It might indeed help if we could dispense with the patronising and accusatory colonialist gaze of Westerners (like the Discovery Channel garbage referred to above), and consider instead the West's historical collusion in the mass-slaughter of Koreans ...
ARTICLE BELOW by Brian Wilson (
www.brianwillson.com.), a Vietnam veteran, long-time peace activist, and writer:
The demonization of North Korea by the United States government continues unrelentlessly. The wealthy oil and baseball man who claims to be president of the United States, used his first State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 to brand perennial enemy North Korea, along with former allies Iran and Iraq, as "the world’s most dangerous regimes" who now form a threatening "axis of evil."
Unbeknown to the public, because it was intended to have remained a secret (whoops!), was the fact that this claimed president presented a "Nuclear Posture Review" report to Congress only three weeks earlier, on January 8, which ordered the Pentagon to prepare contingency plans for use of nuclear weapons. The first designated targets for nuclear attack were his newly identified members of the "axis of evil," along with four other lucky nations as well – Syria, Libya, Russia, and China. That this is nothing short of a policy of ultimate terror remains unaddressed in the U.S. media.
That Koreans are deeply concerned is an understatement. However, they understand the context in which their "evil" is being portrayed, not an altogether new threat levelled at them.
Two of the interventions [by the US] in the Nineteenth Century were inflicted against Korea, the first in 1866. The second, larger one, in 1871, witnessed the landing of over 700 marines and sailors on Kanghwa beach on the west side of Korea seeking to establish the first phases of colonization. Destroying several forts while inflicting over 600 casualties on the defending Korean natives, the U.S. withdrew realizing that in order to assure hegemonic success, a much larger, permanent military presence would be necessary.
The North Korean people regularly remark about this U.S. invasion, even though most in South Korea do not know of it due to historic censorship. Most in the U.S. don’t know about it either, for similar reasons, even though in all of the Nineteenth Century, this was the largest U.S. military force to land on foreign soil outside of Mexico and Canada until the "Spanish American War" in 1898.
I believe it important for U.S. Americans to place themselves in the position of people living in targeted countries. That North Korea, a nation of 24 million people, i.e., one-twentieth the population of the U.S., many of them poor, a land slightly larger in area than the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, continues to be one of the most demonized nations and least understood, totally perplexes the Korean people. It is worthwhile to seek an understanding of their perspective.
I recently visited that nation and talked with a number of her citizens. I travelled 900 ground miles through six of North Korea's nine provinces, as well as spending time in Pyongyang, the capital, and several other cities. I talked with dozens of people from all walks of life. Though times have been hard for North Koreans, especially in the 1990s, they long ago proudly rebuilt all of their dozens of cities, thousands of villages, and hundreds of dykes and dams destroyed during the war.
U.S. interference into the sovereign life of Korea immediately upon the 1945 surrender of the hated Japanese, who had occupied the Korean Peninsula for forty years, is one of the major crimes of the Twentieth Century, from which the Korean people have never recovered. (SEE "United States Government War Crimes," Spring 2002 - issue # 1 of Global Outlook). From a North Korean’s perspective they
(1) have vigorously opposed the unlawful and egregious division of their country from day one to the present,
(2) were blamed for starting the "Korean War" which in fact had been a struggle between a minority of wealthy Koreans supporting continued colonization in collaboration with the U.S. and those majority Koreans who opposed it,
(3) proudly and courageously held the U.S. and its "crony U.N. allies" to a stalemate during the "War," and
(4) have been tragically and unfairly considered a hostile nation ever since. They have not forgotten the forty years of Japanese occupation that preceded the U.S. imposed division and subsequent occupation that continues in the South. They deeply yearn for reunification of their historically unified culture.
Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war, especially from the continuous bombing, much of it incendiary and napalm, deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country. "Every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, and village" was ordered bombed by General MacArthur in the fall of 1950. It never stopped until the day of the armistice on July 27, 1953. The pained memories of people are still obvious, and their anger at "America" is often expressed, though they were very welcoming and gracious to me. Ten million Korean families remain permanently separated from each other due to the military patrolled and fenced dividing line spanning 150 miles across the entire Peninsula.
Let us make it very clear here for western readers. North Korea was virtually totally destroyed during the "Korean War." U.S. General Douglas MacArthur's architect for the criminal air campaign was Strategic Air Command head General Curtis LeMay who had proudly conducted the earlier March 10 - August 15, 1945 continuous incendiary bombings of Japan that had destroyed 63 major cities and murdered a million citizens. (The deadly Atomic bombings actually killed far fewer people.)
Eight years later, after destroying North Korea's 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, LeMay remarked, "Over a period of three years or so we killed off - what - twenty percent of the population."
6 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 the belligerance of another.
Virtually every person wanted to know what I thought of Bush's recent accusation of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." Each of the three governments comprising Bush’s "axis of evil" of course immediately condemned the remarks, North Korea being no exception. I shared with them my own outrage and fears, and they seemed relieved to know that not all "Americans" are so cruel and bellicose. As with people in so many other nations with whom the U.S. has treated with hostility, they simply cannot understand why the U.S. is so obsessed with them.
Koreans were relieved to learn that a recent poll had indicated eighty percent of South Koreans were against the U.S. belligerant stance against their northern neighbors. The North Korean government described Bush as a "typical rogue and a kingpin of terrorism" as he was visiting the South in February, only three weeks after presenting his threatening State of the Union address.
7 It was also encouraging that the two Koreas resumed quiet diplomatic talks in March just as the U.S. and South Korea were once again conducting their regular, large-scale, joint military exercises so enraging to the North, and to an increasing number of people in the South among the growing reunification movement there.
8 In the English-language newspaper, The Pyongyang Times, (February 23, 2002) there were articles entitled "US Is Empire of the Devil," Korea Will Never Be a Threat to the US," and "Bush’s Remarks Stand Condemned." Quite frankly, all three of these articles relate a truth about the U.S. that would draw a consensus from many quarters around the world.