Could USA Do Worse To Korea Than Last Time? N. Korean Joy To Have Nuclear Deterrent Understandable

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By Jay Janson
RESIDENT HISTORIAN
first posted Oct 10, 2017 • reposted May 26, 2021

PRECIS

History of genocidal crimes against Koreans in their own beloved country by the USA before and after it became the sole world superpower as a result of the Second World War, a conflict which could not have happened without mega enormous investment in, and joint venturing by US corporations and banks in building impoverished Nazi Germany up to world #1 military force. Why there is joy for having a nuclear deterrent becomes obvious.

—The Editor

With seconds to live, a South Korean accused of collaboration or sympathy with the North or an independent Korea, looks at the camera in a testimony that the presstitutes of the Western media have buried for generations. The South Korean regime installed by the Americans committed—along with US troops—unspeakable atrocities on the civilian population, Hundreds of thousands were murdered just in the South in pacification campaigns at which the US army and the CIA were already developing an expertise.

The following is a short history of genocidal crimes against humanity bitterly suffered by Koreans in their own beloved country from savage attack, conquest, and manipulation by the USA before and after it became the sole world superpower as a result of the Second World War, which could not have happened without the mega enormous investment in, and joint venturing by, US corporations and banks in building impoverished Nazi Germany up to world number one military force; a rearmament permitted by the powerful elite in Washington and Europe in clear abrogation of the prohibitions of the Versailles Treaty - with Hitler’s promise to invade socialist Russia in mind.[1]

1871, June 10 — Adm. Rodgers, commanding five warships and a landing party of over 1,230 men armed with Remington carbines and Springfield muskets attack Choji Fortress of Kanghwa-do, and proceed to occupy the whole island (116.8 sq mi), killing 350 Korean defenders of the island while losing only three of their own, withdrawing to China when the Korean army sends in reinforcement armed with modern weapons. This war known in Korea as Sinmi-yangyo and as the 1871 US Korea Campaign in America.2

Theodore Roosevelt has historically received a good press because of his fight against the Robber Barons and other popular gestures, including the creation of national parks, and supposed conservationism, but his lust for animal killing and brutal imperialist attitudes certainly cast a pall on his image. From its birth as independent nation, hard-core imperialism has been a trait of US leaders in an unbroken chain of shame and criminality.

1905 — US President Theodore Roosevelt cuts all relations with Koreans, turns the American legation in Seoul over to the Japanese military, deletes the word “Korea” from the State Department’s Record of Foreign Relations and places it under the heading of “Japan,” approving of what will be a brutal, too often murderous, forty year occupation, during much of which, Koreans are forbidden even to speak their language; an unconstitutional act of the US president, said to have been in exchange for acceptance of the continuing US occupation of the Philippines by Japan, recognized as a half-brother empire of the European colonial powers.3

1918 — President Woodrow Wilson officially recognizes Korea as territory of the Japanese Empire, refuses to receive delegations from Korea and Vietnam demanding restoration of sovereignty, delegations mistakenly hopeful for Wilson having proclaimed before both houses of Congress, as an addendum to his ‘Fourteen Points“ of a day earlier, “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action…. that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them;” a promise become known in the third world as an infamous, cruel and preposterous lie (the Japanese occupiers were deadly in punishing all those involved in the country-wide March 1st Korean Independence Movement).

1945, September 8 — US State Department officials arrive in Korea with the US Army, disband the government of the Korean People’s Republic created September 6, in Seoul, by delegates from local peoples’ offices from all provinces throughout the peninsula formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10), proceed without any Korean authorization whatsoever, to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops and establishing a military government, flying in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur’s private plane), Singman Rhee, to head it; eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that will include collaborators, and will outlaw all strikes, declare the KPR and all its activities illegal and begin a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea.4

1946-1949 — The US in effect declares war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee’s special forces and secret police take the lives of some 200,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea; on the Island of Cheju (Jeju) alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents are murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north invade the South. [Wikipedia]

Even South Korean media cannot or will not entirely suppress the truth—

The Jeju massacre in film. South Korean Director O Muel occupies a rare place in Korean cinema, being one of the very few filmmakers creating works about Jeju Island. All of his previous films were shot on his native Jeju, in Jeju dialect, featuring the lives of people living on the island. O’s latest film “Jiseul,” however, is an artful, grim piece about a horrific historical event on the island. Unveiled to the press on Sunday as part of the Busan International Film Festival, it tells the story of a group of some 120 villagers who hid from soldiers in a cave during the 1948 Jeju Massacre. The historical event resulted in the death of some 30,000 islanders as the government sought to quell an uprising led by a small group of communist insurgents. (Source: The Korea Herald)

1950, June 28 — The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea’s ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.

