’s own commander-in-chief.  

Not only does the ROK military translate the will of the US in domestic actions--including coups and massacres, but it has also functioned as a brutal sidekick for US aggressions abroad, and serves as a strategic force projection platform and force multiplier for US containment against China. Unlike any other "sovereign" state in the world, South Korea's 3.7 million troops and materiel all fall under US operational control the instant that the US decides that they want to use them.

This is despite the fact that since the inception of its civilian government in 1993, SK has sued the US for the return of Opcon.  This request is now going into its third decade; the US has simply stalled, moved goal posts, changed definitions and conditions, and stonewalled to this date.

This debate around Opcon is important in the current historical moment as the US is escalating to war with China. Any de-escalation with North Korea will require the declaration of peace, predicated on the return of sovereign opcon to South Korea.  However, the US will not seek to de-escalate tensions with North Korea, because if that happens, South Korea is likely to confederate in some manner with North Korea, join China's Belt and Road Initiative and then become integrated as an ally of China.  This would cripple the US security architecture in the Northeast Pacific.  This renders any peace with North Korea antithetical to US strategic interests. 

Secondly, the US escalation for War with China requires the capacity to access and threaten the Chinese continent across a series of leverage points. Inescapably, South Korea will be a key theater of battle, because of its geostrategic position as a bridgehead onto China.  Also, the temptation to leverage a force of 6.7 million South Koreans (3.7 M troops +3 M paramilitary) as cannon fodder for war against China is simply too irresistible to pass on.  In light of this, Korea expert Tim Beal argues that in this moment of heightened tension with China, the most dangerous place in the Pacific is not the South China Sea or the East China Sea, but on the Korean Peninsula.  

We will see this conflict heighten as South Korea enters into a new presidential election cycle between a US-favored conservative candidate, and a China-sympathetic progressive candidate.  

Nevertheless, South Korea’s history offers a stark and ominous lesson, one that the MSM would prefer you ignore: a battle is brewing, with very high stakes.  Under pressure, the US has taken brutal actions to maintain control and hegemony. It may do so again.  

Chun’s passing is being taken as an opportunity to distribute soporific drafts of historical amnesia--the better to sleepwalk into war or tragedy, again. 

People with a conscience should not let this misdirection pass.  To close one’s eyes to history is to enable future atrocities and war.   Only with eyes wide open does the public have a chance of staving off this coming war. 

K.J. Noh, is a scholar, educator and journalist focusing on the political economy and geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.   He writes for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, Asia Times, MR Online.  He also does frequent commentary and analysis on the news programs The Critical Hour, By Any Means Necessary, Fault Lines, Political Misfits, Loud & Clear, Breakthrough News, Flashpoints. He believes a functioning society requires good information; to that end, he strives to combat the weaponization of disinformation in the current cold war climate.

The Colonial Gaze in Overdrive: The Latest Rumors and Allegations About the DPRK

Photo: KIM WON-JIN / Contributor / Getty Images

By Derek R. Ford

After weeks of wild speculation about his health, which began as rumors that he was undergoing surgery and escalated into claims that he had in fact died, Chairman Kim Jong Un visually appeared in the media at a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new fertilizer plant. It was yet another case of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK, or North Korea) magical ability to raise someone from the dead.

All of the think tank experts and media outlets are now struggling to confirm their initial theory by comparing the movement of Chairman Kim’s legs before his “disappearance” and during the ceremony and by ruminating on a “mysterious mark” on his wrist.

Lest the rumors die, on May 03 the South Korean military reported that four bullets fired from the north hit the wall of a South Korean guard post along the Demilitarized Zone. In response, troops in the south fired 20 warning shots.

A Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said the shots were unintentional, as conditions were foggy and the shots came when Korean People’s Army soldiers typically change shifts and check firearms. US Secretary of Defense Mike Pompeo agreed with the assessment. Given the highly sensitive nature of the situation, the DPRK hasn’t formally responded at this point, and there hasn’t actually been any evidence confirming that the shots came from the north, let alone from the Korean People’s Army.

Despite this, speculation abounds that it was intentional. The most quoted source is Choi Kang, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, who told Reuters: “Yesterday, Kim was trying to show he is perfectly healthy, and today, Kim is trying to mute all kinds of speculation that he may not have full control over the military.”

Dr. Choi’s hypothesis might make sense if the DPRK’s military consisted of a few guys with guns. Maybe then it could be an assertion of control. But the country has an incredibly sophisticated military, and firing four rounds of ammunition isn’t much of a statement.

It might make sense if the DPRK had absolutely anything to gain from such an action. They don’t. In fact, such an action could only hurt them insofar as it is treated as a “provocative” action by the US. Whenever the DPRK does basically anything, from testing missiles to launching communications satellites, they’re quickly and routinely—and uniquely—condemned. This is an unjust situation, but one of which the North’s leadership is acutely aware. And now the United Nations Command is investigating to determine whether the shots violated the armistice agreement signed in 1953 to end—or pause—the US-led war against Korea.

It might make sense if the DPRK was looking to antagonize their fellow Koreans in the south. But that’s not the case. In April 2018, Chairman Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed the historic Panmunjom Declaration, the second point of which was to eliminate military tensions. Since then, the two states have made tremendous strides in doing so by removing landmines and dismantling guard posts. US war exercises have continued, although they have been significantly scaled back.

If you’re not visible, you don’t exist

More problematic with Choi’s assertion, however, one that accords with the rumors of Chairman Kim’s death, is the idea that Chairman Kim and the DPRK have something to “prove” to the West. The logic and force of the West’s colonial gaze is in full force here. Chairman Kim is injured or dead simply because he isn’t visible to the West, and the longer he isn’t visible the more likely it is he is dead. Now he’s “trying to show us” he has control of the military.

The colonialist framework holds that the colonized subject exists only insofar as they’re recognized by the colonizing power. This is the framework under which it’s logical for the colonizer to “discover” a land inhabited by people for centuries. After “discovery,” colonialism demands the constant visibility and transparency of the colonized. Any retreat from visibility into opacity is an affront to the colonial power. This explains the constant outrage from the West that the DPRK is “shrouded in secrecy” or a “hermit kingdom: because the West can’t have unfettered access, because they have to deal with assertions of national sovereignty, because they can’t send in weapons inspectors at the will.

The US is, for obvious reason, a significant factor in North Korea’s actions and policies. But as I heard Ri Ki Ho, representative of the DPRK’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in NYC, say at the 2019 Global Peace Forum on Korea: “we’re not obsessed with the US.”

Ri was speaking in the context of the nuclear talks between the US and DPRK, saying that whatever the US did or didn’t do, the DPRK would continue along the path it set forward. It makes perfect sense, but only if we divorce ourselves from the colonialist gaze.

My own take is that the rumors and accusations are primarily intended to halt inter-Korean cooperation. Thus, it’s not a coincidence that the rumors of Chairman Kim’s health coincided with the April 15 legislative elections in South Korea. The ruling Democratic Party and its allied Platform Party (which might be absorbed within the DPK) won a resounding victory, capturing 180 out of the 300 available seats in the National Assembly. The far-right, represented by the Unified Future Party, performed worse than they had in 60 years.

The election was partly a referendum on the Moon government’s engagement with the DPRK, which has encountered obstacle after obstacle primarily in the form of US sanctions and the domination of the US over South Korea’s military. The result was a clear affirmation of engagement, peace, and reunification with their fellow Korean people in the north.

The rumors and accusations, then, can be seen as an attempt to disorient and disillusion the hopes of the South Korean people, and to present these aspirations within Korea as an impossibility to the people of the world. They have the added benefit of obstructing any remaining possibility of a rapprochement between the US and DPRK under the Trump administration. Further, depending on the UNC findings, the accusations of gunfire may result in still more sanctions or something even worse.

Regardless of whatever rumors are flying, whatever allegations are in the air, whatever demonization campaign is circulating, the refrain of everyone interested in peace and justice is the same: The Korean people—in the southern and northern parts of the peninsula and in the diaspora—have the rights to peace, liberation, and self-determination, and we will do whatever we can to help them realize those rights.

Derek R. Ford is an educator and organizer, whose latest book is Politics and Pedagogy in the “Post-Truth” Era (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Still Fighting for Korea’s Liberation: An Interview with Ahn Hak-sop

By Derek R. Ford

Editor’s Note: Ahn Hak-sop was an officer in the Korean People’s Army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) during the Korean War. In 1952, he was captured by the United States and its proxy forces while on his way to a meeting in the southern part of Korea. He served decades as an unconverted political prisoner before finally winning release in 1995. Today, he is still active as a peace and reunification activist in the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea). Liberation School interviewed Mr. Ahn in November 2019 at a peace church in the Civilian Control Zone just south of the 38th parallel that divides the Korean peninsula. This interview was conducted by Derek Ford, Hampton Institute’s Education Dept chair, for Liberation School.

Thank you so much for speaking with us today, Mr. Ahn. It’s wonderful to see you again. To begin, can you tell us about how you got involved with the Korean struggle for peace, independence, and reunification?

My birth town is Ganghwa Island. I was born in a poor household, in the era of Japanese imperialism. My family was Confuscianist. I went to elementary school and was taught an imperialist education. They didn’t teach me that Korea was a colony. I found that out in second grade. Through my experiences in the imperialist education, I found out that Korea was not independent, and since that time the feeling of anti-imperialism grew in my mind. At the time of liberation from Japanese imperialism, I was in hiding because of anti-imperialist activism, and that is where I met the resistance forces. On the afternoon of August 15, I knew that I was liberated from Japanese imperialism.

