Author’s note: Please don’t get offended by being called an idiot…I derived the word ‘idiot’ from Greek word, idiotes, which refers to ‘a private person’ …as distinguished from the public person like bureaucrat, congressman, or President. An idiot follows the rules and orders that others draft and sign whether or not it’s an idiot’s interest.
Again, here I am not intended to suggest any solution regarding the Korean conflict like other myriads of high-priced pundits spit out a cantata of simplistic nostrum day in day out ad nauseam…as a writer not a politician, I rather simply try to shatter the stereotypes that the mainstream media make ‘idiots’ confused/mesmerized about the existing situation.
Historically, Korea has always been a cat’s-paw in the world’s power games among China, Japan, and a Johnny-come-lately Uncle Sam in Asia Pacific region. And Koreans used to call the Korean Peninsula, ‘a shrimp whose back gets broken in the fight between Whales.’
Today, the world media have been ga-gaing over the tense confrontation between the North and South Korea as if it reached a hair’s breath from total/actual/atomic warfare with a possible nuclear debacle in the region.
Instead of the domino theory the mainstream media drummed up during the Vietnam War in the 70s, in which Ho Chi Minh was jumping into the canoe, paddle across the Pacific Ocean to California, and rape your grandma, they in 21st Century employ more scare tactic of nuclear bomb attack on the US mainland delivered by the North Korea’s Long-range Ballistic Missiles…for a month or so, Americans have been barraged in their evening dinner table with a horror story that ‘a roly-poly enfant terrible’ is going to lob the atomic-bomb tipped missiles into the Guam/Hawaii/Alaska/California, even though it’s absolutely a public knowledge that Kim, ‘a mad boy-child’, does not yet have enough strategic inventory of atomic bombs to significantly harm their enemies, S. Korean, Japanese, and Uncle Sam, let alone no accurate delivery system to reach the US mainland.
In addition, no Western media ever raised the raison-detre why the North was joining with other nations like India, Pakistan, and Iran for the Nuclear Club…Kim does not want to end up like the miserable fates of Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, et al.
That is, it’s ‘Do or Die’ choice of battle for his survival…he isn’t an idiot not to know the consequence that he/his people are going to be a history if he ever lobs the A-bomb against his enemies…But by convincing his enemies about his MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) policy, his survival is guaranteed ironically by his enemies.
In other words, the North Korea has no reason to commit a suicide attack of nuclear campaign against their enemies, unless their enemies forced them to engage in an overwhelmingly/strategically unequal warfare resulting in their own demise.
In the historical and contemporary perspectives, one could easily come to the conclusion thatUncle Sam with his disciplined client state, S. Korea, has been a culprit/villain stirring up a hornet’s nest by maneuvering various war machines including the A-bomb simulation flight by Stealth Bombers…for a moment, let’s proceed to an unimaginable moment if the North Korean engages the same war game with Mexican soldiers, as Uncle Sam does with their puppet, S. Korean soldiers…Na… You don’t even have to imagine…we had already witnessed the scenario when Castro was about to install the silos housing the Russian missiles in Cuba.
Here, the ‘American Exceptionalism’ applies with full force…under an untrammeled vision of US hegemony in the divine notion of ‘manifest destiny’, American ‘idiots’ believe in American altruism, benevolence, democracy, and devotion to liberty and justice for the lesser happier/more ignorant people around the globe.
For the S. Korean idiots, they have been raised/fed/educated on a diet of ‘red scare’ propaganda instilled by the Presidents of past regimes, ranging from a comprador house steward (Syngman Rhee) and three military vassals (one of them was arguably the most corrupt, imperious, and totalitarian dictator, Park CH whose daughter these idiots elected as their president in 2012).
A majority of S. Korean ‘idiots’ are sick to the bone…aping the Western culture (de-Koreanization) has long been a fashionable/profitable business entities in the South, abandoning their indigenous culture in exchange for receiving junk food (Big Macs), junk entertainment (buffoonish Kangnam style dancing), and junk way of thinking and feeling (Yellow skin/White minds)…they idolize and emulate a look-a-like Caucasian by raising their nose pointy, surgically cutting off Mongolian folds on their eyes and sawing off their protruding cheekbones and square face. They trusted that the less Korean you are and the more American you are, the better you will be.
