February 10, 2018
Considering that a nuclear conflict over North Korea appeared imminent in recent weeks, the winter Olympics at Pyeongchang, South Korea, is a most welcome distraction – and might even deter a major war on the peninsula.
The highlight of the games was the arrival of Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un. This was the first time a member of North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty had come to South Korea. Her handshake with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in was a historic and welcome moment.
So too the planned joint marches by North and South Korean athletes under a new reunification flag. For all Koreans, this was a deeply emotional and inspiring ceremony.
But not for US Vice President Mike Pence, who was sent by Trump to give the Olympics the evil eye. He even refused to stand for the joint marchers in a surly act that spoke volumes about his role. Whether he meets President Moon or Kim Yo-jong remains to be seen. Even a cup of tea between Pence and Kim could end all the crazy talk about nuclear war. Does anyone in Washington know that North Korea lies between China and Russia?
All this drama is happening as the Trump White House is advocating giving North Korea a `bloody nose.’ Meaning a massive bombing campaign that could very likely include nuclear weapons. Trump, who received a reported five exemptions from military service because of a little boner spur in his foot, revels in military affairs and thinks a ‘bloody nose’ will warn Kim Jong-un to be good. Trump is planning a big military parade at which he will take the salute.
This writer went through US Army basic and advanced infantry training with a broken bone in my foot, and has no sympathy with the president’s militaristic pretensions.
South Korea’s able president Moon is moving heaven and earth to prevent a war in which his nation would be the main victim. Some 2-3 million Korean civilians died in the 1950-53 Korean War. All North Korea and much of South Korea were bombed flat by US air power. Now, as tensions surge, US heavy bombers and nuclear weapons ring North Korea, ready to flatten the north and make the rubble bounce.
North Korea’s thousands of heavy guns dug into mountains just north of the DMZ (I’ve seen them) could flatten all of South Korea’s capitol, Seoul, north of the Han River, killing millions, not counting nukes and poison gas. South Korea, the world’s eleventh industrial power, would again pay the terrible price for a new war on the peninsula.
One of VP Pence’s main missions is to whip up support among rightwing South Koreans who bitterly oppose any peace deal between the two Koreas and support attacking the north. Many on South Korea’s hard right are evangelical Christians. It’s no coincidence that Mike Pence, an ardent fundamentalist protestant, was sent to show the flag and rally opposition to any détente with North Korea. Whatever happened to ‘turn the other cheek?’
Washington does not want a lessening of tensions between the two Koreas. And much less, talk of potential reunification. If the two Koreas came to peace, what justification would the US have for keeping powerful air, land and naval forces in strategic South Korea, often called ‘America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier.’ Japan is no more favorable to a united Korea.
South Korean President Moon has been calling for a new, positive era in north-south relations. He has been adamant in opposing any chance of war on the peninsula. But Washington has simply ignored Moon or brushed aside his objections to threats of war against North Korea. The North Koreans routinely accused the south of being ‘American puppets.’ Pyongyang is the only ‘legitimate, truly independent Korean government,’ charges the north.
Interestingly, in the event of war, South Korea’s 655,000-man active armed forces and 4 million-man reserves come under the command of a four-star US general. US nuclear weapons can be moved through South Korean bases. The so-called joint US-South Korea joint command is mere window dressing.
It’s hard to say how close the US was to attacking North Korea. Trump certainly backed himself into a corner by all his foolish threats to unleash ‘fire and fury’ on North Korea. The Olympics delayed the rush to war against North Korea. But once they are over, the war drums will resume beating. President Trump is probably thinking about a dandy parade after a short, devastating attack on North Korea – provided, of course, that the troublesome northerners don’t manage to retaliate by landing a few nuclear warheads on Japan and Washington.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2018
This post is in: North Korea, South Korea
…still looking up:
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“SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea plans to send a special envoy to North Korea in response to an invitation from leader Kim Jong Un, South Korean President Moon Jae-in told his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in a phone call on Thursday.”
from the BBC,
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“North Korea is willing to hold talks with the US, South Korea says.
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The announcement came after Gen Kim Yong-chol met South Korean President Moon Jae-in before the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics.
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US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka also attended the ceremony, but US officials have ruled out meeting the North Korean delegation.
