On Sunday, July 16, 2017 at 8:50:01 PM UTC-7,
Had the South Koreans been allowed to carry their own water,
they would have signed apeace treaty with North Korea decades
ago.
Wakalukong
Not true. Syngman Rhee refused to sign and released the POWs in
order to keep the war going.
Ah Resty, wise, dear netizen friend of mine! While we'll never know
for sure whether the Koreans would have sign a peace treaty if they
were allowed to be their own masters, Syngman Rhee was a poor man's
reason to back your position against Wakalukong's.
Actually, compare what Wakalukong said:
Rhee was like Hamid Kharzai, an American installed puppet. He
reportedly killed 100,000 of his country's men and women to maintain
his rule. Througout his long rule, his country's military was under
the command of the commanding US general in South Korea.
with what Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers said:
Syngman Rhee, an exile who had lived in the US for 40 years, was
returned to Korea on MacArthur's personal plane. He initially allied
with left leaders to form a government approved of by the US. Then
in 1947, he dispensed with his "left" allies by assassinating their
leaders, Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-Shik. Rhee consolidated power and the US
pushed for United Nations-sponsored elections in May 1948 to put a
legal imprimatur on the divided Koreas. Rhee was elected at 71
years old in an election boycotted by most parties who saw it as
sham. He came to power in the midst of an insurgency.
I think Wakalukong's Rhee's Karzai comparison was to the mark.
Washington's influence on South Korea is simply enormous. No 3-bit
dictator is going to be able to say
"_I_ refuse to sign a peace treaty with the North because
_I_ want the war to continue indefinitely",
spilling a lot of American blood along the way!
I think you ought to be able to see that Washington would never let a
puppet choose war over peace if American blood is on the line to back
up that option, decade after decade ad eternum, unless the puppet's
choice is also the puppeteers' own choice.
Like Patrick Buchanan would ask: "Cui Bono?"
Washington might be evil enough to kill many people and destroy many
countries; but it is incomprehensible that it would be stupid enough
to spill American blood in broad daylight.
It can calculate the costs of spilling American blood on behalf of a
known dictator whose existence rested solely on him being our puppet -
doing our bidding on the Korean peninsula.
Just look at what the American military have done to systematically
kill off a third of the North's population of 8 to 9 millions!
Rhee was elected at 71 years old in an election boycotted by most
parties who saw it as sham. He came to power in the midst of an
insurgency.
On Jeju Island, the largest Korean island lying in a strategic
location in the Korea Strait, there continued to be protests against
the US military government. It was one of the last areas where
people's committees continued to exist. Gen. Hodge told Congress
Jeju was a truly communal area that is peacefully controlled by the
People's Committee," but he organized its extermination in a
scorched-earth attack.
In September, Rhee's new government launched a massive
counterinsurgency operation under US command. S. Brian Willson
reports it resulted in the killing of "60,000 Islanders, with
another 40,000 desperately fleeing in boats to Japan. Thus,
one-third of its residents were either murdered or fled during the
'extermination' campaign. Nearly 40,000 homes were destroyed and
270 of 400 villages were leveled." It was an ugly attack, Iggy Kim
notes: "Torture, mutilation, gang rape and arbitrary execution were
rife. . . a quarter of the Jeju population had been massacred. The
US embassy happily reported: "The all-out guerilla extermination
campaign came to a virtual end in April with order restored and most
rebels and sympathizers killed, captured, or converted.'" This was
the single greatest masssacre in modern Korean history and a warning
of what was to come in the Korean War. As we will se, Jeju is part
of the story in Today's US asian escalation.
More brutality occurred on mainland Korea. On October 19, dissident
soldiers in the port city of Yosu rose up in opposition to the war
in Jeju. About 2,000 insurgent soldiers took control of the city. By
Oct. 20, a number of nearby towns had also been liberated and the
People's Committee was reinstated as the governing body. People's
courts were established to try police officers, landlords, regime
officials and other supporters of the Rhee dictatorship. This
rebellion was suppressed by a bloodletting, planned and directed by
the US military.
The Korean War followed. S. Brian Willson summarizes the war:
"The Korean War that lasted from June 1950 to July 1953 was an
enlargement of the 1948-50 struggle of Jeju Islanders to preserve
their self-determination from the tyrannical rule of US-supported
Rhee and his tiny cadre of wealthy constituents. Little known is
that the US-imposed division of Korea in 1945 against the wishes of
the vast majority of Koreans was the primary cause of the Korean War
that broke out five years later. The War destroyed by bombing most
cities and villages in Korea north of the 38th Parallel, and many
south of it, while killing four million Koreans - three million
(one-third) of the north's residents and one million of those living
in the south, in addition to killing one million Chinese. This was a
staggering international crime still unrecognized that killed five
million people and permanently separated 10 million Korean families."