What was your understanding of US imperialism at that time?

At first, I thought the US Army was a liberation army. But soon General MacArthur referred to the US as an occupying army. There was no word of liberation, only occupation; so I was suspicious, but only partly so. Although I was young, the whole nation was full with division between the rule of the US and Soviets. In September of 1945, Koreans went out to greet the US Army, but the US Army shot at them. After the Moscow Committee, the US Army said explicitly that they were there to block the Soviet Union. But in 1948, the Soviet Union withdrew all of their troops. But the US Army didn’t withdraw.

In almost every town, there was a People’s Committee for self-rule, but the US Army crushed the People’s Committees with tanks and soldiers. There was a lot of resistance and revolt at that time.

On August 8, 1947, when I was returning home with a colleague from a meeting to prepare a celebration for the liberation, someone shot at us, and my colleague was wounded and arrested. I survived and ran away and went underground to Kaesong, which was in the northern part of the peninsula, although there was no 38th parallel at that time. While I was in Kaesong, I went to engineering school. The South Korean police went to school to arrest me, but the school protected me.

What happened after that, during the war?

During the war, I enlisted in the Korean People’s Army, but the school delayed my admittance. I was sick, and so I wasn’t able to fight when I finally joined. I served in intelligence gathering. The KPA sent me to the South in 1952 as an intelligence officer, where I was arrested. In early April of 1952, I was going to a meeting of the Workers’ Party in the district of Kangwondo. I was observed on my way there and arrested.

While I was in jail, I had a lot of obstacles to overcome. There was spying and torture for 42 years. There was pressure to convert from Juche ideology into capitalism beginning in 1956.

First they tried to make theoretical arguments against the DPRK. But they couldn’t defend their beliefs to me. After that, they tried to bribe me with property. After that, there was torture. There is a small place in the jail, and they would throw water in the room in the winter. They take all of your clothes and bedding. I tried to survive. So I ran and exercised to keep my body warm. But I couldn’t last forever. I became unconscious, and they dragged my body out to keep me alive. There were other forms of torture. I could overcome all of this. What was most painful was when the police brought my family, my mother and brother to the prison.

When and how were you finally released?

On August 15, 1995 I was released from jail. They didn’t want to do it, but they had to release me because of the Geneva Convention. They should have released me in 1953. At that time, I should have been sent to the DPRK, but the US and South Korea didn’t do that. They said I was a spy, and so I didn’t fall under the convention, which they said only applied to battleground soldiers, not information operatives.

I tried to litigate for many years, and the army and prison did everything they could do to block the law. I couldn’t send any letters or meet with anyone. I finally got one letter out, however, and human rights lawyers took up my case. The government was forced to justify my detention, and there was no justification. They had to release me.

Two other prisoners came out of jail with me. Two of them went to the DPRK in 2000 after the June 15 Declaration. Those comrades went to the North because they thought that shortly there would be free movement between the two states. They went to the North to study and thought they would come back later.

Why did you stay in the South?

I remained in the South by my own choice. There are three reasons. First, I thought it was a temporary situation. Second, there were young progressive people here in the South, and they asked me to stay. They said, “If the unconverted prisoners go the North, we will lose the center of the struggle.” It became very important for me to stay. The third reason is that Korea is now divided, and the US occupies the southern part. We have to keep struggling here for the withdrawal of US army, the peace treaty, and peaceful reunification. I decided to stay here to fight for these goals. In 1952, I came here to liberate the southern half of the peninsula, and I need to stay here and continue that struggle.

What has your life been like since release?

The government required me to have one guaranteed supervisor when I was released, so if there was any problem with me they could hold them accountable. I tore up the paper and said, “I will not give you a hostage.”

Still, there are security police who follow me. Whenever there is a problem with the North and South, they raid my house and stand guard outside my property. One time at a demonstration, conservative forces attacked me. The police did nothing to protect me.

I’d like to explain more about the Security Surveillance Act, which mandates that police watch former political prisoners. Every week or every other week, the police come to my house and ask about my activities, who has visited my house, and so on. Once every other month I need to report to them about what I did, who I met, and who visited me. Every two years I need to go to court. However, I don’t report to them or go to court. That is their law, and it’s unjust.

It’s not easy to continue fighting this law. I can’t leave the country. I can’t visit my hometown. But I’ve lived my whole life for reunification and anti-imperialism, and I’d like to live the rest of my life for that.

From Stolen Land to Riches: US Neo-Colonialism in South Korea

By Riley Bove

The history behind the division of Korea into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) is a complicated matter that crosses many spheres. The history between the US and Korea dates back to the Joseon Dynasty when American missionaries introduced Christianity to the peninsula through mission trips and the building of orphanages. When the Japanese colonized the Korean peninsula at the turn of the 20th century, it led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, the enslavement of Korean people, as well as the violent suppression of culture, language, and national sovereignty. After World War II and the defeat of Japanese colonialism, and the liberation of Korea, the US enacted both military and governmental control in the southern half of the peninsula. The Korean War was one of many conflicts during which US imperialism acted through proxies to contest the global struggle for socialism and national liberation through the US’s “containment policy.”

The point of this article is to explore the ways in which the US has enacted imperialism and neocolonialism on the Korean Peninsula since its division in the post-WWII era and into the present day. While much attention is paid to the devastation the US caused--and continues to cause--in the DPRK, this article focuses more on the divisive and exploitative role its played in the ROK.

The history of the exploitation of the Korean peninsula dates back to the colonization of Korea by Japan in 1910. By the 20th century, the Korean peninsula had already come under the Japanese sphere of influence and under the militarized gaze of the Meiji government. By 1910, Korea was fully under Japanese colonial rule. American missionaries had already been in contact with the Korean peninsula, starting the 1880s, spreading the evangelical faith throughout and beginning the connection between Korea and the West.  Japan had set its imperialist sights on conquering the rest of the Pacific by 1940. From 1910 to 1945, Korea was subjected to a brutal 35-year-long colonization by the Japanese. For example, Korean women experienced sexual subjugation under Japanese rule. In her essay, “The Korean “Comfort Women’: Movement For Redress,” Sarah Soh Chunghee states that, “Japan began drafting Korean women in full force from around 1937 when its army invaded China and the soldiers raped and murdered tens of thousands of Chinese women in Nanjing” (1228). While occupying Korea, Japan forced women into sexual slavery and men, women, and children were murdered by the Japanese as they moved to fight the indigenous resistance  movements that emerged.

By the end of WWII, the liberation of Korea was underway as revolutionaries swept the Japanese imperialists from the peninsula. Both the Soviet Union and the US consolidated to rebuild the peninsula after the liberation movement. The Soviets helped the north establish a workers-led state and reclaim the land previously owned by landlords. There were preparations to have a “People’s Republic” in Korea that was of, by, and for Koreans. However, this never came to fruition. Anna Louise Strong, in her report for the CIA, writes that: “When the Americans landed in Korea, the Koreans had already a de facto government. A "People's Republic" had been declared a day earlier by a congress of Koreans themselves. General John R. Hodge, commander of the U. S. armed forces, dissolved this "People's Republic," and drove most of its members underground.”  Strong details how, between the liberation of Korea and the creation of the state of South Korea, a people’s democracy was already established in the south. However, the American forces overthrew the de facto government and established a US-backed puppet military dictatorship. The north established their own government without any assistance from foreign powers, while in the south, the Americans maintained their iron grip which has continued into the present day.

After the American “intervention” and toppling of the de facto “People’s Republic of Korea” government, the American imperialists  implanted a pro-US ally, Syngman Rhee, in order to govern the southern half of the peninsula. Rhee was a Western educated Korean who had anti-Japanese credentials but was fully in the pocket of Washington and Wall Street. Once Syngman Rhee was in power, he imposed his oppressive crackdown of all dissidence. In their essay, “Organizing Dissent against Authoritarianism,” Park Mi states that, “Even a moderate dissident became equated as a procommunist and pro-North Korean activity that was deemed to be prosecuted under the National Security Law” (263). The National Security Act (NSA) became the justification for repressive actions of the Rhee regime, including massacres that totaled in the hundreds of thousands. Park also details that, “Military confrontation with North Korea was used as an excuse to justify violations of human rights and the suppression of political dissidents” (263). The geopolitical landscape of a divided Korea was used by the South Korean-US government as a justification for the suppression of the people’s right to self-determination. At the same time in the United States, during the 1950s, McCarthyism reigned over the political landscape of post-war America. McCarthyism was defined as a “Second Red Scare”, a time of anti-communist setiment and political repression, in which the entire organized left was almost incapacited, with its leaders jailed or driven underground, and anyone who had any pro-communist or even pro-peace sentiments “blacklisted.” In the ROK, the Rhee regime enacted its own McCarthyism era under the NSA in order to snuff out and executed thousands of suspected communists.

After the Rhee administration was overthrown in the 1961 coup d’etat, Park Chung-hee rose to power and declared martial law under the Yushin Constitution, which allowed Park to openly violate civil liberties and assume total control of the government. Under his regime, worker unions and other types of mass organizing were suppressed and thousands of union members and organizers were brutally murdered. They faced sexual assault and rape as well as other forms of police violence. Student organizers, as well as organizations deemed to be Marxist oriented, were brutally suppressed under the Park regime.

