Asian Geopolitics: Korea and Imperialism

The traditional Korean economy was a familiar one, seen throughout the world in pre-modern times, except in proto-capitalist economies such as Athens. The family and village were the basic units, production was focused on agriculture with handicrafts as an accompaniment, and wealth was measured in terms of land. The coming of the Japanese transformed that, and there was considerable modernization and development of the Korean economy. Some have argued that this enabled the country to escape the Malthusian trap, where the stagnant economy of the Choson period inevitably led to destitution and capped population growth (Cha 2010); that, of course, begs the question of what would have happened with modernization without Japanese colonialism even if that had been slower without the imposed forced march.

The Library of Congress country study on South Korea skips all too quickly over the subject of the Japanese colonial development of Korea – 1 page out of 472 – perhaps partly because the successful “top-down government management of the economy” which was taken up again by Park Chung-hee in the 1960s contravened economic orthodoxy (Metraux 1992). The Japanese colonial government developed the infrastructure of a modern economy, with railways, roads, ports and shipping, mining, electricity generation and light, and chemical and heavy industries.

Railways, which were important not merely for economic reasons, but also for military ones providing a facility for moving troops and materiel into Manchuria and further afield, increased to 6362 km by 1945. Similarly the road network was expanded to 20,000 miles by that year. Ports were built and shipping reached 230,000 tons. Manufacturing’s share of industrial output rose from 11% in 1911 to 40% in 1943, and between 1936 and 1943, the number of employees in manufacturing jumped from 188,250 to 549,751. Stimulated by the war, heavy industry’s share of industrial output rose from 38% in 1930 to 73% in 1942 (King 1975).

And so the statistics roll in. Two sets capture some of the complexity and consequences of forced imperialist development.

Firstly there was established “a well-developed network of post offices, almost all equipped to transmit telegrams, 7,100 telephone lines, 5,600 miles of telegraph lines, 15 radio stations, 440,000 radio receivers, 72 theaters and 51 cinemas” (King 1975) quoting (Henderson 1968). We have the makings here of a modern society with communications (second in Asia only to Japan) with social implications as well as the obvious commercial and military ones and radio and cinema facilities which seem to have penetrated quite deeply into the Korean populace, excluding the destitute which constituted about a quarter of the population in1929 (King 1975). This provided entertainment but also social control and indoctrination, perhaps not up to Hollywood standards, but serving the same function.

Secondly, after the rice riots in Japan in 1918, the government made determined efforts to spread the use of the high-yielded varieties that had been developed in Japan to Korea and Taiwan, along with the necessary investment in infrastructure and irrigation, and by the late 1930s, yields in these two colonies were much higher than elsewhere in Asia (Booth 2007). But although rice production went up 50% in the period between 1915/1919 and 1935/1939, exports, mainly to Japan, rose 279%, so that Korean consumption actually fell. Some of the shortfall was made up by the import of sorghum (a grain traditionally used by the rich as animal feed and by the poor as sustenance), but even so the per capita consumption of grain fell during the colonial period (King 1975).

Thus there was considerable economic growth, but the development was structured principally to serve Japan as a component of the Japanese empire, and Koreans were to a large degree excluded from the management of the modernization process; “in manufacturing, the Japanese occupied the high-paying technical jobs and Koreans performed the low-paying manual labor” (Chung 2010). Only in Manchuria, “a land of opportunity not only for Japanese but also for Koreans,” did there seem to be some access to higher positions (Han 2008).

This entailed a commensurate transformation of the social structure. The traditional Confucian hierarchy in which the yangban elite dominated government and military positions had been abolished in 1894, formally if not in actuality, and the Japanese took this further and then displaced Koreans from positions of power replacing them with Japanese. Some yangban managed to hang on to wealth and power through collaborating with the Japanese, and the yangban in South Korea experienced a certain restoration in the late 1940s under Syngman Rhee. Abolition of the traditional strictures would normally have had a progressive and liberating effect, but this was muted by the constraints of Japanese control of Korean society.

This control was welcomed by some, accepted by most, yet resisted in various complex ways, with all of this changing over time as the grip of Japan tightened and the exigencies of the expansion into China and then the Pacific War with the USA generated new economic imperatives.

The Japanese Legacy

There has been a considerable academic debate over the years, especially in the USA (and Britain), South Korea, and Japan, on the impact of Japanese imperialism on the economic development of Korea after liberation (Booth 2007; Haggard et al. 1997; Kohli 1994, 1997). Given the provenance of the academics and the imperial mindset, this has tended to focus exclusively on South Korea, ignoring North Korea. This exclusion is unfortunate since Korea was one entity under the Japanese and a comparison of the two halves would have helped to disentangle the Japanese legacy from the subsequent impact of US imperialism. The USA has impoverished North Korea through physical war, 1950–1953, and continued military threat and economic warfare ever since, and because of the North’s very existence, the USA has privileged the South with economic aid, military spending, and access to Western markets and technology. If US imperialism had not faced the challenge of China, Vietnam, and North Korea, then the four “little dragons/tigers” – Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea – would not have had the rapid growth they had. Overlooking this fundamental reality has tended to vitiate the debate.

There is a need to distinguish between the “Japanese model” of economic development when utilised as part of Japanese imperialism, and so serving Japan at the expense of its colonies, and that same model when applied to a particular country, such as South Korea under Park Chung-hee. It can be argued that Park was very successful (Pearlstine 2018) but this success was largely due to it being focused on developing South Korea as such rather than Korea as part of the Japanese empire. The role of the new imperial framework must be taken into account. The USA poured in huge amounts of civilian aid to bolster the competition against North Korea. It also incurred large military expenditure in South Korea as part of its strategy of containing China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea itself. Moreover South Korea benefitted, as did many others especially on the arc from Korea through Japan around to Thailand from American expenditures in its war in Indochina.

The Japanese period produced huge changes. A forced economic and social development that Bruce Cumings has aptly described as a “pressure cooker” (Sheng 2000; Cumings 1997). There was a massive disruption of Korean society in terms of class structure, occupation (from farm to factory or army), and physical location. Large numbers of Japanese moved into Korea and on to Manchuria; an even greater number of Koreans was forced into Manchuria and further into Asia and to Japan – some 700,000 labor conscripts among them (Underwood 2007). Clearly in the long term, there were many positive outcomes, and that is true of the impact of imperialism in general. We cannot undo the past, but then again now that is over and the price has been paid, perhaps we do not want to either. At the same time, it goes without saying that progress could have been made without the accompanying brutality.

NBC sports commentator Joshua Cooper Ramo ignited a furor in Korea during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics when he said “But every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, and technological, and economic example, [that] has been so important to their own transformation” (Essertier 2018b; “NBC apologizes after praise for Japan’s ‘example’ angers Koreans” 2018; Pearlstine 2018; Selk 2018).

If appraisal is so contested after 70 years, it must have been even more difficult for those living through the Japanese occupation who had to cope with reality on a daily basis. Some fled to Manchuria, the Soviet Union, or China and took part in the armed struggle; most did not but had to find other ways to resist, accept, or embrace the colonial experience.

Collaboration, Acceptance, and Resistance

Conservative Japanese see their rule over Korea as benign and disinterested, producing great economic and social benefit and indeed requested by the Koreans themselves – an attitude which is widely mirrored in other imperialist countries and similar, for instance, to textbook portrayals of America’s colonization of the Philippines (Caprio 2010). That might be expected but what is intriguing, though unfathomable, is how many Koreans privately, if not publically, shared and still share that opinion to some degree (Editorial 2014). Looking back at the Japan period before 1945, we must also bear in mind the American period after 1945. Most Americans would see their country’s role in Korea as similarly benign, disinterested, and welcome, and many (South) Koreans would agree; how many, for what reasons and how inculcated, and how that has varied over time are a complex matter. Complicating matters further, there is the question of empire-resident diaspora, those Koreans who for various reasons – forced labor, migration, or birth – ended up in Japan or America and, again for a variety of reasons, remained there. In 2016 it was estimated that there were some 330,000 Koreans in Japan (Ishibashi et al. 2017) and the US census for that year gives 1.8 m ethnic Koreans (“Asian alone or in any combination by selected groups” 2016). Imperialism, in association with globalization, the two being often intertwined, shifts incredible numbers of people from their traditional homelands and renders fixed concepts of nationality (and culture) problematic.