The US Government, under control of its speculative investment banking elite, uses the gigantic world-wide reach of its likewise controlled US media cartel to manufacture an upside-down reality regarding US business and government intentions in Korea (and elsewhere), by blocking, slanting, omission, disinformation, misinformation and a virulent demonization of a nation once bombed flat, twice over, by US war planes; a six-decade propaganda campaign surely prosecutable as a media crime against peace under Principle VI c. of the universally signed on to Nuremberg Principles in the UN Charter.

1953-2013 — The US using its control over international financial institutions and its power over the financial policies of most of the nations on Earth, keeps in place economy crippling sanctions and trade blockades (only loosening them slightly from time to time in attempts to halt the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea production of nuclear weapons as it faces a US, constantly condemning it in intense belligerency, massively armed with ever new nuclear weapons. (US sanctions obviously violate Principle VI c. Crimes Against Humanity: “inhuman acts done against any civilian population.”)

1945-2013 — The US Government, under control of its speculative investment banking elite, uses the gigantic world-wide reach of its likewise controlled US media cartel to manufacture an upside-down reality regarding US business and government intentions in Korea (and elsewhere), by blocking, slanting, omission, disinformation, misinformation and a virulent demonization of a nation once bombed flat, twice over, by US war planes; a six-decade propaganda campaign surely prosecutable as a media crime against peace under Principle VI c. of the universally signed on to Nuremberg Principles in the UN Charter.5

2010 May — An example of ‘sentence 8’ is the Russian Navy derided, and Chinese government ignored story of a old North Korean torpedo having cut in half a modern South Korean warship in an area where days before, US-ROK live fire exercise war games were menacingly taking place off the coast of North Korea; detailed investigation by Japanese found that a US minesweeper, known to have left the day before, might have been practicing with the newest US spider mine weapon, entirely capable, as most modern mines are indeed capable of, blowing a small warship into two pieces; though a discredited and fabulous US accusation, this media doctored widely broadcasted UN backed accusation has however, become accepted as fact by most of the entire Western media audience and will continue on into the future as the truth until the day it can no longer be of interest).6

2013 and 2017 — A second example of US media crimes against peace, is the present startling situation, as offered in US TV and print media exactly the same as in 2013, namely, that of the somewhat tiny nation, North Korea (size of US State of Pennsylvania), threatening the greatest military power the world has ever seen, possessing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, with a nuclear attack, not for the sake of the bravely warning of its defense and retaliation power to ward of a feared attack from US planes and ships which periodically fire heavy weapons of mass destruction within earshot of its capital Pyongyang as part of frequent military exercises off its coast; the whole world is constantly ‘informed’ of what a madcap menace its leader is, by a Pentagon fed US media, which at the same time is justifying US bombings, invasions, occupations of some three dozen other small nations. In 1913 the North Korea leader Kim Jong-il received the same treatment in the cartelized US media as his young son Kim Jong-un receives today.

Your author, having Korean family and having lived and worked in Seoul for some seven years, admits to puzzlement that the Chinese and Russian governments have kowtowed once again to the now waning superpower in approving sanctions on North Korea even while knowing the effect of those sanctions on the North Korean economy will cause suffering for Korean people and hardly affect the lives of their leaders. This reminds of the case of the Chinese and Russian governments not using their Security Council veto to block the ‘No Fly Zone’ destruction of wealthy and prosperous Libya by the colonial powers. Chinese and Russian intelligence surely knew that there was no uprising of the Libyan people, as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy confessed one month before Gadaffi’s assassination[7] when nearly one million Libyans, out of a total population of six million wildly demonstrated with a mile long green flag for Libya’s revolutionary socialist Arab Jamahiriya‎ while listening to Gadaffi’s encouraging speech from a secret location as British and French warplanes bombed Tripoli nearby[8] (of course never reported in criminal Western media).

