Bush's real crisis in Korea: North and South Koreans want U.S. troops out

They are appalled at the Bush administration's threats of war against the north, they want greater cooperation and contact between the two halves of the divided peninsula, and they want Washington to sign a peace treaty and remove its troops from the south.

In South Korea, this sentiment is being expressed in constant demonstrations of tens and even hundreds of thousands of people against the U.S. military presence there. It was reflected in the recent presidential election, where the candidate who promised to continue a "sunshine policy" toward the north, Roh Moo-hyun, won a decisive majority over Lee Hoi-chang, the candidate favored by Washington.

Roh's victory was made even more remarkable given the predictions of his defeat in all of South Korea's major media the day before the election. Chung Mong-joon, heir to the Hyundai fortune and head of the National Alliance 21 party, had pulled out his support for Roh just two days before the election. The reason he gave was a speech by Roh implying that South Korea would be neutral in any war between the north and the U.S.

Chung's support had been considered crucial by the big business media. But Roh won anyway, with a decisive majority. The whole incident just heightened anti-U.S. popular sentiment, which has been growing in South Korea.

While the struggle against U.S. occupation comes primarily from the masses of people, it also reflects contradictions within the South Korean ruling class, exacerbated by Washington's arrogant demands and the desire of many Korean capitalists to do business with the north. Several large north-south construction and commercial projects have been underway, but they are now jeopardized by Washington's threatening stance toward the north, which was escalated last January when Bush included North Korea in a presumed "Axis of Evil" in his State of the Union speech.

BUSH'S REAL CRISIS IS NOT NUCLEAR

For the Bush administration, this growing rejection of its Cold War policies constitutes a crisis of the first order. The further the two Korean states proceed in knocking down the barriers erected between them, the more threatening is the stance taken by Washington.

The focus of media attention right now is the determination expressed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)--socialist North Korea-- to resume construction of two nuclear power plants. The Bush administration presents this as a terrible threat to the whole area.

Interestingly, "danger from the north" is not the view of the South Koreans, whose capital, Seoul, is just a few miles from the demilitarized zone dividing Korea. They are calling on the U.S. not to make threats but instead to move toward normalizing the situation on the Korean peninsula.

President-elect Roh is expected to maintain the approach to averting a nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula that was articulated by the Kim Dae-Jung government in December 1998. It involved four steps: (1) the United States lifting economic sanctions against North Korea, (2) the United States normalizing relations with North Korea, including opening diplomatic missions, (3) North and South Korea reaching an agreement on arms control, and (4) North and South Korea converting the current cease- fire accord into a permanent peace system. (Korea Times [Seoul], Dec. 8, 1998)

This stance paved the way for the historic north-south summit meeting between DPRK leader Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae-jung in June 2000. While the U.S. government appeared favorable to the summit, its subsequent actions show that it is doing everything it can to torpedo rapprochement between the two states.

The North Korean socialist state was born out of the Korean people's long struggle against Japanese colonialism. The U.S. capitalist establishment, however, has presented the DPRK as a dangerous threat to the world ever since its founding in 1948. This is how it has justified its more than 50-year military occupation of the south.

Promoting fear of the DPRK has been a lucrative business for U.S. companies. South Korea for years was one of the largest purchasers of U.S. weapons in the world. For example, in November 1993 the Pentagon announced the U.S. intended to sell South Korea 317 air-to-air missiles, produced by Raytheon and Hughes Aircraft, for $169 million.

The Japanese newspaper Daily Yomiuri on Sept. 17, 1997, reported that South Korea had imported $1.7 billion worth of weapons in 1996, almost as much as China, which has more than 20 times the population. Most of those weapons came from the United States.

But when the Asian economic crisis hit South Korea in 1997, this enormous burden could no longer be sustained. The Far Eastern Economic Review of Feb. 5, 1998, reported that, due to the crisis, South Korea was postponing 220 military projects, including airborne early warning systems and submarine purchases.

In this period, the South Korean government had its hands full dealing with a militant labor movement that was resisting draconian measures forced on the country by the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. The workers were demanding jobs and a living wage, not missiles.

