OMNI
NORTH KOREA NEWSLETTER #6,
July 9, 2017
The
Korean War and Seeing the World As the Enemy Sees It
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice.
(#1 July 19, 2012;
#2 April 13, 2012; #3, Jan. 19, 2016; #4, Feb. 10, 2016; #5, March 12, 2016).
CONTENTS: North Korea Newsletter
#6
HISTORY I: The Korean War
Publisher’s
Review of I. F. Stone’s The
Hidden History of the
Korean War: 1950-1951 (1952)
Bruce Cumings’ Preface to the 1988 Reprint of The Hidden
History.
Hart-Landsberg’s Rev. (2000)
of Hugh
Deane’s The
Korean War,
1945-1953 (1999).
Publisher’s Review of Korea:
Division, Reunification, and U.S. Foreign
Policy (
Hauben’s Review (2007) of Stone’s Hidden History.
Garner’s Review (2010) of Cumings’ The Korean War: A History
(2010).
Dick’s Rev. (2017) of Cumings begins with
Chapter Six, Air War.
Related
Books
SUMMARY: US War Against North
Korea
Chossudovsky, “America’s War Аgainst the People of Korea” http://global-politics.eu/2017/05/25/americas-war-%D0%B0gainst-people-korea-historical-record-war-crimes/
A
chronologically encompassing essay, from the Japanese occupation to the
present.
ALL OF THE ABOVE INQUIRIES INTO THE TRUE HISTORY OF
KOREA CONTRIBUTE TO CONTROLLING THE NUCLEAR THREAT. Two actions can be highlighted:
Conversion
of Armistice to a Peace Treaty Needed: Singapore's Former Foreign Minister
George Yeo.
Check on US
President’s Control of Nuclear Weapons
Needed Also: Lillyanne Daigle, Global Zero.
OMNI North Korea
Newsletter #5
OMNI Friends for Peace and Justice
A central value in creating a peaceful world is diplomacy.
I taught in the Fulbright College at UAF and was
daily reminded and reinforced every time I passed the sculpture of Fulbright
outside Old Main. Fulbright in The
Price of Empire is our political philosopher of empathy, of changing our manner of thinking about world conflicts, from armed force to seeing the
world as others see it. But our leaders make no effort to see the world
as Kim Jong Un sees it, or as his father and grandfather saw it, despite the
ample evidence of their world. Following
are reviews of three books that set the record straight. For peace with NK we need leaders and
the public who actually know something about Korea's history, if they are to
see the US through North Koreans' eyes.
THE KOREAN WAR:
Our
journalists are trained to give both sides in a controversy, but when some nation
opposes US policy that discipline collapses and the mainstream media (MM)
become megaphones for US armed force bias. The manufactured North Korean threat
provides a clear example of the Mainstream Media promoting war by giving only
the point of view of pro-war-and-violence leaders.
White House/Pentagon/Media Complex: The Screaming Headlines of Double Standards, Bully,
Projection of Evil, Fear, Hatred, Intimidation, Threat (from NADG in June and July 2017).
S.
Korea: China In On Penalizing North.
4-11-17.
Japan’s
Abe Warns of N. Korea Nerve-Gas Threat.
4-14-17
China
Fears Foes on Collision Course. 4-15-17
After
N. Korea Fete, Launch Fails. 4-16-17
Trump:
U.S, Has China’s Support. N. Korean Threat Draws Pence Visit. 4-17-17
Pence
Warns N. Korea: Do Not Test U.S. 4-20-17
North
Korea Back to Nuke Site Work. 4-23-17
N.
Korea Conducts Artillery Drills. U.S.
Holds Exercises with South, Japan as
Tensions Stay High. 4-26-17.
Tensions Stay High. 4-26-17.
A
Threat Blooms. Don’t Underestimate North
Korea. 4-29-17
********
North
Korea Conducts Missile Test. Analysts
Say Alaska in Reach of Weapon.
7-5-17
7-5-17
U.S.
Warns North Korea, Pressures China.
7-6-17
Trump
Discusses N. Korea “Menace.” 7-9-17
Madman. 7-9-17 (cartoon showing Kim Jong Un firing
offing off a missile; this day the NADG published
4 personal attacks on Kim, one calling him a “psychopath”).
Meanwhile
the US is perfecting its anti-ballistic
missile capacity; that is, its first strike capability (strike the enemy first knowing you
can prevent retaliation).
