KOREA/NORTH KOREA

RAINER SHEA—In living memory, the people of North Korea have endured an act of violence that’s equivalent to the Holocaust. When the U.S. partnered with the right-wing south Korean dictator Syngman Rhee to provoke the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea into war, the Americans took an approach to warfare that amounted to crimes of genocide under international law. By carpet bombing all the major cities in North Korea without exception, burning down every town in North Korea, and committing atrocities like pouring gasoline down air ducts and burning North Korean children alive, American troops killed 1.55 million innocent North Korean civilians. This amounted to a population loss of about one-fourth for north Korea.

KONSTANTIN ASLOMOV—Kim acknowledges that his decision to become a spy forced him to “undergo many internal conflicts,” however, even before that, out of mere curiosity (?), he began to collect information which could be of interest to foreign intelligence. And then everything that could be useful was transferred to the curators: public moods, movements of the armed forces and their military preparation, the nuclear programme, especially the databases of the North Korean nuclear physicists.

Up to the end of the eighteenth century China was a great and well-ordered Empire to whom the people of Asia looked up as the fountainhead of civilisation. There followed a century of decay, but during the last 30 years there has been a crisis of rejuvenation, culminating two years ago in the recovery by China of her former proud position with prestige enhanced by an officialdom that is completely incorruptible and an army under perfect discipline. All this is familiar to those who deal with Far Eastern affairs, but any American who states these facts is in danger of being labelled Communist and being made the victim of a witch-hunt.

STEVEN JONAS—It is very important to note that there has never been a peace treaty, either between North and South Korea nor between the North and the United States following the conclusion of the armistice that ended the fighting in 1953. The North has been asking for such a treaty for many years, as have many elements in South Korea. Under neither Democratic nor Republican Presidents has the U.S. ever shown any inclination to negotiate one. And so, as far as the North Koreans are concerned, the number one objective for the U.S. has been the overthrow of their government, with the likely “unification” (and man, would that be a bloody affair) under South Korean rule.

GEORGE BURCHETT—I first visited the DPRK in September 2002 with my son Graham. We arrived from Sydney, Australia, where we were living at the time. I must confess that I was a little bit apprehensive. I had lived in Australia since 1985 and had had to endure an endless and sustained demonization campaign against my father, Wilfred Burchett. He was never forgiven by the Australian establishment and its media etc. enforcers for reporting the ceasefire talks to end the Korean War from the North Korean-Chinese side.