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The US says North Koreans pulled out of a meeting with Vice-President Mike Pence during the opening ceremony.”
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We’ll see how the Americans drop of this olive branch. When people are diametrically apart, it’s tough to find a common ground. North Korea wants nuclear weapons for self-protection, and the Americans don’t want KN to have them because they are a threat to American rule of South East Asia…
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UN needs to change, South Korea and Japan need to ‘kick out’ the Americans. The Americans need to stop meddling in international affairs. Pretty simple to me… now, just to get it implemented.
From the BBC,
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“An armed officer who stood outside a Florida school where a gunman killed 17 people last week “certainly did a poor job”, US President Donald Trump says.
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Deputy Scot Peterson resigned after an investigation found he failed to confront the suspect.
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Mr Trump said Mr Peterson might be a “coward” who “didn’t react properly under pressure”.”
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Strange comment from D-cubed (Draft Dodger Donald)
… and more good news, “North Korea’s Kim Yo-jong baby rumours fascinate South”
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This could all be vapourware… but, it doesn’t hurt, and, may lead to something…
One sports corollary about Mike Pence being at the Olympics with a mandate to stir up trouble between the Koreas: Could it mean that the American Government acting behind the scenes have put pressure on Commissioner Gary Bettman and the NHL to pull out of the Pyeongchang Games? Bettman’s decision to pull the NHL out of the Olympics hurts international hockey badly and it is not characteristic of him. Recently he brought back the World Cup, allowed the NHL to play games in Europe again, and play exhibition games in China.
It also makes no sense as a business decision. South Korea recently raised the standard of play of its hockey teams to at least the “B level” of play. South Korea is a potential splendid new market for the NHL of 50 million people so snubbing them by pulling out the Olympics makes no sense at all. One reason advanced was that the current Olympics in their time zone hurt American television ratings, but Bettman also hinted that the NHL might return for the next Olympics which will be held in Beijing, China – the same time zone as Pyeongchang, so that explanation has no validity either.
So Pence’s presence at the Olympics might suggest that background pressure, perhaps even threats and blackmail might have been used on Bettman and the NHL to take an illogical, bad, business decision that hurts the growth of international hockey. Like the Kennedy assassination and 9/11, it might take a long, long time, if ever before the public finds out the real truth.
“South Korea’s able president Moon is moving heaven and earth to prevent a war in which his nation would be the main victim.”
But all this Olympics diversions, charm offensive, and silly antics will NOT change the course of history because they don’t get to the heart of the matter. They pass over the real cancer of Korean history.
If someone has cancer, the problem will not go away with healthy food, exercise, festivity, songs and dance, and etc. The cancer itself has to be targeted and removed. Unless it is removed, no other cure will make any long-term difference. Eating healthy and exercise are good things but cannot cure cancer. The cancer cells have to be removed or destroyed through surgery, radiation, and/or chemo.
This is why all the fireworks during the Olympics won’t make a difference. They are fun while they last. It’s like Russian Olympics didn’t change anything. Why? Russia wouldn’t and still won’t face up to the fact that its cancer is the fact that JEWS HATE RUSSIA. As long as Russia won’t address that key issue, nothing they will make any difference since Jewish power that attacks Russia will go on attacking. The Jewish role(the dominant force in the West) in anti-Russianism has to be exposed, which is why Russia Insider was right about the need to address the Jew Taboo. Russia spent a lot of money at Sochi as peace offensive, but it got a bloody nose in Ukraine as the result of Neocon plotting against Russia. While Russians were throwing a party for peace and good relations, vicious Jewish globalists were doing everything to surround and subvert Russia.
https://russia-insider.com/en/its-time-drop-jew-taboo/ri22186
Same with Korea. All this Olympics charm stuff is nothing but empty fireworks. It doesn’t get to the cancer of history in Korea. The core of the cancer is the fact that the US divided Korea and gave half to Stalin. Koreans didn’t ask for this. And it wasn’t Stalin who proposed the idea. US came up with the idea that Soviets should enter North Asia, and it was US idea that Soviets should enter Korea as well. Now if the US had let Soviets take all of Korea, that would have been that. It would have been united and ‘liberated’ by Soviets. Or, US could have insisted on occupying Korea on their own. But US decided to divide the nation even though, unlike Germany, Korea was not an aggressor nation. What happened was similar to what was pushed through UN in relation to Palestine. Again, Palestinians had no say in the matter. They woke up one day and found that half their nation had been given to Zionists(who were let in by the imperialists).
