Archive | South Korea

RSS feed for this section

Why North Korea is developing nuclear weapons

Posted on 06 March 2013.

NOVANEWS

U.S. ‘has repeatedly pondered, planned and threatened the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea’

Launch pad for DPRK rocket

This article was first published on the “what’s left” blog on Feb. 16, 2013. It is re-published here with the author’s permission. It has been slightly edited for style.

Is North Korea’s recent nuclear test, its third, to be welcomed, lamented or condemned? It depends on your perspective. If you believe that a people should be able to organize their affairs free from foreign domination and interference; that the United States and its client government in Seoul have denied Koreans in the south that right and seek to deny Koreans in the north the same right; and that the best chance that Koreans in the north have for preserving their sovereignty is to build nuclear weapons to deter a US military conquest, then the test is to be welcomed.

If you’re a liberal, you might believe that the United States should offer the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name) security guarantees in return for Pyongyang completely, permanently and verifiably eliminating its nuclear weapons program. If so, your position invites three questions.

  • Contrary to the febrile rhetoric of high U.S. officials, the United States is not threatened by North Korea. North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability is a defensive threat alone. The DPRK’s leaders are not unaware that a first-strike nuclear attack would trigger an overwhelming U.S. nuclear retaliatory strike, which, as then U.S. President Bill Clinton once warned, “would mean the end of their country as we know it.” Since a North Korean first-strike would be suicidal (and this is not lost on the North Korean leadership), whether Pyongyang has or doesn’t have nuclear weapons makes little difference to U.S. national security. What, then, would motivate Washington to offer genuine security guarantees? It can’t be argued that U.S. national security considerations form the basis of the guarantees, since the threat to the United States of a nuclear-armed North Korea is about the same as a disarmed North Korea—approximately zero.
  • How credible could any security guarantee be, in light of the reality that since 1945 Washington has invested significant blood and treasure in eliminating all expressions of communism and anti-imperialism on the Korean peninsula. The argument that the United States could issue genuine security guarantees would have to explain what had transpired to bring about a radical qualitative shift in U.S. policy from attempting to eliminate communism in Korea to détente with it.
  • Why is it incumbent on North Korea alone to disarm? Why not the United States too?

The conservative view, on which I shall not tarry, is simple. Anything North Korea does, except surrender, is blameworthy.

Finally, you might lament Pyongyang’s nuclear test for running counter to nuclear non-proliferation, invoking the fear that growth in the number of countries with nuclear weapons increases the risk of war. But this view crumbles under scrutiny. The elimination of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq didn’t reduce the chances of U.S. military intervention in that country—it increased them. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s voluntary elimination of his WMD didn’t prevent a NATO assault on Libya—it cleared the way for it. The disarming of countries that deny the U.S. ruling class access to markets, natural resources, and investment opportunities, in order to use these for their own development, doesn’t reduce the risk of wars of conquest—it makes them all the more certain.

The radical view locates the cause of wars of conquest since the rise of capitalism in the drive for profits. This compulsion chases the goods, services and capital of corporate-dominated societies over the face of the globe to settle everywhere, nestle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere, irrespective of the wishes, interests, development needs and welfare of the natives. If territories aren’t voluntarily opened to capital penetration through trade and investment agreements, their doors are battered down by the Pentagon, the enforcer of last resort of a world economic order supporting, as its first commitment, the profit-making interests of the U.S. ruling class.

Background

Because North Korea has long been vilified and condemned by the Western press as bellicose, provocative and unpredictable, it’s difficult to cut through the fog of vituperation that obscures any kind of dispassionate understanding of the country to grasp that the DPRK represents something praiseworthy: a tradition of struggle against oppression and foreign domination, rooted in the experience of a majority of Koreans dating back to the end of WWII and the period of Japanese colonial rule. This tradition found expression in the Korean People’s Republic, a national government, created by, for, and of Koreans, that was already in place when U.S. troops landed at Inchon in September 1945. The new government was comprised of leftists who had won the backing of the majority, partly because they had led the struggle against Japan’s colonial occupation, and partly because they promised relief from exploitation by landlords and capitalists. The USSR, which occupied the north of the country until 1948, worked with the KPR in its occupation zone, but the United States suppressed the NPR in the south, worked to exterminate leftist forces in its zone, and backed conservatives reviled by Koreans for their oppressions and collaboration with the Japanese. By 1948, the peninsula was divided between a northern government led by guerrillas and activists who fought to liberate Korea from Japanese rule, and a southern government led by a U.S.-installed anti-communist backed by conservatives tainted by collaboration with colonial oppression. For the next 65 years, the essential character of the competing regimes has remained the same. Park Geun-hye, the incoming South Korean president is the daughter of a former president, Park Chung-hee, who came to power in a military coup in 1961. The elder Park had served in the Japanese Imperial Army. Kim Il Sung, grandfather of North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong-eun, was an important guerrilla leader who, unlike the collaborator Park, fought, rather than served, the Japanese. The North represents the traditions of struggle against foreign domination, both political and economic, while the South represents the tradition of submission to and collaboration with a foreign hegemon. Significantly, there are no foreign troops stationed in North Korea, but are in South Korea. North Korean troops have never fought abroad, but South Korea’s have, odiously in Vietnam, in return for infusions of mercenary lucre from the Americans, and later in Iraq. As regards repression, South Korea’s authoritarianism on behalf of rightist causes is long and enduring, typified in the virulently anti-communist National Security Law, which metes out harsh punishment to anyone who so much as publicly utters a kind word about North Korea. The South Korean police state also blocks access to pro-North Korean websites, bans books, including volumes by Noam Chomsky and heterodox (though pro-capitalist) economist Ha Joon-chang, and imprisons anyone who travels to the North.

Pressure

Since the Korean War the United States and South Korea have maintained unceasing pressure on North Korea through subversion, espionage, propaganda, economic warfare and threats of nuclear attack and military invasion.

Since the Korean War the United States and South Korea have maintained unceasing pressure on North Korea through subversion, espionage, propaganda, economic warfare and threats of nuclear attack and military invasion. Low-intensity warfare sets as its ultimate objective the collapse of the North Korean government. Unremitting military pressure forces Pyongyang to maintain punishingly high expenditures on defense (formalized in the country’s Songun, or “army first” policy). Massive defense expenditures divert critical resources from the civilian economy, retarding economic growth. At the same time, trade and financial sanctions heap further harm on the economy. Economic dislocations disrupt food supplies, make life harsh for many North Koreans, and breed discontent. Discontent in turn engenders political opposition, which is beaten back and contained by measures of repression and restriction of civic and political liberties. In response, Washington disingenuously deplores Pyongyang’s military expenditures at a time North Koreans “are starving”; denounces Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program as a “provocation” (rather than a defense against U.S. military threat); dishonestly attributes the country’s economic difficulties to allegedly inherent weaknesses in public ownership and central planning (rather than sanctions and financial strangulation); and chastises the DPRK for its repressive measures to check dissent (ultimately traceable to U.S. pressures). In other words, the regrettable features of North Korea that Washington highlights to demonize and discredit the DPRK are the consequences, not the causes, of U.S. North Korea policy. To view U.S. policy as a reaction to the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program, economic difficulties, and repressions is to get the causal direction wrong.

US foreign policy

U.S. foreign policy aims to secure and defend access to foreign markets, natural resources and investment opportunities and deny communists and nationalists control because access might be blocked, limited or freighted with social welfare and domestic development considerations.

As a general rule, the American government’s attitude to governments in the Third World … depends very largely on the degree to which these governments favor American free enterprise in their countries or are likely to favor it in the future. … In this perspective, the supreme evil is obviously the assumption of power by governments whose main purpose is precisely to abolish private ownership and private enterprise. … Such governments are profoundly objectionable not only because their actions profoundly affect foreign-owned interests and enterprises or because they render future capitalist implantation impossible [but also] because the withdrawal of any country from the world system of capitalist enterprise is seen as constituting a weakening of that system and as providing encouragement to further dissidence and withdrawal. [1]

North Korea is one of the few countries left that commits “the supreme evil.” Allowed to develop in peace, unimpeded by military pressure and economic warfare, it might become an inspiration for other countries to follow. From the perspective of the U.S. ruling class, the United States’ North Korea policy must have one overarching objective: the DPRK’s demise. Asked by The New York Times to explain the aim of U.S. policy on North Korea, then U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton “strode over to a bookshelf, pulled off a volume and slapped it on the table. It was called ‘The End of North Korea.’” “‘That,’ he said, ‘is our policy.’” [2]

On top of profit-making goals, and crippling North Korea economically, politically and socially to prevent its emergence as an inspiring example to other countries, Washington seeks to maintain access to its strategic position on a peninsula whose proximity to China and Russia provides a forward operating base from which to pressure these two significant obstacles to the United States’ complete domination of the globe.

