South Korean President Championing US Wars
Saw Own Siblings Killed By US Bombs
By Jay Janson
25 October, 2012
Countercurrents.org
In his autobiography, The Uncharted Path, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, writing of his youth during the American invasion of Korea, describes his tiny brother and sister being caught outdoors and wounded during a US bombing and despite all efforts slowly dying some days later.
Lee Myung-bak's continuing loyalty to America's mass-homicidal foreign policy serving the Wall Street led international community of private investors is somewhat striking. From your author's experience living in the most Confucian society in the world, the bonds of family in Korea are such that when tragedy strikes one family member it makes a lasting impression and a molding of attitudes for the rest of the family.
What happened to Lee's tiny siblings notwithstanding, "with the presidential election in South Korea just two months away, efforts are underway to lock into place a policy of [warlike] confrontation with that nation's neighbor to the north. When President Lee took office five years ago, he wasted little time in undoing the rapprochement that had been painstakingly built up during his predecessor's term. All of the leading candidates in this year's presidential race, including even Park Geun-hye of the conservative Grand National Party, hold more moderate positions on relations with North Korea than does President Lee.
Neither Lee nor U.S. President Obama are keen on warming relations between the two Koreas and making every effort to forestall such an eventuality. A new agreement allows South Korea to develop ballistic missiles ranging up to 800 kilometers, sufficient to cover all of North Korea and sections of China and Russia.
'If we launch a missile from the central region of the country, all of North Korean territory is under the 550-kilometer striking range,' [boasts] Major General Shin Won-sik, South Korean Ministry of National Defense.
... a missile is now permitted to house a warhead weighing up to two tons. ... The Lee Administration wants to move forward without delay on the deployment of the new missiles, and has asked the legislature to allocate $2.2 billion towards a long range ballistic missile program." [ Militarizing South Korea , By Gregory Elich, Global Research , October 17, 2012 click here [1]
One can imagine how many of Korea's five and six-year-olds could be killed by shrapnel from these missiles or mercifully turned instantly into dust by Lee's new missiles. It would seem that what almost every other person in the world can imagine, President Lee cannot, or will not let it bother his conscience.
By Gregory Elich continues, quoting the U.S. Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, "'it is interesting how well the system could mesh with that of the U.S. missile defense system. ... consisting of radar, U.S.-built Patriot PAC-2 missiles, and Aegis destroyers armed with sea-to-air missiles purchased from the U.S., is ideally suited for interoperability with the U.S. system.'
The Obama Administration is engaging in a major expansion of its missile system in Asia.The focus of our rhetoric is North Korea. The reality is the U.S.laying the foundations for an Asian missile ... system with Japan, South Korea and Australia.
The Lee Administration has further tied South Korea to Western military policy by its recent signing onto NATO's Partnership Cooperation Program and is a contributor" to NATO operations in Afghanistan. ...
The U.S. will install additional Patriot PAC-3 and ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles, and is returning a chemical warfare battalion to South Korea, which is in the incipient stage of producing kamikaze drones with warheads weighing more than two tons.
The Obama Administration has steadfastly eschewed any talks with North Korea, and appears bent on a policy of further isolating that nation and raising tensions higher. President Lee, similarly averse to dialogue, wants to present his successor in office with a fait accompli, ... exposing it to the risk of being drawn into any conflict that may arise between the U.S. and China or Russia.
Much depends on the extent that the next South Korean president is willing or able to undo the damage of these recent moves, and to instead focus on dialogue with North Korea and pursue an independent policy that puts the Korean people first."
This archival research peoples historian knows a lot of America's consistent business oriented, horrifically violent and deviously media presented wars, military interventions and covert overthrows in smaller vulnerable nations. Mr. Lee Myung-bak surely knows at least the history of deadly US crimes against the people of his nation.
Educated Koreans know that President Theodore Roosevelt closed all commercial and diplomatic relations with Koreans and dealt all matters through the Japanese military government of occupied Korea. They know President Wilson officially recognized Korea as Japanese Territory and this business collaboration between the US and Japanese Empires lasted through Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administrations for a total of nearly forty years. Forty years of brutal treatment by the Japanese. Thank you America.
Koreans know the US defeated Japan in 1945 in World War II outside of Korea, and by the time Americans and the Soviets arrived to replace the Japanese occupation, Koreans had already set up, through workers and farmers and anti Japanese groups, arrangements for democratic self-rule. The US and Soviet Union, without asking Korean elders, illegally, and against all ethics and moral standards, divided Korea. Thanks again.
