Is North Korea An 'Imminent Threat'?

[Brian4Liberty]

Is North Korea An 'Imminent Threat'?

[navy-vet]

I love and respect Dr Paul beyond words, but...."maybe the South Koreans will talk with the North", seems somewhat unrealistic. In for a penny, in for a pound seems to ring through to me.

[AZJoe]

Were we to lift sanctions and open trade with North Korea, imagine just how quickly the things would change for the better.

In fact that almost took place under the Sunshine Policy between North and South Korea with active talks of plans for a future reunification:

"a wide cooperative framework that included infrastructure development, such as the restoration and construction of roads and railways, economic assistance, as well as a wide variety of inter-Korean business ventures. It was aimed at both increasing living standards in the North and upping its dependence on the South. More than 40 different types of agreements were concluded between the two Koreas during this period ..." http://thediplomat.com/2016/07/when-sunshine-ruled-on-the-korean-peninsula/

However the neoconservative establishment could not risk the possibility of peace, trade and prosperity breaking out on the Korean Peninsula. The neoconservatives had control of George W. Bush. Washington received the Sunshine Policy with absolute frigidity, actively opposed it, and reacted with heavy hand to sabotage any detente or cooperation between the Koreas. Bush came out with his "Axis of Evil" speech, pushed additional military buildup, personally visited the DMZ to whip up antagonistic fervor, targeted South Korean politicians to attempt to discredit those who favored Sunshine, and did everything possible to try to thwart detente and trade, and antagonize relations between the two Koreas. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and the neocons were successful then.

More on the Sunshine Police and Washington's war against peace:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...he-korean-war/
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...he-korean-war/
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2...ean-conundrum/
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j010603.html

[AZJoe]

North Korea is About to Take over the USA:



According to the Heritage Foundation:

“The rogue regime in North Korea poses one of the most dangerous threats to U.S. national security interests. Pyongyang presents a multifaceted military threat to peace and stability in Asia as well as a global proliferation risk.

General Curtis LeMay who coordinated the bombing raids against North Korea during the Korean War (1950-53) acknowledged that:

We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure? Strategic Air Warfare: An Interview with Generals (1988)

But it was all for a good cause, killing to preserve democracy.
The territories North of the thirty-eighth parallel were subjected to extensive carpet bombing and fire-bombing using napalm, which resulted in the destruction of seventy-eight cities and thousands of villages. As a result, almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed.
According to U.S. Major General William F. Dean:

“most of the North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wastelands”.

According to award winning author and Vietnam war veteran Brian Willson:

“It is now believed that the population north of the imposed thirty-eighth Parallel lost nearly a third its population of eight to nine million people during the thirty-seven-month-long “hot” war, 1950-53, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.” ...

Pyongyang rebuilt:


“While the Western media portrays North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as a threat to Global Security, it fails to acknowledge that the U.S. has being threatening North Korea with a nuclear attack for more than half a century.Unknown to the broader public, the U.S. had envisaged the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea at the very outset of the Korean War in 1950. In the immediate wake of the war, the U.S. deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea for use on a pre-emptive basis against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in violation of the July 1953 Armistice Agreement.” ...

[AZJoe]

From Moon of Alabama:

Media say,
the U.S. may
or may not
kill a number of North Koreans
for this or that
or no reason
but call North Korea
'the volatile and unpredictable regime'

consider what the U.S. media don't tell you about Korea:

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.

"As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress. ...

"The offer is (still) on the table and China supports it."

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach ...

North Korea is understandably nervous each and every time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large yearly maneuvers and openly train for invading North Korea and for killing its government and people. ...

North Korea justifies its nuclear program as the economically optimal way to respond to these maneuvers.

Each time the U.S. and South Korea launch their very large maneuvers, the North Korean conscription army (1.2 million strong) has to go into a high state of defense readiness. Large maneuvers are a classic starting point for military attacks. The U.S.-South Korean maneuvers are (intentionally) held during the planting (April/May) or harvesting (August) season for rice when North Korea needs each and every hand in its few arable areas. Only 17% of the northern landmass is usable for agriculture and the climate in not favorable. ...

Its nuclear deterrent allows North Korea to reduce its conventional military readiness especially during the all important agricultural seasons. ... - Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy)

A guaranteed end of the yearly U.S. maneuvers would allow North Korea to lower its conventional defenses without relying on nukes. The link between the U.S. maneuvers and the nuclear deterrent North Korea is making in its repeated offer is a direct and logical connection.

The North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un has officially announced a no-first-use policy for its nuclear capabilities ...
The byongjin strategy, despised by the Obama administration, has been successful

What are the sources of [North Korea's economic] growth? One explanation might be that less is now spent on the conventional military sector, while nuclear development at this stage is cheaper—it may only cost 2 to 3 percent of GNP, according to some estimates. Theoretically, byungjin is more “economy friendly” than the previous “songun” or military-first policy which supposedly concentrated resources on the military.

To understand why North Korea fears U.S. aggressiveness consider the utter devastation caused mostly by the U.S. during the Korea War: via Jeffrey Kaye - bigger

Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945 and tried to assimilate it. A nominal communist resistance under Kim Il-sung and others fought against the Japanese occupation. After the Japanese WWII surrender in 1945 the U.S. controlled and occupied the mostly agricultural parts of Korea below the arbitrarily chosen 38th parallel line. The allied Soviet Union controlled the industrialized part above the line. They had agreed on a short trusteeship of a united and independent country. In the upcoming cold war the U.S. retracted on the agreement and in 1948 installed a South Korean proxy dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. This manifested an artificial border the Koreans had not asked for and did not want. The communists still commanded a strong and seasoned resistance movement in the south and hoped to reunite the country. The Korea War ensued. It utterly destroyed the country. All of Korea was severely effected but especially the industrialized north which lost about a third of its population and all of its reasonably well developed infrastructure - roads, factories and nearly all of its cities. ...

Every Korean family was effected. ... No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.

The country would reunite if China and the U.S. (and Russia) could agree upon its neutrality. ... the continued danger of an "accidental" war in Korea would be much diminished if the U.S. would accept the North Korean offer - an end to aggressive behavior like threatening maneuvers against the north, in exchange for a verified stop of the northern nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has to insist on this condition out of sheer economic necessity.

The U.S. government and the "western" media hide the rationality of the northern offer ... it is not Korea, neither north nor south, that is the "volatile and unpredictable" entity here. ...

[AZJoe]

Both China (“The situation now is similar to the time before a storm, and this kind of dangerous situation worth of our attention and we must be alert,”) and Russia (watching the developments around North Korea with "great concern") have weighed in on the increasingly tense saber-rattling ...

China warned that a war on the Korean Peninsula would have devastating consequences and "one has the feeling that a war could break out at any moment."...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged all parties “to stop provoking and threatening each other and not to make the situation irretrievable," seemingly fearful that the next step could make war (world-inclusive) inevitable.

“No matter who the nation is, if it continues to provoke wars in the Peninsula, it has to bear this historical responsibility and pay its price.” “Once a war really happens, the result will be nothing but losing all round and no one could become a winner,” Wang told reporters

These concerns were echoed by a senior Russian lawmaker who, as AP reports, says the US is a greater threat to global peace than North Korea...

Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, said Friday "the most alarming thing about the current U.S. administration is that you can't be sure if it is bluffing or really going to implement its threats."

He says "America objectively poses a greater threat to peace than North Korea," adding that "the entire world is scared and left guessing if it strikes or not."...