History is not only written by the victor; it is, by definition, written with hindsight. The historian knows what is to come but the historical actor does not. The empire, whether it be Roman, British, Japanese, or American, might well seem permanent to colonial subjects, a natural state of affairs to which man must adapt and get on with life. Resistance is often invented after the empire has fallen. Few Koreans today would freely admit that their parents and grandparents collaborated actively with the Japanese, although many obviously did, and not merely out of self-interest (Han 2008; Park 2004a, 2016). From the late nineteenth century onward, for many Asians Japan was the wave of the future.

However there was also considerable resistance to Japanese rule, covert and overt, and two specific events among many others require special note. Firstly there were the demonstrations which started on March 1, 1919, and which became known as the March 1st Movement. This was not merely a movement demanding democracy and national sovereignty but also an expression of the disappointment that the USA and the other (victorious) imperialist powers had so soon betrayed Woodrow Wilson’s lofty rhetoric of “self-determination” first outlined to Congress in 1918 and proclaimed at the Versailles Peace Conference in January 1919. The Korean protests were mirrored elsewhere, notably by the May 4 Movement in China that year.

It is perhaps in the nature of rising imperialism to promise liberation to colonies and then to forget that promise when the former imperial power is displaced; this is very much the story of imperial Japan in Asia. However talk of self-determination and freedom holds a special place in US imperial rhetoric even as that rhetoric is contradicted by reality; Richard Nixon’s 1972 report of US foreign policy, as the battle to subjugate Indochina was reaching its inglorious end, “was filled with encomiums to American support for self-determination as a principle of U.S. policy” (Simpson 2012).

The March 1st Movement (called in the North “March First People’s Uprising” (“The March 1st Movement in ‘Korea’s Fight for Freedom’” 2017)) did mark the beginnings of resistance, initially non-violent protest but subsequently armed struggle against Japanese colonialism. After its suppression there was some temporary softening of Japanese rule. But the main result was that it became the symbol of Korean desire for independence which resonates today. It is significant that Moon Jae-in has claimed that March 1, 1919, marks the beginnings of the “Republic of Korea.” This can be seen as an attempt to appropriate historical legitimacy, though the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has of course an equal claim, but it also sidelines the US establishment of the Republic of Korea under Syngman Rhee in 1948 which did, in many eyes, lack legitimacy. This was how it was seen in an attack by the conservative Chosun Ilbo which charged President Moon with refusing “to acknowledge Syngman Rhee as the country’s first president..[with] its national security firmly anchored in its steadfast alliance with the United States” (Jong 2018).

The other main event was the establishment of a Korean government in exile in Shanghai on April 11, 1919. This again was mainly of symbolic importance since its military arm, which became the Korean Liberation Army in 1940, never achieved substantial size or effectiveness and was, in any case, under Chinese (nationalist) control although toward the end of the Pacific War, there was cooperation with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the CIA. The OSS cooperated with various liberation movements during the war, including the Viet Minh of Ho Chi Minh (Bergin 2018), but not it appears with Kim Il-sung. In any case US relations with wartime allies – Ho, Tito, and of course the Soviet Union itself – quickly soured after victory as their interests diverged.

That the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (or KPG) was established in China was significant. There were strong parallels between the Chinese and Korean experiences of the Japanese incursion and the failure of the West, despite the rhetoric, to support self-determination, until of course Japan became an enemy after Pearl Harbor. The USA never recognized the KPG although it did make use of its standing in Korean eyes by taking Syngman Rhee, who had been its first president for a short period, and installing him as the first President of the Republic of Korea in 1948.

If we had to take three individuals to exemplify different Korean responses to imperialism, it would be Syngman Rhee, Kim Il-sung, and Park Chung-hee. Only Japan and the USA can be truly classified as imperialist but China, both before and after 1949, and the Soviet Union/Russia being great powers necessarily exhibit some of the characteristics of imperialism. Koreans often compare their country to a shrimp among whales, and although it would be simplistic to consider that all whales are the same, it has to be recognized that they are all large, potentially dangerous, and self-centered.

These three Koreans, for all their differences, were contemporaries, straddling the Japanese and American periods.

He opposed the armistice, wanting the Americans to keep on fighting, and at one stage there were high-level deliberations going up as far as President Eisenhower on removing his from power (Gwertzman 1975). In the event the Americans decided against his arrest, but in 1960 Rhee was toppled by student riots and flown, by the CIA, back to the USA, taking, in is alleged, $20 million with him (Lee 2000).

Park served in the Japanese puppet Manchukuo army after submitting a letter pledging loyalty to the Japanese emperor signed with his own blood (“Evidence of Park Chung-hee’s military allegiance to Japan surfaces” 2009). During the American period, he carved out a degree of autonomy and developed the South Korea economy, at the expense of the people certainly but also by defying American “advice,” following the Japanese model of state-guided development, with a focus on heavy and chemical industries aiming to build a comprehensive economy, rather than one which just serviced the American (Kamiya 1980). In this he was following somewhat the same road as Kim Il-sung in the North, who refused to join COMECON (the Soviet-led common market) because it would have trapped the DPRK in a position of economic and technological dependency (Person 2013). The history of Park’s collaboration with the Japanese was largely suppressed during the period of the military dictatorships only being publically revealed during the progressive administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun (Choe 2008). The conservative administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park’s daughter Park Geun-hye tried to restore amnesia, partly by diverting attention, as Park Chung-hee had done, by waving the nationalist flag and criticizing Japan (Han 2014; McGill 2014). As late as 2012, there were reports of South Koreans being surprised to learn of Park Chung-hee’s collaboration (Lee and Shin 2012).

Kim Il-sung, the most famous leader of the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement, was in a very different position to Rhee and Park, though there were obvious challenges in common. He was independent of Japanese and American imperialism, but he did have to cope with the Soviet Union and with China who necessarily had their own agendas and priorities. Since the Soviet Union was the occupying power in the North after the Japanese surrender, it clearly was in a position to determine, within limits, the successor regime. According to the Washington Post, he was not the “first choice” but “…they turned to Kim, who had a reputation in Korea as a heroic fighter in Manchuria against the Japanese” (Fifield 2017). Over the years he became adept at playing the Chinese off against the Soviets with the aim of developing a state which was independent politically, militarily, and economically (Beal 2005). Having two competing patrons was an advantage denied to his Southern counterparts. Unlike Rhee he was genuinely popular – there is only so much a “personality cult” can achieve – and his enduring reputation is indicated by American annoyance in 2012 that the new leader, Kim Jong-un, was utilizing memories of his “revered grandfather” to establish his position (Associated Press 2012; Choe 2012). Of course the Soviet Union was anxious to establish a friendly regime in post-liberation North Korea but neither they nor Kim Il-sung and his colleagues were burdened with the corpse of Japanese imperialism the way the USA was. The Soviet footprint in North Korea was very much lighter than the American one in the South. The Soviet occupation ended in 1948, and while Soviet pilots – flying MiG-15s to great effect according to Russian reports (Malishevski 2015) – were sent to the war, the involvement was negligible compared to that of the Americans. The USA reassumed operational control (OPCON) of the South Korea military during the war and still holds that today along a substantial military presence.

Korea, being a small country, was unable to gain its own liberation from Japanese rule; that came about through the intervention of the major powers, principally the USA and to a lesser extent the Soviet Union. Whether it will be able to wrest full independence from the USA is as yet unknown; it is an unfinished story. This has meant that Koreans have had to work with more powerful foreign countries in a varying mélange of collaboration and manipulation.

In the aftermath of wars, there is an understandable tendency to vilify, persecute, and sometimes execute those charged with collaborating with the defeated occupier. With the passage of time, historians develop a more nuanced appraisal, moving away from a Manichean dichotomy of good resistance fighters and evil collaborators (Brook 2008; Duara 2008; Kwon 2008). While it is valuable to move away from simplicities toward a deeper analysis of a complex phenomenon, most of this is from the perspective of the victorious imperialism, discussing those who collaborated with “them” while ignoring those who collaborate with “us.”