Anyway, the division of Korea by the US and the gifting the north to Stalin was the cancer of history plaguing Korea. But no side will focus on this crucial truth. North Korea has its own bogus myth of how heroic Kim defeated the Japanese all on his own BUT the US somehow grabbed the south. America mentions its role in dividing Korea but treats it as just a detail of history, like how Jean Marie Le Pen dismissed Shoah as detail of WWII. He didn’t deny it but saw no great significance in it.
US treats the division of Korea not as a tragedy or crime(for which is US culpable) but just as little detail(like Obama dismisses his utter destruction of Libya as, oops, just an ‘mistake’). The official US narrative of Korea begins with the northern ‘invasion’ of the south, as if it’s somehow wrong for a people to want to unite their own nation, especially one that was divided by foreign powers. So, the US grandstands as the selfless nation that intervened to save the south from the communist north. This is all the funnier when the US had removed all its military from the South, left the South with nothing in weapons, and openly declared to the world it wouldn’t lift a finger to save the South. North saw green light to take the south, and it would have succeeded if the US didn’t suddenly have a change of mind and decided to intervene and then dump all its surplus weaponry from WWII on civilians in the North.
And of course, the South follows the US narrative. It treats US role in division of Korea as just a detail-of-history(“nothing to notice here, folks, just move along”) and grovels before Americans as Big Brother, Big Boss, Big Savior, etc. As for the Korean left, it discredited itself during the Cold War with its romantic view of the Stalinist north. Though even the Korean left now sees North Korea as an evil regime, they wasted precious energy during the Cold War in being sympathetic to the north. And because of such sympathies, it was easily routed by the Right. It wasn’t very difficult to prove that the Kim clan is pretty vile.
Now, if the Korean Left had good sense, it would have denounced the North Korean regime as repressive & inhuman and then blamed the US for its existence. After all, there never would have been a North K and South K if the US hadn’t decided to play footsie with the Soviets. While the Korean War was a violent blood tragedy, the bigger tragedy was the relatively quiet one: the division of Korea that set the grounds for the war, the bad blood, the tensions, the mutual hatred among the same people, and now this current madness that can really spiral out of control and bring upon yet another calamity.
So, the story of the division is the real cancer of Korean history, and nothing real can be done unless that cancer is identified and removed. It must be re-categorized from detail of history to the key narrative that explains why the war happened and why this conflict exists to this day. (Similarly, blaming Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon for the Vietnam War really misses the point. The real cancer goes back to Eisenhower who did a terrible job in effectively dividing Vietnam that led to war and all else.) If the division of Korea is turned into a key narrative, then the US will no longer be able to push the white knight BS as the noble defender of poor beleaguered South Korea.
In truth, the US has been protecting SK from a monster it created via the imposition of division. Without the division, there would just have been Korea instead of SK and NK. The whole US moral narrative about Korea collapses overnight if people were to identify and expose the cancer of history. Then, the US will be put on the moral-historical defensive and will have to answer for why it divided Korea and set the grounds for all the hell that followed.
This is why the US ignores the Division as just a detail of history. And SK, so addicted to US markets and US protection, dare not speak the truth either. And NK ignores the truth because the truth would mean NK regime exists only because US gave Stalin half of Korea. Kim Il Sung would be exposed as a puppet installed by Stalin who’d cut a deal with the US. You’d think democratic SK and free Kors in America would speak the truth. But yellows are dog-like and can’t think or see beyond what was taught to them by their teachers and by the media.
Now, there may be some in SK who understand the need for a new Narrative. But they are so fearful of alienating or offending America that they just stick to the tired old game of bashing Japan, which is easy since Japan is politically zero.
