Rev Left Radio - Patriots, Traitors, and Empires: The Korean War and Korea's Struggle for Freedom

Episode Date: July 4, 2021

Stephen Gowans joins Breht to talk about his book "Patriots, Traitors, and Empires: The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom". They discuss the history of Korea, Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, WW2 and the Cold War, The Korean War, Kim Il-Sung and guerrilla warfare, South Korea as an American puppet state, the Soviet Union and Mao's China, American propaganda against the DPRK, the prospects for a unified Korea, and much more!  Check out Stephen's blog here: https://gowans.blog/ Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GowansStephen   Outro Music: "SNOW" by Zion T (feat. Lee Moon Sae) ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

The Korean War was one of the bloodiest chapters in Korean history. It was a civil war that nearly ignited World War III. We are united in detesting communist slavery. A war that took the lives of tens of thousands of American GIs and millions of Koreans. What we did in North Korea has never really been acknowledged. The Korean War set the template for Vietnam. The Korean War is one of the most vicious, violent, nauseating wars of the 20th century. It was a war many Americans don't remember, and Koreans can never forget.

The United States dropped more ordinance on North Korea in that three-year war than we dropped during the entire Second World War. For North Koreans and for the state, ideology of North Korea, the Korean War is not a memory. It's still very much alive. There's no way to understand what's going on today without understanding of the Korean War. How can you understand this Korean conflict that we are having without understanding of the origin of that conflict? Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. Today's episode is one that has been long in the making. I've long wanted to do an episode on the history of Korea, of the DPRK,

on the Korean War specifically. A few months ago, I asked on Twitter some good guests for a possible guest to come on and talk about that topic. and Stephen Gowens was recommended and specifically this conversation will be rooted around his book Patriots, Traders, and Empires, The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom. It's a wonderful book.

It works as a history on its own right but also a counter history, a sort of people's history from the perspective of Koreans and of the DPRK more broadly and really highlights first Japanese occupation of the peninsula and then after World War II,

U.S. continued occupation and the puppet government set up in the South and the continued brutality sanctions and threats of invasion lobbed at the north by the Americans and their allies. So this is really crucial, crucial history to understand. As I say in the episode, you cannot understand the present-day political situation between the U.S., the DPRK and South Korea without understanding this history. And so I hope people get a lot out of this and come to a better, more well-rounded conception of the situation broadly because if you just rely on the U.S. educational system and popular culture and the mainstream media to tell you about North and South Korea, you're going to have an absurdly childish understanding of that region,

of that peninsula. So we'll get into that. Before we do, though, just wanted to say that if you like what we do here at RevLeft Radio, Rev. Left Radio is 100% listener-supported and funding. it always will be there's no advertisers or anything big money infusions anything like that coke industry's money nothing like that to support rev left radio so we do depend on our listeners to support us and if you go to patreon.com forward slash rev left radio and you do donate to us you will have access to our discord and monthly bonus episodes so definitely do that if you haven't already and we appreciate everybody who has and will continue to support Rev Left Radio. It really means the world to us.

And it allows us to do what we do. When I quit my job to do this full time, I had to take out a $10,000 loan to make that rupture from my retail job and to try to focus on this project full time. And while we've paid back a lot of that, we still have a little bit to go. So the people that have supported us,

you're really allowing us to do the show and pay back the loan that I took in a risky manner to dedicate myself full time to this and to expand into Red Menace and guerrilla history as well. So thank you to everybody who supports the show. Now, without further ado, let's get into this fascinating conversation with Stephen Gowan, centered around his book, Patriots, Traders and Empires, The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom. Enjoy.

I'm the author of three books, Washington's Long War in Syria, Patriots, Traders, and Empires, the story of Korea's fight for freedom and Israel and Beachhead in the Middle East. I also have a blog called What's Left, which examines the world from a traditional leftist perspective, and that is one committed to the equality of people and the equality of nations. Yeah, beautiful. So I've read, and the focus of this episode is obviously going to be patriots, traitors, and empires, the story of Korea's struggle for freedom. Wonderful book.