Stephen Gowans in his book Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Fight for Freedomreminds us that the story of modern Korea is a continuing relationship with imperialism that continues to this day (Gowans 2018). While the dichotomy patriot/traitor might be considered too neat, the essential point that acknowledging the role of imperialism is the key to understanding Korea is quite correct (Beal 2018).

Three Decisions that Shaped Contemporary Korean History

The Korean War

Although the Korean War has been labelled “the forgotten war” (Blair 1987), it is surely the one thing, apart from the well-publicized malevolent belligerence of North Korea, that most people outside the peninsula know about Korea. Both the standard description of this war being an unprovoked invasion of South Korea by North Korea and the more nuanced and plausible analysis that North Korea reacted at an opportune time, when the large contingent of Koreans fighting on the side of the Communists in the Chinese Civil War returned home, is somewhat irrelevant (Hart-Landsberg 2000). Just as civil wars erupted in other places and times – the USA in the 1860s, China in the 1940s – because of the buildup of irreconcilable forces, so too the Korean Civil War had the markings of inevitability given US policy in Korea since 1945. The war caused immense death and destruction of the peninsula, and casualties among the participants, although as the way with imperialism, the USA which bears the greatest responsibility came off by far the lightest. In fact, apart from its casualties on the battlefield – 33,686 out of 1.3 million (Lacina and Gleditsch 2005), with millions of Korean civilians – in many ways it and the empire did well from the carnage. The Korean War rescued the Japanese economy from the doldrums and set in on the path to high-speed growth. More importantly, at the imperial center, Korea was the Hot War that bedded the Cold War into the American political system along with the permanent war economy and the military-industrial complex (Melman 1974, 2003; Eisenhower 1961).

Park Chung-hee, Vietnam, and the Imperial Framework

The word “Vietcong” is used here in the usual fashion to refer to foreign dead, even babes in arms. The South Korean troops were particularly notorious for their brutality, which can be seen as a natural consequence of the history of serving imperial Japan and implementing Syngman Rhee’s bloody rule. In recent years there has been a growing awareness and shame in South Korea over the atrocities committed by their troops in the “pacification” of South Vietnam (Armstrong 2001; Cho 2018). In 2017, on a visit to Vietnam, President Moon Jae-in attempted to apologize for the past but was ignored by Vietnamese media (Choi 2017a).

By contrast Kim Il-sung sent support to the Vietnamese and also to the various anti-colonialist struggles around the world, including Africa. Although American pressure has recently compelled various Africa countries to curtail or sever ties with the DPRK, there is still gratitude for past solidarity and resistance to US demands (Harris 2017a).

Park’s policy was certainly more profitable than Kim’s, and the growth of the South Korean economy owes much to the blood money earned in Vietnam. In fact, much of the success of the Four Asian Tigers (or Dragons) – South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore – was due to US imperial expenditure in Vietnam and elsewhere in the region.

However, with the USA facing defeat in Vietnam in the early 1970s, and the opening to China, Park Chung-hee became very worried that the USA might cut and run in Korea and that he would be the victim of “strategic abandonment” (Sneider 2008). The domestic response was the Yushin Constitution which increased the repressive power of the presidency. Whatever popularity Park had garnered during the high growth of the 1960s, following from the disaster of the Syngman Rhee period, began to evaporate, and “dissidence became an enduring feature of student life at that time” (Avery 2012). North Korea was still stronger than the South – economically, militarily, and politically – and with US support uncertain, Park made the decision to develop nuclear weapons. The North would make the same decision later and for similar reasons, not so much for fear of the South but because of the overwhelming military superiority of the USA. For those that could achieve it, a nuclear deterrent became the obvious choice when faced with a much more powerful adversary.

Park, in fact, could not achieve it because the Americans found out and forced him to abandon the program (though there are indications that aspects of it continued even more clandestinely than before) (Eum and Ser 2004; Hayes and Moon 2011).

Park’s increasingly unpopularity with the people, and sections of the elite, led to his assassination in 1979 by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (Breen 2010). Park’s defiance of the USA over economic policy, and his attempt at developing nuclear weapons, gave him a cachet in nationalist thinking, and there was a very popular novel published in 1999 which ascribed his assassination to the USA (Moon 2009). At his funeral procession, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke cruelly observed “There wasn’t a wet eye in Seoul” (Oberdorfer and Carlin 2001).

Park Chung hee is survived by a daughter, Park Geun-hee who, inheriting her father’s standing among conservatives and a wider public approval of her father’s role in South Korea’s economic development, became president in 2013 until she was toppled by popular protests – the Candlelight Revolution – and is now in jail on corruption charges (Fifield 2018). Exile, assassination, or disgrace is the norm for South Korean leaders (Lee 2016).

By contrast, north of the imperial divide, both Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il died peacefully, to great popular distress (the father more than the son), and the third in line, Kim Jong-un, is in power, unchallenged it would seem and with popular support (Ryall and Irvine 2015; Kong 2018).

Jeju: From Massacre Island to US Naval Base to Encircle China

Jeju (formerly usually spelt Cheju) is the Korean peninsula’s largest island, and its subtropical climate makes it a popular tourist destination. It also has Hallasan, South Korea’s highest mountain and symbolic twin to Paektusan in the north, considered to be the spiritual home of the Korean people, and where it is claimed Kim Jong-il was born.

Jeju was the site of the most infamous massacre of the Syngman Rhee period. On March 1, 1947, a rally was held commemorating the March 1st Movement against Japanese colonialism and protesting against the forthcoming election to be held by the US Military Government in Korea (USMGIK) in 1948 that would finalize the division of the peninsula and install Syngman Rhee as president. Police fired upon the meeting killing six people and injuring eight. This led over the next year to strikes and various protests which cumulated in the Jeju Uprising of April 3, 1948. The authorities reacted with a scorched earth policy, and by the time the island was finally pacified, 7 years later in 1954, at least 30,000 people – 10% of the population – had been killed (Heo 2018a; “Remembering the April 3 Jeju Uprising” 2018; Song 2010; Yetter 2011). The massacre was kept under wraps, with severe penalties against anyone who publicized it until 2000 when the Kim Dae-jung administration allowed an investigation. In 2003 his successor, President Roh Moo-hyun, apologized on behalf of the national government: “Due to wrongful decisions of the government, many innocent people of Jeju suffered many casualties and destruction of their homes” (Song 2010). The phrasing was significant. Not only was there no mention of the scale of the massacre, which was merely attributed to “wrongful decisions” (would the Holocaust be so described?), but the use of the word “innocent” implies that others – those who took up arms for Korean sovereignty and against repression and perhaps even those who merely protested – were guilty. The description reveals the dilemma that South Korea “progressives” such as Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun, and now Moon Jae-in face. They wish to exorcise the crimes of the past and build a peaceful and just Korea but are unable to confront the reality of the domination by US imperialism. Sovereignty always remains beyond their grasp (Elich 2018). However the ghosts of Jeju refuse to go quietly away and in 2018, on the 70th anniversary of the uprising there have been a number of articles in the South Korea press on the subject, with rallies and demonstrations outside the US embassy and a petition with over 100,000 signatures called on the US Government to apologize for its role in the massacre (Huh 2018; “Special features on the 70th anniversary of the Jeju April 3rd Incident” 2018).

