Improving the US-North Korea Relations Not in Obama’s Agenda (but the China-focused US Military Buildup in the Korean peninsula is a priori)
Ratcheting up the DPRK as “an enduring pariah/a useful demon” provides United States a rationale for placing Korean Peninsula on a permanent war footing where Americans can do anything they want on the stationary flattop of neo-colonial flagship, “USS South Korea”.
[A Editor’s not: Mr. Han’s article was originally submitted in December 09, 2015.]
Many Korean-Americans, typically ‘progressive’-minded’* peace activists for the unification movement of the divided Koreas, have entertained for years lots of wishful thinking, hope, expectation, and opportunity vise-a-vie a possible epiphany of One-Korea, when Barak Hussein Obama, a Negro in the erstwhile slave land, reached the pinnacle of the Super Power, USA…along with an enthusiastic drumbeats of Negro Americans dancing in the street for the crowning of their brotha a Prez, the ‘progressive’ Korean-Americans matched eagerly their whole-hearted endorsement with the Negro Americans…then waited, waited, and waited for years up to the almost last end of his term.
And voila! Nothing, zilch, and nada essentially happened, changed, improved, redressed, or revised…for Negro Americans, they are still being killed like a stray dog in the street, their poverty getting worse, and one in five negro children goes to school without a breakfast every day, while their brotha and his family slurp caviar and chardonnay at the White House.
For the ‘progressive’ Korean Americans who devote their days for the One Korea movement, they solemnly declared in an expensive (eighty thousand dollars) New York Times ad ‘An Open Letter to President’ (http://www.kancc.org/bbs/board.php?bo_table=issue&wr_id=797) and subsequent article, ‘US-DPRK Relation’ (http://peacemaking.kr/english/) that “Obama’s foreign policy vise-a-vie North Korea is a disastrous/big failure…mostly due to the lack of sincerity on the part of the US”.
Before lamenting their disappointment on Obama’s “unrealistic policy toward the North Korea”, they never forgot to show their obsequiousness…’progressive’ Korean-Americans still look upon Nobel-Peace Prize- awarded “Obama that can still play a peacemaker’s role in Korean peninsula and make a difference in the future of Korea”, even though Obama has become the first ‘Lethal President’, using drones to execute the people deemed to be terrorists in an extra judicial killings.
(Semantic irony here is that Harry Koh, the Legal counsel in the State Department who defended Obama’s targeted killing is a Korean-American as John Yoo, who also defended, as a legal counsel in the Justice Department, the water boarding torture policies of George W Bush, is also a conservative/neo-con Korean-American…Korean-Americans are such a versatile/all-round fella serving/collaborating/ass-licking a ‘Power that be’ with abandon.)
It seems obvious that Obama’s initiatives of opening the diplomatic relationship with Cuba and negotiation with Iran on the nuclear proliferation solicited and kick-started a large crowd of erstwhile clergymen, scholars, literati of ‘progressive’ Korean-Americans entertaining a wet dream …demanding that “Obama should look at North Korea in the same light as he sees Cuba.”
However, with no geo-political/economic/military factors warrant contrasting the North Korea with Cuba or Iran, the US State Department mouthpiece bluntly declared: “North Korea is not Iran!” and the spokesman did not even bother to mention about Cuba.
(Later in their subsequent joint article, “US-North Korea Relation”, the so-called ‘progressive-minded’ Korean-Americans, admitted that “as a Korean-American steeped in the culture of America, it is clear to me that dealing with the DPRK (North Korea) is distinctively different from dealing with Cuba or Iran.” )
Geographically, Cuba is located just 80 miles south of Florida, like a wart sitting on the bridge of Uncle Sam’s nose, a constant nuisance for over half a century…with no probability of the regime change with economic sanctions/ embargoes/propaganda, Uncle Sam simply decided to rely on more subtle tactics…a cultural onslaught upon the hearts and minds of Cuban people aiming at the conversion of Cuban political and economic system into the neo-liberal/colonial bondage to the American Empire.
Cultural imperialists assume that cultural conversion is a one-way street…a dominant culture of American Empire absorbs/reconfigures/overwhelms the receptor culture of the Cuban society where people gradually monkey around the patterns of consumption-crazy American way of life, ending up eventually in a beggar’s line at the gate of IMF/World Bank with a hat in hands as in countries like South Korea, Greece, Philippines, and Thailand et al.
Politically/economically/culturally, Iran has been a power house in the Middle East region since the USCIA-installed puppet regime was ousted by the Ayatollahs in 1979…Iran can stand, as a major player in the region, aloof against pro-Western satellite nations, like Israel/Saudi Arabia/Turkey.
Iran defended the US/Saudi-assisted Iraqi invasion by Saddam Hussein in an eight-year war with North Korea playing a role of a major arms supplier.
Iran publicly denied that they would like to develop the nuclear technology and possess the atomic bombs as deterrence against the foreign invasion/attack…for the reason that Iran would never match the technology/inventory of nuclear bombs of US/Israel or Russia.