Now, South Korean fears may be rational in the sense that America has no concern for real morality. It seems as if the US is a moral nation because of all the noise it makes about the Holocaust, ‘racism’, and ‘antisemitism’, but that’s really about power dynamics, not right and wrong. Would Americans really give a crap about Jews if Jews were poor and dumb and had no control over America? Would Americans really give a crap about blacks if blacks didn’t win in sports & dominate pop music and weren’t favored by powerful Jews(as useful tools against whites)? And why all this favoritism toward Homos? Again, it’s about Power. Jews, blacks, and homos got the power.
In contrast, Obama went back on his promise on the Armenian genocide. And since Armenian-Americans didn’t have the power to do much, it was business as usual. US only cares about those with Power. Americans sympathize with Jews not because Jews were such poor victims of history but because Jews have the power to insist that they be seen as holy victims(and to destroy anyone who won’t weep and pray at the altar of the Shoah). So, if Armenians and South Koreans emulated Jews to gain a moral advantage over America, it won’t work because they don’t have the power of Jews to push their demands. So, South Koreans just go along and play dogs.
The best evidence that American morality is bogus can be illustrated by the Palestinian issue. Here is a people who had NOTHING to do with the great evils of the 20th century. If anything, they were targeted for ethnic cleansing, and they lost their homeland despite their historical innocence. Even now, they live under Occupation in the West Bank, and they continue to lose land to Jewish colonizers. But there is no sympathy for them from neither the Republicans and Democrats. Such indifference(and even hostility toward Palestinians) may seem odd because Americans make big noises about how they learned their lessons from history and feel so sorry for Jews and feel so guilty about blacks… but if so, why such zero sympathy for Palestinians, a people who were utterly crushed by the collusion of the US and USSR to divide Palestine and trigger a war in which the native Arabs would get wiped clean off their lands? Why such lack of sympathy? Why no movie or TV show about Nakba? For the simple fact that Palestinians got no power. If anything, despite all the Palestinian victim-hood, the US narrative on the Middle East would still have us believe that it’s the Israelis who live in fear and terror of the aggressive Palestinians. Granted, Palestinians have used terrorism over the years, but how have Israel and US retaliated against attacks? According to the US narrative, Americans were in the right to firebomb Tokyo and drop nukes on Japan over Hawaii, an island that the Japanese didn’t even intend to occupy. And recently, Israel retaliated against an alleged Iranian drone by bombing dozens of sites in Syria. Israel also continues to occupy Golan Heights that was stolen from Syria. So, the US and Jews deserve the license to kill all they want when they feel wronged, but Palestinians were so very wrong and evil for having used terror upon being robbed of their entire nation. American morality is really a nihilism of power. Only the powerful or those favored by the Power have moral license to do as they please; everyone else better just obey and follow or swallow the pain and sorrow in silence. Asking for even an ounce of sympathy for Palestinians from any US politician is like trying to squeeze tears out of stones. But mention Jews, and they are on their knees with crocodile tears out of fear or expectation of more donations.
Even so, there might be some hope with BDS in preserving at least West Bank for Palestinians. Israel is Jewish and nothing can be done about it now. But Palestinian should still get West Bank, but there is no politician in Congress and no media outlet that will give any voice or support to Palestinians. Hillary, Trump, Romney, McCain, Cruz, etc are alike on the Palestinian issue.
Jews got the power, so they side with AIPAC and ADL while spitting on BDS.
So, what does that tell you about American morality? It’s about the Power, not principles. Americans act so self-righteous and sanctimonious. Americans say they now care so much about truth and human rights to atone for the past sins of white folks.
If so, why won’t America face the truth about the division of Korea or division of Palestine and Nakba? Why won’t America face up to massive killing of civilians in NK(that went far beyond military objectives) or its support of apartheid policies in West Bank? Even when it comes to ‘human rights’ and ‘historical truth’, the Power decides who and what are deserving of sympathy and protection.
Still, both Palestinians and Koreans have been stupid in their failure to base their narratives on historical truth. On the Israeli-Palestine issue, it’s been framed as “Palestinians won’t accept the right of Israel to exist” instead of “The creation of Israel denied the right of Palestine to exist.” Palestinians never had a problem with the Zionist dream of homeland for Jews. Their sense of outrage was about Israel being founded ON Palestine. Imagine if Japanese went to Poland and created New Japan by expelling Poles and then accused Poles of denying the right of New Japan to exist while ignoring the fact that New Japan was built ON Poland.