The subservience of South Korean progressives (also termed liberals in contradistinction to conservatives) is manifest in the issue to the Jeju naval bases. Back in the late 1940s, there were rumors that the US Navy was planning to establish a base on the island which had been used by the Japanese to bomb China during the war. That might have had some attraction being halfway between its two major possessions in Northeast Asia, but at the time the USA still “owned China” (then under Chiang Kai-shek) and the issue was clearly not pressing and nothing seems to have come of it (Heo 2018b). Subsequently America “lost China” which by the twenty-first century became the major challenge to US power, especially in Asia, and the desirability of a base on Jeju took on a new lease of life. However an explicit US naval base would cause political problems, certainly within South Korea and in a different way with China. In addition, naval bases are expensive to construct, and little of the expenditure would come to US corporations. Better to have the locals pay the bills and be the front man. The South Korean government, then under Roh Moo-hyun, came to the rescue (“West Sea Becomes New Arena for Big-Power Rivalry” 2012). The base would be South Korean, not American though of course “The United States, according to its Status of Forces Agreement and its Mutual Defense Treaty with South Korea, can use at whim and at will any South Korean base” (Kang and Hong (Interviewer) 2012). Moreover it was not really a naval base but a “Civilian-Military Port” (Kim and Kang 2013). One problem with this ploy was that no doubt the Chinese were not taken in nor were South Korean activists and there have been continuing protests over the years, even attracting the attention of US filmmaker Oliver Stone (Gwon 2011; Huh 2013). The current president, Moon Jae-in, rather gave the game away with the International Fleet (or Naval) Review of October 2018.

The Review, the third in a series, was held to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Korea (Oh 2018). That it was held in a place where, at their birth, those same Armed Forces had massacred 10% of the population is significant (Kim 2018). It might be an expression of the sense of impunity of the Korean military for past crimes and their power over the civilian presidency. Clearly any ROK president that wants to claw back sovereignty from the US, and make peace with the North, has to reckon with the possibility of a military coup.

Although it was ostensibly a South Korean affair, the Review was also an expression of enthusiastic fealty to the USA. It brought together a motley collection of US “allies” – although the Japanese dropped out over a furor over Korean protests over the flying of the Imperial Japanese Navy ensign (Hurst 2018). The Jeju base and activities connected with it such as the review are clearly aimed at China. At the review ceremony, President Moon declared, “I will further strengthen the Republic of Korea Navy so it may go beyond the Korean Peninsula and contribute to peace in Northeast Asia and the entire world.” This may have been no more than boilerplate rhetoric that politicians indulge in but it may have been a commitment to something more. Not only are the South Korean military under the wartime command of the USA, but modern weapons systems are merely a component of an integrated whole and cannot really function on their own; this is termed “interoperability.” Large countries, especially the USA, have a comprehensive capability, but small ones can only operate as subordinate units within this wider framework. In the 2011 invasion of Libya, for instance, the British and French air forces did not have the signals intelligence to operate on their own but had to depend on US leadership, a fact that has not been lost on Korean analysts (Song 2012).

A preventive war precipitated by the USA to impede the “peaceful rise” of China is the main danger facing the Asia-Pacific, and perhaps the world, today. Whether to support US belligerence toward China or to seek ways to avoid being embroiled is the major question facing countries in the region; Australia for one is a source of some forceful debate (Menadue 2018).

Why then does Moon Jae-in endorse a strategy fraught with danger? The controversy over the US deployment of THAAD – a component of the US missile defense system whose radar can be used for surveillance of Chinese missile sites and which is seen as an important part of an American first strike capability – demonstrated Chinese sensitivities and resolve (Beal 2016a). THAAD not merely makes South Korea a prime Chinese target in case of war but led to substantial and continuing economic costs (Yonhap 2017, 2018b). It may be that Moon calculates that by displaying such enthusiasm for the military and its supporting role in maintaining the US containment of China, he will be allowed some leeway on North policy. If so, it is surely a miscalculation.

OPCON and the Military Presence

When the Republic of Korea was formally established in 1948, USAMGIK was dissolved, and control of the armed forces passed in theory to the new republic, though US advisers continued to be influential and allegedly complicit in the massacres, such as in Jeju, leading up to the Korean War (Heo 2018b). The ROK Army (ROKA) was an ineffectual force certainly in in the early fluid stages of the Korean War despite American advisors (Ramsey 2006). This was not surprising as the first officers trained by the USA from 1945 were selected from those who had served under the Japanese in pacification operations in Manchuria and China, and this is what they continued to do in Korea after 1945. They were not experienced in fighting another army. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) formed in the north was very different. The first cohorts were formed from those who had fought against the Japanese, mainly in conjunction with the Chinese Communists in Manchuria but also with the Soviets in Korea. The Americans claim that it was well equipped compared to the ROKA. In 1949 the KPA was greatly supplemented by thousands of Korean who had fought in the Chinese Civil War. When full-scale war broke out in 1950, the ROKA crumbled, and had it not been for American intervention, the war would have soon been over (Scobell and Sanford 2007).The American response to the debacle was twofold.

The US intervened massively, not merely with its own troops but troops from 15 other countries; this was perhaps the zenith of American authority. By comparison only seven countries sent supporting troops to the Vietnam War, and a mere three countries participated in the coalition of the willing in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Because of the Soviet boycott of the UN Security Council over the refusal to transfer the China seat to the new government in Beijing, the USA was able to dragoon the UN into endorsing American intervention, which came under the auspices of the United Nations Command (UNC). Despite its name the UNC is not controlled by the United Nations but exclusively by the USA (Norton 1997).

The USA also reasserted Operational Control (OPCON) over the South Korean military which it holds to this day. Initially this was done via the UNC, but in the 1970s the UN General Assembly passed a motion declaring that the UNC should be abolished. The USA seems to have ignored that, but it did transfer OPCON directly to the Combined Forces Command (CFC). This is the unified command over the ROK military and US Forces in Korea (USFK), which might suggest some joint ownership. In fact the Commander of the CFC is the Commander of USFK. It is, in other words, a front organization. That is under discussion and may conceivably change, though that is unlikely.

OPCON has changed slightly over time. Park Chung-hee tried to get it back in the late 1960s but the Americans refused. General Roh Tae-woo raised it again in the later 1980s when running for president, and on 1 December 1994, during the Kim Young-sam administration, the USA handed back peacetime control, retaining control in wartime, when of course it really mattered (“Experts address misconceptions about OPCON transfer” 2010). Peacetime control did have some significance because it meant, for instance, that General Chun Doo-hwan needed US permission in 1980 to move troops from the DMZ to Kwangju in the south to repress demonstrations (Shorrock 2015). Protests in Kwangju were part of a democratic upsurge following the assassination of Park Chung-hee. US complicity in the massacre in Kwangju, which may have left over 600 dead, was well-established, and US peacetime control was part of the evidence (Kim 2017a) (Shorrock 2017). Why the USA insisted on hanging onto what was a minor part of OPCON is a mystery. Or alternatively, since they had the power, why did they not use it more wisely; massacres that passed unnoticed in the 1940s were less easily covered up in the 1980s. Moreover, from the US point of view, there was little point to Kwangju. The generals had done their job, and by then democracy did not pose the challenge to US control in Korea as it had in the aftermath of liberation from the Japanese.

US control over South Korea was also eased, although temporarily, in respect of the massive joint military exercises it holds with the ROK military. The USA had handed over management of the exercises to the ROKA in 2007/2008 but reasserted control in 2010 following the Cheonan incident (Jung 2010; Kim and Ser 2010). The Cheonan was a ROK Navy ship which sank, probably in an accident with South Korean mines off the coast of North Korea. The inquiry held by the ROK Ministry of Defense predictably pinned the blame on North Korea (Elich 2010; “Russia’s Cheonan investigation suspects that the sinking Cheonan ship was caused by a mine in water” 2010; Gregg 2010). What the real reason for the US resuming control of the exercises is unknown.

Full transfer of OPCON, namely, wartime control, has been postponed numerous times. It is rumored that Moon Jae-in had wanted it to happen during his term in office but has instead called for “early transfer,” whatever that might mean (Park and Lee 2017). He has expressed frustration that despite having a GDP claimed to be 45 times that of the North and massive military spending, “our troops can’t handle the North Korean military on their own” (“Moon vows to push for early takeover of wartime troop control, enhance deterrence against North” 2017; Park et al. 2017). He might also have mentioned that the South has far better military equipment (it jostles with Saudi Arabia for being the biggest purchaser of American weapons) and could field twice as many troops (Kim 2017b). And moreover, because of the US-ROK alliance, war would automatically bring in the USA in support irrespective of OPCON. It is hard to imagine any country less in need of foreign control of its military, something which has been described by a former commander of USFK no less as being the “most remarkable concession of sovereignty in the entire world” (Son 2014).

