AFTER IRAQ, IT SHOULD BE CLEAR: KOREA TRYING TO DETER U.S.ATTACK
By Deirdre Griswold
May 19, 2003--The United States is the world's first and largest nuclear power. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have stationed thousands of nuclear warheads in the area around the Korean peninsula. Washington sent 1.3 million troops to Korea in the early 1950s to fight a war that left 4 to 5 million Koreans and some 50,000 U.S. soldiers dead and the peninsula devastated. The Pentagon has occupied and divided Korea ever since, stationing almost 40,000 troops in the south. It has recently moved more high-tech planes and weaponry into the area.
The Korean War of 1950-53 was never formally ended. The U.S. has refused to negotiate or sign a peace agreement. Here at home, a state of emergency is still on the books that allows the U.S. government to take aggressive action against North Korea (DPRK) at any time.
These basic and undisputed facts must be kept in mind when evaluating the Bush administration's demands that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea scrap its nuclear program. At recent talks in Beijing, Washington refused to give the DPRK any guarantees that, in return, it would refrain from military aggression against that country.
North Korea's nuclear program was designed to supply much-needed electric power to this far-northern country. South Korea has more than a dozen nuclear reactors. But the DPRK's attempts to develop two graphite reactors brought furious resistance from the U.S.
Graphite reactors produce a small amount of plutonium, while the light- water reactors (LWRs) used in South Korea and elsewhere do not. Plutonium can be used to trigger nuclear weapons.
In 1994, the DPRK and the U.S. signed the Framework Agreement. North Korea agreed to abandon construction already begun on its graphite reactors in exchange for a promise that the U.S., South Korea and Japan would help it build two LWRs and that the U.S. would supply fuel oil to cover its power needs in the meantime.
It's been nine years now, and Washington never kept its promises. The LWRs were not built, and fuel deliveries came late, if at all. Last November, at the beginning of another frigid winter, the U.S. and Japan announced they were stopping all oil shipments to the DPRK. That's when the North Koreans announced they were going back to their original plan and resuming work on the graphite reactors.
Since then, the reckless and criminal character of the Bush administration has been revealed to the world through its unprovoked, massive assault on Iraq. Every country not willing to be completely subservient to Washington is worried about defending its territory and its people.
In January the DPRK made it clear that it has the right to defend itself and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has now announced that a 1992 treaty with South Korea to keep the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons is basically "dead." The U.S. claimed to have withdrawn its nuclear weapons back in 1992, but has refused to allow independent inspection of its many bases in South Korea. It also has nuclear-armed submarines and planes within striking distance of Korea.
"We have realized that as long as the United States does not abandon its hostile policy against the North, efforts to keep the Korean Peninsula nuclear free [are] nothing more than an illusion," said the Korean Central News Agency. "We will further boost our already mighty military power."
The president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, is presently in Washington for talks with Bush. In the past, South Korean politicians were nothing more than puppets of U.S. imperialism. But in recent years the sentiment in the south has been so anti-U.S., and the desire of the people for normalization of relations with the north so strong, that elected politicians have had to strike a somewhat independent posture.
People all over the world--except for the millions in the United States captive to a completely controlled media--know that the excuses given by Washington for its invasion and occupation of Iraq were lies. Now they are hearing the same lies about Korea: The DPRK is a "threat" to the world because it may be building "weapons of mass destruction." The U.S. wants to "liberate" the Korean people from a "brutal dictatorship." It wants to bring "free trade" and "development" to the DPRK for the benefit of "the people."
The reality of imperialist war is far different. Even Iraqis who opposed the Saddam Hussein regime are now demonstrating against the U.S.-British occupation of their country--and are being shot down in the streets on orders of the Pentagon. Chaos and devastation are everywhere. U.S. troops protect the oil wells and the oil ministry in Baghdad while millions of civilians are without water and electricity. And they do it for ExxonMobil and Gulf Oil, not for the Iraqi people.
Koreans north and south see all this and vow they will do everything they can to prevent the U.S. imperialist government from starting a new war against the DPRK.
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