ABC7 Los
Angeles
Missile
launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base, intercepts test warhead
Officials
at Vandenberg Air Force Base sent up an interceptor to shoot down a simulated
warhead in a drill designed to prepare for any North Korean intercontinental
ballistic missile strike. (KABC)
By Brandi Hitt, Wednesday, May 31, 2017
By Brandi Hitt, Wednesday, May 31, 2017
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE (KABC) --
Vandenberg has launched test missiles in the past to perfect the
military's missile defense system. MORE
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Three books on the Korean War
I. F. Stone’s The Hidden History of the Korean War (Monthly Review P, 1952), drawing particularly from The New York Times’ reports of the war, accurately called into question the chief and
many smaller US assumptions behind the Korean War. But because it was published before many classified
documents were available, Stone had to be a Sherlock Holmes historian—searching
for subterranean forces and tendencies by lifting up rugs, applying his microscope
to a photograph or hair strand, his magnifying glass to all relevant texts including
between the lines, examining key figures from infancy on, looking for power
struggles, independently connecting to their antecedants the dots of an ongoing
event. He asked previously unasked
questions, dismantled official explanations, and like Ms. Marple always
observed, “Something’s missing.” Difficult
and risky scholarship.
Because it was published in Cold War 1952,
The Hidden History was disregarded by
warrior officials and established historians, and it took 40 years until its
reputation began to change. I have a
copy of the 1988 reprint by Little,
Brown, & Co., Canada, which contains a new Preface by Bruce Cumings and a
new Appendix on the question of the war as a surprise. (This reprint is available in UAF’s Mullins
Library.) Cumings exalts the book: Stone “cared about truth, he was fearless, he
didn’t equate objectivity with silence on the great issues of his day. . . .Hidden History is above all a truthful
book, and it remains one of the best accounts of the American role in the
Korean War.” “Among its many virtues, Hidden History is a textbook on how to
read” (xii-xiii). “It is doubtful that
anyone has ever been better” at fitting odd details together” to “demolish the
official logic or construct an alternative logic” than Stone, such as his
analysis of what happened to the Korean army MacArthur claimed to have
destroyed after the Inch’on landing (xv).
Later critical historians enjoyed the declassified
documents become available since the publication of Stone’s history, and that
evidence corroborated Stone’s history generally and in most cases specifically. Hugh Deane in The Korean War, 1945-1953 (1999) traces the beginning
of the war to 1945, blames the US government primarily for the war, and treats
the war as a civil war. A
third book, Bruce Cumings’ The Korean
War: A History (2010) continues
what has become a counter-Cold War Korean War critical tradition. Published
over 40 years after Stone’s, it corroborates Stone’s narrative and
interpretations, now supported by documents unavailable to Stone. (Cumings is highly regarded for his earlier
book The Origins of the Korean War, two
volumes, 1981-1989, Princeton UP.).
A personal conclusion from the above
account: we can perceive two great heroes of scholarly courage in seeking the
truth during wartime-- author I. F. Stone and publisher Monthly Review Press.
My belief is that if these books had
gained acceptance in governmental, academic, and popular circles, the present
extremely dangerous antagonism between NK and the US would never have
developed. Truth threatens those who
seek to control the world, hence the long dismissal of I. F. Stone.
 Hidden History of the Korean War
Monthly Review Press
September 1, 1969
Matthew Josephson on The
Hidden History of the Korean War:
"I would nominate this for the Book-of-the-Year if there
were such an award given for courage and honesty in writing of the crisis of
our time. Here there are no sensational charges, no unfounded accusations.
With his fine intelligence Mr. Stone analyzes events and statements,
searching always for the motive behind the act, like a good
historian-detective."
From the Author's Preface:
"I have tried to write this story as if I were writing a
novel, with suspense and with three-dimensionality. In a good novel one does
not know all the answers, and I do not know all the answers here. Much about
the Korean War is still hidden, and much will long remain hidden. I believe I
have succeeded in throwing new light on its origins, on the operations of
MacArthur and Dulles, on the weaknesses of Truman and Acheson, on the way the
Chinese were provoked to intervene, and on the way the truce talks have been
dragged out and the issues muddied by American military men hostile from the
first to negotiations. I have tried to bring as much of the hidden story to
light as I could in order to put the people of the United States and the
United Nations on guard."
From the Publisher's Foreword:
"We commend it to readers as a work of quite extraordinary
importance. It is at once a tour de force of research, a brilliant piece of
interpretation, and last but not least an exciting story. It is really what
tits title says it is: The
Hidden History of the Korean War. If enough Americans will read
it, we are convinced that it can become one of those rare documents which,
like Zola's J'accuse, play a role in shaping history."
|
“I. F. Stone's case is thought provoking and helpful, especially when tensions are being stirred up again on the Korean Peninsula, and manipulated wars are still in style. Perhaps however journalism like that of Stone's and lessons from the first Korean War are making a second Korean War less likely.” Jay Hauben, 2007 Rev. of Hidden History. More by Hauben below.
The Monthly
Review, 2000 Volume
52, Issue 05 (October) Setting the Record Straight on the Korean War
Dear Reader, we make this and other articles available for free
online to serve those unable to afford or access the print edition of Monthly Review. If you read the magazine online and can
afford a print subscription, we hope you will consider purchasing one. Please
visit the MR store for subscription options. Thank you very
much. —Eds.