Park was assassinated in 1979 and another pro-US dictator, Chun Doo-hwan, took power. Political and civil tension culminated in the Gwangju Massacre in 1980 in which 2,000 people, including student-led activist groups and anti-government demonstrators, were murdered by the military and governmental forces. Chun remained in power until 1988. Leading up to the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, the Chun government attempted to make the city more “presentable”. Park Mi writes that, “the Chun government introduced a ‘beautification of the environment’ bill, which was designed to eliminate slums and unregistered street vendors” (278). The Chun government had attempted to gentrify the city, leaving the poor and working class citizens in poverty and forced many into homelessness. All while this was happening, the US government, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, actively supported and endorsed the brutal regimes. In the 1980s, the US sent a massive influx of capital to South Korea, and it was only during this time that the GDP of the South overtook that of the North.

At the end of WWII, the country had been transformed into one of the poorest countries in the world. The Korean War, which spanned from 1950 to 1953, economically devastated the entirety of the Korean peninsula. The US military and other allied forces fire-bombed and destroyed 22 of the 24 cities in the northern half. Thousands of people died in the war and hundreds of thousands of children become orphaned and displaced during and after the war. While the US fought under the flag of the UN, this was nothing more than a fig leaf for US imperialism. In one of the most infamous massacres to happen during the Korean war, a US cavalry regiment had opened fire on a crowd of South Korean refugees, murdering 150-300 of them. It would be known as the No Gun Ri massacre. Many years after, the US military attempted to whitewash the massacre and it still hasn’t been held accountable in its role of murdering civilians.

In her book, “From Orphan to Adoptee,” Soo-jin Pate critically analyzes the rise of militarized humanitarianism and the birth of transnational adoptions of Korean children after the Korean War. Pate writes that, “However, its location—its close proximity to the Soviet Union—made Korea extremely important to the United States” (24). Pate describes that even though the mountainous landscape of the Korean peninsula did not offer any crucial resources to the United States that they couldn’t get elsewhere, the close proximity to the Soviet Union made the Korean peninsula an important geopolitical area. This is true, but it is also important to acknowledge that Korea was and is targeted because the DPRK’s social and economic system remains antithetical to capitalism and imperialism.

Pate also writes about the conditions of post-war South Korea for orphans: “In addition, 100,000 children were left without homes and separated from their families so that by the end of the war, over 40,000 orphans resided in orphanages” (30). The devastation of the Korean war left children without parents and the orphanages that already existed were overfilled. Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, along with American NGOs or non-governmental organizations, built more orphanages and provided materials for food and other necessities. Under the backdrop of the US military occupation and the Korean War, this type of humanitarianism became militarized. Pate also echoes this sentiment: “Militarism and humanitarianism became conflated through programs such as Armed Forces Assistance to Korea and Korean Civil Assistance Command, which produced what I call militarized humanitarianism” (34). Also under this backdrop of militarized humanitarianism, NGOs such as Holt International became frontrunners in the transnational adoptions of Korean orphans. With this, American families flocked to adopt children under the guise of “saving”. This type of savior complex often drove the NGOs like Holt International to be one of the most profitable companies in adoption of children. By contrast, orphans in the DPRK remained in the country, and the government provided them with excellent shelter, education, health care, and other resources. In the DPRK, war orphans were something like national heroes.

Images of “cold, hungry, and threadbare” children filling their stomachs with food donated by American and other Western countries inflated the image of the US military and others as saviors to war-torn children. A lot of these Korean orphans were exploited by public relations in the military in order to further conflate this trope. Images of children smiling and interacting with American servicemen became the poster for militarized humanitarianism. American media campaigns started to funnel money and editorials, describing the orphans as “victims of communism.”

With this mass campaign, American NGOs and other organizations donated immense resources. The influx of media attention and campaigns became the driving force of Korean adoptions. Pate describes the conditions of adoptions as follows: “The geopolitics of the Cold War and the discourse of Cold War Orientalism created a particular set of conditions that made the bodies of Korean children highly desirable” (87). She also writes that, “These children were highly desirable because they were perceived as exotic and cute and because they were perhaps the least threatening group of Asians that the United States had ever encountered” (87). Because of the anti-communist sentiment that plagued American society and Cold War politics, this made Korean children highly sought after for international adoption

 Korean children were seen as non-threatening because many of them were extremely young—infants and toddlers—so assimilation into American society would be easier than it would be with older children. Orientalism also played a part in the tropes of Korean children being more submissive towards assimilation tactics and being perceived as non-enemies. The fetishization of Korean girls had to do with similar orientalist tropes of East Asian women as docile and hyper-feminized. Pate describes the phenomenon this way: “the Oriental doll connotes femininity, exoticness, delicateness, silence, and docility, these very descriptions become assigned to the Korean female orphan” (94). This commodification of Korean women, in other words, relied on the racist, misogynistic, and imperialist view of Korean women as “doll-like”. As Pate writes, the interaction of Korean women with US military servicemen was used as a bargaining chip and to help maintain friendly relations between the US and South Korea.

Korean women and young female orphans were often forcibly recruited into sex work for the US military. These types of “camptowns” became a hotbed of sexual assault and rape. This form of exploitation towards Korean women echoes the brutal sexual violence that was forced upon Korean women by Japanese imperialists during the colonization of Korea and WWII. Soojin Pate wrote that, “the United States adopted a ‘boys will be boys’ policy toward camptown prostitution in South Korea. They were able to justify this policy by linking military prostitution to issues of national security. Citing a 1965 study on troop–community relations conducted by the Eighth U.S. Army” (58). The US military, as Pate argues, adopted a more “turning a blind eye” policy toward camptown and military prostitution. Sexual exploitation as US imperialism had evolved into the misogynistic sex industry.

Park Chung-hee had encouraged this sort of sexual exploitation as it fueled the South Korean economy. The Cold War era had turned South Korea into a neoliberal and capitalist hotspot. Even after the partial revitalization of the South Korean economy in the 1960s, political and inequitable economic woes dominated the geopolitical landscape of South Korea for decades. With the birth of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, South Korea’s economy was boosted by technological companies, such as Samsung and Hyundai, primarily trading with its neo-colonial ally, the United States. Social issues such as high rates of suicide have been a consequence of the overbearing demands of production with little to no compensation for the workers themselves. As J. Sul wrote in an article for Anti-Imperialism.org, “I cannot state all the suicidal cases here, but note well that the suicide rate in South Korea is in the top among the OECD nations” (Sul). Toward the beginning of the 2000s, anti-American sentiment began in full swing in South Korea as two events, the 2002 Yangju highway incident where two Korean schoolgirls were fatally killed by a US military vehicle and the murder of Yun Geum-i in 1992 where a bartender was murdered by a US military private. These two events brought up the question of the USFK’s (United States Forces Korea) continued presence in Korea.

These are just some of the ways that US imperialism and neocolonialism manifest on the Korean Peninsula, and why the US’s presence in South Korea is detrimental and has only led to the division and exploitation of the ROK. However, the puppet regimes had also committed violence and murder with the full support of its neo-colonial ally. The US military occupation of South Korea remains the primary obstacle to peace and reunification of our homeland.  The United States needs to end its military occupation in South Korea and dismantle all of its military bases and facilities, paying reparations to all the peoples of Korea.

“For a colonized people: the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”

― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1960)

Riley Bove (Seungyoon Park) is a student at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition in Indianapolis.

References

Fanon, Franz. Les damnés de la terre. A verba futuroruM, 2016

Soh, Chunghee Sarah. “The Korean ‘Comfort Women’: Movement for Redress.” Asian Survey, vol. 36, no. 12, 1996, pp. 1226–1240., www.jstor.org/stable/2645577.

Moon, Katharine H. S. “South Korea-U.S. Relations.” Asian Perspective, vol. 28, no. 4, 2004, pp. 39–61. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42704478.   

Pate, SooJin. From Orphan to Adoptee: US Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption. U of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Strong, Anna Louise. In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report. Prism Key Press, 2011.

Sul, J. “Neoliberalism in South Korea: Financial Crisis, Fascism, and the Rise of Precarious Work.” Anti-Imperialism.org, 1 July 2015, https://anti-imperialism.org/2015/01/12/neoliberalism-in-south-korea-financial-crisis-fascism-and-the-rise-of-precarious-work/.

Mi, P. (2005). Organizing dissent against authoritarianism: The South Korean student movement in the 1980s. Korea Journal. 45. 261-288.

The Question of War with North Korea: A Geopolitical Breakdown

By Devon Bowers

The summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un while photo worthy, was a disaster. Yet, it wasn't due to Trump 'getting played' as so many in the media would have one think, but rather was due to the US wanting to make demands without offering any concessions.

North Korea released a statement early July 2018 in which they "accused the Trump administration on Saturday of pushing a "unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization' and called [the meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo] 'deeply regrettable." [1] More importantly, after the summit, President Trump went and said that North Korea was still an "extraordinary threat,"[2] despite the whole intention of the summit being to lower tensions between the two nations. Given the fact that war between the two (and allied nations) may still break out, it would be pertinent to discuss what such a war would look like, starting with interested parties.

The United States

The US has been deeply involved in the Korean peninsula for the past nearly seven decades and currently has around 28,000 personnel deployed there. [3] While times have changed, the US still retains major interests with regards to the peninsula.