In the years previous to troops from the North reunifying the peninsula in five short weeks, around 200,000 communist, socialists, union members and others demanding democracy, often enough along with their women folk and children were massacred in the South, as recently documented at hundreds of sites uncovered all over South Korea by an official South Korean Congress created Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Cheju Island, where your truly spent his honeymoon, was the site of the massacre of 30,000 (minimum, by UN statistics) men women and children two years before the the North invaded the South by South Korean police and special forces.
All this was accomplished under orders of President Singman Rhee,[2] who had been flown in from Washington and installed in restricted elections under the American occupation which had refused to recognize many workers and peasant organizations, favoring instead the business class much of which had long collaborated with Japanese. (Despite the US invasion having reinstating him as President, Sigmund Rhee eventually would be forced to flee his country a few years later as citizens converged on the Presidential Palace.)
It was to be expected that the Soviet occupation in the North would favor working class organizations over the land owners and business enterprisers who had prospered collaborating with Japanese rule.
After the lighting success of the North Korea army, in five weeks reuniting the peninsula, the US and its allies invaded under the flag of the UN Security Council they controlled.[3] Americans over three years bombed to the ground every Korea city and town of any size, with the exception of US garrisoned Pusan.
(Divide three thousand (Americans dead at 9/11) into two million (Koreans dead) to estimate how many 9/11s were put on the Korean people.
Obviously a flattened Korea could not have gotten back at the superpower even if it would have wanted to, though a hell of a lot of Koreans wanted to, and one can be sure a lot of Koreans still would have liked to have bombed the US back. )
President Lee would know well what is shown
in an Australian produced documentary, The Forgotten War - still- shots of young South Korean young men roped together after capture for running away from induction into the army of the Sigmund Rhee government; newsreels of substantial amounts of Koreans lining the streets welcoming the troops from the North. Lee would remember as well what we read in dozens of articles throughout the Korean War that bewailed, what the New York Times referred to as, 'the lack of will to fight' of much of the South's forces during the war, as the U.S. continually bore the brunt of the fighting.
"... archival documents during a US retreat later emerged showing U.S. commanders ordering the shooting of refugees during this period, declassified documents found but not disclosed by the Pentagon investigators. Among them was a report by the U.S. ambassador in South Korea in July 1950 that the U.S. military had adopted a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Despite demands, the U.S. investigation was not reopened.
Prompted by the exposure of No Gun Ri, survivors of similar alleged incidents in 1950--1951 filed reports with the Seoul government. In 2008 an investigative commission said more than 200 cases of alleged large-scale civilian killings by the U.S. military had been registered, mostly air attacks.
Veterans of the 7th Cavalry remembered similar scenes. "I shot, too. Shot at people. I don't know if they were soldiers or what. Kids, there was kids out there, it didn't matter what it was, 8 to 80, blind, crippled or crazy, they shot 'em all," Joseph Jackman, a G Company rifleman, told the British Broadcasting Corp.[11] Norman L. Tinkler, an H Company machine gunner, remembered white-clad people coming down the railroad tracks toward the bridge, including "a lot of women and children. ... I was the one who pulled the trigger." He fired about 1,000 rounds and assumed "there weren't no survivors."[12][13] Said ex-rifleman Herman Patterson, "It was assumed there were enemy in these people."[14] Thomas H. Hacha, dug in nearby with the sister 1st Battalion, witnessed the slaughter: "I could see the tracers (bullets) spinning around inside the tunnel ... and they were dying down there. I could hear the people screaming."[15]
On July 29, 1950, three days after the killings began, the 7th Cavalry Regiment was withdrawn from those positions as the U.S. retreat continued.
Chun Wook, a journalist with the North Korean 3rd Division troops who advanced to No Gun Ri, reported finding the area covered with layers of bodies. He said about 400 people had been killed." [No Gun Ri Massacre , Wikipedia ] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre]
In 2005 the South Korean National Assembly established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in keeping with its maturation as a constitutional democracy. The Commission sought to "reveal the truth behind civilian massacres during the Korean War and human rights abuses during the [South Korean] authoritarian period and the anti-Japanese independence movement and to learn about the struggle to write truth into Korea's modern history and recent evidence of U.S. and South Korean responsibility for the
massacre of civilians before and during the Korean War."
