SPEAKING
FREELY Kim's message: War is coming to US
soil By Kim Myong Chol
("Unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North
Korea.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
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The Foreign Ministry
of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
announced on October 3 that the DPRK planned to
conduct a nuclear test. The Foreign Ministry
stated that the planned nuclear test was in
response to the grave situation created by the US,
where "the supreme national security interests
of the
DPRK are at stake with the Korean nation standing
at the crossroads of life and death".
The
nuclear test, once conducted, will have
far-reaching implications for the Koreas and the
rest of the world. It carries five messages.
The first message is that Kim Jong-il is
the greatest of the peerless national heroes Korea
has ever produced. Kim is unique in that he is the
first to equip Korea with sufficient military
capability to take the war all the way to the
continental US. Under his leadership the DPRK has
become a nuclear-weapons state with
intercontinental means of delivery. Kim is
certainly in the process of achieving the
long-elusive goal of neutralizing the American
intervention in Korean affairs and bringing
together North and South Korea under the umbrella
of a confederated state.
Unlike all the
previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be
better called the American War or the DPRK-US War
because the main theater will be the continental
US, with major cities transformed into towering
infernos. The DPRK is now the fourth-most powerful
nuclear weapons state just after the US, Russia,
and China.
The DPRK has all types of
nuclear bombs and warheads, atomic, hydrogen and
neutron, and the means of delivery, short-range,
medium-range and long-range, putting the whole of
the continental US within effective range. The
Korean People's Army also is capable of knocking
hostile satellites out of action.
All the
past Korean heroes let the Land of Morning Calm be
reduced to smoking ruins as the wars were fought
on its soil, even though they repelled the
invaders. One of the two major aspirations of the
Korean people has been the buildup of military
capability enough to turn enemy land into the war
theater. Kim has splendidly achieved this
aspiration.
The other has been the
neutralization and phasing out of the American
presence in Korea before the two Koreas come
together as a reunified state. When President
George W Bush agreed on the 2009 transfer of
wartime operational control over South Korean
forces to the South Korean president, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signaled the withdrawal
of US troops with combat troops relocated from the
front line to bases behind Seoul.
The
title "the greatest iron-willed, brilliant
commander" is reserved for Kim Jong-il, who has
led tiny North Korea to acquire the most coveted
membership of the elite nuclear club, braving all
the nuclear war threats, sanctions and isolation
efforts on the part of the US. It is little short
of a miracle that the leader has outmaneuvered and
outpowered the Bush administration against heavy
odds.
Kim is adding to the glory of
Koguryo and Dankun Korea, vindicating the
military-first policy inspired by tamul
(the Koguryo term for standing up to a major
power, valuing the pride of being descendants of
Dankun Korea, developing newer weapons, restoring
lost land and settling old scores with foreign
invaders).
Revealing are headlines of New
York Times articles. One op-ed on February 9,
2005, by Nicholas Kristof is headlined "Bush Bites
His Tongue". The article says: "There are two
words the Bush administration doesn't want you to
think about: North Korea. That's because the most
dangerous failure of US policy these days is in
North Korea. President Bush has been startlingly
passive as North Korea has begun churning out
nuclear weapons like hot cakes."
One
article dated February 13, 2005, by B R Myers is
"Stranger Than Fiction". He writes: "To North
Korea, diplomacy is another form of war. Under the
leadership of Kim Jong-il, the Foreign Ministry
has bullied the United Nations into submission and
outwitted the United States into providing food
aid - all the while developing a formidable
nuclear arsenal. This is, of course, the hardline
view of North Korea that prevails in some quarters
in Washington. Yet it is also the official North
Korean view of North Korea."
The February
20, 2005. article by David Sanger is headlined
"America Loses Bite," with a senior Bush
administration official quoted as saying, "It's
counterproductive to draw a red line for North
Korea because they will only view it as a
challenge." The article notes: "In North Korea's
case, red lines may be what Kim Jong-il sees in
his rear-view mirror."
In his September 9,
2006, address to the 4th Global Strategic Review
of the London-based International Institute for
Strategic Studies, Mitchell Reiss offered a
remarkable observation:
"Perhaps the
least-noted and most astonishing aspect of the
entire diplomatic process involving North Korea
during the past few years has been the almost
complete inability of four of the world's
strongest military and economic powers, including
three nuclear weapons states and three members of
the UN Security Council - the United States, China
and Russia and Japan - to shape the strategic
environment in Northeast Asia.
"They have
proven thoroughly incapable of preventing an
impoverished, dysfunctional country of only 23
million people from consistently endangering the
peace and stability of the world's most
economically dynamic region. This has been nothing
less than a collective failure."