Generally, US concerns with NK include "verifiable elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program," the halting of "nuclear or ballistic missile proliferation,"[4] and reduction of tensions with Japan.

The US is especially concerned with North Korea's nuclear program, as can be seen in their training exercises. In December 2017, US troops trained in exercise Warrior Strike IX which "[putting] them on North Korean soil, with the objective of 'infiltrating' and 'removing weapons of mass destruction." [5] Such exercises are nothing new, as in March 2013, the US began its Winter Wargame in which they simulated "how many American troops would be needed to go in and secure North Korea's nuclear arsenal if Kim's regime collapsed." [6]

Collapse is also a concern as it "would have severe implications for trade and the regional-if not global-economy" and "the potential for major strategic consequences (including control of the North's nuclear arsenal) and a massive humanitarian crisis, not to mention long-term economic and social repercussions, loom large." [7] Such drills are of major concern for the North Korean leadership which has always condemned such exercises and sees them as dangerous and provocative.

Nuclear weapons are extremely important for the North Korean government as not only are the drills seen as a threat, but, looking around the world, they have right to be concerned. In private meetings, North Korean officials "have often stated that they do not intend to become 'another Iraq' or 'another Libya'- countries that, in the North Korean view, succumbed to the United States because they did not have a 'nuclear deterrent."[8] This is further supported by that fact that Donald Greg, US ambassador to Seoul under President Obama, was told by the North Koreans, "we noticed you never attack anyone with nuclear weapons so that's why we developed them" and issued a statement after the attack on Libya, which read, in part:

The situation in Libya is a lesson for the international community. It has been shown to the corners of the earth that Libya's giving up its nuclear arms, which the U.S. liked to chatter on about, was used as an invasion tactic to disarm the country by sugarcoating it with words like 'the guaranteeing of security' and 'the bettering of relations. [9] (emphasis added)

Despite the government being labeled such things as 'insane' and 'crazy' they are acting quite rationally using their nuclear program as a deterrent from unwanted US interference and invasion.

The reliance on nuclear weapons makes sense, given past incidents involving the US, such as the Chenonan incident in 2010, where the South Korean ship, the Cheonan, sunk and blame was immediately laid at the feet of North Korea.[10] This is despite some people questioning the evidence being presented to the public [11] and questions being raised even in South Korea's own official reports. [12]

There was also the Sony hack in December 2014. North Korea was accused of hacking the corporation when they released The Interview, a comedy film that was critical of the North Korean government. As soon as the hack occurred, NK was already being blamed, with the FBI saying that "it determined North Korea was responsible based on an analysis of the malware involved and its similarities to previous attacks the U.S. government [attributed] to North Korean-allied hackers, including an assault on South Korean banks and media outlets in 2013." [13] In response to the hack, the US placed sanctions on NK. [14] However, what is interesting in regards to all of this is that it is quite questionable if North Korea was in fact the source of the hacking.

If you are a victim of hacking, especially on a national level, it can be quite difficult to determine who is responsible. Bruce Schneier, a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, noted in an Atlantic article:

Ordinarily, you could determine who the attacker was by the weaponry. When you saw a tank driving down your street, you knew the military was involved because only the military could afford tanks. Cyberspace is different. In cyberspace, technology is broadly spreading its capability, and everyone is using the same weaponry: hackers, criminals, politically motivated hacktivists, national spies, militaries, even the potential cyberterrorist. They are all exploiting the same vulnerabilities, using the same sort of hacking tools, engaging in the same attack tactics, and leaving the same traces behind. They all eavesdrop or steal data. They all engage in denial-of-service attacks. They all probe cyberdefences and do their best to cover their tracks.[15] (emphasis added)

Due to many different actors utilizing similar tactics and techniques to obtain information, quickly pointing fingers seems to do a disservice.

While the military realm of North Korea has been aggressive, the diplomatic realm has been something of a mixed bag.

President Obama's main goals with regards to NK were to 1) keep Six Party Talks open, however, with the caveat that NK take 'irreversible' steps to denuclearize first, 2) insist that the Talks be preceded by an improvement in relations between the two Koreas, and 3) respond "to Pyongyang's provocations by tightening sanctions against North Korean entities, conducting a series of military exercises, and expanding U.S.-ROK-Japan trilateral cooperation." [16] This was a policy of 'strategic patience' which was essentially a carrot-and-stick approach of handling North Korea, where talks and deals could be made in times of peace, but when problems mounted, sanctions would come into play. There were some major problems with this, as rather than focusing on denuclearization of North Korea, the Obama administration seemed more concerned about non-proliferation of WMDs. This is supported by statements from US officials such as "Jeff Bader, former Senior Director on the East Asian Affairs in the National Security Council, [who] stated in an interview that while pursing bilateral talks with North Korea, the United States would focus on reducing, delaying and freezing the North Korean nuclear program, leaving complete denuclearization in the hands of history."[17]

Obama's strategy didn't work from the get-go as North Korea left the six party talks after "Pyongyang test-fired a modified Taepo Dong-2 three-stage rocket, ostensibly as part of its civilian space program" to which the UN Security Council "issued a presidential statement April 13 [2009] calling the test a violation of Resolution 1718, and expanded sanctions on North Korean firms shortly afterwards." [18] Furthermore, this focus on proliferation rather than denuclearization allowed North Korea to make gains in its program, most notably, by conducting "two underground nuclear explosions and several banned missile tests" [19] in April 2013.

Relations deteriorated further in April 2016 with President Obama stating that "we [the US] could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our [nuclear] arsenals."[20] This was in the context of increased tensions as just a month earlier (March 2016) the US and South Korea launched two military drills, one of which was Operation Key Resolve which tested "the new U.S.-South Korean military strategy operation plan, Operations Plan 5015, which aims to deter North Korea's possible use of weapons of mass destruction by preemptive attack." [21] From NK's perspective, the exercise was "offensive rather than defensive and is aimed at occupying [North Korea] by preemptive strike." It was further noted:

The aggressive nature of the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises is also apparent in setting their targets, like examination of feasibility of operations like "removal of the leadership," "occupying Pyongyang," "regime change," "preemptive nuclear strike" and "decapitation raids," which can never be found in other countries' joint military drills. [22]

While idea of war was in the background, the US 2016 presidential elections brought someone who, at least at first, seemed to strike a different tone on the matter.

The 2016 elections saw the explosion of unlikely presidential candidate Donald Trump, who brought some unconventional thinking to the political arena. In May 2016, Trump said that he would be "willing to talk to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to try to stop Pyongyang's nuclear program, proposing a major shift in U.S. policy toward the isolated nation." [23] The following month, he said that he would be willing to have Kim Jong-Un come to the White House, arguing "What the hell is wrong with speaking?" [24] This was not just a "major shift" from US policy, it was utterly unheard of.

Unfortunately, these ideas weren't to last as when Trump became President he began to condemn North Korea, saying that "the 'greatest immediate threat' to the US is North Korea and its nuclear program" [25] In August 2017, in a war of words between the two leaders, President Trump said to reporters that "North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States" and that "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen." [26] Such comments only aided in further straining already tense relations between the two nations, but the even larger problem seems to be the people who are surrounding him, namely John Bolton.

John Bolton isn't just known for his role in promoting the 2003 Iraq War, but is generally known as a major foreign policy hawk with neoconservative credentials. Not too soon before becoming National Security Adviser to President Trump, he penned an article for the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First," where he says, in part:

The threat [from North Korea] is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times. Given the gaps in U.S. intelligence about North Korea, we should not wait until the very last minute. That would risk striking after the North has deliverable nuclear weapons, a much more dangerous situation. (emphasis added)

Necessity in the nuclear and ballistic-missile age is simply different than in the age of steam. What was once remote is now, as a practical matter, near; what was previously time-consuming to deliver can now arrive in minutes; and the level of destructiveness of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is infinitely greater than that of the steamship Caroline's weapons cargo. [27]

It is interesting to note that despite the title, no actual legal argument is made in the article. Still, Bolton argues that due to the idea that at some point in the future North Korea is going to engage in a military, possibly nuclear, attack on the United States, that the US thus has the right to attack North Korea.

Thinking such as this should worry everyone as this is the kind of person who is giving President Trump advice and there is no one to seriously push back on it for the most part. While Steve Bannon and his cohorts aren't good people by any means, at least they represented something of an anti-interventionist front, especially when one looks at Bannon's comments regarding the North Korea situation and how it could only be solved politically.[28]

Relations between the two countries seemed as if they might improve slightly with the summit in June 2018 between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. However, as aforementioned, this went awry due to US demands without concessions. What should be noted, however, is the media's response to the summit, with articles such as Kim Jong Un has played Trump like a Stradivarius by Max Boot in the Washington Post and How Donald Trump Got Played By a Ruthless Dictator by Andy Kroll of the Rolling Stone. Many in the media, in print and television, were incessantly talking about how President Trump was going to 'get played' by Kim. Effectively, the arguments revolved around 1) by even meeting with Kim, Trump was putting North Korea on the same level as the US, 2) that diplomacy with North Korea won't work due to them having reneged on such efforts in the past 3) that Trump 'got nothing' from the summit, and 4) it was a mistake to stop the war games. Each of these arguments should be examined in more detail.