Both the US and ROK governments claim that the postponement of OPCON transfer is consensual and the conservative press in the past has suggested that delays were at Seoul’s request (“Korea Asks U.S. to Delay Troop Control Handover Again” 2013). However, even though the ROK military establishment might have its own secret reasons to approve of the postponement it seems that the real reason for the delay is American reluctance to lose control over what is one of the most powerful militaries in the world, at probably the most strategic location in the world. The ostensible reason for the delay is that conditions are not ripe, and since it is really the USA that decides, there is potential for indefinite postponement (Salmon 2018). The “conditions” usually refer to North Korea’s nuclear deterrent, and since that will not be laid aside without some sort of security guarantee from the USA, which Washington is unwilling to provide, there again matters are in American hands.

Nevertheless negotiations on OPCON transfer must continue and a framework for a superficially new, if essentially unchanged command structure agreed upon.

There are four major components in the existing structure – the South Korean armed forces (ROKA for convenience), the US forces in Korea (USFK), the United Nations Command (UNC), and the Combined Forces Command (CFC). The CFC has overall wartime command of ROKA and USFK, and the Commander of USFK is also Commander of CFC, under OPCON. The same American general also heads UNC. A number of different entities within the military command structure but all controlled by Washington.

United Nations Command

The UNC does not appear to have any warfighting function, but apart from providing a fig leaf of respectability for the US military presence in South Korea, it does control the southern side of the DMZ. When the USA wanted to block attempts to rejoin the North-South railway network in August 2018, and important part of the détente process, the US commander spoke as head of UNC (“Korean rapprochement efforts stymied by UN rail block” 2018). That the United Nations was being used to prevent peace rather than promote it went largely unnoticed.

However the UNC has an uncertain future. If there were a Peace Declaration ending the Korean war, as advocated by the two Koreas (supported by China and Russia), then UNC would lose its raison d’etre (Park 2018a). This would not necessarily be an insuperable barrier to American utilization of the UN flag in Korea. When a raison d’etre is a pretext, its disappearance can lead to other justifications. NATO was ostensibly founded to “deter Soviet aggression,” but when the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO not merely continued in existence but expanded both its membership (into Eastern Europe) and its role (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya) (Chomsky 2014; Daalder 1999; Rice 2016). It is no surprise then that thought is being given to how to continue UNC if the Korean War is declared over (Shorrock 2018a; Yoo 2018).

Combined Forces Command

Defense News, in an article a few days after the Mattis-Jeong agreement, did mention the CFC transfer to South Korea but buried it a long way from the headline which merely mentioned the control of Korean troops – “South Korea could soon take control of its own wartime operations from the US” (Jeong 2018a).

Pershing was the commander of US troops in Europe in World War I, and he later criticized the deployment of American troops under foreign command. He did not trust the British, or the French, and since he was famous in the aftermath of the war – he was the only general to be awarded six stars – his opinions were influential and have passed into conventional wisdom (Maurice 1931). For instance, Karl Rove, election strategist to George W. Bush, claimed on Fox News in 2011 that “American troops have never been under the formal control of another nation. Why should we start now?” (Jacobson 2011). Rove was factually incorrect when it came to details but political, and essentially he was right (Bruner and Serafino 2001; Schuler 2006). Since Pershing’s day various US units have been under foreign command, but the importance of those cases has decreased and in recent years has been confined to US peacekeeping operations of no substantial military consequence and where, in reality, the USA is in overall strategic control. Why, in Korea of all places, start now?

It is unclear how the idea of relinquishing CFC control to a Korean initially got traction, but it did and is now the subject of a formal agreement. It may be that the transfer will not happen until it no longer matters. There is no fixed date – the latest prediction is 2023 – and it is contingent of conditions and capabilities, so the opportunity for postponement is always there (Jun 2018a). But if it does take place and there is a formal transfer of command, what then?

The world has been distracted by Trump’s strident calls to put “America First,” foolishly dismantling America’s soft power strengths (Beal 2017d). In the meantime the bureaucracy and here the Pentagon have been working away at more sophisticated ways to run the empire in a time of decline where brute force is increasingly ineffective.

Alliances are very much stuff of empires and how to co-opt elites into the imperial structure, without abandoning control is a continuing challenge. Harry Harris was then the Commander of United States Pacific Command (USPACOM), since May 2008 United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). He was subsequently Ambassador-designate to Australia before being transferred to Seoul after Victor Cha, for unspecified reasons, was not appointed ambassador. Harris, incidentally, is an embodiment of modern US imperialism; his father was a US naval officer and his mother Japanese. Unlike his nineteenth-century predecessor Lieutenant Pinkerton, who abandoned Madama Butterfly for an American woman, Harris senior moved his Japanese wife and family to Tennessee.

Embedment might be seen as the human resources equivalent of interoperability, whereby weapon systems are integrated into the imperial military architecture making independent action by subordinate alliance members difficult if not impossible. A key component of interoperability is Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) capability (Elich 2012; Song 2012). We might see ISR as the brains of the military machine which directs the various tools – fighter, bombers, missiles, aircraft carrier, and troops in the field – to carry out appropriate functions. He who controls ISR controls the army, irrespective of the formal chain of command. It is no accident that the air force – the battlefield kingpin to ISR – is to be kept under separate US control (Yoo 2018).

Both the British and the Japanese used a mix of direct and indirect rule in their empire. American control in South Korea at the governance level was direct up to 1948, under the Military Government, and then indirect after that through the Republic of Korea. At the military level, it was direct until 1948, indirect until the USA took over Operational Control in 1950, and then direct after that especially in respect of wartime control. However, even during the Korean War, American military “advisors frequently found themselves working with a counterpart two to three ranks above their rank and advising units larger than the ones they had served in, much less commanded,” a classic indirect rule function (Ramsey 2006).

Indirect rule incurs a certain loss of control, but it is usually advantageous, and sometimes for historical reasons becomes inevitable. If OPCON is finally transferred to the South Koreans, it may really have little effect on American power in Northeast Asia.

US-NK Negotiations and the Sad Failure of Moon Jae-in

Military and Political Dimensions of the Nuclear Weapons Challenge

The idea of North Korea being a great, perhaps the greatest, threat to the USA is certainly frequently repeated and often by what most Americans would reasonably, if naively, think of as authoritative and dependable voices, such as James Clapper then Director of National Intelligence (Landler 2016). It is very seldom challenged, and on the rare occasions when it is, it is inserted into a propaganda envelope which obscures the real relationship between the USA and Korea (Fish 2018).

Unfortunately these experts, and the journalists who interview them, seldom get round to analyzing the real situation. If North Korea is not the threat that James Clapper et al. claim it to be, what is it all about? What is the role of North Korea’s nuclear capability?

Nuclear weapons, as mentioned earlier, function primarily as a deterrent, and that is the case here. North Korea cannot attack the USA, though many Koreans would no doubt like to follow the example of George Washington and expel foreign power from the peninsula. That is not feasible and there is no reason to suppose that anyone in Pyongyang thinks it is. North Korea cannot effectively defend itself from an American attack; it might perhaps do better than Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, but the real danger to Americans comes when they put boots on the ground. There would be no stopping US missiles and bombers. If attack is out of the question and defense is ineffective, that leaves deterrence.

Deterrence is an amorphous concept revolving around bluff, credibility, and acceptable risk and a deterrent that is used is a deterrent that has failed (Beal 2017a). From the point of view of America, North Korea is a high-risk, low-value target. For North Korea it is what Seymour Hersh called, in respect of Israel, the “Samson Option” in that its use would entail destruction (Hersh 1991). There being no other military way to counter possible American aggression, North Korea is left with the nuclear deterrent, not a good option but unfortunately the best.

If North Korea’s nuclear capability is not a threat to the USA but rather an ability to retaliate if attacked, what is the fuss about? If there is no attack, there can be no retaliation. Besides, Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal is by far the smallest of all the nuclear powers and of course dwarfed by that of the USA.