The U.S. had been putting intense pressure on the South Korean government to continue buying weapons. On June 11, 1997, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was telling Congress that South Korea planned to buy 1,065 FIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and 213 launchers from the United States. However, South Korea's Defense Ministry denied that any decision had been made on the purchase, and said it had not decided between the French Mistral, British Starburst, or U.S. Stinger.

Some Korean officials reportedly believed that the U.S. made the announcement prematurely to give an advantage to the Stingers. The deal would have been worth $307 million.

Of particular importance to the U.S. military-industrial complex in this period was the projected theater missile defense program. The Korea Herald of May 4, 1999, reported that Seoul had no plans to join the U.S.- led program. A high-ranking official said that "at this stage, [South Korea has] neither an intention nor ability to take part in the TMD plan, which requires a huge sum of investment and up-to-date technology."

Meanwhile, the U.S., which claimed it was in South Korea to protect it, was preventing South Korea from producing its own medium-range missiles.

During the 1990s, in response to this furious arming of the south, the DPRK was able to develop and manufacture missiles on its own at a much lower cost.

WHY U.S. UNDERMINED AGREED FRAMEWORK

What seemed to be the beginning of a relaxation of tensions between the DPRK and the U.S. had begun on Oct. 21, 1994, with the signing of the Agreed Framework. At that time, it was the view in Washington that socialist North Korea would not survive long because the Soviet Union and its allies had collapsed. Korea's legendary leader, Kim Il Sung, who led the anti-colonial forces during World War II and then established the DPRK, had died on July 8 of that year. The way the U.S. imperialists looked at it, it was just a matter of time before the socialist north would be absorbed by the capitalist south, similar to what had happened to the German Democratic Republic in Europe.

The year had begun with an announcement by the U.S. that it would deploy Patriot missiles in South Korea and would continue its annual nuclear war games known as "Team Spirit." It sent 48 launching ramps and 192 warheads to South Korea. With this club firmly in its belt, the U.S. then entered into the agreement with the DPRK. It seemed to open up a process that would end the official state of war between the two countries, which has existed since 1950.

With the signing of the Agreed Framework, the DPRK stopped construction of its graphite nuclear reactors, which the U.S. claimed could be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, and agreed to allow in UN inspectors. In return, Washington was to help the DPRK build two light-water reactors (LWRs). The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) was set up by the U.S., Japan, South Korea and the European Union to implement the agreement. In the meantime, the U.S. was to keep North Korea supplied with fuel oil until the reactors were ready.

It is now eight cold winters later. The DPRK has not collapsed. It has weathered extremely difficult material shortages but has consolidated its political structure and defense under the leadership of Kim Jong Il. It has also successfully reached out to South Korea in this period.

In these eight years, no construction has been done on the LWRs. By 2000, the ground for the sites had still not been prepared. The South Koreans in charge of the project cited "financing problems"--a euphemism for U.S. foot-dragging.

Nor has the U.S. lived up to the other part of the agreement. The DPRK has complained that promised oil deliveries from the U.S. and Japan were frequently held back until the worst of the winter weather was over.

This November, just at the onset of cold weather, the Bush administration and the Japanese government both announced they were stopping oil shipments altogether.

This brutal move precipitated the current crisis. Without the promised light-water reactors or fuel oil, what was the DPRK to do? Lie down and freeze to death?

The Bush administration may act startled and alarmed by North Korea's announcement that it would resume work on its original nuclear power plants, and its order to the UN inspectors to leave, but it is obvious to any thinking person that Washington knew all along it was forcing the DPRK into a corner.

So the Bush administration is using the threat of war, famine and freezing temperatures, telling the DPRK that it can't build the reactors and tightening an economic blockade of the country.

The DPRK, a far northern country that suffers severe winters, has decided it needs nuclear power. South Korea, with a somewhat milder climate, has 16 operating nuclear power plants and four more under construction.