Addressing the first point, that talking to North Korea legitimizes them, such an argument doesn't make sense. The United States and rest of the world already recognizes NK as a sovereign nation, thus giving them legitimacy. However, this argument is more about how the US shouldn't legitimize the North Korean government and the horrid things it has done. To rebut that, one only has to look at who the US allies itself with, such as Saudi Arabia. People are hand wringing about acknowledging NK, when they are silent about how the US is buddy-buddy with Saudi Arabia, a nation that is currently bombing the ever-loving hell out of Yemen to the point where the Yemeni people are starving [29] and Saudi Arabia is said to have committed war crimes [30] and, some speculate, is possibly engaging in genocide. [31] On top of that, the US has a history of and continues to provide aid to dictators. [32] Thus, the argument that due to Kim Jong-Un's government oppressing the North Korean people means the US shouldn't talk to him doesn't hold water as the US is fine talking to and even aiding oppressive governments around the world.

The idea that diplomacy won't work with North Korea reneging on deals in the past is quite plausible, however, ignores certain details. The only time the US made major gains with North Korea was when engaging in serious diplomacy, as President Bill Clinton did. In 1994, the US and North Korea settled upon the Agreed Framework.

Just four pages long, the agreement said that North Korea would shut down its main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, abandon two others, and seal fuel that could potentially be used to create a nuclear weapon. In exchange, the U.S. would provide oil to make up for the fuel lost from the dismantled plants and would build two new "light fuel" plants from which it would be harder to extract nuclear materials. If North Korea did try to get fuel out of the new plants, it would be easy for nuclear watchdogs to identify-and hard to hide. In addition, the agreement promised that the U.S. would lift economic sanctions and its diplomatic freeze on North Korea and agree that it would not use nuclear weapons of its own on North Korea. [33]

This represented a major milestone of progress in US-North Korean relations and proved that diplomacy with North Korea actually worked. Unfortunately, the US Congress refused to provide funding for the project and thus the light fuel plants were never built. Some may bring up the fact that North Korea continued its uranium enrichment program and thus broke the deal, however, that's not entirely accurate. "The Agreed Framework covered only North Korea's plutonium program; it said nothing about uranium enrichment. North Korea maneuvered around the agreement but didn't violate it"[34] and they did this only after four years of the US not holding up its end of the bargain.

The position that President Trump got nothing from the deal is true, but not for the reasons people are arguing, such as him 'getting played' by Kim Jong-Un. From the get-go, the US wasn't making concessions. Specifically, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said before the summit that "the United States [had] not made any concessions to the regime and will continue to hold firm until Pyongyang takes 'credible steps' toward denuclearization." [35] The US retained this stand even after the summit as Pompeo said that the US wouldn't ease sanctions on North Korea until they denuclearized. [36] During the entire situation, as Washington Post columnist Marc A. Thiessen notes:

Trump made no real concessions in Singapore. He did not lift sanctions, unfreeze North Korean assets or send secret planes loaded with hard currency to Pyongyang. He did not sign an agreement ending the Korean War or offer Pyongyang diplomatic recognition. All the president did was, as a goodwill gesture, suspend military exercises with South Korea - a decision he can easily reverse. [37] (emphasis added)

Demands without concessions, diplomacy does not make.

With regards to the war games, as was just noted, it is something that can be reversed without much hassle. It is important as the North Korean government sees these war games as provocative and that the US and South Korea are preparing to invade it. By not having them, it helps to create an environment where the two parties can begin to discuss and talk out the situation, without the ever-present specter of war behind them.

While far away, there are much closer nations that are quite interested in the peninsula, namely, China, Russia, and Japan.

China

China not only borders North Korea, but has a long history with the nation, going back to their intervention in the Korean War on the side of the North. While the times have changed, China still remains heavily invested in North Korea.

Generally, the Chinese main priority is stability on the peninsula, especially with regards to the North Korean leadership and the country as a whole as they see North Korea as a buffer between them and the American-backed South Korean government. North Korea's stability is vital to Chinese interests as there would be major political, economic, and humanitarian ramifications were to North Korean government to be destabilized or collapse altogether. "However unpredictable and annoying the North Korean government may be to Beijing, any conceivable scenario other than maintaining the status quo could seriously damage PRC interests."[38] To this end, "China's food and energy assistance can be seen as an insurance premium that Beijing remits regularly to avoid paying the higher economic, political, and national security costs" [39] of a collapse or war.

On the question of nuclear weapons, China is rather wary of North Korea's nuclear program as they are worried that it could potentially create a nuclear arms race of sorts, inspiring nations such as Japan and Taiwan to pursue their own nuclear weapons/deterrents in doing so put the entire region on edge. Additionally, the Chinese government wants to avoid such proliferation as it could result in nations being more able to defend their national interests when engaged in conflicts with China, such as debates over the South China Sea. [40]

China supports the reunification of the Korean peninsula, however, they favor a peaceful environment to first be fostered without the interference of outside nations such as the United States. They support this via " direct dialogue, reconciliation and cooperation between the two [Koreas] and [encourage] economic cooperation and prosperity as key factors in achieving unification,"[41] furthermore, to these ends, they don't favor increased sanctions on North Korea as the view is that doing so creates a more hostile environment. On top of all this, reunification allows for a war to be avoided, which, if initiated by the US or South Korea, would force China's hand as China is bound to aid North Korea under the "1961 Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance which states that China is obliged to defend North Korea against unprovoked aggression." [42] Furthermore, a war would harm Chinese investments and put their buffer zone at risk.

Russia

Russia, while seemingly far away, actually holds an eleven mile border with North Korea and thus is paying close attention to and attempting to influence the situation.

They too, see North Korea as an important buffer. The Russian National Committee of the Council of Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific noted that "the most relevant objective is not attaining a predominate position in Korea, but rather the prevention of the entire peninsula falling under the influence of another state, especially one that is not on truly friendly terms with Russia" [43] and thus it is to their advantage that North Korea act as a buffer state to US interests.

Russia is concerned about NK's nuclear program, however it doesn't have the primary prominence that it does for the United States or South Korea. Rather that lies with increasing Russian influence in North Korea and their military concerns.

Specifically, Russia wants to maintain and grow its relationship with North Korea, primarily in the economic and cultural exchange areas. Such views affect their support for sanctions as promoting them could negatively affect Russia's long-term interests. [44] Russia's economic interests prevent it from honoring its United Nations commitment to economically sanction Pyongyang as it would interfere with their access to North Korean markets and diminish their influence on North Korea. [45] With regards to economics, Russia wants to woo North Korea away from their intense dependence on China, utilizing their special economic zones, such as Rason, which is a home for foreign investment. Like the Chinese, they also want stability in North Korea as it would " open up opportunities to tap into the energy market on the peninsula itself, and further establish regional economic partnerships,"[46] possibly allowing Russia to slightly blunt some of the sanctions put on it after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Militarily, they are worried about the US's National Missile Defense plan, which " if fully implemented, would enhance US nuclear superiority over Russia's smaller, less sophisticated nuclear arsenal" [47] and so the Russians want to reign in North Korea's nuclear program as it gives the US justification for continuing to develop and deploy missile defenses which could potentially give the US an upperhand and even dominance with regards to nuclear superiority vis-à-vis Russia.

There are also concerns about a collapse of the North Korean government which could potentially "increase the likelihood that its nuclear weapons-grade material would end up on the black market, available to transnational criminal organizations as well as terrorist networks." [48] This is of major concern for the Russians given their bloody history with Chechen terrorists which engaged in an act of radiological terrorism in the 1990s [49], in addition to their terrorist acts more generally. [50] Therefore, it is in Russian interests to work to limit North Korea's access to nuclear material and ensure that access is in line with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Japan

The Japanese have had long-standing problems with North Korea, specifically with regards to North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens, an issue that remains unresolved.

"From 1977 to 1983, several Japanese citizens living in coastal regions disappeared under strange circumstances," [51] with the truth being revealed in 2002. That year, then-Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, met with then-leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il to address outstanding problems between the two countries, which resulted in the Pyongyang Declaration which dealt with several problems, everything from the historical, such as Japan apologizing for the harm done during its colonial rule of Korea to the status of Korean nationals living in Japan. Plans were made to continue talks in October 2002. Unfortunately, things went south when "Pyongyang revealed that 13 Japanese nationals had been taken from Japan and eight of them had died in North Korea" [52] and, post-summit, announced that the five survivors would be temporarily allowed to return to Japan.

The survivors returned to Japan on October 15, 2002 and were greeted with massive enthusiasm from the Japanese public. Initially, it was reported that they would stay for only two weeks, but then the Japanese government allowed them to permanently stay in Japan, after advocacy from the families of the survivors and politicians. Pyongyang was furious at this announcement, as they viewed it as Japan backing out of sending the survivors back to North Korea.

Despite this, the October 2002 talks continued as scheduled, yet focused purely on the abduction issue. When Japan pressed North Korea for information regarding the deaths of the eight other abductees, they were rebuffed. In response, Japan suspended negotiations for nearly two years, resuming them in May 2004, when Koizumi visited Pyongyang again to restart talks, yet nothing of value was gained.

