Gathering Places
Gathering Places
U.S. should use empathy,
creativity with N. KoreaWhen I interviewed former President Harry S Truman in 1957 for my book "The Korean Decision: June 24-30, 1950," I asked, "Mr. President, as a devout Baptist, when you made the decision to engage the United States in the fourth-largest war in its history [now fifth after Vietnam], did you pray?" "Hell no!" he replied. "There's right and wrong going back to Greece and Rome. It was the right thing to do. I made the decision and went to sleep."
United States-Korea policy has been deep in righteous sleep for more than 50 years. But recent events raise alarm that it is long past time to wake up. Confronted with the threat of nuclear weapon development in the North and rising youthful challenges to continued American military presence in the South, it is time to exercise some empathy and creativity in U.S.-Korean relations.
Empathy for both Koreas should recognize that the exercise of U.S. power on the peninsula, however benevolently or demonically portrayed, is seen as an intrusion. Korean patriots do not want their nation to be a perpetual protectorate, dependency or target of any country -- not Japan, not China, not Russia and not the United States.
Empathy for the South should recognize that U.S. support for repressive regimes during the Cold War associated it with violations of human rights and atrocities, such as the 1980 Kwangju City slaughter that would have brought outraged American protest if committed in a Soviet satellite. What also must be recognized is that Koreans credit themselves with progress toward electoral democracy -- such as through courageous student demonstrations in 1960 and 1987 -- despite lagging and ambiguous U.S. policy. A reservoir of good will is associated with U.S. assistance in repelling the 1950 North Korean invasion and in postwar reconstruction. But this is tempered with criticism of the 1945 role of the United States and the Soviet Union in the tragic division of the country.
In understanding North Korea it is essential to realize that its people were subjected to massive U.S. Air Force bombing -- as well as Navy bombardment -- throughout the 1950-'53 war. Pyongyang, Wonsan and other cities were flattened. To such experience must be added the unambiguous American threat since 1953 to repeat that devastation, including continuing threats to use nuclear weapons.
People subjected to such devastation can be expected to exhibit both defensive bellicosity and a striving for credible removal of the threat of its repetition. Thus becomes understandable the current North Korean move to acquire a deterrent nuclear weapons capability combined with a call for a nonaggression pact and peace treaty with the United States.
Another key to understanding the current nuclear crisis is to recognize North Korea's frustration that numerous peacemaking overtures directed to the United States have been ignored for at least 30 years. In 1973 the North claimed at the United Nations that it had made 131 unanswered peace proposals to the United States. Rather than being "blackmail," the North's nuclear message can be interpreted as, "We want to talk to you about a peace treaty and normal diplomatic relations."
If a nuclear-weapon-free, united Korea is a primary goal of U.S. policy it should simultaneously do three things:
>> Engage the North directly on nuclear and mutual security issues.>> Move resolutely to establish diplomatic relations. China and Russia have recognized the two Koreas to advantage. Why should the United States and Japan remain in disadvantageous, self-imposed exclusion?
>> Strongly support South Korean initiatives for reconciliation and peaceful relations with the North. After all, Korea is their country.
It is time for the United States to wake up. It must shift from its Cold War mindset of paternalism and enmity to become a constructive partner in helping all Koreans to achieve independent peaceful reintegration.
Glenn D. Paige is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, president of the Center for Global Nonviolence and the author of "Nonkilling Global Political Science."