Threats of nuclear war

According to declassified and other U.S. government documents, some released on the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, from “the 1950s’ Pentagon to today’s Obama administration, the United States has repeatedly pondered, planned and threatened the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea.” [3] These documents, along with the public statements of senior US officials, point to an ongoing pattern of U.S. nuclear intimidation of the DPRK.

  • The United States introduced nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula as early as 1950. [4]
  • During the Korean War, U.S. President Harry Truman announced that the use of nuclear weapons was under active consideration; U.S. Air Force bombers flew nuclear rehearsal runs over Pyongyang; and U.S. commander General Douglas MacArthur planned to drop 30 to 50 atomic bombs across the northern neck of the Korean peninsula to block Chinese intervention. [5]
  • In the late 1960s, nuclear-armed U.S. warplanes were maintained on 15-minute alert to strike North Korea. [6]
  • In 1975, U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger acknowledged for the first time that U.S. nuclear weapons were deployed in South Korea. Addressing the North Koreans, he warned, “I do not think it would be wise to test (US) reactions.” [7]
  • In February 1993, Lee Butler, head of the U.S. Strategic Command, announced the United States was retargeting hydrogen bombs aimed at the old USSR on North Korea (and other targets.) One month later, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. [8]
  • On July 22, 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton said if North Korea developed and used nuclear weapons “we would quickly and overwhelmingly retaliate. It would mean the end of their country as we know it.” [9]
  • In 1995, Colin Powell, who had served as chairman of the U.S. Joints Chiefs of Staff and would later serve as U.S. secretary of state, warned the North Koreans that the United States had the means to turn their country into “a charcoal briquette.” [10]
  • Following North Korea’s first nuclear test on October 9, 2006, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reminded North Korea that “the United States has the will and the capability to meet the full range—and I underscore full range of its deterrent and security commitments to Japan [emphasis added].” [11]
  • In April 2010, US defense secretary Leon Panetta refused to rule out a U.S. nuclear attack on North Korea, saying, “all options are on the table.” [12]
  • On February 13, 2013, Panetta described North Korea as “a threat to the United States, to regional stability, and to global security.” He added: “Make no mistake. The US military will take all necessary steps to meet our security commitments to the Republic of Korea and to our regional allies [emphasis added].” [13]

As the North Koreans put it, “no nation in the world has been exposed to the nuclear threat so directly and for so long as the Koreans.” [14]

“For over half a century since early in the 1950s, the US has turned South Korea into the biggest nuclear arsenal in the Far East, gravely threatening the DPRK through ceaseless manoeuvres for a nuclear war. It has worked hard to deprive the DPRK of its sovereignty and its right to exist and develop…. thereby doing tremendous damage to its socialist economic construction and the improvement of the standard of people’s living.” [15]

Economic warfare

The breadth and depth of U.S. economic warfare against North Korea can be summed up in two sentences:

North Korea is “the most sanctioned nation in the world”—George W. Bush. [16]

“… there are few sanctions left to apply.”—The New York Times [17]

From the moment it imposed a total embargo on exports to North Korea three days after the Korean War began in June 1950, the United States has maintained an uninterrupted regimen of economic, financial, and diplomatic sanctions against North Korea. These include:

o Limits on the export of goods and services.

o Prohibition of most foreign aid and agricultural sales.

o A ban on Export-Import Bank funding.

o Denial of favorable trade terms.

o Prohibition of imports from North Korea.

o Blocking of any loan or funding through international financial institutions.

o Limits on export licensing of food and medicine for export to North Korea.

o A ban on government financing of food and medicine exports to North Korea.

o Prohibition on import and export transactions related to transportation.

o A ban on dual-use exports (i.e., civilian goods that could be adapted to military purposes).

o Prohibition on certain commercial banking transactions. [18]

In recent years, U.S. sanctions have been complemented by “efforts to freeze assets and cut off financial flows” [19] by blocking banks that deal with North Korean companies from access to the U.S. banking system. The intended effect is to make North Korea a banking pariah that no bank in the world will touch. Former U.S. President George W. Bush was “determined to squeeze North Korea with every financial sanction possible” until its economy collapsed. [20] The Obama administration has not departed from the Bush policies.

Washington has also acted to sharpen the bite of sanctions, pressing other countries to join its campaign of economic warfare against a country it faults for maintaining a Marxist-Leninist system and non-market economy. [21] This has included the sponsoring of a United Nations Security Council resolution compelling all nations to refrain from exporting dual-use items to North Korea (a repeat of the sanctions regime that led to the crumbling of Iraq’s healthcare system in the 1990s). Washington has even gone so far as to pressure China (unsuccessfully) to cut off North Korea’s supply of oil. [22]

Drawing the appropriate lesson

On the day Baghdad fell to invading U.S. forces, John Bolton warned Iran, Syria and North Korea to “draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq.” [23] There can be no doubt that Pyongyang drew a lesson, though not the one Bolton intended. The North Koreans did not conclude, as Bolton hoped, that peace and security could be achieved by relinquishing WMDs. Instead, the North Koreans couldn’t fail to grasp the real lesson of the U.S. assault on Iraq. The United States had invaded Iraq only after Saddam Hussein had cleared the way by complying with U.S. demands to destroy his weapons of mass destruction. Had he actually retained the weapons he was falsely accused of hiding and holding in reserve, the Americans would likely have never attacked.

Subsequent events in Libya have only reinforced the lesson. Muammar Gaddafi had developed his own WMD program to protect Libya from Western military intervention. But Gaddafi also faced an internal threat—Islamists, including jihadists linked to Al Qaeda, who sought to overthrow him to create an Islamist society in Libya. After 9/11, with the United States setting out to crush Al Qaeda, Gaddafi sought a rapprochement with the West, becoming an ally in the international battle against Al Qaeda, to more effectively deal with his own Islamist enemies at home. The price of being invited into the fold was to abandon his weapons of mass destruction. When Gaddafi agreed to this condition he made a fatal strategic blunder. An economic nationalist, Gaddafi irritated Western oil companies and investors by insisting on serving Libyan interests ahead of the oil companies’ profits and investors’ returns. Fed up with his nationalist obstructions, NATO teamed up with Gaddafi’s Islamist enemies to oust and kill the Libyan leader. Had he not surrendered his WMDs, Gaddafi would likely still be playing a lead role in Libya. “Who would have dared deal with Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein if they had a nuclear capability?” asks Major General Amir Eshel, chief of the Israeli army’s planning division. “No way.” [24]

Having unilaterally disarmed, Gaddafi was hailed in Western capitals, and world leaders hastened to Tripoli to sign commercial agreements with him. Among Gaddafi’s visitors was the South Korean minister of foreign affairs, and Ban Ki-moon, later to become the U.N. secretary general. Both men urged the “rehabilitated” Libyan leader to persuade the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons. [25] Whether Gaddafi acceded to the Koreans’ request is unclear, but if he did, his advice was wisely ignored. In the North Korean view, Gaddafi fell prey to a “bait and switch.” The lesson the DPRK drew from Libya was that the only guarantee of peace on the Korean peninsula is a powerful military, backed by nuclear weapons. [26]

This is neither an irrational view, nor one the West, for all its pieties about nuclear non-proliferation (for others), rejects for itself. Britain, for example, justifies its own nuclear weapons program with reference to the need “to deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means.” [27] If the UK requires nuclear weapons to deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression, then surely the North Koreans—long on the receiving end of these minatory pressures—do as well. Indeed, the case can be made that the North Koreans have a greater need for nuclear arms than the British do, for whom nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression are only hypotheticals.

