------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 05, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
ANTI-KOREA BILL PASSES HOUSE: U.S. ON TRACK TO YET ANOTHER AGGRESSION
By Deirdre Griswold
It is 51 years since the Korean War ended, not in a peace agreement but merely a truce. In all these years, the U.S. government has refused to sign a peace treaty, instead keeping tens of thousands of troops in South Korea and enforcing the division of the Korean peninsula that has torn apart millions of families.
Last year, the Pentagon announced it was going to spend $11 billion on advanced weaponry for its Korean occupation, while downsizing the number of troops it stations there.
The U.S. is now shifting thousands of its soldiers from South Korea to Iraq. How ever, its threats against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north continue and are growing even louder. Massive military exercises are a frequent occurrence, and threats to launch a preemptive strike on the DPRK's nuclear power facilities are being voiced by politicians of both capitalist parties.
If anything, Democrats like John Kerry sound even more hawkish than the Republicans when it comes to Korea. They accuse Bush of being so focused on Iraq that he has neglected the "nuclear threat" from the DPRK. They are being rivaled in their rhetoric, however, by a coalition of Christian evangelicals and Cold War anti-communists loyal to the Bush regime who have been pushing a bill in Congress that would escalate the pressure on the DPRK in the name of "human rights."
That bill passed the House on July 21. The bipartisan vote was unanimous. If it passes the Senate, the U.S. will allocate $24 million each year to stepped-up propaganda aimed at North Korea. The aim is to encourage an exodus from the country by promising a fast track to U.S. citizenship for Koreans who seek asylum in the U.S.
The bill even allocates funds for U.S. agents to seek out North Koreans living in China. This euphemistically named "North Korea Human Rights Act" was sponsored by Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, chair of the House Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific and a "born-again" Christian. Besides fitting their ideological bent, the bill opens the door to contracting out the work on "human rights" propaganda to right-wing Christian evangelicals who have been lobbying hard for it.
The bill's sponsors in Congress claim its aim is only to improve the "human rights" situation in North Korea. But its real intention can be read in an article on the Christian News Service website CNSNews.com headlined "Campaigners Strategize on Toppling North Korean Regime." It reports on a conference held in Seoul that featured Michael Horowitz, a long-time Cold Warrior from the Hudson Institute, infamous for its advocacy of "preemptive" nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Horowitz is now a champion of "human rights."
This offensive by the U.S. appears aimed at least in part at turning back the growing movement in South Korea for reunification of the divided country. Since the historic visit in 2000 of South Korea's last president, Kim Dae-jung, to Pyong yang, capital of the DPRK, the government in the south has been pursuing a "sunshine policy" of increased contacts with the north. There is overwhelming support for reunification among the Koreans in the south, as well as in the north.
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its socialist partners, the DPRK has been struggling with economic problems, especially a shortage of energy. It turned to nuclear power and started building a reactor, only to run into stiff opposition from the U.S. In 1994, an "Agreed Framework" signed with the Clinton administration promised assistance from Washington and South Korea if the DPRK scrapped the work it had done and built a different kind of nuclear power plant that could not produce plutonium, an element in nuclear weapons production.
The promised assistance--oil and nuclear technology--didn't happen. Oil shipments were inadequate and arrived late, often after North Korea's severe winters. The new nuclear power plants were never built. Finally, the DPRK announced it would no longer abide by the broken agreement and resumed work on its original nuclear program.
This is now being used as a pretext for the heightened threats and hostility from the U.S., which of course is the world's largest nuclear superpower and has nothing to fear from the DPRK as long as the Pentagon doesn't launch an attack on that country.
But that's the rub. As long as there's only an armistice in place, it means the U.S. is still in a state of war with the DPRK. North Korea has been trying for years to get Washington to sit down and negotiate a peace treaty. It refuses to do so. That leaves the door wide open for whoever sits in the White House to embroil this country in another war in Korea at any time.
It's a horrible prospect. Millions of Koreans died in the 1950-53 war, and so did over 50,000 U.S. troops.
South Koreans are alarmed that the new bill just passed by the House can further destabilize the situation on the Korean peninsula. Some lawmakers in the governing Uri Party have been pushing a resolution criticizing the U.S. bill as "a scheme aimed at suffocating North Korea." (Chosun Ilbo, July 23) Demon strations continue almost every day against the U.S. occupation troops in the south and against the government's decision to send Korean troops to Iraq. Pilots, mechanics and other airline workers have refused to work on planes transporting troops.
In the north, the emphasis is on strengthening its military defenses as a deterrent to a possible U.S. attack.
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