In these cultural ambience, it’s a foregone conclusion that S. Korean ‘idiots’ have chosen the daughter of the former Military Dictator (world media named her as such, not by me) as their political leader who would definitely mirror the ‘red scare’ policy of her daddy’s ‘Yushin’ movementthat was a carbon copy of the Japanese Imperial Edict.
The election of new ‘Yushin’ president was a positive signal from the S. Korean idiots’ endorsing the US policy of ‘Pivot to Asia ‘in 2012…which is essentially a containment strategy against the expansion of the Chinese dominance in the region by re-arming the Japanese Self Defense Forces under the guise of interdicting the North Korea’s threat.
In geo-political perspective, it’s about time to posit for the Uncle Sam in a new strategic stance in the Pacific region when their other imperial enterprises including the Afghanistan War are about rapidly winding down…Military Industrial Complex are bristling at the closures of weapons/bombs production factories that feed/nourish/enrich the hundreds, thousands of American idiots, an economic doldrums persist for years after the massive sellout in the Wall Street where the corporate wolves howling against the ‘public person’ that ‘we need at least a splendid little war’. (With a help of month-long war-mongering from their corporate media, they achieved to vacate their inventory of military hardwares/bullets/missiles furnishing the massive stockpiles of weapons system in Japan/S. Korea paid by their puppet/idiots.)
There is one major issue that no one, either N/S Koreans/Uncle Sam or our venerable pundits/talking heads, oddly enough wants to bring about into the open discussion…the presence of 28,500 USFK (United States Forces in Korea).
The heavily-armed brigand of the imperial occupation forces has been in the peninsular for over half a century in a naked violation of the Armistice Agreement in 1953 with no end in sight in near future.
The most bizarre reality is that we, both S. Korean/American idiots, are told: North Korea tacitly accepts the continued presence of the USFK in the Peninsula!
(On the contrary, when I, a total idiot, took a trip to N. Korea in 2012, I have witnessed three major slogans spectacularly displayed on the bulletin board in Pyongyang, one of which cries out:“Let’s kick out Yankee brigand from our peninsula!”)
For the North Korean point of view, the presence of the American troop in the peninsula appears to be playing an ambivalent role of sitting duck/hostage/guarantor combined…in one hand, 28,500 US soldiers within the bombing range of nuclear attack are clearly a healthy/aggregate sum of sitting duck/pawn if you add up another 50,000 of that ilk in Japanese islands.
On the other hand, chubby Kim and his comrades have no reason to worry about the pre-emptive strike by Uncle Sam that used to yield it to other lesser evils around the world with impunity…in other words, the US Occupying Forces are ironically positioned in the land as a surety/warranty to the Kim’s safety/survival, because Uncle Sam knows the North would definitely retaliate against his uniformed ‘idiotic’ soldiers with a deadly forces such as nuclear attack when they were in danger of total collapse.
The North Koreans do not have to lob a bomb all the way cross the ocean to strike Hollywood…they have a healthy sum of the most valuable/worthy targets under their nose, so why do they bother to argue over the issue? Let it be that way for a while.
For the South Korean idiots, even bare mention of the issue of the USFK withdrawal from the peninsula suffices to elicit an amusing tantrum both from the hardcore/old-time anti-Communist organization and the newly-elected government as the most mutinous idea subjected to the punishment/incarceration under the heinous Anti-Commie Act of 1950s.
The South’s idiots are happy to pay billions of dollars for the cost of the occupation as if they are paying the insurance premium on their vehicles…without realizing that the ‘insured’ vehicle (the peninsula) would not be safe or worth to drive (would not be sustainable or livable), if the nuclear conflagration spreads all over the peninsula…(during the Korean War in the 50s, Gen. MacArthurfigured after requesting authorization to use A-bombs at his discretion… ‘Dropping 30 to 60 A-bombs across the neck of Manchuria could produce a belt of radioactive cobalt that would win the war for ten days’.)
The South Korean idiots should never forget that the 1950 Korean War was just a ‘hiccup’ compared to what’s coming in present warfare engaging both parties armed with A-bombs.
