The Koreans have a score to settle with the United states, and thus the North Korean government is entirely justified in its development of nuclear weapons if a certain Korean columnist (and North Korean scholar) with the Asia Times is to be believed. Kim Myong-chol in a recent column claimed the Koreans have a simmering score to settle with the US which dates back to the 19th century. Nuclear weapons are the only means by which the North can confront the United States, according to Kim, whose diminished understanding of history is no doubt attributed to the fact that he obtained his education in North Korea.

By Kim’s account this score began with an incident in 1866 when a ship known as the General Sherman supposedly shelled the city of Pyongyang. The ship, in question was not a US ship, however, but a private trader with a mostly Asian crew and a British owner. Perhaps Dr. Kim is confused, but it was not the US that demanded Korea pay tribute up until the end of the 19th century, it was China. It wasn’t the United States who occupied the whole of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945, it was Imperial Japan, nor was it the United States that started the Korean War with its invasion of the South.

While Kim feels the North is justified in its war of words and nuclear development the reality is, the North has invented a fiction to justify their militaristic ambitions. The North Koreans are the only players in the region who have shown a propensity for aggressive action it is they that should be feared, they promote conflict in the region. Kim asserts, like fellow tyrants in Venezuela and Iran, that a war with the US would lead to another loss for the US like their “defeats” in Afghanistan and in the Korean War.

Defeat in Afghanistan? Perhaps that is why Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar lies in hiding somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan. Defeat in the Korean War? Perhaps that explains why the North Koreans remains starving north of the 38th parallel rather than in control of a prosperous and democratic south as was their ambition.

This level of ignorance highlights the dangers of the Korean situation. For years the North Korean regime has spewed such poison, effectively brainwashing their own citizens and now they are attempting to fool their southern counterparts. In reality, absent North Korean military ambition, there is no conflict. The North has repeatedly demonstrated their deception and willingness to deceive in order to foment conflict and extract concession, which is why appeasing the North in 1994 was exactly the wrong move.

Appeasement only encourages an aggressor and after the spectacle of the EU, US and UN offering one incentive package after another to Iran, it should come as no surprise that the North will continue to make aggressive posturing as it seeks similar concessions. By casting the US as an enemy and an aggressor and inventing a supposed conflict with the US, the North Koreans, like Hugo Chavez, argue their military expansion is justified to counter a pending invasion, this distractionary Mussolini-esque tactic also serves to distract their sheep like citizenry from the inescapable reality of North Korean authoritarianism and repression. Aside from the pawns in the North, no one has proven more susceptible to this propaganda than the youth of South Korea, who are both too young to remember the scourge of North Korean aggression and too ignorant to learn from history, they too look to the US as a rival, which begs the question: why is the US sacrificing men, money and time to defend a nation that is becoming increasingly hostile to our support and defense. It is long since time for the South to shoulder the responsibility for their own defense allowing US forces to leave the peninsula permanently.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HH31Dg01.html