This entire issue launched political careers, such as with Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, of the Liberal Democratic Party, who assumed position in 2006 and, along with his allies, made the abduction issue front and center. [53] He has pushed for major changes to Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which doesn't allow the nation to have a military that can engage in offensive operations. In order for it to go through, the measure would have to pass by a two-thirds majority in the Parliament and be subject to a referendum. Currently, there are problems as "it's unclear if Mr. Abe's coalition partners would back the proposal, and [Liberal Democratic Party] leaders acknowledge they don't expect to win support from major opposition parties" and much of the public is "wedded to the country's pacifist ways, and polls suggest a majority aren't ready for Article 9 to change." [54] If Japan's constitutional change were to go through, it would allow Japan's military to acquire cruise missiles and long-ranged air launched missiles which would let Japan attack military bases in North Korea from a distance. [55]

The military threat of North Korea is quite real to the Japanese, who have already had to deal with North Korea missiles being fired near them. Conventionally, there is "the threat posed by North Korea's guerilla incursions, incursions into Japanese territorial waters as well as attacks on Japanese nuclear power facilities along the coast of the Sea of Japan." [56] In terms of missiles, while Japan "continues to invest funds and other resources for the development of a regional missile defense system in order to protect the Japanese territory from North Korean rogue missiles," [57] there are still problems as "the 22 ballistic missiles [North Korea] has tested since February [2017] have all been fired toward Japan, whose capital Tokyo lies just 800 miles from Pyongyang." [58] Such a situation leaves the public and government seriously concerned about both North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

In order to confront concerns about North Korea, not only is Japan increasing its military[59] , but it is also changing its military organization.

Specifically, the Ground Self-Defense Force is going to be put under a single, unified command and the establishment of an amphibious brigade. Michael Green, the senior vice president for Asia and the Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, notes that this is in response to a reinterpretation of Article 9 in which Japan's military can be used for 'collective self-defense' which "will allow Japanese forces to plan for and potentially participate in joint military operations with the U.S. beyond Japan's home island" and let Japan "engage in anti-submarine warfare, missile defense or other missions in close support of the United States."[60] This is all being done in response to the North Korean missile threat, but also China's probing of Japanese waters.

Given all this, the question must be asked: What would a war with North Korea look like on some level?

As to why a war would start, it would most likely be accidental, with either North Korea or South Korea/the US misinterpreting the moves of the other party[61] and while therefore unlikely, is still a possibility and thus should be examined.

In terms of numbers, North Korea's military is as follows:

- 1,190,000 active, 6,300,000 reserve and 189,000 paramilitary personnel[62]

- "[A]bout 820 combat aircraft, 30 reconnaissance aircraft, and 330 transport aircraft"[63]

- 4,300 tanks and 2,000 special forces soldiers [64]

- 4,000 armored fighting vehicles, 13,000 artillery pieces, 4,500 self-propelled guns, and 5,000 rocket artillery pieces [65]

- 967 naval assets, mainly based in submarines (86) and patrol craft (438)[66]

While some may lambaste the North Korean military as not being a serious threat due to the US and South Korean militaries being better trained and equipped, it doesn't mean that they still can't do damage. As has been noted in the past, NK's artillery could do massive damage to Seoul [67], the South Korean capital, especially if they utilize chemical weapons that North Korea is thought to possess.[68] There are also the special forces soldiers, which are trained to "cover infiltration into the forward and rear areas to strike major units and facilities, assassinations of key personnel, disruption of rear areas and hybrid operations."[69] Thus, in case of a war, major havoc could be wrought in terms of physical destruction and the targeting of political, economic, and military sites.

Furthermore, the actual conditions of war for North Korea would be different. The likelihood of North Korea initiating a war is extremely slim, given the fact that they wouldn't want to have to go up against both the US and South Korea without aid from Russia or China, as China noted in 2017 that engaging in aggressive acts would forfeit Chinese support. [70] Therefore, any war would be initiated by the US and its allies, thus turning it into a defensive war. North Korea's goals would be simply to survive and push back the invasion, with nuclear weapons being used as a last resort, where as the invading nations would have to either do an incursion into North Korea or more likely a toppling of the North Korean government and post war occupation, something that would be much more difficult and costly in terms of money, lives, and material.

In terms of logistics, a North Korean-started war is questionable as well as it isn't even particularly known if they have the capabilities to maintain supply lines far into South Korea. The United States, on the other hand, would have serious logistical problems supporting a war on the peninsula as they already "[don't] have the ability to evacuate [their] own anticipated wounded quickly," with the New York Times noting in February 2018 that the US has "limited ability to evacuate injured troops from the Korean Peninsula daily - a problem more acute if the North retaliated with chemical weapons." [71] Thus, there could be serious problems with resupply, which would hamper fighting effectiveness. This doesn't take into account that current war plans have the US mobilizing "nearly 700,000 US soldiers [that] would be mobilized alongside 160 ships, 1,600 aircraft," [72] all of which would take time to prepare and actually put into theater.

There is also the question of outside nations. In case of a war, China would activate anti-missile systems near their border with North Korea and provide humanitarian aid, however Song Zhongping, a military expert and a TV commentator, noted that "defensive action could lead to engagement if US action on the Korean Peninsula threatens China's core interests." [73] Russia, too, is prepared militarily. In 2017, Russia's Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, stated that "Russia was getting ready for a military standoff between its unruly neighbor and other states around the world" and "We are assessing this and preparing ourselves. We will not be taken by surprise." [74] Thus, it seems everyone is getting prepared for a possible battle.

While the situation with North Korea seems to have stabilized for now, as we know, the situation can change at a moment's notice. The question of war still lingers in the air.

This was originally published on AHTribune.com.

Notes

[1] Gardiner Harris, Choe Sang-Hun, "North Korea Criticizes 'Gangster-Like' U.S. Attitude After Talks With Mike Pompeo," New York Times, July 7, 2018 ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/07/world/asia/mike-pompeo-north-korea-pyongyang.html )

[2] BBC, Trump says North Korea still 'extraordinary threat', https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44584957 (June 23, 2018)

[3] Tom Vanden Brook, "Pentagon bases about 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea," USA Today, June 5, 2018 ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/05/u-s-bases-28-000-troops-south-korea-summit-june-12/671126002/ )

[4] Emma Chanlett-Avery, Dick K. Nanto, North Korea: Economic Leverage and Policy Analysis, Congressional Research Service, (January 22, 2010), pg 13

[5] Alex Diaz, "US commandos train to capture North Korean nukes," Fox News, December 20, 2017 ( http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/12/20/us-commandos-train-to-capture-north-korean-nukes.html )

[6] Colleen Curry, "U.S. Wargames North Korean Regime Collapse, Invasion to Secure Nukes," ABC News, March 29, 2013 ( http://abcnews.go.com/International/us-wargames-north-korean-regime-collapse-invasion-secure/story?id=18822930 )

[7] Emma Chanlett-Avery, Mi Ae Taylor, North Korea: U.S. Relations, Nuclear Diplomacy, and Internal Situation , Congressional Research Service, (May 6, 2010), pg 2

[8] Evan J. R. Revere, Facing the Facts: Towards a New U.S. North Korea Policy, The Brookings Institute, https://www.brookings.edu/research/facing-the-facts-towards-a-new-u-s-north-korea-policy/ (October 16, 2013), pg 12

[9] Geoffery Ingersoll, The Iraq Invasion Convinced North Korea That It Needed Nukes," Business Insider, April 3, 2013 ( https://www.businessinsider.com/the-iraq-war-spurred-dprk-nuke-research-2013-4 )

[10] Jack Kim, "North Korea torpedoed South's navy ship: report," Reuters, April 21, 2010 ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-korea-ship/north-korea-torpedoed-souths-navy-ship-report-idUSTRE63L08W20100422 )

[11] David Cyranoski, Did a North Korean torpedo really sink the Cheonan?, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/questions-korean-torpedo/

[12] Barbara Demick, John M. Glionna, "Doubts surface on North Korea's role in ship sinking," LA Times, July 23, 2010 ( http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/23/world/la-fg-korea-torpedo-20100724 )

[13] Alex Altman, Zeke J. Miller, "FBI Accuses North Korea in Sony Hack," Time, December 19, 2014 ( http://time.com/3642161/sony-hack-north-korea-the-interview-fbi/ )

[14] Zeke J. Miller, "U.S. Sanctions North Korea Over Sony Hack," Time, January 2, 2015 ( http://time.com/3652479/sony-hack-north-korea-the-interview-obama-sanctions/ )

[15] Bruce Schneier, "We Still Don't Know Who Hacked Sony," The Atlantic, January 5, 2015 ( https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/we-still-dont-know-who-hacked-sony-north-korea/384198/ )

[16] Emma Chanlett-Avery, William H. Cooper, Mark E. Manyin, Mary Beth Nitikin, Ian E. Reinhart, U.S.-South Korea Relations, Congressional Research Service, (February 5, 2013), pg 9

[17] Dongsoo Kim, "The Obama administration's policy toward North Korea: the causes and consequences of strategic patience," Journal of Asian Public Policy 9:1 (December 2015), pg 40

[18] Arms Control Association, The Six Party Talks At A Glance, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/6partytalks

[19] Matt Spetalnick, Anna Yukhananov, "Analysis: North Korea tests Obama's 'strategic patience," Reuters, April 19, 2013 ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-korea-north-obama/analysis-north-korea-tests-obamas-strategic-patience-idUSBRE9380YR20130409 )

[20] David Blair, "'We could destroy you,' Obama warns 'erratic' North Korean leader." The Telegraph, April 26, 2016 ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/26/us-developing-missile-shield-to-guard-against-nuclear-attack-fro/ )