When Palestinians came to the peace table in the 90s, they should have grounded the debate on “The creation of Israel denied the right of Palestine to exist.” They would have been in a more powerful negotiating position and put the US and the Zionists on the moral defensive. Narratives are that crucial, but Palestinians just didn’t get it, and let the Jews frame the debate.
Still, Palestinians haven’t been as retarded as Koreans. At least Palestinians have a word for their tragedy called Nakba. At least they return to that theme, and a growing number of Americans do feel that Palestinians got a raw deal from the US and USSR then manipulated by Zionists and World Jewry.
In contrast, the Division of Korea, from which all the later tragedies flowed, is treated as just a detail of history by Koreans, and the US is more than happy to oblige because it is spared blame.
Also, by placing the Korean War at the center of the Narrative, the US can grandstand as the caped-crusader-defender of the ‘free’ South from the Stalinist North… while ignoring the fact that it had divided Korea and given north to Stalin to decide its future.
As for the North, it could have devised a most compelling argument for its nuclear program. It could have made a case against American duplicity, invasions, and subversion in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It could have solemnly pointed to Libya to prove that American words aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. (Russia also discovered American promises are worthless when NATO came all the way up to Russian borders. In the end, power and power alone, not promises or principles, decide. Especially when the US is now run by neurotic megalomaniacal Jews, it act like a gangster state.) But with an inflated sense of grandeur, the dumb fat idiot Kim Jong Un just played into the hands of hawks in the US and SK by larping as a James Bond villain. He is so stupid that he even alienated China, for long the only reliable ally and backup for North Korea. An insipid spoiled brat too ‘proud’ to admit he’s been acting in fear of US aggression, he presented himself to the world as a ‘madman’. He plays the gangsta and makes himself come across as the aggressor. What a dummy.
Anyway, if people in South Korea really want to prevent a war that’s being cooked by the US, then they must expose the cancer. And doing so will put even the Korean idiot Right on the defensive. The hard right in Korea(which is just a cucky dog to the US) blasts any overture to NK as pro-communist. This soft-on-communism accusation has always paralyzed those seeking more peaceful approach in the South. But the easiest and most effective way to discredit the hard right that cucks to the US is to put the Division narrative at the center. The Korean right will be shamed into silence when confronted with the truth. Korean right says US is the god-savior nation that protected Koreans in the south from the evil north. But if indeed the north is so evil, why did it come to exist in the first place? Did Koreans themselves decided to divide their nation and create NK? No. North Korea exists only because US made a secret deal with Stalin to divide the nation. It was the US that carelessly just cut a nation like a cake and handed half to a bloody commie tyrant. So, the Korean Right’s position can be exposed as totally delusional. It claims to be anti-communist and pro-US but have totally overlooked the fact that it was their beloved US that divided Korea and handed half the nation to the Soviets.
Also, Evangelical Koreans can be shamed into silence when confronted with the truth that the US is now the leading anti-Christian nation in the world. Bakers in America are destroyed for not baking homo cakes, and churches are desecrated with homo colors. Korean Evangelicals, many of whom are old, still see the US through traditional lenses when the US was indeed a very Christian nation. They need to be informed that the new religion of the US is homomania, and if anything, the main cultural influence of US on Korea or any other nation is slut culture, homo vanity, and degenerate rap filth. Indeed, it is the US that is leading the charge to pressure South Koreans to do away with Christianity and embrace Homo Worship instead.
As for the Korean Left, it needs to face the fact that it was the ‘liberal’ Obama regime that secretly supported the Park Geun regime to victory because both political parties in the US favor the Korean Right as more pliable and obedient. Also, it was Obama’s destruction of Libya and subversive actions in Ukraine and Syria that convinced North Koreans that the US is a gangster-nation that cannot be trusted.
Last year, there was a candlelight revolution against the corrupt regime of Park, a real dodo. What SK needs is another candlelight revolution, one that is about history and truth than day-to-day politics. The cancer of modern Korean history is that the Official Narrative has been based on a falsehood. The great tragedy didn’t begin with the Korean War, Cold War, North Korean nuclear program, or whatever. It began with the criminal division of Korea that was done either by malice or gross negligence by the US.