A panel discussion headed up by its standing commissioner was recently heard in heart gripping documentation reports at the International Affairs Building of Columbia University, New York, as part of a short tour of universities in the United States. The speaker was Kim Dong-choon, Standing Commissioner, South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Human ights and Peace Center, Sungkonghoe University
It should be sobering for Americans to contemplate Picasso's Korean Massacre painting of American troops shooting down women and children at Sinchon, in the North of Korea. see Picasso Korean Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Picasso_Massacre_in_Korea.jpg
President Lee could not possibly be unaware of all the well documented events and suffering described above, and he surely must remember his little brother's and sister's violent deaths. But in a world of maximized universal deceit and disinformation one cannot expect Lee to act differently than all the rest of the politicians in most countries that are beholden to the amoral international private investment community that rules the world.
The fact that for years the U.S. has had enormous trade and peaceful and friendly relations with the communist governments of China and Vietnam is making a goodly number of Americans, not only Koreans, wonder why millions of Korean and Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Latin American and African lives were sacrificed in murderously violent actions to prevent communist leadership.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his sermon 'Beyond Vietnam - a Time to Break Silence railed that all these atrocity wars and covert overthrows are to maintain unjust predatory investments, but these US wars and violent covert attacks on vulnerable nations go forward unabated in no small measure for corporate media having buried King's words along with his assassinated body. [see King Condemned US Wars http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/]
Though King's words have been discounted, we have the wisdom of forerunners of King's awaking insight in Helen Keller, Eugene Debs and Albert Einstein. And the pathetic war criminal investors, and their beholden sickly corrupted media personnel, arrogant military, horrific CIA and self-incriminating elected and appointed politicians both past and present will eventually be brought to justice in the information age. [see educational web site: Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity - http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/]
When Korea is once again whole, it will prosecute, if only posthumously, the unfortunate President Lee Myung-bak just as in South Korea itself, two former presidents were tried and sentenced to death in 1996. [ Chun Doo-huan, Roh Tae-woo, Wikepedia]
During five years of working and living among Koreans, I learned that today's military nature of a North Korean government once threatened with US nuclear weapons [4] belies the history of what was the Northern part of the colony of Japan before partition. It had been the more sophisticated, more industrialized, culturally advanced half of the the colonized nation by virtue, among other more traditional aspects, its railroads and great hydroelectric energy. In the South, even now, though it be still dangerous to speak freely about the North under threat of imprisonment or worse, intellectuals and artists look to the North as an un- commercialized society where revered soft-spoken and refined Korean traditional graces still prevail in counter-distinction to a commodified sense of values ever more encroaching on sensitivity in the southern and capitalist half of the most Confucian society in the world.[4]
Footnotes
[1]
Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He provide a list of sources for reports in his article:
(1) Jung Ha-Won, "US Lets S. Korea Raise Missile Range to Cover North," Agence France-Presse, October 7, 2012.
(2) Kim Hee-jin, "U.S. Allows 800km Range for Seoul's Ballistic Missiles," JoongAng Ilbo, October 8, 2012.
(3) Lee Tae-hoon, "Seoul Will Cover NK with Ballistic Missiles," Korea Times, October 7, 2012.
(4) Kim Hee-jin and Jeong Yong-soo, "Larger Missiles to be Deployed within Five Years," JoongAng Ilbo, October 9, 2012.
(5) "Pentagon: S. Korea has Many Options to Help U.S. Missile Defense," Yonhap, September 25, 2012.
(6) Kwon Tae-ho, "US-South Korean Expansions in East Asia Could Provoke China's Growing Military," June 16, 2012.
(7) Ha Eo-young, "The Aftermath of US-Korea Missile Range Extension Agreement," Hankyoreh, October 9, 2012.
(8) Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, "U.S. Plans New Asia Missile Defenses," Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2012.
(9) Jim Wolf, "U.S., Japan Said Discussing Missile Defense Ship Upgrades," Reuters, August 15, 2012.
(10)Park Hyong-ki, "Korea, U.S. to Strengthen Missile Defense," Korea Herald, October 10, 2012.
(11)"NATO and the Republic of Korea Sign New Partnership Programme," North Atlantic Treaty Organization, September 20, 2012.
(12) "U.S. Forces to Bring "Smart' Artillery Shells to Korea," Chosun Ilbo, October 5, 2012.