Korea:
Division, Reunification, and U.S. Foreign Policy
This historical work, released on the eve of the fiftieth
anniversary of the Korean War, overturns the conventional wisdom on Korea.
Official U.S. history portrays the Korean War as a notable
example of America’s selfless commitment to democracy. According to Cold War
history, South Korea emerged from the conflict to create a prosperous and
dynamic economy, while U.S. troops served as the nation’s peacekeepers. This
book, in a wide canvass of the historical background, contests those claims.
By careful scrutiny of U.S. policy in Asia and the history of
Korean struggles for independence, Hart-Landsberg
identifies the true motivations and origins of U.S. aims in Korea, showing how
U.S. foreign policy opposed popular movements in the South and actually sought
the division of the peninsula. That policy set in motion separate political
processes in North and South Korea that resulted in a cultural tragedy for the
Korean people and turned the Korean peninsula into a potentially explosive
trouble spot.
Hart-Landsberg foresees opportunities for creating a different
atmosphere, one capable of ending the long era of separation and hostility
imposed by the Cold War.
Korean
unification is one of the most important issues on the international agenda
today. Hart-Landsberg’s broad-ranging inquiry develops a perspective that is
rarely heard and that merits careful attention. It is a valuable contribution
to a debate that should not be delayed.
—Noam Chomsky
This
challenging and provocative work reveals the significant dark side of U.S.
foreign policy toward Korea. —Choice
[Korea]
successfully addresses the related realities of Korean and American foreign
policy. It is especially important for its account of the early striving for
unification. Carefully researched, comprehensive, and well-written, it should
be able to dispel some of the lamentable ignorance that blinds Americans to all
that is important and attractive on the Korean peninsula. —Science
and Society
“Setting
the Record Straight on the Korean War” by Martin
Hart-Landsberg, a Review of
Deane, Hugh, The Korean War, 1945-1953 (San
Francisco: China Books and Periodicals, Inc., 1999), 246 pp. https://monthlyreview.org/2000/10/01/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-korean-war/
Hugh Deane
has written a concise, political, and engaging history of the Korean war. One
reason this book is special is that Deane was in southern Korea during the late
1940s as a reporter, and his experiences there enable him to provide a more
immediate and personal perspective on events than one normally finds in
histories of the Korean war.
In The Korean War, 1945-1953, Deane challenges
conventional understandings of the war. Most importantly, he argues that it
began in 1945, not 1950; that primary responsibility for the war lies with the
U.S. government, which actively and intentionally divided Korea to further its
imperialist ambitions; and finally, that the fighting between 1950 and 1953 is
best characterized as a civil war rather than an unprovoked invasion of one
nation by another.
Although
Deane makes little attempt to explain the
contemporary relevance of his work, it is an easy task. A peace treaty
ending the Korean war has never been signed. Technically, the United States and
North Korea remain in a state of war; the United States has rebuffed numerous
North Korean attempts to negotiate its end. In fact, the United States and
Japan still refuse to recognize North Korea. This continuing state of hostilities
(intensified by the ongoing presence of U.S. military personnel in South Korea)
has the potential to trigger a new, and potentially nuclear, Korean war. It has
also provided useful cover for rightists in Japan to pursue remilitarization
and for the military-industrial complex in the United States to sustain high
levels of military spending. Finally, this situation, along with the tensions
generated by Korea’s division, has also provided justification for the
governments of both North and South Korea to distort and limit progressive
political and social possibilities on both sides of the thirty-eighth
parallel.1
While the
events surrounding the Korean war cannot fully explain all of the above, the
taproot of current tensions and struggles does lie in the period between 1945
and 1953. And, because the carefully managed conventional history of the Korean
war has helped U.S. policymakers maintain popular support for their foreign
policy, it is necessary to challenge that history if we are to build support for
a new U.S. policy towards Korea and meaningful solidarity with the Korean
people.
Cracks in
the conventional history are slowly becoming visible. In September 1999, the
U.S. government was finally forced to admit that the U.S. army might have
committed an atrocity during the Korean war—specifically, that U.S. soldiers
murdered several hundred Korean civilians near Nogun village in late July
1950.2
While the
U.S. government acknowledges that atrocities
were committed during the war, it previously blamed them all on North
Korea, not itself or South Korea. However, as Deane shows, the opposite is
closer to the truth. For example, the Syngman Rhee regime “ordered a blood bath
in the southern regions retaken from the north after Inchon in the fall of
1950…Gregory Henderson [a U.S. official stationed in Seoul] estimated…that
probably more than 100,000 were killed without any trial whatsoever when
soldiers and the Counter-Intelligence Corps recaptured areas where the left was
known to be strong” (96). Deane also highlights the normally overlooked period
from October through November 1950, when U.S. and South Korean forces occupied
North Korea. The result was a reign of terror. “After reoccupying Pyongyang,
the North Koreans claimed that 15,000 people had been massacred there—the
bodies filled the courtyard of the main prison and 26 air raid shelters” (101).