Bragging about the massacre, USAF Strategic Air Command head General
Curtis LeMay, who blanket-bombed Japan in World War II and later ran
for vice president with segregationist George Wallace, summed it up
well, "Over a period of three years or so we killed off - what -
twenty percent of the population." Willson corrects LeMay, writing
"it is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th
Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8-9 million people
during the 37-month long "hot" war, 1950-1953, perhaps an
unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to
belligerence of another.
One thing that the American people should always keep in mind is that
the "crazy Kims" of the North can't possibly rely on "repressive"
measures to hold onto the people's support all of the time. The fact
that North Korea today is (and was for many decades) a stable country
can in no small part owe its unity and strength to how many Koreans
have lost a relative or loved one in the hand of the US military and
its Rhee allies during the early years of South Korea in the 1950s -
which was a lot!
President Trump today has a choice to make: to go with the flow of
some seven decades of bad US foreign policy on the Koreas or to be a
statesman and let the Koreans choose their own path and leave them in
peace.
Today's Korean situation has a colonial root. But it's time for US
troops to come home from the 38 parallel.
[The] US quite arbitrarily decided with Russia, China and England,
to divide Korea into two nations "temporarily" as part of its
decolonization. The powers agreed that Japan should lose all of its
colonies and that in "due course" Korea would be free. Korea was
divided on the 38th parallel. The US made sure to keep the capital,
Seoul, and key ports. Essentially, the US took as much of Korea as
it thought the Russians would allow. This division planted the seeds
of the Korean War, causing a five-year revolution and
counter-revolution that escalated into the Korean War.
So you get the picture? For more, please see Zeese and Flowers below.
lo yeeOn
North Korea and the United States: Will the Real Aggressor Please
Stand Down?
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, March 05, 2013
http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/05/north-korea-and-the-united-states-will-the-real-aggressor-please-stand-down/
Near the end of World War II, as Japan was weakened, Korean "People's
Committees" formed all over the country and Korean exiles returned
from China, the US and Russia to prepare for independence and
democratic rule. On September 6, 1945, these disparate forces and
representatives of the people's committees proclaimed a Korean
People's Republic (the KPR) with a progressive agenda of land reform,
rent control, an eight-hour work day and minimum wage among its
27-point program.
But the KPR was prevented from becoming a reality. Instead, after
World War II and without Korean representation, the US quite
arbitrarily decided with Russia, China and England, to divide Korea
into two nations "temporarily" as part of its decolonization. The
powers agreed that Japan should lose all of its colonies and that in
"due course" Korea would be free. Korea was divided on the 38th
parallel. The US made sure to keep the capital, Seoul, and key ports.
Essentially, the US took as much of Korea as it thought the Russians
would allow. This division planted the seeds of the Korean War,
causing a five-year revolution and counter-revolution that escalated
into the Korean War.
Initially, the South Koreans welcomed the United States, but US
Gen. John Hodge, the military governor of South Korea working under
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, quickly brought Koreans who had cooperated
with the Japanese during occupation into the government and shut out
Koreans seeking democracy. He refused to meet with representatives of
the KPR and banned the party, working instead with the right wing
Korean Democratic Party - made up of landlords, land owners, business
interests and pro-Japanese collaborators.
Shut out of politics, Koreans who sought an independent democratic
state took to other methods and a mass uprising occurred. A strike
against the railroads in September 1946 by 8,000 railway workers in
Pusan quickly grew into a general strike of workers and students in
all of the South's major cities. The US military arrested strike
leaders en masse. In Taegu, on Oct. 1, huge riots occurred after
police smashed picket lines and fired into a crowd of student
demonstrators, killing three and wounding scores. In Yongchon, on
Oct. 3, 10,000 people attacked the police station and killed more than
40 police, including the county chief. Some 20 landlords and
pro-Japanese officials were also killed. A few days later, the US
military declared martial law to crush the uprising. They fired into
large crowds of demonstrators in numerous cities and towns, killing
and wounding an unknown number of people.
Syngman Rhee, an exile who had lived in the US for 40 years, was
returned to Korea on MacArthur's personal plane. He initially allied
with left leaders to form a government approved of by the US. Then in
1947, he dispensed with his "left" allies by assassinating their
leaders, Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-Shik. Rhee consolidated power and the US
pushed for United Nations-sponsored elections in May 1948 to put a
legal imprimatur on the divided Koreas. Rhee was elected at 71 years
old in an election boycotted by most parties who saw it as sham. He
came to power in the midst of an insurgency.