General Kevin P. Chilton, head of the U.S. Strategic Command from 2007 to 2011, told Washington Post columnist Walter Pincus in 2010 that, “Throughout the 65-year history of nuclear weapons, no nuclear power has been conquered or even put at risk of conquest.” [28] On the other hand, countries that comply with demands to abandon their WMDs soon find themselves conquered, by countries with nuclear weapons aplenty and no intention of giving them up. Pincus used Chilton’s words to advocate a pre-emptive strike on North Korea to prevent the country from developing a large enough nuclear arsenal to make itself invulnerable to conquest. That no nuclear power has been conquered or put at risk of conquest is “a thought others in government ought to ponder as they watch Iran and North Korea seek to develop nuclear capability,” Pincus wrote. [29]

Conclusion

Nuclear arms have political utility. For countries with formidable nuclear arsenals and the means of delivering warheads, nuclear weapons can be used to extort political concessions from non-nuclear-armed states through terror and intimidation. No country exploits the political utility of nuclear weapons as vigorously as the United States does. In pursuing its foreign policy goals, Washington threatened other countries with nuclear attack on 25 separate occasions between 1970 and 2010, and 14 occasions between 1990 and 2010. On six of these occasions, the United States threatened the DPRK. [30] There have been more U.S. threats against North Korea since. (The United States’ record of issuing threats of nuclear attack against other countries over this period is: Iraq, 7; China, 4; the USSR, 4; Libya, 2; Iran, 1; Syria, 1. Significantly, all these countries, like the DPRK, were under communist or economically nationalist governance when the threats were made.)

Nuclear weapons also have political utility for countries menaced by nuclear and other military threats. They raise the stakes for countries seeking to use their militaries for conquest, and therefore reduce the chances of military intervention. There is little doubt that the U.S. military intervention in Iraq and NATO intervention in Libya would not have been carried out had the targets not disarmed and cleared the way for outside forces to intervene with impunity.

A North Korean nuclear arsenal does not increase the chances of war—it reduces the likelihood that the United States and its South Korean marionette will attempt to bring down the communist government in Pyongyang by force. This is to be welcomed by anyone who opposes imperialist military interventions; supports the right of a people to organize its affairs free from foreign domination; and has an interest in the survival of one of the few top-to-bottom, actually-existing, alternatives to the global capitalist system of oppression, exploitation and foreign domination.

_______

1. Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society, Merlin Press, 2009, p. 62.

2. “Absent from the Korea Talks: Bush’s Hard-Liner,” The New York Times, September 2, 2003.

3. Charles J. Hanley and Randy Hershaft, “U.S. often weighed N. Korea nuke option,” The Associated Press, October 11, 2010.

4. Hanley and Hershaft.

5. Hanley and Hershaft.

6. Hanley and Hershaft.

7. Hanley and Hershaft.

8. Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. p. 488-489.

9. William E. Berry Jr., “North Korea’s nuclear program: The Clinton administration’s response,” INSS Occasional Paper 3, March 1995.

10. Bruce Cumings, “Latest North Korean provocations stem from missed US opportunities for demilitarization,” Democracy Now!, May 29, 2009.

11. Lou Dobbs Tonight, October 18, 2006.

12. Hanley and Hershaft.

13. Choe Sang-hun, “New leader in South criticizes North Korea,” The New York Times, February 13, 2013.

14. “Foreign ministry issues memorandum on N-issue,” Korean Central News Agency, April 21, 2010.

15. Korean Central News Agency, February 13, 2013.

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

17. Neil MacFarquhar and Jane Perlez, “China looms over response to nuclear test by North Korea,” The New York Times, February 12, 2013.

18. Dianne E. Rennack, “North Korea: Economic sanctions”, Congressional Research Service, October 17, 2006. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl31696.pdf

19. Mark Landler, “Envoy to coordinate North Korea sanctions,” The New York Times, June 27, 2009.

20. The New York Times, September 13, 2006.

21. According to Rennack, the following U.S. sanctions have been imposed on North Korea for reasons listed as either “communism,” “non-market economy” or “communism and market disruption”: prohibition on foreign aid; prohibition on Export-Import Bank funding; limits on the exports or goods and services; denial of favorable trade terms.

22. The Washington Post, June 24, 2005.

23. “U.S. Tells Iran, Syria, N. Korea ‘Learn from Iraq,” Reuters, April 9, 2003.

24. Ethan Bronner, “Israel sense bluffing in Iran’s threats of retaliation,” The New York Times, January 26, 2012.

25. Chosun Ilbo, February 14, 2005.

26. Mark McDonald, “North Korea suggests Libya should have kept nuclear program,” The New York Times, March 24, 2011.

A February 21, 2013, comment by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (“Nuclear test part of DPRK’s substantial countermeasures to defend its sovereignty”) noted that,

“The tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear programs, yielding to the high-handed practices and pressure of the U.S. in recent years, clearly prove that the DPRK was very far-sighted and just when it made the option. They also teach the truth that the U.S. nuclear blackmail should be countered with substantial countermeasures, not with compromise or retreat.”

An article in the February 22, 2013, issue of Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of North Korea’s ruling Workers Party (“Gone are the days of US nuclear blackmail”) observed that “Had it not been the nuclear deterrence of our own, the U.S. would have already launched a war on the peninsula as it had done in Iraq and Libya and plunged it into a sorry plight as the Balkan at the end of last century and Afghanistan early in this century.”

27. http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/AC00DD79-76D6-4FE3-91A1-6A56B03C092F/0/DefenceWhitePaper2006_Cm6994.pdf

28. Quoted in Walter Pincus, “As missions are added, Stratcom commander keeps focus on deterrence,” The Washington Post, March 30, 2010.

29. Pincus.

30. Samuel Black, “The changing political utility of nuclear weapons: Nuclear threats from 1970 to 2010,” The Stimson Center, August 2010, http://www.stimson.org/images/uploads/research-pdfs/Nuclear_Final.pdf

Posted in South Korea1 Comment

Militarizing South Korea

Posted on 23 October 2012.

NOVANEWS
Global Research

With the presidential election in South Korea just two months away, efforts are underway to lock into place a policy of confrontation with that nation’s neighbor to the north. When current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office five years ago, he wasted little time in undoing the rapprochement that had been painstakingly built up during his predecessor’s term.

All of the leading candidates in this year’s presidential race, including even Park Geun-hye of the conservative Grand National Party, hold more moderate positions on relations with North Korea than does President Lee. Neither Lee nor U.S. President Obama are keen on the prospect of warming relations between the two Koreas, and they are making every effort to forestall such an eventuality in the little time that remains in Lee’s term.

Under provisions of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), an international treaty involving 34 nations, South Korea was committed to limiting its ballistic missiles to a range of no more than 300 kilometers and capping payload at 500 kilograms. The Lee Administration chafed under those restrictions and long sought their removal. This month he met with success, reaching a deal with the U.S. that allows South Korea to exceed the treaty’s limits. The new agreement allows South Korea to develop ballistic missiles ranging up to 800 kilometers, sufficient to cover all of North Korea and sections of China and Russia. The payload limit remains at 500 kilograms, but only for missiles at the maximum allowable range. (1)

As South Korea sees it, any missile having a range lower than 550 kilometers can carry up to 1,000 kilograms of explosives. “We can say that there’s no payload limit actually, because if we launch a missile from the central region of the country, all of North Korean territory is under the 550-kilometer striking range,” observes Major General Shin Won-sik of the South Korean Ministry of National Defense. (2)

Under 300 kilograms, and a missile is now permitted to house a warhead weighing up to two tons, and Shin points out that most of North Korea’s primary targets lie within that distance of the border. Restraints apply only to deployment, Shin argues, so research may proceed on missiles that surpass the new limits, including the production of prototypes. (3)

The Lee Administration wants to move forward without delay on the deployment of the new missiles, and has asked the legislature to allocate $2.2 billion towards a long range ballistic missile program. Those missiles are expected to be in place by 2017. (4)

It appears that in tradeoff for allowing South Korea a special exemption under the MTCR, the U.S. expects South Korea to coordinate its efforts with U.S. missile defense plans. According to Kathleen Hicks, U.S. Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, there are “a lot of ways” that South Korea could assist U.S. missile defense in Northeast Asia. “We do have a dialogue with the Koreans about how to contribute to missile defense,” she says. (5)

The Korean Air and Missile Defense System (KAMD) is scheduled to be fully deployed by 2015. Ostensibly intended to serve only as South Korea’s defense against attack by the North, it is interesting to note how well the system could mesh with that of the U.S. missile defense system. The KAMD, consisting of radar, U.S.-built Patriot PAC-2 missiles, and Aegis destroyers armed with sea-to-air missiles purchased from the U.S., is ideally suited for interoperability with the U.S. system.