In going along with sanctioning a fellow member of the United Nations for gaining a defensive capability against nuclear threats of the superpower made by both President Truman[9] and the Eisenhower administration[10] before those of President Trump, China and Russia must be deeming it safer to play along and allow the superpower to strut a bit more before they find an appropriate moment to lower the economic boom on the superpower’s fake trillions of dollars, which will as well end USA’s still overwhelming military superiority.

End Notes

Buried History: 27 Million Died in Russia Because Wall Street Built Up Hitler’s Wehrmacht to Knock Out Soviet Union https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/08/08/buried-history-27-million-died-in-russia-because-wall-street-built-up-hitlers-wehrmacht-to-knock-out-soviet-union/
During the last years of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea’s isolationist policy earned it the name the “Hermit Kingdom”, primarily for protection against Western imperialism before it was forced to open trade beginning an era leading into Japanese colonial rule. A Brief History of the US-Korea Relations Prior to 1945, Korea Web Weekly [↩]
Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy, New York Times, James Bradley, 12/5/2009. See also the

Taft-Katsura Agreement. [↩]
The Unknown Truth About Korea: U.S. Sanctioned Death Squads and War Crimes, 1945-1953, S Brian Willson. [↩]
Manufacturing Consent, Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky. 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. [↩]
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.

See also Kim Petersen, “Independent Media as Mouthpiece for Centers of Power,” Dissident Voice, 28 May 2010.

NY Times, AP Consistently Leaving Out Debunking Info on “N. Korean Torpedo’ Claim.

7. Neither would conglomerate US media ever report that only one month BEFORE Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's gloating and bragging as having had a hand in Gadaffi's (brutal) death, long term Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had made an abject belated public confession, speaking before Italian reporters regarding huge Italian protests against NATO's war on Libya and its current relentless terror bombing during a strike for better work conditions in Rome in which the cry of union members was, "There is a silent massacre going on in Libya!" and "Don't let Sirte, Bani Walid and Sebha become the new Fallujah or the new Guernica". Berlusconi, also known to own ninety percent of Italian media, confessed as follows: "Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi hasn't been the victim of a popular uprising!" That is the conviction of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who had been a friend of Gaddafi till Italy became one of the leading countries behind NATO's war against Libya in March spoke as follows: "This has nothing to do with a popular uprising. The Libyan people love Gaddafi, as I was able to see when I went to Libya", Berlusconi said on Friday during a party meeting in Rome. He said he suspects there was a plot against Gaddafi..

"Powerful people decided to give life to a new era by trying to oust Gaddafi," Berlusconi said, according to Italian news agency ANSA. Earlier, in July, Berlusconi already said he was against NATO intervention in Libya but "had to go along with it", therewith exposing the fragility of the alliance trying to murder Gaddafi. He added: "What choice did I have considering America's pressure, President Georgio Napolitano's stance, and the Parliament's decision?" [Berlusconi says Libyans love Qaddafi: as Italians protest against NATO, Voltairenet.org www.voltairenet.org/article171382.html]

8. Your author shall never forget seeing on a European news site, an overjoyed Saif Gaddafi elated, smiling happily, trilled, relieved, convinced that the nightmare was over because a million, or more Libyans in a total population of little more than six, were wildly demonstrating with green flags for Gaddafi and their Jamahiriva or green book government on the outskirts of Tripoli even as NATO warplanes bombed within earshot. His elation was contagious, and for a moment or two I too naively thought yes, they would have to stop bombing for this overwhelming evidence that it was wrong.

Then I remembered the incredible seeming omniscient ability of Western media to blackout news. Of course, with world opinion always in it craw, 'mainstream media' simply never reported these massive demonstrations for Gaddafi and against the US NATO UN sponsored continuous bombing then already at this juncture three and half months long. (Non-Western media covering the demonstrations did note that the bombings of Tripoli "had declined since the rise of the marches in Tripoli with a shift to increased bombing of other parts of Libya.") .