On Jeju Island, the largest Korean island lying in a strategic
location in the Korea Strait, there continued to be protests against
the US military government. It was one of the last areas where
people's committees continued to exist. Gen. Hodge told Congress Jeju
was a truly communal area that is peacefully controlled by the
People's Committee," but he organized its extermination in a
scorched-earth attack.
In September, Rhee's new government launched a massive
counterinsurgency operation under US command. S. Brian Willson
reports it resulted in the killing of "60,000 Islanders, with another
40,000 desperately fleeing in boats to Japan. Thus, one-third of its
residents were either murdered or fled during the 'extermination'
campaign. Nearly 40,000 homes were destroyed and 270 of 400 villages
were leveled." It was an ugly attack, Iggy Kim notes: "Torture,
mutilation, gang rape and arbitrary execution were rife. . . a quarter
of the Jeju population had been massacred. The US embassy happily
reported: "The all-out guerilla extermination campaign came to a
virtual end in April with order restored and most rebels and
sympathizers killed, captured, or converted.'" This was the single
greatest masssacre in modern Korean history and a warning of what was
to come in the Korean War. As we will se, Jeju is part of the story
in Today's US asian escalation.
More brutality occurred on mainland Korea. On October 19, dissident
soldiers in the port city of Yosu rose up in opposition to the war in
Jeju. About 2,000 insurgent soldiers took control of the city. By
Oct. 20, a number of nearby towns had also been liberated and the
People's Committee was reinstated as the governing body. People's
courts were established to try police officers, landlords, regime
officials and other supporters of the Rhee dictatorship. This
rebellion was suppressed by a bloodletting, planned and directed by
the US military.
The Korean War followed. S. Brian Willson summarizes the war:
"The Korean War that lasted from June 1950 to July 1953 was an
enlargement of the 1948-50 struggle of Jeju Islanders to preserve
their self-determination from the tyrannical rule of US-supported
Rhee and his tiny cadre of wealthy constituents. Little known is
that the US-imposed division of Korea in 1945 against the wishes of
the vast majority of Koreans was the primary cause of the Korean War
that broke out five years later. The War destroyed by bombing most
cities and villages in Korea north of the 38th Parallel, and many
south of it, while killing four million Koreans - three million
(one-third) of the north's residents and one million of those living
in the south, in addition to killing one million Chinese. This was a
staggering international crime still unrecognized that killed five
million people and permanently separated 10 million Korean families."
Bragging about the massacre, USAF Strategic Air Command head General
Curtis LeMay, who blanket-bombed Japan in World War II and later ran
for vice president with segregationist George Wallace, summed it up
well, "Over a period of three years or so we killed off - what -
twenty percent of the population." Willson corrects LeMay, writing
"it is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th
Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8-9 million people
during the 37-month long "hot" war, 1950-1953, perhaps an
unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to
belligerence of another.
Context Today: Korea Targeted, Mock Attacks, Learning from Iraq and
Libya and the Asia Pivot
This historical context results in North Korea taking the threats of
the United States very seriously. It knows the US has been willing to
kill large portions of its population throughout history and has seen
what the US has done to other countries.
In 2002, President George W. Bush labeled North Korea part of the
"axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran. S. Brian Willson traveled
900 ground miles through six of North Korea's nine provinces, as well
as Pyongyang, the capital, and several other cities, talking with
dozens of people from all walks of life; all wanted to know about the
"axis of evil" speech. He found that North Koreans "simply cannot
understand why the US is so obsessed with them."
Of course, the North Korean government witnessed the "shock and awe"
campaign of bombardments against Iraq and the killing of at least
hundreds of thousands (credible research shows more than 1 million
Iraqis killed, 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows and 5 million
orphans). They saw the brutal killing by hanging of the former US
ally, now turned into an enemy, Saddam Hussein. And, they can look to
the experience of Libya. Libya was an enemy but then began to develop
positive relations with the US. In 2003, Libya halted its program to
build a nuclear bomb in an effort to mend its relations with the US.
Then last year Libya was overthrown in a US-supported war and its
leader Moammar Gadhafi was brutally killed. As Reuters reports, "`The
tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their
nuclear programs... clearly prove that the DPRK (Democratic People's
Republic of Korea) was very far-sighted and just when it made the
(nuclear) option," North Korea's KCNA news agency said."
The United States stations 28,500 troops in South Korea. In November
2012 the US upgraded its weapons systems and announced an agreement
with Japan that would allow South Korea to bomb anywhere in North
Korea. In June 2012 the Pentagon announced that Gen.l Neil H. Tolley
would be removed as commander of US Special Operations in South Korea
after he revealed to a Japanese foreign affairs publication that
American and South Korean troops had been parachuting into North Korea
on spy missions.
. . .