(13)"U.S. Chemical Warfare Battalion to Return to Korea," Chosun Ilbo, October 8, 2012.
Chris Carroll and Jon Rabiroff, "Army Relocating Chemical Warfare Battalion to South Korea," Stars and Stripes, October 5, 2012.
(14) "South Korea Interested in Procurement of AH-1Z and AH-64D Helicopters," Defence Professionals, September 26, 2012.
David J. Barton, "$3.6b Helicopter Sale to Korea Proposed, Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop JV Primes," Govconwire, September 26, 2012.
Wendell Minnick, "Korea Decision on Attack Helicopters Nearing," Defense News, September 28, 2012.
(15) Daniel Miller, "South Korea Developing Kamikaze-Style Drone that Dive Bombs the Enemy at 250mph," Daily Mail, October 10, 2012.
Kim Hee-jin, "U.S. Allows 800km Range for Seoul's Ballistic Missiles," JoongAng Ilbo, October 8, 2012.
Gregory Elich is also the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.
click here
[2]
In 1925, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai, made up of all of the major pro-independence factions had impeached Rhee for misuse of his authority, an event that would foreshadow his later political career. [Syngman Rhee, Wikipedia]
[3]
UNTV recently filmed UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon thanking US Armed Forces Veterans for saving his country from a triumphal communist government of Korea. (The UN flag flew over an American invasion and murder of a couple million Koreans in Korea, often in their own villages and homes, for the greater evil for US, and its servile UN, was a triumphal communist government of Korea.)
[4]
Past OEN published articles that further illustrate continuing US plans for Korea's continued partition:
June 16, 2010
NY Times, AP Consistently Leaving Out Debunking Info on "N. Korean Torpedo' Claim
Even capitalist South Korea's major newspapers have carried the friendly-US-fire suppositions re its blown up warship by both a Russian Navy investigation and Japanese investigative reporters. It is difficult to even find having been reported in U.S. media the simple and diplomatic Chinese answer to the U.S. asking help to punish North Korea on the basis of a U.S. 'international investigation' finding. "Not creditable."
June 9, 2010
N. Korean Torpedo Accusation Fizzles - Strong Probability of US Mine Strike Investigated
The self-righteous scowling countenance of Mrs. Clinton reminded us of a serious Colin Powell pointing to photos of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction trucks, of Adelai Stevenson's photo evidence that planes that bombed Cuba were not U.S. planes, of Robert McNamara on the Gulf of Tonkin attack on innocent U.S. warships, of the John Foster Dulles proving that communists, not capitalists, were out to conquer the world.
May 27, 2009
U.S. Threat to Atom Bomb North Korea Never Forgotten
On Nov. 30, 1950, President Truman at a press conference, remarked that the use of the atomic bomb was under active consideration. Koreans heard this as menacingly foreboding apocalypse, for U.S. forces were in retreat, and had suffered losses when China send 'volunteer' forces to N. Korea 45 days earlier. North Korea going to great expense to acquire nuclear capability. Is memory of that U.S. threat to Nuke fueling paranoia?
April 17, 2009
In 2005, in keeping with its maturation as a constitutional democracy, the South Korean National Assembly established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to seek to "reveal the truth behind civilian massacres during the Korean War and human rights abuses during the [South Korean] authoritarian period and recent evidence of U.S. and South Korean responsibility for the massacre of civilians
February 27, 2008
NY Phil Plays in a Korea Once Destroyed by U.S. Invasion, Flattened by U.S. Bombers
Beautiful telecast. Koreans interviewed spoke of avowed resolve to protect their country,they knew Americans were their enemies, spoke softly, politely, with calm pleasant countenance. Americans can go on thinking they were good guys doing good. But they might like to remember that 'good' was done in Korea, to Koreans, all of whom were not in agreement that it was for their own good. Picasso's Cheju Massacre Painting sobering
April 6, 2009
Obama Calls on U.N. to Punish North Korea Over Rocket, but WHO PUNISHES THE U.S.?
Commercial media feeding frenzy on the space missile launch by North Korea at the same time whipping up fear of Iran. Obama has harsh words for North Korea, as earlier for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela and Iran, which received a kind invite to talk mixed in with such severe public criticism as to make the invitation unacceptable. So far, Obama, both as president and as commander-in-chief belies change to serious diplomacy.
Jay Janson, Archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.
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