Readers may view a few of the non-Western reports with videos and photos and if interested read the full translation of Gaddafi's long speech of July 1, 2011 and HUGE PRO GADDAFI RALLY IN TRIPOLI - RAW FOOTAGE, 7/2/2011, www.blacklistednews.com/?news_id=14505 or videos can be seen with Gadaffi addressing the multitude by hookup to remote location at www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSnlIlATIKw and www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3lJAbRkzQ4 November 30: On this day in 1950, President Harry S. Truman announces during a press conference that he is prepared to authorize the use of atomic weapons in order to achieve peace in Korea. At the time of Truman’s announcement, communist China had joined North Korean forces ... This Day In History, The History Channel. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/truman-refuses-to-rule-out-atomic-weapons 10. New York Times, June 8, 1984,

U.S. PAPERS TELL OF '53 POLICY TO USE A-BOMB IN KOREA
By BERNARD GWERTZMAN

WASHINGTON, June 7— Documents released today give details on a decision by President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Administration in 1953 to use atomic bombs in North Korea and Communist China, if necessary, to end the Korean War. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/08/world/us-papers-tell-of-53-policy-to-use-a-bomb-in-korea.html

A P P E N D I X
How US propaganda permeates everything and pollutes the minds of even those who should know better.
Hollywood’s Repeated Campaigns to Glorify MacArthur
To their shame, prominent actors—from Laurence Olivier to Gregory Peck, a renowned liberal—have lent their talents to the perpetuation of imperialist narratives about Korea. The main motif has been MacArthur’s landing at Inchon in 1950, an event that signaled the US’ fateful re-entry into the Korean civil war, with Washington determined to roll back the North’s gains in the South. The Communist North was seeking to reunify the peninsula, and at last liberate Korea from foreign meddling and domination. MacArthur’s Inchon exploits, a clear case of an imperialist victory to be regretted not celebrated, have generated a number of films to date, most of which have proved mercifully box office and critical poison and promptly sunk from view a few days after wide release.

Douglas MacArthur and US imperialism whitewashed in films

Peck as MacArthur in disgraceful 1977 film.

Douglas MacArthur, an egotistic and fiercely anti-communist general who personifies the callousness of Western imperialism in Asia, and who in his youth distinguished himself in the Philippines “pacification campaign” and US meddling in Mexico, and who was also happy to break up in 1932 the Depression-era veterans’ “bonus army” in Washington DC, has been the object of several hagiographic films designed to make him look as a sort of flawed hero, himself a victim of political chicanery, eventually forcing his retirement.
..
Three films deserve mention. The first, MacArthur (1977), enlisted the services of none other than Gregory Peck, a lifelong liberal Democrat who had actually opposed the blacklist and the HUAC hearings. Peck’s participation in this film confirms how little major celebrities understand about the real nature of American power.

The second feature, directed by a Briton, Terence Young, perhaps even more notorious than the previous one, was called Inchon. The most memorable aspect of this film is that it managed to convince Laurence Oliver to play MacArthur. The Wiki provides useful information:

INCHON (also called Inchon!) is a 1981 South Korean–American epic war filmabout the Battle of Inchon, considered to be the turning point of the Korean War. The film was directed by Terence Young and financed by Unification Churchfounder Sun Myung Moon. It stars Laurence Olivier as General Douglas MacArthur, who led the United States surprise amphibious landing at Incheon, South Korea in 1950. Also featured are Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Toshiro Mifune, and Richard Roundtree. It was filmed in South Korea, California, Italy, Ireland and Japan. <—> The film was released theatrically in the United States and Canada in September 1982 and then quickly withdrawn because of its poor performance at the box office. It has never been released on home video, although it has sometimes been broadcast on television. It was the largest financial loss in film of 1982, earning less than $2 million [on a budget of $46MM]. Inchon was financed by Sun Myung Moon and Japanese newspaper publisher Mitsuharu Ishii.^[3]^[4]^[5] Moon was involved with the film’s production from the very beginning.^[6] Ishii, a member of the Unification Church in Japan and a friend of Moon, served as the film’s producer; and Moon, although credited as “Special Advisor on Korean Matters”, contributed $30 million to Ishii’s film production company One Way Productions.^[6]^[7]^[8] Moon initially did not want the public to know that he was behind the financing of the film and its production.^[4] Ishii said he was instructed by God to make the film.^[7] Additional funding was provided by Robert Standard, the associate producer and a member of the Unification Church of the United States.^[6]

Reviewers at the time gave it consistently bad reviews and later commentators including Newsweek, TV Guide and Canadian Press have classed Inchon among the worst films of all time.

