ROK President Lee heats up cold war on Korean peninsula

The ROK has 40 times the military weaponry

President Lee Myung-bak


There are three key facts that place the brinkmanship being played out on the Korean peninsula into perspective.

south Korea is revealed to be that of a local bully acting on behalf of a much larger global one.

first key fact: north Korea is a military pipsqueak. South Korea’s military budget is many times larger than north Korea’. south Korean military is integrated into the US 30,000 US troops on Korean, 40,000 in nearby Japan. US submarines lurk. US spy planes fly high. US strategic nuclear missiles are targeted. To think that north Korea poses a danger to south Korea is to think idiotically.

The north recognize the gross imbalance. They try to develop the most formidable deterrents it can while seeking peace. north Korean transformed by echo chamber from a non-threat into one where the leadership is mad and unpredictable. Only in this way can a weak country be turned into a danger

second key fact: United States has sought destruction of the north for 60 years
- Isolate diplomatically
- Subject to the longest campaign of economic warfare in modern history
- Continually threaten to place it on a constant war footing that depletes its resources and cripples its economy.

third key fact: right-wing Lee Myung-bak is more closely aligned with US policy on north Korea than two previous govt. Lee wants to see north Korea’s collapse and its absorption by the south, while two other favored detente. Lee was chairman and CEO of Hyundai. Goad is to save from “leftist, anti-U.S. and pro-north Korean elements included former presidents who pursued policies of coexistence and worked toward an eventual confederation. Lee is committed to a policy of confrontation, heightened tensions and subordination of the north to the south. Lee restored designation of north Korea as the ROK’s archenemy. Says expert Selig Harrison “south Korea is once again seeking the collapse of the North and its absorption by the South.


Lee’s local reputation is one of a US puppet betraying Korean interests. tens of thousands in central Seoul, 2008 largest antigovernment protest in 20 years, barricade with shipping containers. coated with oil, filled with sandbags, could not march on President Lee Myung-bak’s office. people placed this message on the shipping containers, ‘This is a new border for our country. From here starts the U.S. state of South Korea.’ Korea’s No. 1 national traitor. Lee has become ‘a Korean leader kowtowing to the Americans.’

the rising tensions re the outcome of the Lee government’s policy of seeking the collapse of north Korea in order to absorb it. Seoul has turned reality on its head and presented all its provocations as self-defense against north Korean aggression. the Cheonan was sunk in shallow waters. Lee quickly manoeuvred to blame. his own military initially denied a torpedo was involved. Lee said his intuition told him a north Korean torpedo was behind the sinking. Washington too exploited the tragedy.

In November north Korea shelled. Washington portrayed the shelling as an unprovoked act. south had fired live artillery into waters belong to north Korea. north Korean retaliation South Korean violation of north Korean territorial waters. Coincided with south Korean manoeuvres involving 70,000 ROK, backed by US Marines. For Pyongyang is could have been a rehearsal for an invasion. how could the DPRK generals distinguish a rehearsal for an invasion from preparation for a real one? south Korea’s live artillery fire was highly aggressive act. On top of that North Korea had to enforce its claim to sovereignty.

Just days ago, 24 December 2010, ROK repeated firing live, same island. US Marines to be present. Seoul warned that a north Korean response, US and south Korean air strikes on north Korean. Pyongyang wisely refrained.

Seoul’s alignment with Washington’s strategy of maintaining unceasing pressure on Pyongyang has been evident in other ways. Lee government has appointed a minister of unification, “south Korea to carve out...and market economy as values.” Imagine if Pyongyang said it was going to carve out. the word “tongil” was emblazoned on the headbands
south Korean marines. atest barrage. Tongil is the Korean word for reunification. reunification by force.

further, another live fire drill to the dozens it has already conducted this year. threateningly close near the land border. The biggest wintertime joint firing exercise the army and air force had staged, 800 troops, F-15K and KF-16 jet fighters, K-1 tanks, AH-1S attack helicopters and K-9. self-propelled guns. South Korea had planned 47 drills but one more owing to “tension with the North.”

Seoul’s goal is to heighten tension. “For the first time in seven years, South Korea has illuminated a 30m steel Christmas tree near the demilitarized zone.

old war against the north will continue, no matter what concessions Pyongyang makes. north Korea can hope for is a relaxation of pressure under another ROK president. Washington settle for is a peace on its own terms – one in which north Korea turns away from socialism and uncompromising commitment to anti-imperialism. north Korea carries on despite enormous imperialist pressure

YOU WOULD THINK SOUTHERNERS WOULD UNDERSTAND OCCUPATION

military occupations generate so much hatred, resentment, and resistance
Costly occupations are an activity you hope your adversaries undertake, especially in areas of little intrinsic strategic value.
Britain's occupation of Iraq after World War I triggered fierce opposition, and British forces in Mandate Palestine eventually faced armed resistance from both Arab and Zionist groups. French rule in Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, and Indochina spawned several violent resistance movements, and Russia has fought Chechen insurgents in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
The Shiite population of southern Lebanon initially welcomed Israel's invasion in 1982, but the IDF behaved badly and stayed too long, which led directly to the formation of Hezbollah.
sraelis were also surprised by the first intifida in 1987, having mistakenly assumed that their occupation of the West Bank was benevolent and that the Palestinians there would be content to be governed by the IDF forever.

Military occupation generates resistance because it is humiliating, disruptive, arbitrary and sometimes terrifying to its objects, even when the occupying power is acting from more-or-less benevolent motives.
so you choke down your anger and just put up with it. Now imagine that this is occurring after you've waited for hours at some internal checkpoint, that none of the occupiers speak your language, and that it is like this every single day. And occasionally the occupying power kills innocent people by mistake, engages in other forms of indiscriminate force, and does so with scant regard for local customs and sensibilities
It is sometimes said that Americans don't understand this phenomenon because the United States has never been conquered and occupied. But this simply isn't true. After the Civil War, a "foreign army" occupied the former Confederacy and imposed a new political order that most white southerners found abhorrent.

clipped from: walt.foreignpolicy.com
The first Reconstruction Act of 1867 put most southern states under formal military control, supervised the writing of new state constitutions, and sought to enfranchise and empower former slaves. It also attempted to rebuild the south economically, but the reconstruction effort was undermined by corruption and poor administration. Sound familiar? However laudable the aims may have been, the results were precisely what one would expect. Northern occupation eventually triggered violent resistance by the Ku Klux Klan, White League, Red Shirts, and other insurgent groups, which helped thwart Reconstruction and paved the way for the Jim Crow system that lasted until the second half of the 20th century.
Nor should we forget how long a profound sense of anger and resentment lasted.
one hundred years after the end of the Civil War, he was still being taught songs that expressed a lingering hatred of what the Yankees had done

This is what defeat in war and prolonged occupation does to a society: it generates hatred and resentment that can last a century or more. Hatred of the "party of Lincoln" kept the South solidly Democratic for decades, and its political character remains distinctly different even today, nearly 150 years after the civil war ended.
And don't forget that unlike our current presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupying forces of the North spoke the same language and had been part of the same country prior to the war; in some cases, there were even strong family connections on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Yet defeat in war and military occupation were an enduring source of division for many years thereafter.
The bottom line is that you don't need to be a sociologist, political scientist, or a student of colonialism or foreign cultures to understand why military occupation is such a poisonous activity and why it usually fails.