[21] Kent Miller, Jeff Schogol, "315,000 U.S. and South Korean troops begin massive exercise as North threatens war," Marine Corps Times, March 5, 2016 ( https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2016/03/05/315000-u-s-and-south-korean-troops-begin-massive-exercise-as-north-threatens-war/ )

[22] Jon Min Dok, Suspend the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises for peace , NK News, https://www.nknews.org/2016/03/suspend-the-u-s-south-korea-joint-military-exercises-for-peace/ (March 15, 2016)

[23] Emily Flitter, Steve Holland, "Exclusive: Trump would talk to North Korea's Kim, wants to renegotiate climate accord," Reuters , May 17, 2016 ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-exclusive/exclusive-trump-would-talk-to-north-koreas-kim-wants-to-renegotiate-climate-accord-idUSKCN0Y82JO )

[24] Jeremy Diamond, "Trump says he would host Kim Jong Un in U.S.." CNN, June 15, 2016 ( https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/15/politics/donald-trump-north-korea-kim-jong-un/index.html )

[25] Wolf Blitzer, Jeremy Diamond, Jake Tapper, "Top source: Trump believes North Korea is greatest threat," CNN, February 28, 2017 ( https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/politics/north-korea-obama-trump-threat/index.html )

[26] Peter Baker, Choe Sang-Hun, "Trump Threatens 'Fire and Fury' Against North Korea if It Endangers U.S.," New York Times, August 8, 2017 ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/world/asia/north-korea-un-sanctions-nuclear-missile-united-nations.html )

[27] John R. Bolton, The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First, Gatestone Institute, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11978/north-korea-first-strike (March 2, 2018)

[28] Robert Kuttner, "Steve Bannon, Unrepentant," The American Prospect, August 16, 2017 ( http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant )

[29] Zeeshan Aleem, "Saudi Arabia's new blockade is starving Yemen," Vox, November 22, 2017 ( https://www.vox.com/world/2017/11/22/16680392/saudi-arabia-yemen-blockade-famine-casualties )

[30] Rasha Mohammed, Rawan Shaif, "Saudi Arabia Is Committing War Crimes in Yemen." Foreign Policy, March 25, 2016 ( https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/25/civilian-casualties-war-crimes-saudi-arabia-yemen-war/ )

[31] Randi Nord, "Is What's Happening in Yemen Really Genocide?" Mint Press News, June 4, 2018 ( https://www.mintpressnews.com/yemen-genocide/243247/ )

[32] Rich Whitney, "US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World's Dictatorships," Truthout, September 23, 2017 ( https://truthout.org/articles/us-provides-military-assistance-to-73-percent-of-world-s-dictatorships/ )

[33] Erin Blakemore, Bill Clinton Once Struck a Nuclear Deal With North Korea, History.com, https://www.history.com/news/north-korea-nuclear-deal-bill-clinton-agreed-framework (April 17, 2018)

[34] Fred Kaplan, "Sorry, Trump, but Talking to North Korea Has Worked," Slate, October 10, 2017 ( http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/10/it_is_possible_to_negotiate_with_north_korea_bill_clinton_did_it.html )

[35] Karoun Demirjian, John Hudson, "Pompeo promises 'zero concessions' to North Korea until 'credible steps' are made," Washington Post, May 23, 2018 ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pompeo-promises-zero-concessions-to-north-korea-until-credible-steps-are-made/2018/05/23/3ad505e4-5e90-11e8-9ee3-49d6d4814c4c_story.html?utm_term=.153314b69298 )

[36] The Mainichi,US: No sanctions relief before North Korea denuclearizes , https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180615/p2g/00m/0fp/012000c (June 15, 2018)

[37] Marc A. Thiessen, "On North Korea, Trump deserves more latitude and less attitude," Washington Post, June 15, 2018 ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-deserves-more-latitude-and-less-attitude/2018/06/15/3be1edde-6fee-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html?utm_term=.d85c6087ab39 )

[38] Dick K. Nanto, Mark E. Manyin, China-North Korea Relations , Congressional Research Service, December 28, 2010, pg 7

[39] Ibid. pg 9

[40] Ibid, pg 8

[41] Walter Diamana, Strategic Alliance: China-North Korea, International Policy Digest, https://intpolicydigest.org/2015/07/02/strategic-alliance-china-north-korea/ (July 2, 2015)

[42] Ibid

[43] Russian National Committee of the Council of Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, "The Korean Crisis Management: A Russian Perspective," Korea Review of International Studies 13:2 (2010), pg 83

[44] Ibid. pg 85

[45] Anthony V. Rinna, "Russia's Relationship With North Korea: It's Complicated," The Diplomat, February 1, 2018 ( https://thediplomat.com/2018/02/russias-relationship-with-north-korea-its-complicated/ )

[46] Jacqueline Westermann, Australia, don't underestimate Russia's interests in Korea , The Strategist, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-dont-underestimate-russias-interests-in-korea/ (May 9, 2018)

[47] Geetha Govindasamy, Chang Kyoo Park, Er-Win Tan, "The Revival of Russia's Role on the Korean Peninsula," Asian Perspective 37:1 (2011), pg 141

[48] Ibid

[49] Jeffrey Bale, The Chechen Resistance and Radiological Terrorism, Nuclear Threat Initiative, http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/chechen-resistance-radiological-terror/ (April 1, 2004)

[50] Preeti Bhattacharji, Chechen Terrorism (Russia, Chechnya, Separatist), Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chechen-terrorism-russia-chechnya-separatist (April 8, 2010)

[51] Adam Edelman, "Japanese citizens simply vanished. North Korea had abducted them. But why?" NBC News, June 11, 2018 ( https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/japanese-citizens-simply-vanished-north-korea-had-abducted-them-why-n881546 )

[52] Tsuneo Akaha, "Japanese Policy Towards The North Korean Problem," Journal of Asian and African Studies 42:3 (2007), pg 302

[53] Norimitsu Onishi, "Japan Rightists Fan Fury Over North Korea Abductions," New York Times, December 17, 2006 ( https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/world/asia/17japan.html )

[54] Byron Tau, "Abe's Window of Time for Amending Japan's Pacifist Constitution Narrows." Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2018 ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/abes-window-of-time-for-amending-japans-pacifist-constitution-narrows-1534075201 )

[55] Kosuke Takahashi, "Japan Needs Constitution Change to Have Capabilities to Strike Enemy Bases," Japan Forward, December 23, 2017 ( https://japan-forward.com/japan-needs-constitution-change-to-have-capabilities-to-strike-enemy-bases/ )

[56] Emma Chanlett-Avery, William H. Cooper, Mark E. Manyin, Weston S. Konishi, Japan-US Relations: Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, November 25, 2009, pg 9

[57] Ibid

[58] Charlie Campbell, "'This Is All We Can Do': How the Japanese Are Preparing for a North Korean Nuclear Attack," Time, September 20, 2017 ( http://time.com/4949262/north-korea-japan-nuclear-missiles-drills/ )

[59] Tom O'Connor, "North Korea Crisis: Japan is Growing Its Military For The First Time Since World War II Because Of Kim Jong Un," Newsweek, September 21, 2017 ( https://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-crisis-japan-bigger-military-role-ashes-war-669217 )

[60] World Politics Review, Japan Aims to 'Lock' the U.S. in Asia With a Sweeping Military Revamp , https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/24549/japan-aims-to-lock-the-u-s-in-asia-with-a-sweeping-military-revamp (April 11, 2018)

[61] Elias Groll, Dan De Luce, Jenna McLaughlin, Armageddon by Accident, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/18/armageddon-by-accident-north-korea-nuclear-war-missiles/ (October 18, 2017)

[62] Defense-Aerospace, North Korea's Military: How Does it Actually Stack Up?, http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/186531/how-does-north-korea%E2%80%99s-military-compare-to-south-korea%E2%80%99s%3F.html (September 5, 2017)

[63] Alex Lockie, "North Korea has a massive air force - here's why it's basically a joke," Business Insider, June 21, 2018 ( https://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-has-a-massive-air-force-heres-why-its-basically-a-joke-2018-6 )

[64] Dave Majumdar, North Korea's Army by the Numbers: 4,300 Tanks and 200,000 Lethal Special Forces, The National Interest, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/north-koreas-army-by-the-numbers-4300-tanks-200000-lethal-24301 (February 1, 2018)

[65] Armed Forces, Korean Armed forces, http://armedforces.eu/North_Korea

[66] Global Firepower, 2018 North Korea Military Strength, https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=north-korea

[67] Stratfor, How North Korea Would Retaliate, https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/how-north-korea-would-retaliate (January 5, 2017)

[68] Nuclear Threat Initiative, North Korea, http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/chemical/ (April 2018)

[69] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/north-koreas-army-by-the-numbers-4300-tanks-200000-lethal-24301

[70] Simon Denyer, Amanda Erickson, "Beijing warns Pyongyang: You're on your own if you go after the United States," Washington Post, August 11, 2017 ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-warns-north-korea-youre-on-your-own-if-you-go-after-the-us/2017/08/11/a01a4396-7e68-11e7-9026-4a0a64977c92_story.html?utm_term=.3d010f091b13 )

[71] Robert Beckhusen, The U.S. Military Is Not Prepared to Hunt This Many North Korean Missiles , War Is Boring, https://warisboring.com/the-u-s-military-is-not-prepared-to-hunt-this-many-north-korean-missiles/ (March 5, 2018)

[72] Robin Harding, Bryan Harris, "US rhetoric on North Korea runs into logistical reality," Financial Times, December 27, 2017 ( https://www.ft.com/content/1cf44ab8-de1a-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c )

[73] Deng Xiaoci, "China should prepare to defend against war in Korean Peninsula: expert," Global Times, December 17, 2017 ( http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1080722.shtml )

[74] Dan Falvey, "Russia plan for military intervention in North Korea to stop a nuclear apocalypse," Express, December 2, 2017 ( https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/886615/North-Korea-nuclear-missile-war-vladimir-putin-military-action-kim-jong-un )

Eyewitness North Korea: An American's Journey to the DPRK before the Travel Ban

By Derek R. Ford

On August 1, Rex Tillerson announced that beginning in one month the U.S. government would be banning its citizens from traveling to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). A few days later, I boarded an Air Koryo plane and landed in that country for a fact-finding and peace delegation. There were a total of five of us, all traveling on U.S. passports. Call us skeptical, but we didn't buy that the Trump administration was acting in our best interests, let alone acting in the name of peace and justice. Indeed, as soon as we landed the hegemonic U.S. narrative about the country began to crumble. Even though I had previously been highly critical of the presentation of the country we have been exposed to our entire lives, I couldn't quite anticipate just how different the reality actually is. And it wasn't only life in the country that was radically different, but also my experience as U.S. citizen traveling there.