The answer lies with imperialism. It makes an attack on North Korea unpalatably dangerous and strikes at the heart of imperial power. The USA may, or may not, attack a particular country, but it wants the option to be able to. What is the point of military power if it cannot be used to subjugate those who resist? The very smallness of North Korea and its deterrent and the historical circumstances in which it was developed make it especially challenging for US imperialism. Even the strongest of empires – and the USA is the most powerful in history – recognize that large countries cannot be attacked with impunity. Small countries should be different. It is frequently observed that if Iraq or Libya had possessed a meaningful nuclear deterrent, they would not have been attacked (Frolov 2010; Sanati 2011; Taylor 2017). North Korea thus poses a strategic challenge to US imperialism rather than a direct military threat. There is always the danger that the Korean example might be contagious spreading to Iran and further afield.

US-East Asia Strategy and Its Contradictions

US difficulties are compounded by the contradiction inherent in its East Asia strategy. On the one hand, there is the long-standing desire to destroy the North Korean state, thus extirpating the shame of the failure to achieve victory in the Korean War and extending American power to the very borders on China. This might take place through direct military action (Read 2017; Thompson 2016). Alternatively and very attractively, there is the fantasy that North Korea will “collapse” and that all the USA will need to do is to “manage” that collapse, utilizing the South Korea military (Foster-Carter 1998; Glaser and Snyder 2010; O 2016; Olson 2016). Obama seemed to believe this, hence his policy of “strategic patience” (Foster-Carter 2015; “Obama: North Korea is bound to collapse” 2015). There are myriad problems involved in all this for the USA. These include North Korean retaliation, nuclear or conventional, and resistance – one authoritative study estimated that up to 400,000 troops would be required for pacification even if there was no significant military resistance (Bennett 2010; Bennett and Lind 2011). On top of these dangers Chinese intervention is almost certain (“Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018” 2018).

Leaving all this aside and assuming that the USA now has another scalp on its belt without being locked in a war with China, there is the problem of justifying the huge US military presence in the region (Holmes 2017). USFK has no plans to leave whatever happens, and President Moon has agreed that the presence will continue even if peace is declared (Cho and Kim 2018; Kim 2018a). Nevertheless it is clear that pressure will mount.

The presence has two components – one is the actual physical deployment of troops and assets such as THAAD in South Korea and elsewhere in maritime East Asia such as in Japan and Guam – the “military presence.” The other is the alliance structure that locks South Korea, as well as Japan and Taiwan, into the encirclement of China. Some analysts have realized that the latter is the important one and have been prepared to consider a slimming down of the physical presence (Sokolsky and DePetris 2018). Others, including Congress, have been loath to see any withdrawal of US troops from the front line, even though that might be strategically a wise decision (Yonhap 2018c).

The Military Presence and Its Complications

The North Korean position on the military presence is interesting and shrouded in some fantasizing. Ever since the 2000 summit between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il Seoul has been claiming that Pyongyang has accepted that the US military presence should continue: “Kim Jong-il clearly agreed with President Kim Dae-jung that United States forces in Korea (USFK) should remain in Korea even after unification for peace keeping and maintaining the balance of power” (“NK Backs Continued USFK Presence” 2000). This assertion has been continued in 2018 regarding meetings between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un (Yi 2018b). It is obvious why South Korea should claim this because it allows them to talk détente with the North without challenging US dominance, but the South Korean claims, as presented, appear preposterous. It seems like that neither Kim Jong-il nor Kim Jong Un, realizing the South Korea presidents’ predicament, made the US presence a confrontational issue for strategic reasons. The small US contingent (roughly 23,000 at the moment) is of no great military significance in itself and would probably mainly serve to facilitate the bringing in of an expeditionary force in the event of war (Elich 2012; “Joint Press Conference with Secretary Panetta and Defense Minister Kim in the Pentagon Briefing Room” 2012).

Moreover USFK might well be a hostage against attack. Over the last 15 years, US forces have been drawn back from Seoul to Pyeongtaek some 60 km to the south to take them out of range of North Korean artillery (“N Korea angry at US army plans” 2003). This would have made the USA more likely to launch an attack on the North, with its bases being safe, but would leave Seoul vulnerable to retaliation. One might have been thought that the South Korean government would have objected and attempted to block the move. Though there have been long-running protests by the inhabitants of Pyeongtaek, the South Korean government seems to have remained silent (Choe 2006). As with the deployment of THAAD and the naval base on Jeju, South Korean interests were sacrificed on the altar of American strategic objectives, yet another manifestation of the imperial-client relationship.

However the US sense of security may be misplaced. The KPA has claimed that its long-range artillery can now reach Pyeongtaek and even Pusan (“U.S. Troops in S. Korea Can Never Escape Strikes by KPA’s Long-range Artillery: Panmunjom Mission” 2017). That may be an exaggeration, but in any case the US bases are vulnerable to missile attack (Oh 2017). This makes Korea a special case, though the Iranians now claim that they can retaliate against US bases in the region if attacked (Sharafedin 2018). Pearl Harbor is the only instance of a US base outside the theatre of operations ever having been attacked; US wars – Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, to name a few – have always been prosecuted from bases at a sufficient distance to be invulnerable to counterattack.

Moreover the US bases at Pyeongtaek – Osan Airforce Base and especially United States Army Garrison (USAG) Humphreys, where USFK is now headquartered – is home not merely to troops but also an increasing number of dependents. It is now US policy to encourage dependents to live on base in order to discourage the sorts of things that soldiers on their own get up to, such as drunkenness and the occasional rape. If the USA were to launch an attack on North Korea, it would almost certainly have to evacuate the dependents first, thus giving warning to Pyongyang and antagonizing the South Korean people aware of the implications for their own safety (Lamothe 2017). The evacuation problem in fact extends far beyond the military presence issue since there are also hundreds of thousands of other civilians – Americans and citizens of core allies such as Australia and Britain – who would also have to be evacuated (Hayes 2018; Jun 2018b). Nuclear retaliation aside, the reported confidence of President Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham that in the event of a war with North Korea “it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here” leaves out this inconvenient fact (Ortiz and Yamamoto 2017).

Another drawback in the US military presence is that it reminds Beijing of the US containment of China and the role of the Korean Peninsula in that. USAG Humphreys is not merely the largest overseas US base (and mainly paid for by the South Korean taxpayer), but it is also the one closest to Beijing (Hincks 2018; Lee and Jung 2012; Letman 2017).

The US military presence in South Korea is an affront to Korean sovereignty but whatever opprobrium that would attract from South Korean citizens would fall on the government in Seoul which endorses it rather than that in Pyongyang which condemns it.

North Korea policy toward the USA is therefore not straightforward. Being so much weaker, it must attempt to be flexible and pragmatic, sometimes being conciliatory and at other times defiant. Nevertheless its very weakness and vulnerability mean that peace and security, coupled with economic development, are the overriding and simplifying objectives. The Byungjin policy which attempts to use the relative cheapness of a nuclear deterrent compared to conventional defense to allow space for economic development despite US economic warfare is the expression of this (Beal 2014; Feron 2017; Toloraya 2016).

The USA is in a very different position. It has security and no need for peace – indeed peace is anathema to what is termed too simply the military-industrial complex. It has innumerable options. They may come with costs as well as benefits, but there are still many choices to be made. Often that is an uncomfortable place to be in, and the solution is to defer difficult choices and opt for the status quo.

Pushback and the Attraction of the Status Quo

The USA has constantly considered and frequently threatened war against North Korea since the armistice of 1953 and yet has never taken the decisive step even though it has engaged in military action around the world, overt and covert many times over that period (Blum 2018). A large part of the reason is clearly the military dangers of retaliation, resistance, and Chinese intervention. There are those who engage in wishful thinking, arguing that resistance would be minimal, that China could be persuaded to approve of an American-led invasion, and that only South Koreans would suffer the costs of retaliation (Luttwak 2018). However wiser or more cautious counsel has so far prevailed, and it is noticeable that when politicians ramp up the threats, as Trump did before Kim Jong-un’s peace overture in 2018, the military and their affiliates in the media have been careful to cool matters down warning of “catastrophic consequences” (Marx 2018; Shankar 2017).