This past June, the U.S. and South Korea reached agreement on a “comprehensive alliance approach” to defense, involving both modification of the MTCR and implementation of a missile defense system. According to a South Korean government official, “It means building a South Korea-led missile defense system against North Korean missile attacks, with the U.S. providing intelligence and detection support.” (6) But U.S.-South Korean integration can cut both ways, and it is difficult to envision the KAMD remaining uninvolved in the U.S. missile defense system. A former South Korean foreign affairs/security official feels that the process of South Korea’s incorporation into the U.S. system could already be underway. “I think there needs to be a concrete explanation on this idea of it not being missile defense participation,” he said. (7)

The Obama Administration is engaging in a major expansion of its missile defense system in Asia, including the construction of additional radars in Japan and the Philippines. American upgrades to Japanese weaponry are also taking place. “The focus of our rhetoric is North Korea,” explains Steven Hildreth, a U.S. expert in missile defense technology and policy. “The reality is that we’re also looking longer term at the elephant in the room, which is China.” Hildreth claims the U.S. is laying the foundations for an Asian missile defense system with nations such as Japan, South Korea and Australia. (8)

An essential component of those plans is an upgrade in technology, including Aegis systems aboard Japanese destroyers. Nick Bucci, head of maritime programs at Lockheed Martin, said he is “pretty sure” that South Korea has been talking with the U.S. Navy about similar upgrades to its Aegis destroyers. (9)

Unnamed sources revealed that the U.S. and South Korea have recently developed a strategic plan for targeting North Korea. The specific scenarios that would trigger the plan into action are not publicly known. The attack would be implemented in five phases, including the launch of the long range ballistic missiles that South Korea intends to soon develop. This would be followed by sending waves of cruise missiles flying into North Korea, and then fighter planes and bombers would pound North Korea’s nuclear facilities. Drones would eliminate moving targets, relying on U.S. intelligence and communication systems. The plan is to be discussed in further detail at next week’s Security Consultative Meeting between the U.S. and South Korea. (10)

The Lee Administration has further tied South Korea to Western military policy by its recent signing onto NATO’s Partnership Cooperation Program. According to a NATO statement, South Korea is “already a valuable contributor” to NATO operations in Afghanistan, and its role in the partnership program will “promote political dialogue and practical cooperation” in several areas, including “multinational peace support” – a euphemistic phrase that it would be more accurate to call “war and military occupation.” (11)

The growing militarization of the Korean Peninsula continues apace. U.S. armed forces in South Korea will soon be supplied with precision-guided artillery shells, which have an almost vertical trajectory ideal for targeting North Korean artillery batteries situated behind mountains. By the end of this year, the U.S. will also install additional Patriot PAC-3 missiles and ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles. (12) The U.S. is also returning a chemical warfare battalion to South Korea, nine years after it had been withdrawn. (13) South Korea is seeking to purchase from the U.S. 36 Apache attack helicopters at a price tag of $3.6 billion, and in a separate deal 36 Cobra attack helicopters, at a cost of $2.6 billion. Included in the deals are associated components, as well as missiles and rockets. (14)

South Korea is also in the incipient stage of producing kamikaze drones, which are expected to become operational by 2015. The recently signed modification to the MTCR agreement allows South Korea to arm drones with warheads weighing more than two tons. (15)

The Obama Administration has steadfastly eschewed any talks with North Korea, and appears bent on a policy of further isolating that nation and raising tensions in a potentially volatile area of the world. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, similarly averse to dialogue, wants to present his successor in office with a fait accompli, ensuring that there is no alternative but to continue his policy of confrontation.

According to a South Korean general, the lifting of missile restrictions on South Korea enables its military to respond to North Korea with more “flexibility.” That can only mean a greater likelihood of the use of weaponry and in a wider array of situations. The belief that military force on the Korean Peninsula can be carefully calibrated to produce a desired and precise result without risking a wider conflagration is not only reckless but delusional. North Korea’s own militarization is driven to a large extent by its feelings of being threatened, and the recent moves by the U.S. and South Korea are only going to feed that perception – a not inaccurate one.

Furthermore, there is every indication that South Korea is likely to become increasingly integrated into the U.S. missile defense system in Northeast Asia, exposing it to the risk of being drawn into any conflict that may arise between the U.S. and China or Russia. Much depends on the extent that the next South Korean president is willing or able to undo the damage of these recent moves, and to instead focus on dialogue with North Korea and pursue an independent policy that puts the Korean people first.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.

http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Liberators-Militarism-Mayhem-Pursuit/dp/1595265708

NOTES

(1) Jung Ha-Won, “US Lets S. Korea Raise Missile Range to Cover North,” Agence France-Presse, October 7, 2012.

(2) Kim Hee-jin, “U.S. Allows 800km Range for Seoul’s Ballistic Missiles,” JoongAng Ilbo, October 8, 2012.

(3) Lee Tae-hoon, “Seoul Will Cover NK with Ballistic Missiles,” Korea Times, October 7, 2012.

(4) Kim Hee-jin and Jeong Yong-soo, “Larger Missiles to be Deployed within Five Years,” JoongAng Ilbo, October 9, 2012.

(5) “Pentagon: S. Korea has Many Options to Help U.S. Missile Defense,” Yonhap, September 25, 2012.

(6) Kwon Tae-ho, “US-South Korean Expansions in East Asia Could Provoke China’s Growing Military,” June 16, 2012.

(7) Ha Eo-young, “The Aftermath of US-Korea Missile Range Extension Agreement,” Hankyoreh, October 9, 2012.

(8) Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. Plans New Asia Missile Defenses,” Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2012.

(9) Jim Wolf, “U.S., Japan Said Discussing Missile Defense Ship Upgrades,” Reuters, August 15, 2012.

(10)Park Hyong-ki, “Korea, U.S. to Strengthen Missile Defense,” Korea Herald, October 10, 2012.

(11)“NATO and the Republic of Korea Sign New Partnership Programme,” North Atlantic Treaty Organization, September 20, 2012.

(12) “U.S. Forces to Bring ‘Smart’ Artillery Shells to Korea,” Chosun Ilbo, October 5, 2012.

(13)“U.S. Chemical Warfare Battalion to Return to Korea,” Chosun Ilbo, October 8, 2012.

Chris Carroll and Jon Rabiroff, “Army Relocating Chemical Warfare Battalion to South Korea,” Stars and Stripes, October 5, 2012.

(14) “South Korea Interested in Procurement of AH-1Z and AH-64D Helicopters,” Defence Professionals, September 26, 2012.

David J. Barton, “$3.6b Helicopter Sale to Korea Proposed, Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop JV Primes,” Govconwire, September 26, 2012.

Wendell Minnick, “Korea Decision on Attack Helicopters Nearing,” Defense News, September 28, 2012.

(15) Daniel Miller, “South Korea Developing Kamikaze-Style Drone that Dive Bombs the Enemy at 250mph,” Daily Mail, October 10, 2012.

Kim Hee-jin, “U.S. Allows 800km Range for Seoul’s Ballistic Missiles,” JoongAng Ilbo, October 8, 2012.

Copyright © 2012 Global Research

Posted in South Korea0 Comments

South Korea – Illuminati Aim to Corrupt Youth

Posted on 04 September 2012.

NOVANEWS

korea.jpeg
Left, The boys are being taught that the metrosexual look is hip.

LETTER FROM SOUTH KOREA:

The Illuminati have given up on adults and focused on youth. 
Ex-pat James Farganne wages a street-level battle against their  influence. 

“At the end of the third day, all of my testimony about Illuminati Jewish methods of infiltrating a society was a matter of Korean court record. The judge reviewed the testimony and released me immediately. Despite indirect threats, I have experienced no further reprisals.“

by James Farganne

As an ex-pat in South Korea, I am fortunate to be part of a society that has thus far rejected feminism.

On Korean television, men are still generally portrayed as strong, loving fathers, husbands, and sons.

Korean women, by and large, still practice the art of knowing when to be strong women, delicate ladies, and, on occasion, delightful girls. Career driven mothers are most definitely the exception and not the rule.

The unity of the family is still paramount here. Divorce is still a stigma that  can stunt a woman’s social and economic prospects. I don’t say “single mother”, because from what I understand, the courts tend to award custody to the father, especially if the woman instigated the divorce — in which case, no alimony.

However, if the woman demonstrates that the father has been unfaithful, abusive, or negligent, these conventions are waived. In other words, Korean family courts are not venues for the highway robbery of men.

I like this society so much that, having married a woman with whom I know I’ll go the distance, I have applied for citizenship. But I see a very disturbing trend emerging: a Luciferian attack on Korean children.

Some months back, I wrote about my attempts to strike at what I saw as the root of the corruption. Those efforts landed me in jail. The detectives interrogated me for three days. They wanted to know why I had been harassing certain people. I told them exactly why, and they took assiduous notes. I never retained a lawyer, stating that a man of truth needs no such animal.