I have to begin with this latter aspect, because the propaganda against the DPRK is so total, so all-encompassing, that it can make one's actual experience be dismissed in advance. If one's on-the-ground observations differ in any way from the dominant narrative, then it is because one only observed a highly orchestrated and carefully curated propaganda show.

Tourism in the DPRK is a regulated industry, and there are two very good reasons for this. For one, the U.S. has for decades tried to send spies and agitators into the country to organize destabilization campaigns. The National Endowment for Democracy has a public policy of trying to push propaganda into the country and foster a dissident movement. For two, given the destruction wrought by Western tourists throughout the world, there is a good argument to be had that Westerners should be carefully policed and monitored on their visits. As a sovereign and indigenous nation, the DPRK has a right to control who enters its country and on what conditions, and this should be respected.

This, however, wasn't my experience at all. Not once did I ever feel restricted or policed. During my time there I was free to speak with anyone and to go anywhere. I engaged in numerous spontaneous conversations with people while eating in restaurants, hiking in the wilderness, and walking on the streets. Even passing through immigration and customs was a breeze-much easier than the U.S. They didn't search our phones or laptops. (Upon return, however, one member of our delegation was detained by U.S. customs agents for three hours, and had his phone and computer searched).

Nor was I only shown the best and brightest spots of the country. I spent about as much time in Pyongyang as I did in the countryside, and over the trip we spent hours driving around the country. My Korean friends were very proud of everything in their country, from the new high rises in cities to the old housing structures in the countryside. Our main hotel, the Raknang Guesthouse, had all the amenities of a five-star hotel in any U.S. city, but at another hotel we only had a few hours of hot water each day, and the air conditioning cut in and out. It's true that there is a marked difference between the city and countryside, but that isn't unique to the DPRK. That's true for everywhere, including here in the U.S. I live in rural Indiana, and there is a huge contrast between the infrastructure in my town and that of Indianapolis.

At no point in our trip did we feel unsafe or threatened. As it turns out, if you don't maliciously break any laws, the DPRK is a nice place to visit.

"Just try to understand where we are coming from, and make up your own mind"

We were hosted by Dawn Media, a new media group in the country that is separate from both the state and the ruling party. They aren't a tour company, so the only official tour guides we interacted with were at museums, special events, and the demilitarized zone.

If the official tours in the country are intended to be propaganda shows, then the tour industry is doing a terrible job. And here I have to admit my own prejudices as I embarked on my trip, for I was surprised at how objective and reasonable the tour guides were.

When we approached the final checkpoint before the demilitarized zone we met a soldier who would escort us to the border. Before we left, he told us: "What I am going to show you and tell you is what happened to us. I am going to tell you our perspective. Just try to understand where we are coming from, and make up your own mind."

It was the same at the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities. There, our guide said, "We ask that you try to put yourself in our shoes."

Having arrived in the country just days after the travel ban was announced, many people were surprised to learn we were from the U.S. And when one young woman who had recently graduated from the foreign language university found out where we were from, she told us why she was upset about the ban. "It is important for people to see so that they know," she said. "They can make up their own minds about our country."

Not once on our trip did anyone-a tour guide, our hosts, our friends-tell us that we had to agree with what we were told.

And not once were we treated with any disrespect or hostility. And this was truly remarkable. Even when we met Jong Gun-Song, a 72-year-old survivor of the Sinchon massacre. He was just three when U.S. soldiers threw him and about 400 other children into a warehouse, where they were left in the cold without food or water for one week before the soldiers poured gasoline through the vents and started a fire. Jong was tucked away in a corner, and although he fell into a coma from the smoke, he awoke days later. It would have been quite understandable if this man refused to speak with us or spoke to us with bitterness and anger. Instead, he approached us with humility and respect.

The media and educational systems in the country make a clear distinction between the people of the U.S. and our government. And they make a radically sharper distinction between the people of the U.S. who want peace and our government.

The DPRK: Another Country

U.S. scholar Bruce Cumings titled his popular 2004 book, North Korea: Another Country. The subtitle works on two different levels. For one, North Korea truly is another country in that it is a very different kind of country, especially when compared to the U.S. There are no corporate billboards or advertisements, no McDonald's restaurants or Starbucks coffee shops. Women and children walk the streets alone and confidently at any hour of the day. In the countryside hitch hikers are everywhere. There are few police on the streets. The military is present, but you see them doings things like picking up trash or working on construction projects, and you don't see them carrying assault rifles, or any weapons for that matter (we even saw a citizen playfully hitting a soldier). You also don't see many surveillance cameras. Most people are atheists (although we met some Buddhists).

Yet North Korea is also another country in the sense that it is just another country. People go to work, date, get married, have children, play sports and exercise, go shopping, talk on cell phones, ride bikes, read books in parks (sometimes on benches, but oftentimes in a squatting position), play music, and sing and dance (and they sing and dance a lot-and they will make you do it, too). They have agreements and disagreements, smile and cry. They go to plays and concerts, take vacations, swim in rivers. They get frustrated with and yell at each other, and they joke and laugh with each other. They are human beings. It's just another country.

Hard Truths

This was my first trip, but I know people who have made other trips, and many trips. One of my friends who accompanied me there had been literally hundreds of times over the past 30 or so years. He had been there during the 1990s, during the worst years in the country's history. The overthrow and dissolution of the Soviet Union brought economic crisis, which was exacerbated by severe floods and droughts. Rather than send aid, the U.S. tightened sanctions against the country (just like it did to Cuba). Life was intensely difficult.

The sanctions against the country are criminal and must come to an end. But they have had the adverse effect of diversifying and strengthening the DPRK's economy. Unable to trade openly on the global market, the DPRK has become self-sufficient in many areas, including in food production.

Since 2006, they have invested heavily in light industry. All over, you see all kinds of goods made in the DPRK: silverware, chips and snacks, bottled water, purses and backpacks, clothes and shoes, medicines, solar panels (which are everywhere), and fishing nets. They are building new streets with new high-rise apartments, shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues every year. They have their own internet and cell phone network (and 4.5 million cell phones). Everywhere you go, you see construction. In many buildings you can see evidence of recent renovations. While the DPRK doesn't release its economic data, the Hyundai Research Group estimated that the GDP grew by an astronomic 9 percent in 2015.

To be sure, if we are comparing it to the richest parts of the U.S. or Europe it won't hold up much. But the DPRK didn't benefit from centuries of colonizing and enslaving the world. On the contrary, they were the victims of colonialism, and were enslaved by the Japanese.

The hard truth is that the DPRK isn't crumbling from sanctions. And the people there aren't cowering at Trump's incendiary rhetoric.

The 1950-1953 U.S. war against Korea, which they call the Fatherland Liberation War, was absolutely devastating. Three consecutive years of U.S. carpet bombing had totally levelled the country. But even without an air force, the Korean People's Army emerged victorious. They dealt U.S. imperialism its first blow, and forced an armistice on July 27, 1953.

They then completely rebuilt their country. They did it largely on their own, and they did it while navigating constant U.S. aggression. That's part of the reason they were so proud to show us everything, even that which didn't hold up to Western standards.

And that's the reason they aren't backing down. Since their founding in 1948, the DPRK has maintained its independence. It has never been occupied by another country. It has never become a junior partner of any country-not even the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. Of this independence they are fiercely proud.

The U.S. has always maintained that the country is on the verge of collapse. This may have been an understandable position in the mid 1990s, when the aforementioned economic and natural tragedies struck, and when their founding leader Kim Il Sung died. But they persevered even then.

The DPRK doesn't want to be locked in an eternal struggle with the U.S. What they want is to be able to determine their destiny and to be able to develop in peace. But this isn't want we are told here in the U.S. We are told they want nothing but our destruction. And in order to uphold this false narrative, our government is preventing us from traveling to the country to see it for ourselves.

Everyone I spoke with in the DPRK wanted me to make up my own mind about their country. Meanwhile, the U.S. government wants to make up my mind for me.

You can see pictures and videos from Derek's trip on his facebook page here , and you can e-mail him at derek.ford@hamptoninstitution.org