Not so long ago, some American experts on the Korean issue gave an assessment that the range of the US’s choice is decreasing in its policy toward the DPRK. When this was opened to the public, it drew the focus of attention. An international TV broadcast of Russia, quoting remarks of US experts on Korea carried in an American magazine, reported that the position of the DPRK has further consolidated in the international arena in the recent several months, that the US administration should not underestimate the capability of Korea, and that if a war breaks out with the country, it will not be confined to the Korean peninsula alone.
Broken Dream
The United States, which had emerged as leader of imperialism after fishing in troubled waters in the Second World War, put the point of its strategy of world supremacy in Asia, especially in the Far East, and the core of it was to subjugate Korea and the neighbouring countries so as to make the Pacific as the “lake of America.”
The US militarily occupied south Korea in haste in September 1945 and ignited the Korean war in June 1950 which was an extension of the aggressive Far East policy of America. It, however, suffered decisive defeat politically and militarily in the three-year-long war, and had no other choice but to conclude an armistice agreement. Thus, the US’s “ABC” war plan to destroy the young DPRK in its cradle through the war and, by expanding it in succession, to dominate China and the vast territory of the former Soviet Union went up in smoke.
Later, masters of the White House have changed consecutively, but the US’s ambition of world supremacy to establish domination over the whole Korean territory and conquer the Eurasian continent has never changed even a bit, and so its DPRK policy has remained immutable. But the persistent pursuance of a hostile policy against the DPRK has resulted in bitter failures and shame alone. Despite desperate attempts, the “theory on possible collapse of Korea in three days, three months or three years,” the “soft-landing theory” that Korea would change when the US steadily applied isolation and suffocation, and the “theory on strategic patience” that the latter would surely give up the banner of socialism if the US waited patiently have backfired on the US while giving fuel to the Korean people’s anti-US sentiment. They brought about a contrary effect: they propelled Korea towards possession of strong nuclear deterrent that threats the US.
This has radically changed the asymmetric frame of the DPRKUS confrontation, the one between a non-nuclear state and a nuclear state. As a result, the US’s dream of domination of the whole Korea and its neighbouring countries was smashed completely. Now even in the United States the administration’s hostile policy against the DPRK is harshly criticized as “complete failure,” “extreme absurdity” and “policy inviting misfortunes alone.”
After all, it is clear that the DPRK policy the White House has desperately pursued is nothing but a wild dream and a ridiculous policy that has hastened its own fall. The world public opinion comments in unison that the US is really foolish as it is stubbornly pursuing the wrong DPRK strategy.
Shattered Myth
Before the Korean war the American armed forces had been known as legendary being because they had never been defeated in over 110 wars of overseas aggression they had carried out. After the start of the Korean war the US blatantly talked that the officers of the Korean People’s Army “will be frightened” if they heard the US troop’s arrival at the Korean front and that the “north Korean army will take flight when they see the GIs.”
But the myth of the “mightiness” was smashed in the war. Having suffered severe political and military blows, the US proposed armistice negotiation to the DPRK a year after the outbreak of the war. And on July 27, 1953 it signed the Korean Armistice Agreement. At that time Clark, the then Commander of the US forces in the Far East and Commander of the “UN forces,” lamented that he was the first United States army commander in history to sign an armistice agreement without victory, and Marshall, the former US State Secretary, confessed that the myth was shattered, that it became clear to everyone that the United States was not so strong as others thought, and that it suffered heavy defeat in Korea.
Afterwards, the DPRK-US confrontation has been a continuance of the US’s unilateral provocations and the DPRK’s hard-line countermeasures, resulting in Washington’s consecutive defeat and the revelation of its weakness. In 1968 the US armed spy ship Pueblo was captured by the KPA navy while conducting espionage in the DPRK’s territorial waters. At that time it threatened Korea by concentrating huge land, sea and air forces in and around the Korean peninsula, but it could not but submit to the DPRK a document in which it made a sincere apology for the ship’s act of espionage and hostility, and offered a sure guarantee that it would assure no violation in the territorial waters of the DPRK.
In 1993 the US clamoured for an ad hoc inspection of the DPRK by the International Atomic Energy Agency on the plea of “suspicion of Korea’s nuclear development,” and it began the Team Spirit 93 joint military exercise. Coping with this situation, Korea took hard-line countermeasures like declaration of a semiwar state and withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. This made the US come to the table of the DPRK-US talks, bringing about the adoptions of the joint statement of the DPRK and the US on June 11, 1993 which committed the two sides to settlement of the nuclear issue of the Korean peninsula by peaceful means, and the DPRK-USA Agreed Framework on October 21, 1994, the gist of which bound the US to provide the DPRK with light water reactors and interim energy alternatives.
In recent years voices of warning the US about its overconfidence are ringing out loudly not only in the world but also in the US itself. In his report on combat capability of the US forces delivered at a hearing of the US Congress Senate military affairs committee the US Army Chief of Staff confessed that if the US is to go to war with military powers such as the DPRK, China and Russia, the US forces’ combat capability is not on a due level, and that in the war with the DPRK the US cannot win. Especially, the DPRK’s successful launch of surface-tosurface medium and long-range strategic ballistic rockets Hwasong-10 and its consecutive public demonstration of ultra-modern weapons have aggravated the American uneasiness and horror.
The US, which pretended to be the mythical being over 70 years ago, is falling to ruin, suffering defeat after defeat in the confrontation with the small country of Korea. Now the world political scientists and experts unanimously say that the military power and influence of the US have remarkably weakened, which means the coming end of time of the unipolar world of America and the start of a multipolar world. The US should know that recognition of the present reality and revision of its foolish policy toward the DPRK is a good alternative that may help it avoid the nightmare.
Article by Jong Jin Chol