On the other hand, the military wants to preserve its military presence in South Korea and its forward strategic position in Asia, and tension on the Korean Peninsula is seen as a necessary justification for that. President Jimmy Carter tried to scale down the US military presence on assuming office in 1977 and to withdraw the 700 nuclear weapons deployed in South Korea. He was outmaneuvered by US intelligence which exaggerated the strength of the KPA and ascribed, without evidence, an intention to invade on the part of Pyongyang if Carter’s plan was put into effect (Gady 2018; Whyte 2015). Carter gave in and the military presence continues to this day, at a slightly lower troop level and, in theory, without land-based nuclear weapons since 1991, though this is disputed (Staines 2004). However, since the focus of US-Asia strategy is China, with Korea being merely a part, albeit an important part of that, then even a successful invasion of North Korea would be counterproductive.

However if war in Korea presents dangers for the United States peace perhaps poses greater challenges. It is just conceivable that a domestically strong and deeply strategic US administration might be able to construct a deal with North Korea that would not greatly undermine the global position of the USA in respect of proliferation (the “North Korean example”). If North Korea could be quickly integrated into the global capitalist system, the deal might even be passed off as a victory. If the USA could tolerate an independent North Korea and an autonomous South Korea in some sort of pre-unification confederal system, then it is possible that the old dream of harnessing the Korean Peninsula to the anti-China alliance, as is attempted with countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, and India, could be pursued (Carlin and Lewis 2007; Cumings 2008; Richardson 2007). None of this is likely to come to pass. The Trump administration is extremely weak with its hold on domestic political power quite tenuous. The foreign policy establishment despises it for incompetence and has been trying through various devices – Russiagate and Mueller – to remove Trump from office. In addition the Democrats have taken the House of Representatives in the November 2018 midterm elections, and many Republications in Congress have a profound hatred for Trump’s foreign policy, the late John McCain being an obvious example. Strategically the administration is incoherent and disheveled. Although Donald Trump might hanker after a Nobel Peace Prize and the legacy of being the American president who “solved the North Korea crisis,” he has so little understanding of the issues that he allows his North Korea policy to incorporate elements, such as “maximum pressure” of sanctions and a refusal to negotiate meaningful security guarantees that ensure there will be no deal. The process of derailment of negotiations is especially facilitated by his very own Rasputin, John Bolton (Jeong 2018)

Interestingly the article was also derided by some fellow mainstream journalists such as the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor and CCN’s Will Ripley (Ripley 2018; Taylor 2018). The lead author of the NYT article, David Sanger, has a nickname going back at least to the 1990s of “Scoop Sanger” from his success in publishing journalist scoops deriving from his role as a mouthpiece for elements in the intelligence community who wanted to influence government policy (Cumings 2003; Lewis 2005, 2015). The mainstream media is of course part of the state propaganda system, but presumably Taylor and Ripley thought that Sanger was being rather too blatant. The obvious inaccuracies in the article, and its agenda, were so egregious that the Executive Editor of the Hankyoreh, South Korea’s leading liberal newspaper, wrote a personal open letter to his counterpart on the Times protesting (Kim 2018e).

However it would be a mistake to lay too much stress on the foibles and foolishness of the Trump administration. American presidents find it very easy to make war and, even when they do try, very difficult to make peace. It is a systemic issue which transcends individuals though specificities are important.

Empires are by their nature, warlike animals and although they may impose peace within their domain – as euphemized by the phrases Pax Romana and Pax Britannica – they are created and continue through force. Traditional empires may have wanted stability on their borders which were far away in terms of time and control, and what was on the other side might not have merited further conquest. Competitor empires also imposed constraints. The US empire is different. Globalization means there are no limits and technology has largely abolished the former constraints of time and control. The military has always been a powerful force in previous empires, but the modern American military-industrial complex – encompassing all those who make their living from not so much from war itself but from the possibility of war, from generals and arms manufactures to journalists and politicians – has grown mightily in influence. The military-industrial complex, it should be noted, does not necessarily want war itself so much as the prospect and likelihood of war. Nothing is more threatening to the permanent war economy than the prospect of peace. This does not mean that militarism is not a force in target countries such as North Korea. Having been under existential threat from the world’s hyperpower for all of its existence, it would be strange if the North Korean military was not a powerful political force. But it is constrained by the overwhelming necessity of peace and security. The USA is different. For all the talk of the “National Security State,” the national security of the USA has not really been under threat since the ebbing of British power at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Fordham 1999; Hendrickson 1998; Hogan 1998). The USA is indeed exceptional; all other countries to varying degrees have to be concerned for national security. The US, for reasons of geography, size, and power, has little need for such concerns. Rather it is a matter of projecting power with relative impunity. The “National Security State” is really a euphemism describing a new, globalist stage in US imperialism.

This power and impunity means that the USA can conduct its foreign affairs in ways which would be fatal for other countries. An aspect which is of special relevance here is the two-party adversarial system. The USA has developed a political framework in which there are effectively only two political parties (though the maverick Trump has dented that somewhat). The parties are very similar ideologically, and in fact their foreign policy positions are easily switched. They differentiate themselves for the voters not so much by policies as by being adversarial, opposing what the other party is doing. This gives the voters the illusion of choice without the reality. It has an important consequence in terms of foreign policy because it automatically engenders discontinuity and incoherence of which there are many instances. George W. Bush was famous for his ABC foreign policy – Anything But Clinton (Delury 2008; Sigal 2005). One result was that he tore up the Agreed Framework that Bill Clinton had signed with the DPRK in 1994 on spurious grounds (Cumings 2003). Trump has torn up Obama’s deal with Iran, and in turn the Democratic Party is attempting to sabotage his negotiations with North Korea (Hwang 2018a, b; Kristof 2018; Manchester 2018). Since political principles are not a major factor, there is a tendency for American politicians to compete with the opposition by waving the flag of “patriotism” every more vigorously, even when it is strategically counterproductive. Dropping bombs on foreigners, or at least those with no air defenses, is a sure way of upstaging the competition and winning praise; after Trump launched a missile attack on Syria in 2017, prominent foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria proclaimed on CNN that by doing so, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States” (Chasmar 2017; Naureckas 2017).

Apart from the structural forces underlying the reluctance of the USA to accept peace in general in the case of the Korean peninsula, there is also the overriding need to contain China (Fullilove and Lemahieu 2018). From the division of the peninsula in 1945 up until today, Korea has essentially been a subset of wider geopolitical concerns – first the Soviet Union and subsequently China.

If a hostile North Korea disappears whether through war or through peace, the USA faces a challenge of justifying its military presence in East Asia and specifically in South Korea. With war too dangerous, peace unpalatable, and an incapacity of both the current administration and the foreign policy establishment to surmount these challenges, the USA necessarily prefers the status quo. Whatever Trump’s hankering for a Nobel Peace Prize today or a yearning to be a great war president tomorrow, it is likely that his attempts in either direction will be frustrated.

The Dilemmas and Impotence of Moon Jae-in and the South Korean Elite

If the USA is an imperialist state and North Korea an independent, resistant state, then South Korea can perhaps best be characterized as a “swing state.” Both the USA and North Korea have fixed positions which are unlikely to change. North Korea may be fluid in negotiations, but there is no reason to suppose it will succumb to US pressure and surrender. The USA may make various peaceful pronouncements, but its essential thrust for domination will remain, and it will not, in Mao Zedong’s phrase, lay down its butcher’s knife and become a Buddha. South Korea is different. Created by the USA from the detritus of the Japanese empire as a client state, it has wrestled ever since with the conflicting demands of subservience and wresting a degree of autonomy. Japan itself became a client state at the same time, and the parallels are intriguing (McCormack 2018). The OPCON issue is a formal expression of its client status, but American domination is more extensive and invidious than that, extending throughout society both at popular and elite levels. South Korea has the potential to swing toward independence; it is a major economy, with a stable society and a powerful military. Its military budget is far greater than that of the North; in 2013 it was claimed in the National Assembly that it was 33/34 times greater (Kim 2013). In its first decades, it needed the USA to protect it from domestic rebellion and the threat from North Korea. But ruthless repression, economic growth, American support, and indoctrination have produced great changes; even today challenging the official government line can lead to prosecution under the National Security Act (NSA or more commonly NSL) (Shim 2018). The North has been greatly weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and by unrelenting pressure from the USA. South Korea now has the potential to make its own way and to escape from American domination. It also has the necessity to do so, for as long as it remains a client state, it will be used by the USA as a pawn against China. If the USA goes go to war against China – something which is frequently discussed (Berg 2018; Heath 2018; Kagan 2018) – then South Korea will be on the front line and will face devastation.