The True Start of the Korean War
Deane’s book is divided
into five sections (with the middle sections dominating): History That Shapes the Present, The True Start of the Korean War, The 1950 War in the Making, Armies at War, and Armistice and Aftermath.
While mainstream accounts of the start of the Korean War normally begin with
North Korean forces “invading” South Korea, Deane’s aim in section two is to
show that the war started in 1945 as a result of U.S. policy. He therefore begins his analysis with the 1945 arrival
of U.S. troops in southern Korea. MORE
https://monthlyreview.org/2000/10/01/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-korean-war/
Martin Hart-Landsberg teaches
economics at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He is the author
of Korea: Division, Reunification and U.S. Foreign Policy (1998)
and Rush to Development: Economic Change and Political Struggle in
South Korea (1993).
The Hidden History of the Korean War
by I. F. Stone, 364 pages.
Monthly Review Press. 1952, 1970, 1988.
Book Review by Jay Hauben. OhmyNews on Feb.14, 2007.
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/Korea/hidden-history-korean-war.txt
The controversial book, The Hidden History of the Korean War by I. F.
Stone was originally published in 1952 during the Korean War (1950-1953) and republished in 1970 during the Vietnam War (1960-1975). It raised questions about the origin of the Korean War, made a case that the United States government manipulated the United Nations, and gave evidence that the U.S. military and South Korean oligarchy dragged out the war by sabotaging the peace talks.
Publishing such a book in the U.S. during the time of McCarthyism, while the war was still continuing was an act of journalistic courage. . . . This book-length feat of
journalism, with over 600 citations for his quotes and materials, is a testament to Stone's search for a way to strengthen his readers to think for themselves, rather than be overwhelmed by official stories and war propaganda. MORE http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/Korea/hidden-history-korean-war.txt
Review of Cumings’ The Korean War: a History
“Carpet-Bombing Falsehoods About a War That’s Little Understood” By DWIGHT GARNER. The New
York Times, JULY 21, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/books/22book.html#story-continues-6
North Korea, like Cuba, is a country suspended in time, one that
exists off modernity’s grid. It’s a place where the cold war never ended, where
the heirloom paranoia is taken down and polished daily.
Korea’s cold war chill is heating up. Four months ago a South
Korean warship was sunk, and a South Korean-led international investigative
team concluded that North Korea was responsible. Next week the United States
and South Korea will begin large-scale naval exercises off the coasts of the
Korean Peninsula and Japan in a show
of force.
The world will be watching, and here’s a book that American
policymakers may hope it won’t be reading: Bruce Cumings’s “Korean War,” a powerful revisionist history of America’s
intervention in Korea. Beneath its bland title, Mr. Cumings’s book is a
squirm-inducing assault on America’s moral behavior during the Korean War, a
conflict that he says is misremembered when it is remembered at all. It’s a
book that puts the reflexive
anti-Americanism of North Korea’s leaders into sympathetic historical context.
Mr. Cumings is chairman of the history department at the
University of Chicago and the author of “The Origins of the Korean War,” a
respected two-volume survey. He mows
down a host of myths about the war in his short new book, which is a
distillation of his own scholarship and that of many other historians. But he
begins by mowing down David Halberstam.
Mr. Cumings, who admires Mr. Halberstam’s writing about Vietnam,
plucks the wings from “The Coldest Winter,” Mr. Halberstam’s 2007 book about
the Korean War. The book, he argues, makes all the classic mistakes popular
American historians tend to make about this little understood war.
Mr. Halberstam’s book is among those that “evince almost no
knowledge of Korea or its history” and “barely get past two or three Korean
names,” Mr. Cumings writes. “Halberstam mentions the U.S. Military Government from
1945 to 1948, which deeply shaped postwar Korean history — in one sentence,” he
adds. “There is absolutely nothing on the atrocious massacres of this war, or
the American incendiary bombing campaigns.” Ouch.
Americans need to get past the idea, Mr. Cumings says, that the
Korean War was a “discrete, encapsulated” story that began in 1950, when the
United States intervened to help push the Communist north out of the south of
Korea, and ended in 1953, after the war bogged down in a stalemate. The United States
succeeded in containment, establishing the 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone
that still runs through Korea’s middle, but failed miserably at the war for the
north, an attempt at Communist rollback.
Mr. Cumings argues that the Korean War was a civil war with
long, tangled historical roots, one in which America had little business
meddling. He notes how “appallingly dirty” the war was. In terms of civilian
slaughter, he declares, “our ostensibly democratic ally was the worst offender,
contrary to the American image of the North Koreans as fiendish terrorists.” MORE http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/books/22book.html#story-continues-6
Bruce
Cumings’ The Korean War (2010) a
Reply to US North Korean Policy 2017 by Dick Bennett
Let’s
quickly remember what’s been going on between these two nuclear-armed nations,
as reported in the NADG. Recall the headlines at the beginning; here
are four more analyzed.