While Peck’s participation in the first film could be attributed to the perennial propaganda fog and knee-jerk chauvinism that envelops all Americans, including of course liberals, Olivier left no doubt as to his clearly unethical motives. In an interview he was refreshingly honest about his motives. Again the Wiki:

Laurence Olivier was paid $1 million to play General Douglas MacArthur in the film.^[4] He was contracted for six weeks of filming, and received a payment of $250,000 upon signing the contract and the remainder was given in four subsequent installments.^[11]His salary came out to $50,000 per day.^[14] In addition to this fee, Olivier also received $2,500 per week for his expenses.^[11]Olivier was interviewed during the film’s production and explained why he agreed to be part of its cast: “People ask me why I’m playing in this picture. The answer is simple. Money, dear boy. I’m like a vintage wine. You have to drink me quickly before I turn sour. I’m almost used up now and I can feel the end coming. That’s why I’m taking money now. I’ve got nothing to leave my family but the money I can make from films. Nothing is beneath me if it pays well. I’ve earned the right to damn well grab whatever I can in the time I’ve got left.”^[3]
Olivier researched the role by traveling to Norfolk, Virginia to visit the MacArthur Museum, and speaking with Alexander Haig, who had served as aide-de-camp to MacArthur.^[11] Haig told Olivier that MacArthur’s voice sounded like W. C. Fields, and Olivier tried to imitate this.^[5] He enjoyed working with accents, and obtained recordings of MacArthur’s voice. He was interested in various inconsistencies in these recordings, and especially in the difference in vowel sounds made by MacArthur.^[3] During filming, the makeup process for Olivier took two and a half hours, but after it was complete, he thought he neither looked like himself nor like General MacArthur.^[11]
The 72-year-old Olivier, who had been in poor health for years, suffered during filming in Seoul because of the summer heat. Director Terence Young recalled that between takes Olivier lay on a cot, virtually immobile with pain and exhaustion, but that when needed “he dropped fifty years and stepped forward without complaint”.
This shameful film also featured celebrity stars like Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Richard Roundtree, and Toshiro Mifune, all probably motivated for the same reason as Olivier, money, and a lack of scruples or total indifference to what the Korean War was all about.
The third and last film meriting mention in this dishonor roll is Operation Chromite.
Operation Chromite (2016) , intended as war epic, latest propaganda effort again chiefly financed by the South Koreans. Stars clueless “action star” Liam Neeson as MacArthur
To gauge this film’s artistic caliber (never mind the truth content) we quote from a review appearing on a rightwing Christian magazine, Providence, which bills itself as “A JOURNAL OF CHRISTIANITY & AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. What follows is truly Orwellian, so brace yourselves. It is nonetheless an interesting insight into this kind of mentality, still extremely common in the US and other corners of the world. Let’s call it “Christian imperialism”. Declares critic Mark Tooley:
“My first time viewing a Korean film, it was melodramatic, mawkish, and often absurdly over the top, drenched in extravagant South Korean patriotism and anti-communist excitation. Reviewers hate it. I loved it! So too would MacArthur, the personification of maudlin schmalz, who is justifiably the story’s heroic patriarch, and who is portrayed as a fearless war god, just as he would have hoped.
“North Korea’s Soviet backed invasion was brazen aggression that threatened the still embryonic post WWII liberal order that the U.S. had hoped to orchestrate through the United Nations. The UN role in defending South Korea was an early and still rare instance of multilateral defiance of aggression. Inchon, which routed North Korea after its near complete occupation of the South, was America’s greatest military victory in Korea and MacArthur’s greatest personal triumph.
MacArthur is portrayed commendably by Liam Neeson as stoic and visionary. As MacArthur overlooks his departing invasion force he looks like Caesar preparing his legions to invade Gaul. The fleet of 200 warships slicing through stormy night waters with MacArthur at the helm seems like a martial angelic host avenging devilish injustice. As the South Korean covert team on shore captures and ignites a light house to illuminate the arriving invasion, MacArthur is at the helm of his battleship, quoting God’s proclamation in Genesis: “Let there be light!” It’s all great fun, and better than the Unification Church-funded 1981 film Inchon, which I saw as a boy, with Laurence Olivier as MacArthur, who concluded that widely reviled movie by leading the liberated South Korean parliament in the Lord’s Prayer.”

About the Author

JAY JANSON, spent eight years as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and also toured, including with Dan Tai-son, who practiced in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh, and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. Everyone in the orchestra lost family, "killed by the Americans" they would mention simply, with Buddhist un-accusing acceptance.. Read other articles by Jay.

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