But, because SK made considerable gains as a vassal of the US, there’s been a tendency to just let sleeping dogs lie and go on with business as usual. Such attitude might be justifiable IF tensions between NK and SK could ease gradually into reconciliation and reunification. Let let bygones be bygones, and look to the hopeful future than the bitter past.
But such an attitude is no longer viable. US is acting so crazy in the Middle East, against Russia, against Iran, and now ramping up useless tension in Asia.
The US had played a key role in creating the terror networks that boomeranged and led to 9/11, but it blamed Hussein for WMD and invaded & destroyed that nation under false pretexts. The fact that the US has never ever been a fair, trustworthy, or balanced negotiator between Jews and Palestinians should be proof enough that it cannot be trusted by any nation. Indeed, how could the US ever have been an impartial mediator between Israelis and Palestinians when it had used its muscle to let Zionists destroy Palestine and carry out Nakba? Imagine if someone helps another person to take over your house and push you out into the street. Can that person be a fair mediator between you and the person who stole your house? Of course not. The ONLY way he might serve as a reliable mediator is if he comes around to admitting that (1) he played an instrumental role in helping the other guy invade your house (2) your miserable state is due to his collusion with the guy who took over your house. The US cannot be a trustworthy mediator between Jews and Palestinians because the US still doesn’t acknowledge Nakba as a great tragedy for the Palestinians resulting from the division of Palestine by the great powers without the consent of Palestinians.
Same goes for Korea. Unless the US admits its role in the Division and faces up to its nihilistic and Zionist-tribalistic gangster-state behavior since the end of the Cold War, the US will go on acting like it has the license to kill any number of people and destroy any number of nations because, of course, it’s the ‘exceptional nation’ and champion of ‘democratic values’.
The only way to stop this crazy beast is to speak the truth. Only the narrative of the Division as front, middle, and center will take away the moral BS of the US when it comes to Korea. US was not some selfless savior of SK from baddie NK. US was the grossly negligent or malicious power that divided a victim nation of Japan and gave half to Stalin. And this wasn’t like Hungary and Poland falling to the Soviets. That was something the US could not prevent. In contrast, it was the US that initiated Soviet entry into Asia and cooked up the plot in Korea.
Because that narrative is shelved or overlooked as just a detail of history, the US puts on moral airs as the white knight of South Korea and acts like it has the right to do anything in the region.
Koreans have shown the collective resolve to remove a corrupt regime. Can they come together to challenge the corrupted narrative that is really the cancer of their nation that gives the US carte blanche to say and do whatever it wants?
One thing for sure, if two great powers, say Russia and China, divided Israel in half into North Israel and South Israel, Jews would not cravenly allow the great powers to force their official narrative on Jews. Jews will insist on their own version of events and shape their own history. But dog-like Koreans? Forget about it.
PS. But what if Crazy Trump really does start a war in Korea. If Kim really has nuclear capability and blows up Seoul or Tokyo, it will be the worst clusterfuc* since WWII. But if NK nuclear threat is mostly bluster and if the Kim regime can be decapitated, Trump may go down as a kind of idiot-savant great liberator, what MacArthur failed to be in the Korean War. This time around, the US won’t have to worry about China since the Chinese washed their hands of spoiled brat Kim. Chinese are playing Pilate and telling fat Kim, “If you want to play with fire and go down in flames, go ahead. We want nothing to do with it.” Some may worry about national resistance from the NK masses following US invasion, but I don’t see it. Without the regime that rules by fear, I think most North Koreans will welcome change. Throw some chocolate bars at the starving bastards, and it will soon be Game Over. As the US discovered in postwar Japan, yellows are dog-like and usually follow the boss. So, when the military regime ruled Japan, all Japanese were willing to fight to the end. But when the US was the new boss, the Japanese were obedient dogs at the feet of Shogun MacArthur. If the NK regime is toppled, the North Korean masses might admire a ‘god-emperor’ like Trump. They’re used to revering big boss man. Also, unlike Iraq where the removal of Hussein led to sectarian and ethnic warfare, there is only one people in North Korea. So, NK won’t end up like tribal Afghanistan, Iraq,and Libya.