The
December 29, 2002, Washington Post article by
Michael Dobbs says: "US officials note that North
Korea's action has been condemned by most of its
neighbors and potential big-power patrons, such as
China and Russia, Japan and South Korea. Such
logic is unconvincing to many experts on North
Korea. They contend that Kim is trying to set up a
situation in which he wins, whatever happens."
The second point is that a nuclear test
will be a legitimate exercise of North Korea's
sovereign right in supreme national-security
interests of the country. The sole reason for the
development of nuclear weapons is more than 50
years of direct exposure to naked nuclear threats
and sanctions from the US. The Kim administration
seeks to commit nuclear weapons to actual use
against the US in case of war, never to use them
as a tool of negotiations.
It is sheer
illusion to think that sanctions and isolation
will stop North Korea from the planned nuclear
test. US hostility, threats and sanctions are the
very engines that have propelled the development
of nuclear weapons. Absent US hostility, nuclear
blackmailing, sanctions, threats of isolation and
regime change, the Kim administration would never
have thought at all of acquiring nuclear
deterrence.
What makes North Korea unique
among those states Bush lumped together as the
"axis of evil" is that only it has been subjected
to US nuclear threats and sanctions and singled
out as a prime target of nuclear preemption. The
US refuses to end the state of war with North
Korea while keeping combat-ready nuclear-attack
forces ready in bases in Japan and South Korea.
North Korea is not host to any foreign military
bases. The US is engaged in ceaseless
nuclear-attack exercises in and around Japan and
South Korea.
The US, Russia, China, the
United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan and Israel
conducted numerous nuclear detonation experiments
in legitimate exercise of their sovereignty. There
is no international convention or treaty that
prohibits North Korea from conducting underground
nuclear tests. No country is allowed to infringe
on the sovereignty of North Korea in material
breach of Chapter 2 of the UN charter, unless they
are prepared to risk triggering nuclear war with
North Korea.
The third message is that the
nuclear-armed North Korea will be a major boon to
China and Russia. Nuclear-armed, the two countries
are friendless in case of war with the US. The US
has nuclear-armed allies, such as the UK and
France. The Americans have a network of military
bases around the two countries, while they have
none. The presence of a mighty nuclear weapons
state in Korea should be most welcome to Russia
and China.
The People's Republic of China
has every reason to welcome a nuclear-armed North
Korea, whatever it may say in public. The nuclear
deterrence of North Korea is a major factor in
reducing US military pressure on China on the
question of the independence of Taiwan.
The fourth point is that the North Korea
government of Kim does not care at all whether
Japan goes nuclear, or that South Korea and
Australia follow suit. In the first place, those
countries are practically nuclear-armed because
they are under the nuclear umbrella of the US and
house American nuclear bases and because Tokyo's
military spending is 10 times that of Pyongyang's
and Seoul's defense budget is five times that of
Pyongyang's. It is too obvious that they are
capable of acquiring nuclear weapons at short
notice.
The factor that has prevented them
from developing their own nuclear weapons is
political pressure from the US, not because North
Korea was only conventionally armed. The US has
insisted that they should be under the nuclear
umbrella and buy expensive high-tech weapons from
them.
Their becoming nuclear powers will
signal that the US is no longer a reliable cop. At
long last de-Americanization of the US allies and
neutralization of the US in the rest of the world
will be set into motion. This is one of the
reasons why the Kim administration has every
reason to secretly welcome the nuclear arming of
junior US allies.
The main enemy to North
Korea is the US, the sole surviving superpower in
the world. Acquisition of hundreds of nuclear
weapons by Japan and South Korea will not have any
serious impact on the total balance of nuclear
power. Japan and South Korea have too much to lose
in a nuclear war with North Korea, while North
Korea has little.
It is important to note
that the nuclear weapons and long-range means of
delivery are not aimed at South Korea and will be
common property shared with South Korea under a
confederated government.
The fifth and
last point is a long, overdue farewell to the
nuclear non-proliferation regime, with the Bush
administration standing in the dock as prime
defendant accused of sabotaging nuclear
non-proliferation. Had the Americans been
steadfast in upholding the nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty by reducing their nuclear
weapons and respecting the sovereignty and
independence of the non-nuclear states, North
Korea would not have felt any need to defend
itself with nuclear weapons.
A nuclear
test by North Korea will go a long way toward
emboldening anti-American states around the world
to acquire nuclear weapons. There is a long line
of candidate states.
It is important to
note that the North Korean Foreign Ministry
pledges to faithfully implement its international
commitment in the field of nuclear
non-proliferation as a responsible nuclear-weapons
state and to prohibit nuclear transfer.
Kim Myong-chol is author of a
number of books and papers in Korean, Japanese and
English on North Korea. He is executive director
of the Center for Korean-American Peace. He has a
PhD from the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea's Academy of Social Sciences and is often
called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il
and North Korea.
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Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