At the end of the third day, all of my testimony about Illuminati Jewish methods of infiltrating a society was a matter of Korean court record. The judge reviewed the testimony and released me immediately. Despite indirect threats, I have experienced no further reprisals.

TARGET YOUTH

This is all good news. But every time I get on the subway, I see signs of degradation everywhere, and it is almost always directed at youth.

Children are impressionable. Without watchful parents, most of them will imitate the garbage that is sold to them as “cool”. The pop music culture here is vile, laced with pornographic dance and Masonic imagery. The boys are being taught that the metrosexual look is hip. I wonder what will happen to those boys when they get smacked upside the head with mandatory military service.

Every time I see a metrosexual boy on the subway, without exception, unless my wife is there to get embarrassed, I take him to task. I walk up to him with my turban and my very big beard. I squint at him until he starts to squirm. By now, people are looking. I create a silent situation. When the tension is sufficient, I bark out at him, in perfect Korean (I’m quite practiced in this):

“Your legs are hairy, but you have lipstick on! No boobs, but you’re carrying a purse! Are you a BOY or a GIRL?”

“I — I –”

“BOY OR GIRL! ANSWER! I AIN’T GOT ALL DAY!”

“I’m a — I’m a boy!”

“BOYS don’t wear lipstick and carry purses! I think you might be a very ugly GIRL!”

“No, I’m a boy!”

“You might THINK you’re a boy! I think maybe you’re a GIRL who just WANTS to be a boy! And yet, no boobs!”

By now, the old people are cackling and nodding vigorously. I get lots of positive feedback from the seniors when I do this. The “boy” is always cowed. He can’t backtalk me, because he is a boy, and I am a man. He usually scampers off the train at the next station. The seniors know what’s what. After the foregoing incident, once we have a dialogue going, I always tell them they have an enemy in their midst, and I ask if they know who the enemy is.

You’d be shocked how often they immediately reply: “The Jew”.

GIRLS

Another thing I do, though much less often, is to counsel girls who dress like whores. Yes, the whore look is being foisted on girls who spend most of their week in dowdy school uniforms — so this is mainly a weekend hit. When I see a girl who is obviously under 18 sluttishly dressed and with her face horribly disfigured by makeup, I gently ask her if she is trying to find a boy to have sex. Responses do not vary. There is zero defiance. They are always mortified, and sometimes confused, so I explain to them that the only reason any girl would dress that way would be to attract sexually excited boys.

“Well that’s not why I’m dressed this way!”

“Why are you dressed that way, then?”

“Because dresses this way…”

“God made you prettier than she is. Why isn’t God’s look good enough for you?”

So goes my fight against the Illuminati in South Korea — via guerrilla tactics, ones that I can’t be arrested for.

Why is this important? Well, if I were awake and aware and living in North America right now, I’d have no hope for mankind — none whatsoever. But I do have hope. The elites still have their work cut out for them here.

That said, even living in the society that I have just snapshot for you by anecdote, I am mightily concerned. I wonder if traditional family values here will be enough to squash the onslaught of Luciferian poison being sprayed directly into the brains of these children each time they watch a pop music show on TV.

They always start with the women and children. Everything else falls like dominos. Where will this go?

Feminism has failed in Korea. Here is a really funny example. There is a Korean breakfast cereal that consists of puffed barley. The pieces are oval and each has a black blotch on one side of it . A group of upstart feministas tried to lobby the National Assembly to pass laws banning this popular cereal.

cereal.jpg

Why? Are you sitting down?

They claimed that the puffed barley grains looked like vaginas, and therefore degraded women. Assembly lawmakers did the sensible thing: publicly mocked the lobbyists, and sent them packing. At least, that is the story as was told to me by my university students.

But the children? I can’t say. As a stepfather whose Korean teen stepson is militantly homosexual (a real rarity, but nonetheless a fact), I am worried, but again, not hopeless. I believe that if people stand firm for their families, they can overcome the Illuminati, because the elites are nothing without our submission and consent.

The West has been all but won. The East will be a tougher nut for them to crack.

Posted in South Korea0 Comments

Breaking – Korea Intel, Real Threat to US

Posted on 30 April 2012.

NOVANEWS
The Ones We Know About

What Has Been Kept From You, Beyond Classified

 

 by  Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

 

We are told North Korea is poor, starving and totally broke.  We are told their missiles blow up on their launch pads, their nuclear bombs “fizzle out.” 

We tell jokes about them, make fun of their leaders, talk about their isolation. 

North Korea represents a clear and present danger to the safety of the United States and our government is lying to us about it.

Yes, America is at it again. We lie.

North Korea is isolated for a reason.   Most likely, a short time ago, the US destroyed a North Korean experimental weapon on the launch pad, using one of our own, a craft capable of inter-planetary travel and, thusly, one that is “just our imagination” like the hundreds of thousands of tons of vaporized steel from the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Last week, VT, along with intelligence agencies of two nations, analyzed the photographs of the UFOs in South Korea.  We published, with limited permission, highly classified proof that these were advanced American defense systems capable of operation within and without the atmosphere.  Go ahead, pretend it isn’t real.

Why Korea, why then, why the failed “satellite launch” and now the war threats, you will now begin to learn some of what we can now reveal.  Our advanced access to forensic analysis allowed us to verify the weapons, the highly secret American craft.  Forensics is a funny business, when you “do it for real.”

Physical Forensic Analysis is Not Your Amateur ‘Pixel’ Analysis – CGI Fakes Can be Spotted Immediately

We have had others done, all just as phony as the airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center, no mass, no movement, no metal signatures, veritable cartoons, hardly of Disney or Star Wars quality.

We lie about North Korea, we play games with them, and so do others.  They are heavily financed by both Russia and China, maintain a bizarre and complicated relationship with their “sister nation,” South Korea and everything we are told is total fiction.

Now they are saying they have secret weapons and can destroy the United States.  In some ways, we have been able to confirm at least part of their claims.

Years ago, scientists from North Korea defected reporting advanced biological experiments.  We were told North Korea had developed a “white people bomb” that would kill everyone that didn’t have certain Chinese and Korean genes.

Anthrax – Surpassed by DNA Bio Weapons? Israel and South Africa Worked on One to Kill Only Arabs and Africans

We were able to confirm that North Korea spent years collecting gene specimens from every area of China and had the full and extremely unauthorized and secretive cooperation of the South Korean government.

We do not know if such a weapon exists but the Bush administration had plans to invade North Korea, plans that were scrapped when two scientists, one a Russian, one North Korean, met with Paul Wolfowitz and explained the projects they had been working on.

All of it may well have been lies, other projects probably were not.

It has been of some propaganda value to the United States and others to print accounts of guards from what has been described as “Camp 22″ who have, somehow, been able to escape through China and eventually into US hands.

Japanese Unit 731 aftermath – Corpses were collected for quick autopsy to observe bio weapons effects on organs while still fresh

Their stories are of a myriad of human experiments, everything Mengele was accused of during World War II, Mengele and the Japanese Unit 731 combined.

At least 200,000 people are said to have been frozen, vivisected, starved, poisoned, it goes on forever.

You either believe these things on face value with no proof or accept some of it as evidence of a biological weapons program along with something else.

The primary experiment North Korea has been involved in has involved manipulation of human DNA, projects assisted by Russian and China to create not only the “super soldier” but to increase “cerebral wattage” and double, even triple IQ.

Those treated are sent to Russia for education and returned to North Korea.  For every success there are failures.

One of the reasons that North Korea is kept so isolated is that their experimentation, a nation that functions as though it were a giant Monsanto Corporation, creator of GMO agriculture, the “Frankenwheat” and so many other products, is that some of the failures are allowed to live and are, on occasion seen, humans nearly 10 feet tall in some instances.

Our concern is this:  We are told that these weapons are deliverable and that the North Korean rocket program, not their nuclear program, is designed to infect populations with genetically engineered bioweapons.

At least one scientist from Israel, where such weapons are also being developed at a secret facility in the Southern Negev desert and in Libya, have visited Korea and shared some data.  Their warning is that North Korea is ready to do real damage, kill hundreds of millions, and has weapons it is ready to deploy.

In fact we have multiple assurances of this including informants from within North Korea itself.

Do we believe them?

The United States government believes them and the current language heard from North Korea, the threats of “super weapons” is not being ignored.