Robert Burns (AP).
“U.S. Defense Chief Warns of North Korea During Asia Trip.” NADG (June
3, 2017). Comment by Dick Bennett
What
has that dictatorship done? It is
“accelerating its push to acquire a nuclear-armed missile capable of
threatening the United States and other nations, and the U.S. regards this as a
‘clear and present danger,’ US. Defense Secretary James Mattis said.” But why?
The double-standard here is so egregious it invites commensurate irony,
but since Chomsky’s best has failed to stop it, I’ll just speak
straightforwardly. The US decimated
North Korea (NK, DPRK) during the Korean War, and since then has threatened the
country every day, and annually particularly by sharing war maneuvers with
South Korea near the borders of NK, including airplanes capable of carrying
nuclear bombs. Does nobody in the US
know this? Or care? We can threaten and the world knows we can
and will bomb because we have already nuclear bombed Japan. And the world knows the US will shock and
awe and occupy any country in the world that does not have retaliatory power
(Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and I’m talking specifically about Iraq). So NK tries to defend itself and is denounced
for threatening the threatener!! On the
schoolyard that is called defending yourself against the bully.
The US helped other countries from Britain to India build its nuclear
bombs. So why are they not helping
NK? Why this gargantuan antagonism
toward NK? Could it be that leaders of
the US fear the people of NK were deeply injured and offended by the shock and
awe bombing and torching of the cities and villages of NK, and that if they
ever got the bomb they would use it for revenge? But if that is true, then several remedies
have been available for many years.
First, NK wants a peace treaty that protects them from attack. Second, they would welcome an apology. Third, we could give them reparations for
such destruction. And fourth, we could
help them convert their nuclear weapons program into nuclear power for the
rescue of the country from its dearth of energy.
But oh! U.S. War Secretary Mattis
will reply to all of this, NK started the Korean War and we only entered
the war to defend the freedom of SK, and NK’s threatening behavior since then
has required our shock and awe military buildup in SK and in Japan and
especially Okinawa. But Secretary Mattis
have you read Bruce Cumings’ The Korean
War? “…the
Korean War was a civil war with long, tangled historical roots, one in which
America had little business meddling“; the US committed “saturation bombing
of Korea’s north” (from the New York Times review http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/books/22book.html). No US citizen should say or think anything
about NK until he or she has read this book and Cumings’ 2-vol. The Origins of the Korean War.
April 10, 2017. “Navy Carrier En
Route to Korea.” “A U.S. Navy strike group [the US has 10 groups, each carrier accompanied by at
least 2 guided missile destroyers and a guided-missile cruiser and attending
ships: no other country has even one carrier group] was ordered toward the
Korean Peninsula…’as a prudent measure to maintain readiness and presence in
the western Pacific,’ the spokesman for U.S. Pacific command said.” (More “presence” needed when Okinawa is an
immense land, sea, and air US military base, and back-up Guam is a smaller
replica? And note the “Pacific
command.” The US has covered the planet
with “commands” to surveil and potentially bomb every inch of the planet if
unruly toward US policy: Central Command/centcom, Africa Command/africom, etc.)
April 26, 2017. “Military
Maneuvers.” Page 1A photo of US submarine with this
caption: “The nuclear submarine USS
Michigan docks…at the port of Busan, South Korea. The submarine’s arrival coincided with
maneuvers involving U.S. and South Korean vessels in the Yellow Sea and
Japanese-U.S. naval exercises in the Sea of Japan. (That is, west, south, and east of N.
Korea.) Meanwhile, North Korea staged
long-range artillery drills marking the 85th anniversary of its
military’s founding.” (On my desk I
have over a dozen clips from the
newspaper of US opposition to NK during April alone.)
May 5, 2017. “N. Korea Sanctions
Get House Backing.” P. 4A.
“The Republican-led house…overwhelmingly voted to impose new sanctions
on North Korea, targeting its shipping industry and use of slave labor.” Note “overwhelmingly”: the vote was
bipartisan, 419-1, by the Republican/Democrat War Party. (The dissenter was Thomas Massie, R-Ky,)
The astonishing thing about this bill and vote was its emphasis upon NK
“slave labor,” which turns out to be not slave labor but NK citizens working
abroad. Perhaps all impoverished
countries “export” labor seeking better wages to send home to their families,
such as Mexico to US and back. The
Philippines exports the largest number of their citizens, to the Emirates for
example. Calling this common practice
“slave labor” on the part of NK is just another instance of US double standards
and double speak, and of enemies of NK casting that nation in the worst
possible way.
