I don’t think that anyone really wants a war with North Korea. The potential use of nuclear weapons on either side is the stuff of nightmares; but even without nuclear weapons, the death tolls from conventional munitions such as artillery, small arms, non-nuclear missiles and air-strikes would be extraordinary.

Thus, many have been shocked that President Trump has seemed openly hostile to N. Korean Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un. They have blamed him with escalating the conflict, with prodding the rogue nation to the brink of nuclear conflict.

In the end, it sounds as if North Korea were a gentle, quiet land of rural majesty that just wanted to be left alone, when along came Donald Trump, who started being mean to the cuddly Teddy Bear president of exotic, far-off North Korea.

And yet, we forget. We forget that the Korean war of 1950-53 began when North invaded South and that it ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. That war cost an estimated 1.6 million civilian casualties and some 1.2 million combat casualties. I’ve met veterans of that nightmare. It was a horrible war, and would be again.

(https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/28/world/asia/korean-war-fast-facts/index.html).

However, we also forget that since that truce, North Korea has constantly provoked South Korea with infiltrations by special operations soldiers, with naval and border clashes, assassinations, terrorist events and artillery fire. We forget that North Korean operatives have kidnapped citizens of South Korea, Japan and other nations. (Many of whom never saw their families again.) Go through the list in the link below. It’s not stuff we hear much about, but it’s truly shocking. And the list only goes to 2007.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30004.pdf

Beyond that, we in the West (and particularly college educated Americans) have a stunning ignorance about the singular delights of the land above the 38th parallel. We forget that North Korea, that undying zombie of Communism, is a land of terrible cruelty, torture, imprisonment, starvation and sorrow. As we in the West decry oppression in all its real and imaginary forms, the people of North Korea understand it in full. Over the decades of North Korean tyranny, since 1948, hundreds of thousands have died at the hands of their own government in prison camps and reeducation centers. Attempted defection to China usually results in either more abuses, or return to North Korea with further torment. Starvation, beatings, rape, forced abortions and executions are tools of state, and entire families are punished for the transgressions of one. (I suspect no small number of those crushed souls would say today, ’bomb it, bomb it all; it really can’t get a whole lot worse for us here, eating bugs and rats, and hoping our children aren’t murdered.’)
If you think I’m confabulating, follow the links below.

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/north-korea

https://victimsofcommunism.org/north-korea-under-communism-1948-2014/

So it’s all well and good for us to oppose nuclear war, and to oppose war in in general. But the sudden discovery that North Korea was a super friendly place until Donald Trump? That’s not historically accurate or intellectually honest.

If it all cools off and calmer heads prevail, North Korea will still have hundreds of thousands of citizens living in conditions that rival those of the Soviet Gulags, or the Nazi concentration camps. They will survive day to day, eating starvation rations, being beaten or raped, tortured and murdered; the lucky ones exported abroad as wage slaves.
Those not in the camps, even the true believers, will continue to live in the constant fear that they’ll be arrested. And in the knowledge that their success, their survival, depends on showing unwavering devotion to Kim Jong-un and his family’s dynastic brand of tyrannical thuggery. Political opponents, religious believers, families of those suspected of dissent, all will fear the government or be punished by it. Because that’s how it goes down in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Assuming, again, that the war clouds pass, free people can wipe the sweat from their furrowed brows and allow the horrors of North Korea to go on, safe in the knowledge that diplomats will continue to talk as nuclear weapons and delivery systems continue to be developed in North Korea. All funded by the slave labor of untold, unknown citizens. And as men, women and children continue to suffer and starve.

What a relief that will be! And those who say ‘not my president’ can meet in safe cafes and discuss how ‘that crazy Trump’ nearly caused a war with a country that has been provoking free nations, and torturing its own citizens, for over 70 years. Safe out of the view of sensitive American citizens who oppose oppression.

I also hope we’re all prepared for what we see when, and if, the DPRK ever falls and the West has access. Because when we go in at last (hopefully through diplomacy or some miracle), when we see the camps and hear the stories, and witness the broken lives and weeping, gaunt faces; when we at last grasp the misery and sorrow that generations of people endured under that regime, we’ll be ashamed. And it will take decades for those people to escape the toxic cloud of imposed fear that enveloped them for so long.

But then, the world let it happen in exchange for the comfort of empty discussions and endless sanctions as we (the West and China) kicked North Korea and her people down the bloody road of history.

God forgive us when we see what that ‘peace’ cost.

0 0 votes
Article Rating