It must also be accepted that both China and Russia are fully complicit in their experiments and that China has made no real effort to rein in North Korea despite talking about it.  They are, in fact, very much partners and supply the billions needed for this advanced research.

Currently, North Korea is decades ahead of the rest of the world in bio-weapons research, advanced poisons but still working on their own delivery systems.

They also have an army that has genetically modified, “supersoldiers” as it were, who they believe can conquer South Korea in hours.

Photo of troop formation during Kim’s funeral procession

They are also prepared to launch immediate attacks on Japan and have a long history of kidnapping Japanese and studying their genetics in order to develop DNA related weapons to wipe out the Japanese race.

Were Americans more familiar with defense issues in the region, some of this would seem less surprising while other areas are too classified to ever be mentioned.

North Korea has spent 65 years digging themselves in, in order to protect themselves from thermonuclear attack.  South Korea is much less inclined to fight North Korea than we imagine and China has told us less than publicly that they have traditional interests in North Korea, a region they see as the “heartland” of their dynastic rulers.

There is a reason I am writing this.  I expect some to take a new look at North Korea’s behaviors, be less trustful of China in maintaining controls over North Korea and to put clear blame on Russia for anything that transpires related to North Korea. The old Soviet relationships never ended.

I also want our CIA to actually brief the president on the real nature of the threat.  I suspect they have not.

We have “flanked” them to some extent, showing them we have technologies they can only dream of.  They are now telling us the same and are not entirely untrue in doing it.

There is a very real danger, one is that our nuclear arsenal is poorly designed for dealing with.  Retaliation will not be an adequate answer, even if we have the common sense to recognize that North Korea has not been acting alone.

They really believe they are meant to be the only race destined to survive, a race of supermen.

Toward that end, they have built a wall around North Korea and had 65 years and uncounted wealth and scientific expertise to use along lines none in America have ever been briefed on.

We have allowed a maniacally ruled despotism to have technological advantages over us, something unforseen, something they are announcing hourly.

Whatever we can or can’t do, realize that Beijing and Moscow paid for every cent of it.

Posted in South Korea0 Comments

Exchanging Fire on the Korean Peninsula

Posted on 04 March 2012.

NOVANEWS

By Nile Bowie

The 38th parallel dividing the two Korean nation states may be the most potent physical manifestation of antithetical idealism subsisting into the 21stcentury. From it’s guerilla warfare induced separation in 1945, to the highly touted present day threat of sacred war – the ideologies of the two opposing Korean nation states have worked to the advantage of powers largely using Korea as a proxy. In the south, the oligarchical cadre of President Lee Myung Bak has worked ad nauseum to dismantle the infrastructure of former President Kim Dae-Jung’s sunshine policy toward the northward regime. In an unfettered embrace for the military industrial complex, Lee has further aligned with the Pentagon and the Obama administration to secure an influx of state-of the-art-military technology.

To the North, ideology has always been far more relevant than economics. Beneath the first signs of Chinese-style market reform and the increasing presence of special economic zones, the effectiveness of state mythology surrounding its deified leadership may soon gently begin to be challenged as North Koreans learn more about foreigners and the world beyond their borders.  Since its inception, the Northern population has been subjected to vigorous domestic propaganda espousing the pristine virtuousness of a uniquely homogenous Korean race – protected from the evils of the outside world under the everlasting paternal care of the Great Father Leader, General Kim il-Sung. Although always second to firepower, economic legitimacy appears to be more of a priority following the third dynastic handover into the remarkably stable Kim Jong-Un regime.

The threat of war has permanently occupied the Korean peninsula since the existence of its two nation states, with each side seeking to wholly absorb the other into its ideological and economic orbit. The South’s undisputed economic dominance makes it naturally suited to lead integrative efforts toward much needed reconciliation on the peninsula. Under the publically loathed chaebol regime model of Lee Myung Bak, the prospects of a mutual bloodless reunification appear stark. As one state begins to manufacture its own fighter jets and increasingly expands its arsenal of advanced military technology – the other brandishes a collection ageing Soviet-made machinery, suspected to be largely obsolete. Between the artillery exchanges of a hypothetical Korean Holy War, it must be asked – is South Korea really prey or predator?

Recent tension on the peninsula in the form of US-ROK Combined Forces Command drills reignited an ongoing stream of public analysis. The war games conducted on February 20th, 2012 were negligently held in a disputed area of the West Sea. Following an exchange of threatening rhetoric, the ROK began evacuating residents of Baengnyeong Island, located just south of the maritime border with North Korea. Prior to the commencement of military exercises, the North warned the ROK “not to forget the lesson” of Yeonpyeong Island, where four civilians were killed in a Northern bombardment in 2010 after the South began firing shells into North Korean territorial waters as part of a live ammunition drill.

Fortunately, the North did not respond to the most recent US-ROK Combined Forces Command exercise, perceiving it to be a “premeditated military provocation.” Korean news sources report an estimated 5,000 live rounds fired during the exercise, all of them falling into South Korean waters. The drill was conducted over two hours, involving Cobra attack helicopters, self-propelled howitzers and Vulcan cannons. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) warns that North Korea is fully prepared for war and the complete collapse of ties between the two Koreas. In response to further planned exercises, the North’s National Defense Commission (NDC) has stated ”Now that a war has been declared against us, the army and people are firmly determined to counter it with a sacred war of our own style and protect the security of the nation and the peace of the country.”

The upcoming US-ROK drills include Key Resolve, a computerized command post exercise involving 200,000 troops launching on February 27th, 2012 and continuing until March 9th. Further joint air, ground and naval field training exercises under the moniker of Foal Eagle, will be held from March 1st to April 30th, 2012. In anticipation of the planned joint military exercises, Kim Jong-Un has reportedly visited front-line military units in the southwestern region responsible for the Yeonpyeong Island shelling in 2010. Amid the tension of impending conflict, the US-ROK Combined Forces Command has fully mobilized its surveillance radar, with reconnaissance planes and F-15K fighters on emergency standby. The DPRK’s 4th Army Corps and other front-line units operate on heightened alert while monitoring the mobilization of allied troops. The Associated Press has confirmed Washington’s use of U-2 aircrafts from South Korea’s Osan Air Base to conduct monitoring over North Korean airspace.

Although it’s irresponsible to deny South Korea’s sovereignty and the vibrant economic achievements of the people within it, the nation’s current leadership has worked to further reduce the country into an economic and military protectorate of the United States. Under President Lee Myung Bak, the globalmultifaceted strategic partnership between Seoul and Washington has pressured the ROK into deploying its military personnel to more than a dozen countries, including Afghanistan Somalia, Lebanon and other fronts in the mythicized War on Terror. South Korean troops have also joined Cobra Gold, the United States’ largest multilateral exercise in the Asia-Pacific region in conjunction with Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore.

As policy makers in Seoul’s Blue House continue propagating an unbalanced emphasis on US relations, the ROK is forced out of emerging markets in the Middle East as a result of the expanding blanket of US sanctions in the region.  In addition to an increased global presence of ROK troops, South Korea has been cajoled into the suspension of its crucial trading partnership with Iran. Kim Keun-sik, a North Korea analyst at Kyungnam University elaborates,  “Seoul’s participation in sanctions against Iran is the worst trap of the Korea-US alliance. It is not aimed at deterring the North (which is the initial purpose of the alliance) nor at peacefully resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.” As Seoul is dragged into complying with American militarism, relations between Pyongyang and Tehran have become increasingly more intimate.

As Korea braces for the spike in oil prices after freezing Iranian petrochemical and oil imports at the behest of US assertion, Lee Myung Bak personally traveled to the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia in search of new trading partners. South Korea and Saudi Arabia subsequently agreed to significantly bolster their economic and defense cooperation, with talks of exporting ammunition and howitzers to the feudalistic monarchy. Fortunately for American arms manufacturers, the ROK has a large appetite for high-end fighter jets. Boeing is vying to be a beneficiary in Korea’s largest ever arms procurement deal with their F-15 Silent Eagle (F-15SE). Korea plans to further purchase 60 fighter jets with an enormous budget of $7.3 billion. Lockheed Martin and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) are also competing to win armament deals. In an effort to counter North Korean submarine attacks, the ROK has allocated an additional $565,000 of its 2012 budget for plans to establish a submarine command.