While one may be Lilliputian, the other
certainly is Brobingnagian, with a record of actually using nuclear bombs on
two cities and threatening to use it a dozen times. (And let’s remember international law and
keep it up front in our minds. Not only
is an attack on another country without first being attacked a war crime, threatening attack is also in violation
of the UN Charter, a treaty, which
the US promulgated and signed into US law, and our nuclear threatenings place
us among the lawless. The UN Charter reads in article 2(4): “All members shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of [armed] force.”)
One
way to read Bruce Cumings’ The Korean
War: A History is to start in the middle with chapter six, which perhaps
more than any other part of Korean history helps us understand its present
ruler, Kim Jong Un’s behavior toward the US.
Chapter 6 connects us to his memory of his grandfather and the Korean
War, and to his father who ruled afterward, and reminds us too of what we never
knew or have forgotten about that war.
Chapter Six
A film, perhaps a more recent novel
might begin a specific event and expand outward (how many novels or histories
begin comprehensively, how many with close-up, dramatic incident, each chapter
assembling the concluding whole?).
Cumings might have opened with Chapter 6, the Air War. As in the Vietnam War, the US controlled the
skies. Annihilation of the enemy was
possible.
Given the extremely dangerous situation
in 2017, that would have been a useful structure. The young dictator, Kim Jong Un, is often
dismissed as childish, paranoid, unstable.
But once one sees his country through the experiences of his grandfather,
Kim Il Sung, a different young dictator emerges, for that is the grandson’s
vision.
In chapter 6, Cumings describes the brutal
decimation of NK by US air war.
Decimate: to destroy a great
number or proportion of. “What hardly
any Americans know or remember…is that we carpet-bombed the North for three
years with next to no concern for civilian casualties. . . .The air assaults
ranged from the widespread and continual use of firebombing to threats to use
nuclear and chemical weapons, finally to the destruction of huge North Korean
dams in the last stages of the war” (149).
One raid on Pyongyang, July 11, 1952,
“involved 1,254 air sorties by day and 54 B-20 assaults by night, the prelude
to bombing thirty other cities and industrial objectives. . . .Highly
concentrated incendiary bombs were followed up with delayed demolition
explosives” (152).
And how does Kim Jong Un possibly
perceive the US populace, its bomber pilots, its media? “…oceans of [napalm] were dropped on Korea
silently or without notice in America.”
General Ridgway “wanted bigger and better napalm bombs. . .’to wipe out
all life in tactical locality’” (153).
Published articles discussed the USAF love of its “wonder weapon,” the
hideous napalm. And the US “also
considered using atomic weapons several times,” particularly during “early
April 1951” (156).
“In the end the scale of urban destruction
quite exceeded that in Germany and Japan” (159).
All who can at least consider the role of
empathy in preventing aggression should read this chapter. If, instead of threatening NK with nuclear
extinction, we saw him and the Korean people through the narrative, photos, and
films of the cities of Wonsan or
Pyonyang, and all the cities, towns, and villages bombed and burned to the
ground during the Korean War, we would understand our human similarities and be
more capable of thinking of cooperation instead of war.
The remaining
chapters, like chapter 6, assemble the narrative and the facts to further
confirm the history summarized in chapter 1.
Introduction
and Chapter One
Cumings
begins his book conventionally with an Introduction and follows with the
overview of Chapter One, “The Course of the War.” In his Introduction, Cumings states the
purpose of his book is “to uncover truths that most Americans do not know. .
.truths sometimes as shocking as they are unpalatable to American self-esteem”
(xv). Particularly important is the long
existence as a nation and culture of Korea,
“with well-recognized national boundaries since the tenth century.” But by 1910 Japan had made it a colony, an
occupation of replacement of Korean by Japanese political and religious
traditions, seen by Koreans as theft of its sovereignty and culture. This explains the depth of Korean/Japanese
enmity to this day. The end of WWII and
defeat of the Japanese did not restore a unified Korea longed for by many
Koreans.
Rather, the US occupied the southern half
1945-48 and established a Christian, Western sympathizer, and brutal dictator,
Syngman Rhee, as president. To North
Koreans and to SK allies, the Korean War was a continuation of an eighty years’
war. And in 1949 SK made “small assaults
across the [38th] parallel” and occupied some territory north of the
parallel. Both Kim Il Sung and Syngman
Rhee sought support for invasion of the other from their allies. Rhee is quoted as saying “he would attack
even if ‘it brought on a general war’. . .but it is no different from his
threats to march north made many times before” (7). After feints on both sides during 1949 and
early 1950, on June 25, 1950, the NK army drove across the parallel toward
Seoul (see also pp. 5-10, and chapter 5, esp. 139-.) as two SK divisions
collapsed. Westerners also know little
about the Korean War itself; for example, that it was an “appallingly dirty”
war “with a sordid history of civilian slaughters” and that our ally South
Korea was “the worst offender” (xviii).