However the structural forces of potential and necessity do not necessarily translate into action, as is brought home by the presidency of Moon Jae-in.

Paik Nak-chung has argued that the “Candlelight Revolution” of 2017 which led to the downfall of Park Geun-hye, and opened the way for the election of Moon Jae-in, was a “real revolution” (Paik 2018). It may well have been real in aspiration, but the Moon administration has not fulfilled that desire and promise. “Revolution” does imply an overturning of domestic social relations and international relationships, the two being intertwined, certainly in the Korean context. Moon’s popularity has plummeted, mainly so far because of inherited economic problems and his failure to address them (Park 2018b; Rhyu 2018). More important here is his failure to stand up to the USA which will dash prospects for detente and peace. Paik claims that the Candlelight Revolution produced a new government able to respond the Kim Jong-un’s peace overtures of 2018 (Paik 2018). That is true but the response is constrained and vitiated by domestic forces, particularly the military and the conservatives, and subordinated to the policies of the United States. Since the USA does not want peace, South Korea will not attain it unless it defies America, and Moon shows no signs of doing that. This was apparent months after he took office in 2017 and has been continually reconfirmed since then (Beal 2017b, c). Moon clearly faces formidable obstacles. He has limited formal political power, and, more substantially, there is always the danger of some sort of coup, either political (Roh Moo-hyun narrowly escaped impeachment in 2004) or military. The USA can apply immense pressure to achieve its aims, even instigated a coup if necessary. So the challenge for Moon is to nudge the USA into a meaningful peace dialogue with Pyongyang without inciting a counteroffensive from the conservatives and military in South Korea. There are various aspects to that, with sanctions having high visibility, but the fundamental one is persuading the USA to accept peaceful coexistence with an independent North Korea which retains the right and ability for self-defense a compromise which could be called “capping” (Dalton and Levite 2018; Miller and Sokolsky 2018; Sigal 2018b; Work 2018a). It is unlikely that any such persuasion would be successful since the USA, for reasons discussed above, is not able to make the geostrategic adjustments necessary and will opt for the status quo. Nevertheless, if Moon is to help remove the specter of devastation from the Korean peninsula, he must try. North Korea has developed a nuclear deterrent because of the threat from the USA, so Pyongyang will not move toward denuclearization unless that threat is addressed. However, despite pretensions, South Korea has no direct role to play in the negotiations between the USA and the DPRK on the nuclear issue. What it can do is, on the one hand, improve bilateral relations with the North – the détente process – and on the other address the issue of sanctions.

While a number of useful and productive moves have been made during 2018 to promote détente with the North, there is a limit to what can be achieved at the bilateral level. Enthusiasts abroad, often Korean Americans, were carried away with the thought that, at last, Koreans were able to take their destiny in their own hands and forge peace (Feffer 2018; Freeman-Woolpert 2018; Lindorff 2018; Shorrock 2018c). In South Korea the government, naturally, and the liberal media echoed this fantasy (Editorial 2018; Lee 2018b; Noh 2018a; Yi 2018; Yu 2018). In reality there was very little of substance that South Korea could do with the North that did not require US approval (Jeong et al. 2018; Kim 2018b, c; “Korean rapprochement efforts stymied by UN rail block” 2018; Lee 2018a; Shin 2018; Yonhap 2018a).

Much of the constraint that the USA is able to impose on the detente process is exercised through its dominance of the United Nations (and the UNC) and is manifested through sanctions. It is well established that sanctions are usually ineffective in compelling governments to succumb to US demands and that their main function is a domestic one, to “satisfy the need to appear to be acting while avoiding the risks of action” (Friedman 2018). In respect of small countries such as North Korea, they are a particularly cowardly weapon, costing little and posing no danger while inflicting great pain on the target population, especially the most vulnerable, that is, the elderly and children. They produce disease, ill-health, malnutrition, and sometimes starvation. Currently the UN estimates that 40% of the population of North Korea “require humanitarian assistance” (“UN Humanitarian Chief to visit the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 9–12 July 2018” 2018). Maternal mortality is eight times higher in North Korea than in the South (Kim 2018d). Sanctions are fanning a TB epidemic in North Korea, and Seoul has fears it may spread south (Talmadge 2018). The US attitude toward sanctions was famously summed up by the US Ambassador to the UN Madelaine Albright who when asked on CCN in 1996 about reports that sanctions had killed half a million Iraqi children replied “…we think the price is worth it” (Stahl 2007).

In the present context, sanctions have an added dimension, with two aspects. As long as Washington thinks that it can achieve the unilateral surrender of North Korea with sanctions, it will not find it necessary to negotiate on the security issue. That is wishful thinking and we may suppose that more astute minds see sanctions as a convenient device with which to scuttle negotiations. North Korea is not going to believe any US professions of peaceful intent while it is carrying out economic aggression.

Sanctions therefore have become a key element in current negotiations. Unless there is movement on sanctions, there will be no progress. If Moon Jae-in is to have any effect on US-DPRK negotiations then sanctions alleviation is the button to push. He has made some noises, but as soon as he has encountered opposition from the US, or its subordinate allies, he has backed down. On his trip to Western Europe in October 2018, he raised the issue (how strongly we don’t know) with Macron and May and was rebuffed by both (Jeong 2018b; Ryall 2018; Yi 2018a; Yoon and Norman 2018). He went to New Zealand, and the message was the same: Prime Minister Ardern “said New Zealand would not be receptive to any calls to ease sanctions” and “sanctions would continue to be essential until Pyongyang completely abandons its nuclear program” (Beal and Wilson 2018; Kim 2018c). Moon capitulated to this pressure from the imperial periphery and from the center and reiterated his subservience to US sanctions policy (Kim 2018d; “Seoul to Maintain N. Korea Sanctions until Complete Denuclearization” 2018).

Moon could have attempted to stand up to the USA over sanctions. There is a moral opprobrium; sanctions are variously described as “war crimes” (Cockburn 2018; Pilger 2014; “Rule 53. Starvation as a Method of Warfare” 2017) or “economic terrorism” (“Iran’s Rouhani denounces US sanctions as ‘economic terrorism’” 2018). This opprobrium is latent because the facts are usually suppressed or glossed over – blaming the victim is a common technique – but could be activated. Moreover the key sanctions are those emanating from the United Nations Security Council, and since they are ostensibly largely to protect South Korea, then an appeal to the UNSC by President Moon would have traction. The actions would not be without danger to Moon or his administration, but if sanctions continue, then the possibility of war with the North, and with China, will continue.

It may be that the current measures between South and North to develop détente will create sufficient momentum and become unstoppable, but this is unlikely since at any time the USA can put its foot down and bring things to a halt.

The failure of Moon Jae-in to stand up to the USA over sanctions is but one instance, albeit a crucial one, of a wider incapacity of the South Korean élite, over generations, to wrest autonomy from the USA. While it is subservient, it will continue to be used as a pawn by US imperialism in its broader struggle to maintain hegemony, especially in respect of the Chinese challenge. For the moment the best strategy for the USA is to preserve the status quo in respect of the Korean peninsula. Both war and peace would be less preferable to the present situation where a constructed fear of the “North Korean threat” produces sufficient tension to justify the US military presence in Northeast Asia, along with missile defense and other components of the permanent war economy. Moreover it comes with little cost or danger. Much of the forward military presence is funded by the host countries (Elich 2016; Lim et al. 2017; Park 2018b). Sanctions may cause huge damage to North Korea – $65trillion according to one estimate (“KCNA on Tremendous Damage Done to DPRK by US” 2010) – and danger to South Korea, but have no meaningful effect on the American economy. And since the “North Korean threat” is essentially bogus, the risks are quite manageable.