While the threat of provocation from Pyongyang provides an opportune pretext for militaristic expansion, South Korea’s controversial $970 million joint military base on Jeju Island (the ROK’s southern most territory, parallel to the DMZ) exists to fundamentally project force toward China in the event of military conflict. With sheer disregard for the ecological physiognomies of Jeju Island (recognized by UNESCO) and the concerns of the island’s protesting residents, the joint base would host up to 20 American and South Korean warships, including submarines, aircraft carriers and destroyers once completed in 2014. China has further called the presence of Aegis anti-ballistic systems on Jeju island a dangerous provocation. Under the leadership of President Lee Myung Bak, the South Korea arms industry has expanded to new heights; with a planned increase of $4 billion in exports by 2020, the ROK would be the 7th largest exporter of arms in the world.

Korea Aerospace Industries is currently joining with Lockheed Martin to produce a T-50 fighter jet, intended for the Israeli military. Although Israel recently finalized a deal to purchase thirty M-346 trainer fighters from an Italian competitor, the potential for future defense contracts with Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar seem expectant. While the ROK has recently developed the world’s fastest unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), it still has pressed Washington to sell its RQ-4 Global Hawk spy planes – likely to reverse engineer the vehicle as a template for future Korean-made models. The ROK’s state-run Agency for Defense Development (ADD) has launched a $5.35 million bunker-buster development project to be used for precision strikes against military strongholds in the North by 2013. The project was announced shortly after South Korea finalized a $71 million arms agreement with the US to import American Bunker Buster explosives.

Although a conflict on the Korean Peninsula would almost certainly draw in larger regional powers such as the United States and China, there is little doubt regarding the military viability of both Korean nations on their own. While much of their arsenal is outdated, the DPRK’s 1.2 million people under arms make the North Korean military a credible force. In an effort to defend itself against the Yankee Colony to the South, the DPRK is attempting to build road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. The North’s BM25 Musudan has a potential range of around 4,000 kilometers, allowing it to potentially strike US bases in South Korea, Guam, and Japan. It also possesses the Taep’o-dong-2, which could potentially strike the continental United States with an extremely reduced payload.

North Korean ballistic technology appears to be constructed from components of Russian origin; analysts such as David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ point out that the engines on the North’s Unha-2 launcher are essentially based on the Soviet Scud-B missile. In sharp contrast to the modernity of the ROK’s military technology, the North’s most modern undertakings are based off of the Soviet R-27 sea-launched ballistic missile, first deployed in 1968. The DPRK is also attempting to use a dated American UAV purchased from the Middle East as a basis for its own unmanned attack aircraft program. After North Korean modifications, the US-made MQM-107 Streaker’s 1970s-era technology would serve as an enhanced version of the German WWII-era V-1 Buzz Bomb.

The extremely limited amount of modern equipment in circulation is largely based on modified 1960s-era missile technology, which appears to see little to no actual testing. Despite its large numbers, extreme isolation has left troops in the North with a questionable amount of practical training under its exceedingly bureaucratic chain of command. The North’s domestic missile development program is more limited than generally assumed, with easily visible and immobile long-range missile launch sites. US congressmen belonging to the House Armed Services Committee have voiced concern over the North’s road-mobile ICBM program and its capacity to hide launch platforms. While Northern special ops forces could undertake campaigns of guerilla war for some time and inevitably deal heavy damage onto the South with artillery shells and missiles, the North’s capacity to sustain a large-scale effort without Chinese backing is limited with an American presence on the Peninsula.

Rather than encouraging openness and trade, regime change in the North has long been an open goal for the United States in their effort to push sanctions against the Communist state since its inception. Documents authored in 2009 by the US think-tank, The Council on Foreign Relationsillustrate a military contingency plan involving the stationing of up to 460,000 foreign soldiers into a post-regime North Korea to its capture nuclear arms and ballistic missiles. The document also highlights the need to form a compliant transitional government acquiescent to market liberalization and privatization. Although the regime has acknowledged its possession of a nuclear deterrent in its propaganda, any further specifics on the North’s nuclear program are largely subject to speculation.

In January 2004, US nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker visited the North’s Yongbyon Nuclear facility. Hecker testified before US Congress that he saw no evidence of a nuclear bomb, although he acknowledged that the North possessed weapons-grade plutonium. Shortly after in September 2004, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su-Hon defended announcements that the North has turned plutonium from 8,000 spent fuel rods into nuclear weapons before the UN General Assembly, citing defense against the US nuclear threat. In 2005, the North resumed its nuclear program when the US refused to complete construction on two light-water reactors promised in an Agreed Framework aimed to halt the North’s program. Following a missile test in 2009, the North vowed to reject pressure to denuclearize and informed the IAEA that they would resume their nuclear weapons program.

Hecker visited the Yongbyon nuclear facility again in November 2010 and reported on its increased capabilities, however noting that the experimental light-water reactor he was shown was still in the early stages of construction. Former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il presided over an economic collapse and an unprecedented famine in the 1990’s. His entire legitimacy derived from a highly propagated military first approach that advertised the newfound security of the regime, “the Dear General successfully saw the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent that would protect the Korean race forever. Truly, the son had proven himself worthy of his great father.” While the status of such a nuclear device is largely subject to speculation, any attempts to force denuclearization by the International Community through the Six Party talks will likely result in failure.

Denuclearization is akin to the regime committing political suicide, quelling its only bargaining chip with the outside world. Regardless of the actual progress toward constructing nuclear arms, the North’s weapon is a source of pride for its people, aimed to further defend itself against the US forces responsible for killing nearly a third of it’s population in aerial bombardments during the Korean war (an amount far surpassing the civilian causalities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Under foreign invasion, the North would become increasing more belligerent if faced with China’s military neglect.

China would almost certainly stand to defend its North Korean ally under siege. In addition to a heavily militarized Peninsula, each side is backed by opposing military superpowers. The sensitivity of the region is marked by wild fluctuations in the South Korean stock market at the first sign of tension or instability. China maintains the largest standing army in the world with 2,285,000 personnel and is working to challenge the regional military hegemony of America’s Pacific Century with its expanding naval and conventional capabilities. China has moved to begin testing advanced anti-satellite (ASAT) and Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) weapons systems in an effort to bring the US-China rivalry into Space warfare. The conflict on the Korean peninsula has the potential to further threaten global security, not due to North Korean belligerence, but rather to the ramifications of warring super powers.

The North would only ever use a nuclear device if its existence were directly threatened, as a last resort if the nation came under attack from outside forces. For this reason, the diplomatic strength of the next South Korean President is crucial to peace on the Peninsula. Lee Myung Bak has negligently encouraged a hardline stance on relations to the North, a far cry away from the policies of his predecessor, Kim Dae-Jung, the only South Korean President to visit the North during a summit in 2000. The South will host two upcoming elections this year, the National Assembly in April 2012, and a Presidential election in December 2012; the actions of the next administrationwill be not only fundamental inter-Korean relations, but also to economic cooperation with the United States.

President Lee Myung Bak’s approval ratings now stand at an appalling 27.6%,with the opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) seen as the most proficient with regards to handling job creation, North-South relations, and the redistribution of wealth. Lee, along with his relatives and other members of his administration are currently being investigated by prosecutors for illicitly using insider information to gain profits from purchasing stocks from a Korean firm awarded exclusive rights to develop a diamond mine in Cameroon in 2010. The Lee family has been involved in several unprecedented stock manipulation and money laundering schemes. In addition to presiding over a 23% increase in consumer inflation, Lee has been accused of using public funds to purchase a private residence, while spearheading the increase ofdomestic internet censorship and surveillance.

Under the ROK’s National Security Act (NSA), Lee’s regime has targeted an organization called ‘Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea’ due to their advocating the closure of US army bases and stance against military drills. The organization has been involved in the campaign against the construction of the planned Jeju Island naval base and the heavy-handed conduct of the police and military in quelling dissenting villagers and activists. Members of an NGO which presented alternative findings regarding the alleged North Korean sinking of the Cheonan corvette ship in 2010 were heavily threatened by the South Korean government, which mobilized citizens to protest against experts who doubted the official conclusion. Under President Lee, the NSA has been used to indefinitely detain human rights defenders and citizens for voicing their political views on sites such as Twitter. In late 2011, a political opposition candidate was sentenced to a year in jail for participating in a radio podcast championing free speech.