Of the many ways one might begin a
history of an event, Cumings chooses to give his historical summary of the war
in chapter one. Because it’s a densely
packed narrative and analysis of the NK drive almost to the tip of S. Korea,
the US/SK counterattack northward into NK, and the Chinese counter-counter-attack,
during 1950-52, I will select only a few passages to emphasize.
As J. William Fulbright observed about a
widespread US perception of the USSR during the so-called Cold War, “to many
Americans the Soviets remain an abstraction—an evil abstraction embodying a
feared and alien ideology” (The Price of
Empire 230)--, we also during both
the Korean and Vietnam Wars “did not know the enemy, we lacked ‘empathy’…we
were blind prisoners of our own assumptions.
In Korea we still are” (3).
We heard and still hear of NK cruelty
before, during, and after the war. Cumings cites equal or worse US and S. Korean
atrocities. The NK incursion beginning
June 25, 1950 through collapsing SK divisions, MacArthur described as “’one of
the most offensive acts of international lawlessness of historic record.’” When China intervened, MacArthur “ordered
that a wasteland be created between the war front and the Yalu River border,
destroying from the air every ‘installation, factory, city, and village’”
(29).
On p. 35,
Cumings provides figures of total casualties in the 3 years of the
war: ‘more than 4 million. . .at least 2
million were civilians.” Over a million
SK casualties. NK casualties “2 million, including 1 million civilians,
and about 520,000 soldiers.” “An
estimated 900,000 Chinese soldiers lost their lives in combat.” And a US court ruled it had not been a war,
“since Congress never declared one to exist,” as the Constitution requires.
Cumings’ conclusion: “The point to remember is that this was a
civil war” that did not solve the “extraordinary tensions generated by
colonialism [Japanese occupation], national division [imposed following WWII],
and foreign intervention. The tragedy
was that the war solved nothing; only the status quo ante was restored, only a cease
fire held the peace” (35). The first
chapter glimpses the whole; its narrative and topics are examined in the
following 8 chapters.
Chapter Two,
“The Party of Memory”: Japanese occupation of Korea, the insurgency, Kim Il
Sung, Stalin.
Chapter Three,
“The Party of Forgetting”: US ignorance
of Korea including notable writers like Roth and Halberstam; the Korean War is
best forgotten.
Chapter Four, “Culture of Repression”: US ignorance, Cold War, McCarthyism.
Chapter
Five, “38 Degrees of Separation: A
Forgotten Occupation”: US division of
Korea, occupation of the South, Truman Doctrine, US anticommunism, the better
road not taken. US embraces Syngman Rhee, the Korean War.
Chapter Six,
“’The Most Disproportionate Result’: The Air War.”
Chapter Seven,
“The Flooding of Memory”: US and S. Korean massacres and media and
public suppression of facts.
Chapter Eight,
“A ‘Forgotten War’ That Remade the United States and the Cold War”: US transformed into national imperial
“security” state—hundreds of bases abroad surrounding Russia and China, large
standing Army, population under constant surveillance.
Chapter Nine,
“Requiem: History in the Temper of Reconciliation”: the many perspectives of the war, attempts at
reconciliation, truth commissions, “imagine now what the enemy thinks,” but the
NK/SK/USA and the NK/Japan wars continue.
MISC BOOKS
RELATED TO KOREAN WAR
--Cumings,
Bruce. The Korean War: A History. Random House, 2010. Rev. Z
Magazine (Sept. 2010): “the Korean
War was among the most misguided, unjust, and murderous wars fought by the
United States in its history, displaying many of the features of the Vietnam
War that aroused mass public protest.”
“the war began not in 1950, but during the period of U.S. military
occupation of the South from 1945-1948, which was a product of America’s
imperial ambitions in the Asia-Pacific.”
Book drawn from Cumings 2-vol. history, The Origins of the Korean War. Cumings is chair of the history
department at the U.
of Chicago
--Lee,
Chang-rae. The Surrendered. Novel, KW’s
personal costs, harrowing account of lives upended by the war.
--Millett,
Alan. The War for Korea
--Stone, Oliver
and Peter Kuznick. The Untold History of the United States
What was
important about President Truman’s handling of the US Congress in engaging the US
Did the
delusory “domino metaphor” begin then?
Truman: “If aggression is successful in Korea ,
we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe
to this hemisphere.” (240)
Why do the N.
Koreans, not only the leaders but the people, dislike the US North Korea
According the
William Blum and others, after WWII the US U.S.
--Wills,
Gary. Bomb Power. Briefly
challenges official explanation of cause of the war. Book’s main thesis is the influence of
possession of nuclear power in increasing US presidential power.
US WAR CRIMES AGAINST NORTH KOREA
See
the books discussed above.
Chossudovsky,
“America’s War Аgainst the People of Korea: The Historical Record of US
War Crimes.” The Global Politics.
May 25, 2017.