The best way to bring peace and unity to Korea is through truth and integrity. But since all sides — the US, NK, and SK — are all so incapable of facing the truth, maybe crazy man Trump will be the man who makes the difference.
Who would have thought Mr. Bonzo Reagan would be the hero of the Cold War? History sometimes works crazy, and Trump’s gamble, if he really does intend war, may be the ice breaker that really opens up a new chapter in the peninsula.
I notice that the Americans feature heavily in your dialogue… They, I suspect, are the problem.
The good will continues, from the BBC, “South Korea has approved a plan to pay the cost of hosting North Korea’s delegation to the Winter Olympics. D-cubed (draft dodger Donald) has to be thinking of some way to rain on this parade.
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The 2.86bn Korean won ($2.64m, £1.9m) will come from the South’s unification ministry budget.
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A group of more than 400 North Korean supporters and performers have travelled to Pyeongchang, South Korea for the Games.”
The Americans will not be pleased.
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From the BBC, “North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has praised South Korea for hosting the North at the Winter Olympics and called for a “further livening up” of the “warm climate of reconciliation””
From the BBC, another wonderful step, “North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has invited South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in to Pyongyang.
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It would be the first summit in more than a decade between Korean leaders.
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Mr Moon said the Koreas should “make it happen” and encouraged the north to return to negotiations with the US.”
The United States should stay at home… they are not needed or, in most cases, wanted. What’s to negotiate?
One interesting thing to consider is the history and psychology involved in the North Korean position. Occupied by Japan in 1916 the were subjected to a campaign designed to destroy their culture and kill off any group that looked like it would resist Japan… then 1946 they get split into two countries without having any say in the matter. Then Syngman Rhee is put in power by the Americans… a right wing politician with ties to American Christian Groups and who once worked for the OSS ( sounds like Afghanistan ? ) He fires up the rhetoric against the North and then the Korean War… not only did the North lose, but more bombs were dropped on North Korea than were in the Pacific during WW2… back to the stone age was the term. Then after ( well after isn’t really accurate as the war never really ended ) the rhetoric, propaganda, military exercises, flyovers, etc only kept bringing back the past. Clinton makes a deal with them, months later Bush rips it up. How do you negotiate with someone who could not have any trust in anything you have to say ? In addition, if Israel is allowed Nuclear weapons because of its history… why shouldn’t North Korea? Trump alone is not to blame for this mess, everyone back to Truman owns a part. Stepping back may be the way to calm things down, but I doubt the blood thirsty American media and electorate would allow any US President to make such a move… the views of Korean North or South be damned. https://www.globalresearch.ca/south-koreas-sunshine-policy-80-percent-of-south-koreans-support-peace-and-north-south-engagement/5617513
It was a shame that the Kim had to make a show of his military. This is not in keeping with the spirit of the Olympics.
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It was far worse for the American Vice President to act like an ass in refusing to greet the Kim. The Americans clearly don’t want a peaceful solution to the ‘Korean Problem’. They really are threatened by N. Korea.
the Americans are not threatened in a military sense, but, by what the Kim represents.
Excellent commentary! The current lessening of tensions between the two Korean governments should be welcomed by Washington, but under its current dotard president, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Pence is obviously a willing puppet of Trump, so his reaction to the conciliatory talk between the North and South Korea is an accurate reflection of his boss’ attitude.
It’s clear that North Korea wants something from the government in Seoul, which accounts in large part for its peaceful overtures. With most of the N. Korean people starving and a Stalinist government that is no doubt broke, Kim Jong-un is getting a more than a little desperate. But, regardless of Kim’s motives, South Korea and Washington should both welcome a lessening of tensions on the Korean peninsula. The US and S. Korea could offer their signatures on a formal end to the Korean War and make some kind of deal on the conduct of the annual joint US-S. Korean military exercises, in exchange for North Korea ending its nuclear weapons program. China and Russia would undoubtedly be happy to assist and officials from a neutral country like Switzerland or Sweden could mediate in such talks.
Trump’s plans to hold a Soviet- or North Korean-style military parade make it obvious that he has delusions of grandeur – something along the lines of a Mussolini or other kooky dictators whose powers he probably envies. One really has to question his sanity. But, the fact that Trump’s fans are sticking with him says a lot about their lack of sanity, too.