Lee Myung Bak’s government has also been exposed for selling informationsuch as the resident registration numbers, names, and addresses of South Korean citizens en masse to private bond firms and other civilian institutions.DUP opposition leader, Han Myeong-sook has called for the mass resignation of the cabinet and an apology from President Lee Myung Bak for the corruption and irregularities that have plagued his administration. The DUP has ignited public appeal for pledging to scrap the publically loathed KOR-US Free Trade Agreement when it enters office, much to the dismay of the US government. The FTA would be the largest U.S. trade pact since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

As the United States advertises its stake in the Asia-Pacific century, officials have used the threat of North Korea to maintain an unpopular military presence in the region, declaring it central to 21st century national security. In the face of aggressive opposition by the South Korean & Japanese public, the U.S. Pacific Command may further its agenda by conveniently exacerbating the belligerent rhetoric of Pyongyang – only to further encircle a far more powerful China in their effort to develop new weapons, such as the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile. Much to the dismay of US political elites such as the cantankerous Senator John McCain, the Obama administration has approved the planned consolidation of American troops in South Korea to bases south of Seoul by 2016.

The United States currently maintains 28,500 troops in more than 100 bases across South Korea. The planned consolidation does not warrant a personnel reduction, nor does it address the rising demands of the Korean public and their longing for national sovereignty – rather, it highlights the fact that the Pentagon is having an increasingly more difficult time balancing their chequebook. Former CIA director turned United States Secretary of Defense,Leon Panetta assured lawmakers that US military power in the Asia-Pacific region won’t be debilitated by proposed steep budget cuts. The US already has eleven carriers in the Pacific area and has established deals with Australia for a permanent presence in the Northern Territory; policy makers are working steadfastly for a similar agreement with the Philippines.

Under the proposed consolidation cited in the Strategic Alliance 2015 Roadmap, the wartime operational control of Korean forces will transition from the US-ROK Combined Forces Command to the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff by December 2015.  The US forces based in Korea will consolidate into the United States Korea Command, or US KORCOM. The US will maintain its current level of 28,500 troops, while cutting nearly half of its bases immediately South of the DMZ due to proposed budget restructuring. The next South Korea administration would aggregate mass public support by reasserting the ROK’s national sovereignty and further working to build a conducive relationship with the North by proposing new economic ties and eliminating US presence on the Peninsula.

The leadership of both Korean nations must avert further conflict at all costs. Experts at the Pentagon have estimated that the first ninety days of such a conflict may produce 300,000 to 500,000 US-ROK military casualties, in addition to a civilian causality rate in the millions. The negative ramifications for such a conflict would destabilize the global economy and potentially lead the United States and China into direct military conflict. China has already secured rights to many of North Korea’s natural resources such as iron ore and coal; the DPRK has begun cheaply selling off the development rights of mineral resources to China in exchange for foreign currency. The North Korean government has indicated that the value of the minerals buried in its soil was roughly $6.1 trillion as of 2008. As the prospects for a new Korean war never fade, China is now the beneficiary of wealth that should rightfully be used to fund reunification efforts on the peninsula.

The propagation of a future Korean conflict has the potential to serve as a mechanism to further restructure the world economic power structure, to the dictates of the grand chessboard. Geopolitical events of the 20th century follow a directed history of managed conflict, where powerful Western banking families and their surrogate agencies employed a strategy of Hegelian Dialectic to bring Democracy, Capitalism and Communism to the world stage.The work of British researcher and author Atony Sutton detailed how the global banking elite financed and nurtured the Soviet Union from its inception, providing economic and military aid with US taxpayer dollars. In the concluding chapter of his book, “The Best Enemy Money Can Buy,” Sutton exposes how the Soviet-backed North Korean Army used machinery either built in plants with U.S. Lend-Lease equipment or from Russia’s Gorki automobile plant, built by Henry Ford.

China and the Soviet Union contributed heavily to North Korea’s first missile program in the early 1960s, based on technology developed by the United States.  In 1994, the Swiss multinational giant Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) was awarded a $200 million contract with the North Korean government to install two light water nuclear power stations on the nation’s east coast following a deal with the US to freeze Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. Donald Rumsfeld, one of the Bush administration’s most vocal opponents to North Korea, presided over the contract with Pyongyang when he was an executive director of ABB. The U.S. State Department claimed that the light water reactors could not be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Henry Sokolski, head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Washington disputed the claims of the US Government, offering, “These reactors are like all reactors, they have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we’re trying to prevent it acquiring.” In 2002, theBush Administration released $95 million US taxpayer dollars to begin construction of Pyongyang’s light water reactors, as part of the Agreed Framework. Just as Iraq became a threat to US security after Donald Rumsfeld armed Saddam Hussein with chemical and biological weapons, agents of globalism have engineered the North Korean threat.

The purpose of Globalism is to form a centrally managed sociopolitical system based on the Chinese model of authoritarian-capitalism. In order for this to be implemented, the livings standards of so-called developed countries must be eroded while the standards of developed countries must be raised. Under the practice of fractional reserve banking, Central Banks have manipulated an economic climate favorable to BRICs nations, while simultaneously bankrupting the United States and Europe with unregulated money printing and destabilizing Free Trade Agreements. Much to the enthusiasm of Goldman Sachs, trade between developing countries will soon to overtake trade between developed nations. In the expanding economies of developing countries, the number of households earning over US$50,000 is set to double by 2020. The utter decay of the United States manufacturing sector is not due to corporate maleficence, it is to reposition China in the world power structure.

In exchange for economic incentives and national security, nearly every South Korean administration has played junior to American interests, most prominently with President Lee Myung Bak. If another major conflict emerges on the Korean peninsula, joint US-ROK forces backed by an exhausted Pentagon would struggle against the military capabilities of China – Russia may be drawn into the conflict as well to protect their economic interests in North Korea. In the case of a joint Chinese-North Korean victory, China would formally emerge as the world’s military super power. Irrespective of geopolitical speculation, the Korean Peninsula once hosted warring superpowers – the continual orchestration of conflict for over six decades shows potential for another such conflict and its capacity to shift the world power structure to the managed dictates of globalism.

Article originally posted here: Exchanging Fire on the Korean Peninsula

Posted in North Korea, South Korea0 Comments

Korea: Buried Toxic Herbicides Threaten

Posted on 22 June 2011.

NOVANEWS

 

Veterans-For-Change Requests Congress Hold Hearings on Toxic Herbicides Buried by US Army in Korea

by Jim Davis

As you may have heard or seen in recent news articles from both U.S. and South Korean News Departments, major reports have been reported about toxic herbicides being buried throughout Korea by U.S Army personnel.

Searching on the Internet with Google, delivered 58,400 hits under the key words of ‘toxic herbicides being buried throughout Korea by U.S Army personnel,’ including an interesting article at the Korea Times website,

In addition, some documents and testimony has been made public which indicates the deployment of the Dioxin contaminated herbicides Agent Orange, Agent Blue and Monuron covered a much wider date range than has historically been reported by the Departments of the Army and Defense at hearings in Congress. For those who have never heard the terminology of Monuron, Monuron is a herbicide “recommended for use in non-crop areas for total control of weeds, and it would be released to the environment as a result of this use.

Monuron’s registration with EPA for use as a herbicide was cancelled in 1977, and therefore if it is still manufactured, it would be manufactured for export.

In soil, monuron is transformed to its metabolites primarily by biodegradation.

Additionally, a document from the Appeals Management Center of the Department of Veterans Affairs — clearly states that the areas where these toxic herbicides were deployed is far greater than reported – in fact into areas far to the south of the DMZ, Demilitarized Zone.

Veterans-For-Change, respectfully request that both Houses of Congress hold hearings immediately to call the Department of Defense, Department of the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs to explain the following:

  1. Why was this information, which clearly existed in the files center for Unit Records Research, were not previously reported so that affected former service members would know what is causing their serious health problems today?; and

  2. Why have the records of this deployment of toxic herbicides and the Unit Histories suddenly become unavailable to former Service Members since the cited document was revealed by the Board of Veterans Appeals?; and

  3. How many more Veterans of Korean Service and Korean Civilians must suffer and die from the many diseases associated with and proven to be a result of poisoning carried out by the U.S. Departments of the Army and Defense before the U. S. Government reveals the complete truth?; and finally

  4. Why has this Appeal Case Decision not been posted in the Board of Veterans Appeal on-line files despite the fact that ruling was issued in late 2009?

The time has arrived for a thorough investigation of the items listed above, along with a thorough investigation/hearings to make the Department of Defense, Department of the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs accountable to all effected parties, including our Veterans.

As your constituent, Veterans-For-Change expects actions among the leaders in calling for this hearing. It is time for our United States Congress to be accountable about the issues concerning the United States of America and our military and not dwell so much about the actions, morals, or lack of morals from our representatives.

Posted in South Korea, USA0 Comments


Join our mailing list

* = required field

Archives