Instead, Iran wanted to establish the nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East since they were troubled by the Israeli stockpiles of nuclear/hydrogen bombs.
Contrary to some of the ‘progressive’ Korean perspectives comparing North Korea with Cuba or Iran, North Korea is a horse of different color…too dissimilar/far cry in parallel to both countries… as they try to educate/rehabilitate (?) Obama on the North Korea’s leading philosophy of “Juche” ideology and cried out loud “why North Korea is such a tight economic bind and why loosening it requires liberation from external threats, sanctions, and embargoes, most of them imposed by the US over the past 70 years!”
First and foremost, they displayed the most commonly mistaken perception that “Uncle Sam cares about people around the world”… “I don’t give a damn my dear” was a line from Movie “Gone with the Wind” that it’s a standard narrative most of US Prez love to brag about the welfare of ‘unpeople’ around the world.
It’s mind-boggling to find that such an elitish, erudite and literati they display ‘ahistoric’ ignorance over the US foreign policies…Do they believe that Obama or any US Prez ever cares about the welfare of North Koreans?
They gingerly suggested in their Open Letter that “improved relationship with North Korea has a great potential to benefit Korean-Americans and all Americans, and also North Koreans benefit by reducing their defense spending and moving on their economic agenda.”
They did not elaborate what kind of benefit all Americans may have a potential…flooding the North Korean market with thousands of I-phone sets/Hollywood Movies/cans of SPAM? Maybe with a Free Trade Agreement/State Of Forces Agreement/Extra-territoriality of American Citizens and Christian Missionaries?
It’s a corollary to the “Open Door Policy”, that the 10th US President, ‘His Accidency” John Tyler, laid the ground work in 1843 forcing the China (Qing Dynasty) opening up their ports for the Yankee merchandises.(Readers should be noticed that the US imperial/hegemonic policy commenced even two decades before the US Civil War.)
They closed their “Open Letter” with a half-and-half accolade/caveat that “it behooves Obama, as a Nobel Peace Laureate, to take steps to make peace, to normalize the relations between the U.S. and North Korea…in so doing Obama can help to bring about peace, denuclearization, and eventual re-unification of the two Koreas.”
Obviously, you couldn’t deny that they have been “steeped in American culture”…with an absolutely jaundiced eyes that they could only see with American perspective that Obama has been a Nobel Laureate-crowned Peacemaker, not a “Lethal /Drone Prez” to order his man for extra-judicial killing anywhere around the globe as he pleases…http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-drone-pilots-denounce-morally-outrageous-program-n472496 Obama is such a nice person that he concerns about the human rights of North Koreans while he keeps hundreds of unpeople from various countries in the Guantanamo Gulag without any trial…imagine if North Koreans were not armed with a retaliatory Weapons of Mass Destruction…Kim the Third is a history!
As usual, their boilerplate articles have not mentioned at all on the major/critical issue of US occupational forces in South Korea in relation to peace/re-unification in the Korean peninsula…for them and their ilk, either ‘progressive’ or neo-con Korean-Americans, the current occupied status by the USFK(US Forces in Korea) is a fait accompli irrelevant of unification issue, like a crazy idea that Yankee soldiers may still stay in One Korea forever… it’s a NO-Go zone to discuss or debate let alone against the occupation since 1950s for a majority of Koreans/Korean-Americans, including these so-called ‘progressive-minded’ Korean-Americans whether one is either progressive or neo-conservative, a journalist, expert, scholar, political commentator, or Joe-blows…over 30.000-strong American GIs are stationed in S. Korea as a tripwire (read as sitting ducks/headless chickens) that there would be a massive loss of American lives if North Koreans ever attack the South Korea in which warrants automatic American participation in the war.
It’s a reckless/haughty endangerment on the young lives of American sheeple who are duped to believe that North Korean would not dare to engage in a suicidal nuclear attack on Americans…US policymakers would not buy ‘the Samson Option’ by the North Korea because Americans have no such cultural expression in their capitalist system even after they lost 3000-plus American lives in 911 suicide attack.
Instead, they raised the issue of denuclearization of the North Korea as a payback to peace in Korea, without answering why it is incumbent on North Korea alone to disarm…and it absolutely makes no sense to go de-nuclear after Saddam/Gaddafi were taken out from the power by an execution/assassination because they obliged not to go nuclear…there aren’t many left a useful demon in the horizon for Uncle Sam may play with in the theater of international conflicts…it has become the endangered species in 21 century; Saddam Hussein/ Muhammad Gaddafi/ Hugo Chavez kicked the bucket, and Fidel Castro is on the sunset horizon.
Kim the Third has become a valuable/priceless target for Uncle Sam to play with in the Far East region, when Obama deputized Shinzo Abe of Japan as a captain to corral South Korean hen (GH Park) into the Japanese chicken coop.
Why does Obama bother to mend the fence with Kim the Third when he needs badly a bugbear that scares all his little chickens into the “Pivot to Asia” tent?
