Editorial
The 4th Media, together with our friends around the globe, is going to launch a Global Campaign for the Signing of Peace Treaty to End the Korean War. This global campaign, in solidarity with the US National Campaign to End the Korean War, is an urgent response to a very dangerous war crisis which is about to break out, unless it’s swiftly taken care of among Six-Party member states. Needlessly to say, the Korean crisis is automatically a Northeast Asia crisis due to its geopolitically-intertwined therefore fatefully-interconnected relationships with its neighboring countries in the region.
Unless peace and security issues in Korean peninsula are peacefully resolved, the whole region, too, cannot be immune from a possible nuclear war breakout. The Korean peninsula has been forcefully captive to a constant nuclear semi-war status for almost 60 years now. There is no easy way out in the Korea peace question unless a permanent peace regime is firmly secured by those responsible parties, namely China, DPRK (North Korea), and United States of America who are the three signatories of the Armistice Agreement in July 27, 1953.
During over a half-century long division of Korean peninsula, this semi-war status which is very fragile in its nature has structurally forced lives and minds of more than 75 million Korean population altogether. However, the Korea division is like a terminally-ill cancer not only for the peninsula but also for the region as well. Unless this cancer is fundamentally (meaning, structurally) treated and eventually (but urgently!!!) removed from the collective body of multi-nations in the region, lasting peace and security in the region cannot be achievable.
In January 11, 2010, in order to replace the fragile Armistice Agreement, North Korea again called for signing a Peace Treaty which can finally end the yet unfinished Korean War. However, their peace offer is not news at all. For they have endlessly called for it since their first Geneva Political Conference with US in April 1954. It’s a plain historical fact that US is the one who’s repeatedly refused to sign the Peace Treaty. However, this peace initiative by DPRK has not gained much recognition and the support in the world, while they are the one who’s been paradoxically perceived (meaning, demonized) as “the aggressor” “the one who destroys the peace” or “the violator.”
During the Cold War, this vicious cycle of political paradox was perpetuated by mostly American and its allies’ global propaganda systems. It was like a magic box in which the real aggressor is beautified as the most peace-loving nation, while the real peace-builders labeled as the aggressors. Anyhow, the North again calls for signing a peace treaty among those responsible parties to end the war. Its neighbors such as China and Russia support the initiative. However, like in the past, the US, the most important party who’s been responsible for the forced division of Korea since September 1945, manipulates the situation again by repeatedly wielding its outdated hegemonic Cold War strategy by refusing, disregarding, and finger-pointing the peace offer.
South Korea and Japan, the two staunch pro-US and anti-communist allies in the region, followed the US position as they’ve done it since the end of the WWII. The Cheonan sinking incident last March and the Yeonpyong naval conflicts in November are some of the most dangerous results of the absence of Peace Treaty in Korean peninsula. Now the yet unfinished Korean War challenges all the responsible parties in the world to pay urgent attentions, together with swift actions, to keep and maintain the peace and security in the region, otherwise it can certainly become a detonator for a war. However, this time the Second Korean War will be a regional nuclear war for sure, as many predict.
The extremely dangerous Korea situation urgently calls for signing a Peace Treaty in order to End the Korean War. We in the 4th Media believe this campaign should be a global one. Not only Americans in US but also all those who do love peace and believe peace is the only way the humanity can survive should work together. Together with everybody in the whole globe, we do believe we can change the present course which might push the whole world, not only the Korea peninsula and the region, into a “mutually-assured destructive” nuclear war.
You can join us in this noble endeavor to build peace on earth, instead to incite a nuclear war which will definitely annihilate the whole Northeast Asian region. Of course, there is no guarantee if other parts of the world will be safe in that regional nuclear war outbreak! One of the practical ways to carry out this common global mission is to send a collective letter from tens of millions of people around the globe to the President of United States of America, urging him to End the Korean War by Signing a Peace Treaty. Lack of Peace Treaty in the Korean peninsula is a constant reminder of a possible nuclear war in the region, if a war broke!
Dr. Kiyul Chung who is Visiting Professor at School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University is the Editor-in-chief of the 4th Media.