The
following text by Michel Chossudovsky was presented in Seoul, South Korea in
the context of the Korea Armistice Day Commemoration, 27 July 2013
A Message for Peace. Towards a Peace Agreement and the
Withdrawal of US Troops from Korea
Introduction
Armistice Day, 27 July 1953 is day of Remembrance for the People
of Korea.
It is a landmark date in the historical struggle for national reunification
and sovereignty.
I am privileged to have this opportunity of participating in the
60th anniversary commemoration of Armistice Day on July 27, 2013.
I am much indebted to the “Anti-War, Peace Actualized, People
Action” movement for this opportunity to contribute to the debate on peace and
reunification.
An armistice is an agreement by the warring parties to stop
fighting. It does signify the end of war.
What underlies the 1953 Armistice
Agreement is that one of the warring parties, namely the US has consistently
threatened to wage war on the DPRK for the last 60 years.
The US has on countless occasions violated the Armistice
Agreement. It has remained on a war footing. Casually ignored by the Western
media and the international community, the US has actively deployed nuclear
weapons targeted at North Korea for more than half a century in violation of
article 13b) of the Armistice agreement.
The armistice remains in force. The US is still at war with
Korea. It is not a peace treaty, a peace agreement was never signed.
The US
has used the Armistice agreement to justify the presence of 37,000 American
troops on Korean soil under a bogus United Nations mandate, as well as
establish an environment of continuous and ongoing military threats. This
situation of “latent warfare” has lasted for the last 60 years. It is important
to emphasize that this US garrison in South Korea is the only U.S. military
presence based permanently on the Asian continent.
Our
objective in this venue is to call for a far-reaching peace treaty, which will
not only render the armistice agreement signed on July 27, 1953 null and void,
but will also lay the foundations for the speedy withdrawal of US troops from
Korea as well as lay the foundations for the reunification of the Korean
nation.
Armistice Day in a Broader Historical Perspective
MORE http://global-politics.eu/2017/05/25/americas-war-%D0%B0gainst-people-korea-historical-record-war-crimes/
Conversion of the Korean War Armistice
to peace treaty.
US-N. Korea peace treaty needed: George Yeo
Singapore's
former foreign minister George Yeo speaking at the Jeju Forum on June
JUN 2, 2017
Pact must be signed to
ease tensions but talks would be tough, says ex-foreign minister Chang May Choon South Korea Correspondent
In Jeju
Dialogue and a peace
treaty between the US and North Korea are needed to ease tensions on the Korean
Peninsula, said Singapore's former foreign minister George Yeo at a forum in
South Korea.
He noted that
negotiations, should they get off the ground, would be tough. North Korea has
made major technological breakthroughs in intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) development and reached a position that the US - the North's greatest
perceived enemy - might find hard to accept.
Racing to complete its
ICBM programme, North Korea has conducted over 30 missile tests since early
last year and driven the Trump administration to consider military options for
a "maximum pressure and engagement" policy.
At a discussion yesterday
at the Jeju Forum, held at the popular tourist destination, Mr Yeo said:
"I never believed they would give up their nuclear card. It's the only
card they have... the only way to get US attention is to develop ICBM."
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A US-North Korea peace
pact must be signed so as to ease tensions, he said. The two sides technically
remain at war as the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Washington supported Seoul,
ended in an armistice. The US, which has troops stationed in the South, will
not talk to the North unless it abandons nuclear weapons first.
Mr Yeo was Singapore's top
diplomat and trade minister from 1998 to 2008, when South Korea pursued the
North-friendly "Sunshine Policy" under liberal presidents Kim Dae
Jung and Roh Moo Hyun. In 2008, Mr Yeo became the first Singapore foreign
minister to visit Pyongyang.
Just last month, South
Koreans elected another liberal president, Mr Moon Jae In, who promises to
improve inter-Korea relations after a decade of frosty ties due to the
conservatives' hardline policy.
THEIR ONLY CARD
I never believed they
would give up their nuclear card. It's the only card they have... the only way
to get US attention is to develop ICBM.
MR GEORGE YEO, on North Korea's intercontinental ballistic
missile development.
In a video message to the
Jeju Forum, Mr Moon said his administration will work with the international
community to "bring North Korea out to dialogue through persuasion and
pressure". MORE http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/us-n-korea-peace-treaty-needed-george-yeo
CONTROLLING TRUMP
We must stop Trump's nuclear war before it begins
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PUT AT END
Contents: DPRK Newsletter #5
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/07/omni-north-korea-newsletter-5-march-12.html
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the
United States
Dick: To Make Peace with DPRK Study Bill Clinton
and
Ronald Reagan
LARGER
CONTEXTS
ABOLITION
MOVEMENT
OMNI
Nuclear Abolition Newsletters
Sleight,
Global Zero: Abolish All Weapons
END NORTH KOREA NEWSLETTER #6
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