Improving relationship with North Korea do also harm the business of US Military Industrial Complex when South Koreans need not to buy the weapons system with beaucoup money… and the USFK’s raison d’être on the stationary flattop of neo-colonial flagship “USS South Korea” for over half a century would sink into the bottom of Pacific Ocean.
Camp Humphreys in Pyongtaek South Korea
Currently, in the age of the American Empire, the US military are in a full court press for a decade on the Korean peninsula in rebuilding/strengthening/expanding/ augmenting their military bases with more bigger/self-contained facilities filled with large apartments/recreational center/sports arena/expansive shopping centers/immaculate golf course/huge parking lots, spending billions of dollars funded by both US and S. Korean taxpayer’s money.
(US Military loves to call their heavily-armed military garrisons as ‘Camp’, giving an innocuous feeling of a Summer Camp…I‘d like to strongly suggest that those ‘progressive’ Korean-Americans take a sightseeing tour on the construction sites of ‘Camp Humphrey’, and return home /write another Open Letter to Obama.)
It’s not quite an off-key argument to claim that The US military realignment plan of multi-billion dollars in South Korea is in the realm of the US long-term projects for the China-focused military buildup…as the US Military is fond of calling their new Camps in S. Korea an enduring (read as permanent) base, Americans are going to reside in the ‘America Town’ in a putatively sovereign nation, Republic of Korea, as a pretentious guest under the protection of the extra-territoriality law within no time frame.
In other words, Uncle Sam needs a useful demon, North Korea, for ga-ga/rah-rah campaigns to corral a variety of vassal states in Asia under the “pivot to Asia” umbrella, as if a gaggle of frightened children gathers around the Star-Spangled Banner and sing a hallelujah.
And the South Koreans are sheepishly in bed with their arch-enemy/ former colonial overlord, Japanese, acknowledging furtively the Jap’s claim that Japanese Self-Defense Forces have a right to invade the Korean peninsula in case any war breaks out over there… without the possible threat of a useful demon, Kim the Third, Obama’s match-making scheme might not be a cake-walk to push these antagonistic couple to a bed to copulate with.
For those so-called ‘progressive’ Korean-American and their ilk, ‘progressive’ Korean-Americans’ ‘ahistorical’ misconception about Obama’s policy on North Korea could only be redressed/rectified, I believe and hope, if/when they’d have a pilgrim tour on the over 60-something USFK Military Bases in South Korea and have an ‘Eureka moment’ why Obama’s policies on Kim the Third is not a failure but the well-planned and highly-prioritized strategic maneuvers for interdicting the Chinese Defense Mechanism by the hegemonic/imperial Government of the United States.
*I quoted here ’progressive’ with a parenthesis because Korean-Americans with ‘progressive-minded’ are NOT necessarily possessing the progressive-minded ideology that the Western culture designates as progressive/liberal/modern/advanced/labor-friendly et al…they are only being dubbed as ‘progressive’ because they are simply not in line with anti-North Korean policies of their native-land South Korean Government under the power grip by the daughter of former military dictator, General Park CH who was a pro-Japanese collaborator/sellout/ Lieutenant.
Mr. Dale Han is a free-lance journalist living in Canada for four decades who traipses around the globe…including Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Palestine, North Korea and other countries, and writes the dispatches. He can be reached at pepesojourner@hotmail.com
The Nobel peace laureate or Barak Hussein Obama, “an African monkey”, so named by North Korean people, as North Korea itself was so villified and humiliated by George W. Bush(himself the Texas cowboy “animal”) and his ilk as “Axis ov Evil,” “Rouge State,” and an “Outpost of Tyranny,” etc. etc., hasn’t done a damned thing about peace on the Korean peninsula, after some 60 yesrs since they sined an Armistice Treaty in 1953.
It called for a peace conference in three months to consider withdrawal of foreign troops and peace agreement/treaty. Instead American signed an alliance with South Korea after one month and hasn’t done a thing about peace on the Korean peninsula to this date.
While North Korea did not throw a stone to the United States(American boots in Korea, not N. Korean boots in America), the United States threatened N. Korea almost every year since the Armistice with “joint” military exercies of one kind or another, hence resulting in nuclear arms of N. Korea, with ICBMs, SLBMSs, EMP and cyber capabilities and now hydrogen bomb!
The U.S. purports to “encircle” China as it did the Soviet Union, causing tremendous conflict and tension in the region and the world.
The three in the Northern alliance, Russia, China, and North Korea are all nuclear armed, whereas, the three in the southern camp(the Japs., South Korea, and the U.S.) has only the U.S.A. as a nuclear power.
If indeed China is an hypothetical enemy of the United States in the 21st century, it would make abundant sense to make peace with N. Korea and normalize relations with N. Korea, as it will also atutomatically resolve the N. Korean nuclear issue!
No country in the world has been so oppressed, bullied, and humiliated unjustly as N. Korea by the United States – indeed a shame and a stain in the diplomatic history of a “great country professing in human liberty, justice, and peace!”