Korea, What is Wrong?

The government of North Korea is trying to launch a satellite into orbit. Since by U.S. definition North Korea is evil, it is assumed by our corporate security state apparatus and their loyal followers that the launch is just a practice for an offensive, inter-continental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

A little bit of historical review may put the matter in perspective. Despite having an advanced civilization, Korea has always been caught between two more powerful advanced civilizations, those of China and Japan. After the U.S. went on a bullying expedition to Japan in 1854 [See Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan] the Japanese decided they had to modernize or be swallowed up like other Asian nations had been by imperialistic predators.

By then the predators were carving up their rival China, and so Japan took advantage of Chinese weakness to regain "stewardship" [my word choice] over Korea. This took three steps. After Japan won the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, China granted clear independence to Korea. Then Japan won the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and Japan made Korea a protectorate. The U.S. went along with that because we had just massacred about 2 million people in the Philippine Islands and did not want an increasingly powerful Japan taking advantage of the situation there to gain control of U.S. sugar plantations there. [See U.S. Conquest of the Philippines]

Of course all along most Koreans wanted an independent nation, and multiple underground independence organizations existed. When World War II came along they became particularly hopeful. Their hopes were inflated by promises from the Allies that after Japan was defeated Korea would at last take its place among the world's independent nations.

After the Democratic Party of the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and the Japanese surrendered unconditionally (they had been trying to surrender conditionally for months), the Japanese military prepared to return to Japan from Korea and Manchukuo (Manchuria). The Korean independence organizations began talking about how a new Korea would be run. U.S. commercial interests, the Pentagon and Harry Truman did not see it that way. U.S. troops were rushed in, ostensibly to accept the surrender of the Japanese troops in Korea. Because Russian troops had been fighting in Manchuria, just north of Korea, the U.S. agreed that they could temporarily occupy the northern half of Korea.

Then the Russians and U.S. each decided that instead of allowing the Koreans to govern themselves in a unified country, the occupiers would pick winners and losers among the political groups in the regions they occupied. Korea was divided in half, which none of the Korean nationalists liked. But Korean communists got control of the north, and U.S. puppets got control of the south. Moderate, pro-democracy groups were shunted aside in both the north and the south.

When the Russians and Americans finally withdrew their troops, the communists in the north decided to re-unite the country. They easily won a civil war with the fascists in South Korea. But that was politically unacceptable to Harry Truman. The U.S. invaded South Korea. We had the blessings of the United Nations, but then again the U.N. had been set up to further the agendas of the U.S., and the French and British empires.

The Viceroy of Japan, Douglas MacArthur, had the Koreans whipped, but made the mistake of moving to invade China to re-establish war lord Chiang Kai-Shek as its, well, war lord. The Chinese reminded Douglas that white people don't automatically win wars (MacArthur had executed a couple of Japanese generals as war criminals for the crime of having defeated him in battle back in World War II.) After a lot of people died, the U.S. ended up with just half of Korea. The Chinese withdrew from North Korea, but the U.S. occupiers stayed.

So you have to ask yourself, even if you are an American, who is in the wrong here? The foreign invaders, the Americans, or the natives? Are North Koreans, or Koreans of any kind, sitting armed to the teeth on America's borders? I know of none. But U.S. troops, armed to the teeth, sit on North Korea's border. Has Korea ever invaded the United States? No, but the United States has invaded Korea.

I admit the communists have made a mess of the situation, but then they were put in a very weird situation. Their country was torn asunder, and most communist soldiers and party members were killed by U.S. troops during the Korean War. In the south communists and even non-communists who did not walk right were simply rounded up and slaughtered. So Kim Il-sung and a bunch of idiots started bossing Koreans around. They had to allocate a disproportionate share of their economy to defending their southern border. There was nothing inherent in communism that led the nation to economic disaster. China's Communist Party has proven that communism can develop an economy just fine.

So Kim Jong-un is now supreme leader. Maybe, instead of being just an idiot with an inheritance, he is smarter than we think. Maybe with his advisors they can figure out a way to make North Korea livable. My point would be that the U.S. has no business there. Let the Koreans in the south work out their future with the Koreans in the north as best they can.

As to nuclear weapons, again I remind you that only one political party on earth has ever used them, and that party, the Democratic Party, used them against large numbers of civilians living in two urban areas. If there were a world government interested in justice and peace (I don't think the U.N. constitutes such a government), its priority would be to take atomic weapons away from the U.S. first. And send all U.S. troops home. And try Barack Obama, George W. Bush and their crews for war crimes.

See also: The U.S. Conquest of Korea