The DPRK also needs to defend itself against the most destructive military machine the world has ever known. For over half a century, the U.S. has brandished its nuclear weapons to terrorize smaller nations into submission. The crisis Bush faces now is not that the DPRK will be a nuclear danger to the world, but that it may be able to develop enough of a retaliatory capacity that U.S. nuclear blackmail will cease to be effective.

Some in the U.S. ruling establishment are now advising Bush to resume a policy of "engagement" and tone down his rhetoric against the DPRK, at least until the war with Iraq has been resolved. In general, this administration has shown little patience with diplomacy and much desire to wield its big stick. However, despite all its insulting caricatures of the north as a "hermit kingdom" ready to implode, it is forced to reckon with the DPRK leaders' skill at defending the socialist base of their society even while opening political and commercial relations with the south.

Furthermore, the threats are not working. In fact, they seem to be having the opposite effect. After Bush's hints of a "preemptive military strike" on the reactors brought a strong rebuke from the DPRK and led to turmoil in South Korea, including a drop in the stock market there, the U.S. president on Dec. 31 tried to soften his rhetoric. Responding to a reporter's question on possible military action against North Korea, he said, "We can resolve this peacefully."

The aggressive grouping now running the White House has long trumpeted the ability of the Pentagon to fight two wars at the same time. However, they may have to put Korea on the back burner right now, while they focus on preparing a criminal assault on Iraq.

WHY KOREANS DON'T TRUST U.S.

Korea was the first battleground of the Cold War. An estimated 3 million Koreans and over 50,000 U.S. troops were killed there during the 1950-53 war. Terrible atrocities were committed by U.S. troops in both the north and south, as the recent exposures of the massacre at Nogun-ri confirm.

The Cold War strategists of both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations saw this bloody conflict, in which the Pentagon came close to using nuclear weapons on China's border, as essential to rolling back the anti-colonial, anti-capitalist revolutions that transformed China, Korea and Vietnam after World War II.

The intense frustration of the U.S. ruling class with its inability to establish domination over all of Asia after the military defeat of Japanese imperialism led to a vicious debate within the political establishment over "Who lost China?" Even as the Korean War raged, Sen. Joseph McCarthy was unleashed to purge thousands of progressives from the unions, schools and government bureaucracy. In this witch-hunt atmosphere--some feared incipient fascism in the U.S.--there was little expression of the kind of anti-war sentiment that later emerged during the Vietnam War.

Now, however, progressives in the U.S. need to understand and sympathize with Korea's long struggle against colonialism and imperialism. It closely parallels that of Vietnam, another country divided after World War II that only achieved reunification after a bitter liberation struggle.

At least 37,000 U.S. troops have been stationed in the south ever since the Korean War ended in a cease-fire. During both the Carter and Clinton administrations, attempts to reduce the size of this military occupation and move toward normalizing relations with the socialist north were scuttled under pressure of the militarist far right in the U.S.

U.S. propaganda depicts the DPRK--with 25 million people--as a grave threat to world peace. It never mentions that this country has been ringed by U.S. nuclear weapons for more than half a century. Not only do nuclear-armed submarines cruise its coastal waters, not only have U.S. planes with nuclear bombs been constantly within striking distance, not only are long-range missiles focused on its cities, but for years the U.S. stationed nuclear weapons right in South Korea itself.

And they may still be there.

According to the Washington Times--a newspaper with strong ties to South Korea's right wing--President George Bush Sr. announced on July 2, 1992, that all 2,400 U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons in South Korea, made up of 500 tactical weapons from naval aircraft, 1,000 nuclear artillery shells, 700 Lance missile warheads, and 200 B-57 nuclear depth-charge bombs, had been removed to the United States for storage or destruction. (See http://www.nti.org, a very large database on nuclear issues set up by Ted Turner and Sam Nunn, for abstracts of this and other articles from the world press on Korea and nuclear weapons.)

Who can verify that everything in this huge arsenal was truly removed? Two years ago, U.S. forces in South Korea denied having depleted uranium weapons there, but had to retract that after being confronted with the truth by activists.

Have there ever been the kinds of obtrusive weapons inspections of U.S. military facilities in South Korea that Washington demands of Iraq?

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)