50 years of war

We May Have Forgotten; North Korea Hasn’t

By Thomas P. Kim
Thomas P. Kim is a professor of politics and international relations
at Scripps College, Claremont, Calif.

July 23, 2003

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpkim233383942jul23,0,7789520.story

The Bush administration is debating the possibility of a "surgical
strike" on North Korea. This notion is fundamentally shortsighted. To
resolve the current military crisis over North Korea, policy-makers
need to grasp the legacy of the Korean War to North Koreans. American
interests will only be served by a peace treaty that formally ends
that war.

To understand the current military stand-off between the United
States and North Korea, one has to return to the only time Americans
and North Koreans truly came into contact with each other. This Sunday
marks the 50th anniversary of the armistice that suspended armed
hostilities after three years of bloody war. An armistice is an
agreement to cease open conflict. It is not a peace treaty.

In the American imagination the 1950-53 Korean War has been over
for five decades, overshadowed by World War II and eclipsed in
national trauma by the Vietnam War. No powerful collective memory of
Korea binds Americans together as does the "good war" of World War II,
or splits the nation’s soul as does Vietnam.

Most Americans will be surprised to learn that the Korean War
never ended, and that fresh U.S. troops are sent to South Korea every
year. They conduct full-scale combat drills, stare down North Korean
soldiers at the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South, and
war-game for every possible scenario including the use of American
nuclear weapons. In the absence of daily fighting, few recognize that
the 37,000 American troops in South Korea are not peacekeepers, since
there is no peace to be kept.

On the other hand, North Koreans know full well that the war,
known to them as the Fatherland Liberation War, never ended. Not only
do they learn it in their schools, they know it in their bones. While
the Korean War is a distant memory for the vast majority of Americans,
it continues to influence every aspect of life in North Korea today,
and binds North Koreans together like nothing else.

What North Koreans today know is that American bombs leveled
everything in the North, and that every single North Korean lost
family members and friends. The impression of U.S. military might
during the war has always been their single dominant and undiluted
image of the United States.

Western scholars agree that the North invaded the South, but North
Koreans believe that the United States instigated war. Americans who
understand Pearl Harbor’s enduring power to stir the American psyche
can imagine how alive is the national memory of war’s violence when an
entire nation goes up in flames. The Korean War is a living memory
that drives the attitude of the average North Korean.

This is why those arguing for a "surgical strike" on North Korea’s
leader, Kim Jong-il, need a history lesson. For better or worse,
Americans historically come together as a nation in a time of war and
rally around their leader. For better or worse, North Koreans do the
same, only their war has been going on for over 53 years.

During the hot phase of the war, U.S. bombs did not distinguish
between those who supported the North Korean government and those who
did not, but by the time bombs were done dropping only the former were
left. Kim may be the current political beneficiary of the legacy of
the war, but suggesting that he has brainwashed his people against the
United States denies the lived history of more than 22 million people
in the North. Although he may appear hopelessly illegitimate to
American voters, like it or not, Kim represents more than anyone else
the collective will of the North Korean people.

A narrowly targeted attack on the North Korean leader will be seen
as an attack on the North Korean people, and inevitably lead to
popular support for military retaliation against the United States.
Any policy-maker who believes that the average North Korean will
welcome U.S. occupation of North Korea is blind to the historical
record. North Korea will make Iraq look tame by comparison.

Leading Democrats have scored political points with their
criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of North Korea, but
they ignore that the United States was just as close to war in 1994
under the Clinton administration. Although the actors and
administrations have changed, the same historical conditions applied
then as now.

In the final calculus, only a peace treaty that changes the status
quo will guarantee the prevention of nuclear proliferation and secure
the conditions for trade. Britain, Italy, China and Australia are
among the many nations, along with the European Union, that have
established diplomatic relations with North Korea. Washington should
pursue diplomacy as well - 50 years of war is long enough.