Uncle Sam and Mainstream Media deputized by their corporate boss do not want to scare too much their American idiots by informing them that their sons/daughters/brothers/sisters stationed in the conflict region are in danger of total annihilation by the North’s nuclear attack…so that they leak out a series of conflicting reports continuously and systemically. No talking-head in the mainstream media ever mentioned about the precarious/naked exposure of their troops in the region to a nuclear attack and demanded to bring them home immediately. (You’d easily comprehend why they play dumb about this issue, if you know that Uncle Sam have been running for decades the military bases in over 130 countries in 190 UN member nations.)
The Pentagon’s DIA leaked intentionally (?) about the intelligence report, suggesting that the North Korea already possessed the delivery capability of small nuclear-capped long-range missile, while the mouthpiece of Uncle Sam roams around the Asian countries proclaiming that the US never accepts the nuclear-armed status of the North Korea, as if his assurance would make the North Korea’s A-bomb disappear into the thick/polluted fog of Beijing air space.
It appears clearly that China is holding a wild card to play and fishing in the troubled water…while they went along with the economic sanction against the N. Korea submitted by Uncle Sam in the UNSC, they warned the concerned nations including US that no nation has a right to make the region erupt in flame…all idiots, North/South Koreans and Americans, should be aware the fact that no country likes to have their enemies playing peek-a-boo game over their fence.
The Chinese idiots are currently having a good time spurred by their successful export business toward the Western world including erstwhile arch enemy Uncle Sam…For sometime, Chinese idiots would be cautious and discreet in order to avoid the adverse relationship in which Uncle Sam might take umbrage at their close ties with the North Korea.
However, Chinese idiots are well aware of the past track records of the Western colonial powers in early 20th Century and they want the North Korea remaining as a friendly neighbor as a buffer against S. Korea, the satellite state of Uncle Sam.
It’s a moot question how long/far the Chinese idiots would remain silent/keep low profile in a dispute that may threaten their security and prosperity.
One thing is sure: Chinese idiots are holding an ace up their sleeve/using the wild card decisively when the situation in the peninsula ends up too hot to handle.
After fulfilling the divine mission of ‘Manifest Destiny’ in the North American Continent, Uncle Samin late 1800s looked forward to oversea adventures, snatching the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Guam, and engaged in the ‘open-door policy’ in China, Korea, and Japan…a Senator from Indiana State claimed: ‘The power that rules the Pacific is the power that rules the world.’
As Mark Twain wisely quipped that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhymes”,
Obama’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy is nothing more than an extension/a rerun of such imperial enterprises that the US multi-national corporates operate under the name of economic globalization.
And the saddest part is that Uncle Sam still prefers kicking down doors to coming to the negotiating table with other concerned parties, especially when other parties happen to be a black/ brown ‘un-people’, or a gook.
When Uncle Sam ever comes to the negotiating table, they always demand other’s concessions while proffering no comparable trade-off in their position…Obama’s mouthpiece demands the North’s denuclearization as a precondition to come to the negotiating table…without a word of suggestion how the US/S. Korea would match the North’s abolition of nuclear arms capability that warrants a North’s ‘live or die’ option.
Why not offer in return to the North a total pullout of 28,500-strong USFK from the peninsula?
What’s the rationale of keeping the US soldiers in peninsula when the North Korea gives up their deadly weapon system? Do the South Korean idiots who brag about their GDP is 40 times over the North’s still need 28,500 deadly Doberman attack dogs at the border?
Make no mistake about it!
No other nation state has started as many wars or conflicts for two centuries up until now than the United States of America. It’s a documented record that Uncle Sam has been involved in more than 60 wars and proxy fights since WWII and historically no other nation on earth outnumbers the US track record of imperial/hegemonic enterprises with blood on its hands.
However, the North’s chubby Kim does not have many options when the blood hound chases after him steadfastly/relentlessly/obnoxiously…but a “Samson Option’ a.k.a. ‘Suicide Attack’.
At the end of day, there is still time to contemplate/come to the reality/talk, talk, talk, and keep talking to the point until everyone gets pissed off…and maybe, maybe, maybe, peace will prevail over war, I hope.
Mr. Dale Han is a Korean-Canadian free lance journalist covering mostly international policies of USA and Middle East, et al.