Those two other books, I'm also very interested in reading, so maybe in the future we could have you back on to discuss those. But there's a lot of history to cover when it comes to the Korean sort of history and the Korean War, etc. And I think in the U.S. specifically, the Korean War does not get as much coverage in our educational and popular culture and media that's something like even the Vietnam War does or World War II, certainly. So I think this, even on the left, is not as well understood as it could be. And this book is a wonderful examination of it from a principled anti-imperialist perspective. So maybe the way to start is just to start with the introduction of your book, which you titled, One Country, Two States. And it has an opening quote by William Polk that reads, There are not two, but three Koreas, North, South, and the American Military Bases.

Now, we'll get into these details throughout this conversation, of course, But as an introduction to the conversation, can you kind of talk briefly about Korea as being one country split into two or three, as the quote suggests? Yeah, Pope was making a quip about three Koreas. But I think, in fact, it could be said that there are two Koreas embodied by one nation, Korea of patriots and a Korea of traitors or an American Korea and a Korean Korea. First, I mean, the idea that there's one Korea, but two states. Korea as a nation has existed within the same boundaries for over a thousand years. But it's only since 1948 that it has been divided into two states.

And the division is the consequence of a U.S. decision taken in furtherance of U.S. geopolitical aims. Taken, by the way, without consultation with Koreans. And without the slightest regard for the wishes or aspirations of Koreans who didn't won their country politically divided. Had the United States not intervened in Korea at the end of the Second World War, historians agree that the nation would have probably emerged from the war and from its years of colonization by the Japanese with the politics that favored communism, or at the very least a very robust leftist agenda,

because that's what Koreans in the majority wanted. I mean, Koreans were in the main at the time. peasants who were exploited by a tiny landlord class. And they lived in a country that was oppressed by the Japanese. So they would naturally be inclined toward communist politics, since communist politics aimed at overcoming exploitation at the level of class and nation. Well, you know, today there are two states on the peninsula. One, the creation of the United States called the Republic of Korea, and the other, the successor to the little-known People's Republic of Korea, which was the state Koreans proclaimed for themselves at the end of World War II before the United

States arrived on the peninsula and refused to recognize it. Well, the successor state to the People's Republic of Korea is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or what we know informally as North Korea. And these two states, the one created by the United States in North Korea, each claim to be the sole legitimate state in Korea. So we have two states contesting control of the same country. And one of those states, South Korea, is under the control of the United States. So in effect, we have the United States and the DPRK locked in a battle for control of a country. called Korea. Now, when I said that there's a patriot Korea and a traitor Korea, I should

explain, I mean, just briefly, Kim Il-sung, who probably get into later, but just briefly, he was the leader of North Korea, first leader. He had worried that the division of Korea into U.S. and Soviet occupation zones, which is done at the end of the Second World War for the purpose of accepting the Japanese surrender. But this would inevitably lead to the division of Korea into two states. He said there would be one state of patriots and another state of traitors. And the patriots, in his view, would be the Koreans who fought the Japanese colonization of Korea and aspired to an independent Korea.

The traders would be the Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese and who he foresaw would collaborate with the Americans. who Kim recognized, and Kim recognized the United States as an imperialist power that would seek to dominate Korea as Japan had. The epigram of my book is a paraphrase of a line from Israel Epstein, who wrote about the Chinese Revolution, and the line is, the Koreans have as little use for an American Korea as they had for a Japanese Korea. They want a Korean Korea.

Absolutely well said. And we'll get into a lot of what you laid on the table, including Japan's occupation, more on Kim Il-sung and more on the Cold War dynamics as this conversation unfolds. I do want to linger a little bit more on the history here because the historical context is helpful before diving into the modern history of Korea. And as you point out in your book, Korea has existed for over a thousand years. So there is a lot of history there. Can you talk about Korea's sort of geopolitical position throughout history? as a territory and why it's been among the most invaded territories in human history. Yeah, I mean, Koreans have had the great misfortune of living on territory that has been either coveted by powerful states or dominated by them. And those are China, which Korea borders, Russia, which Korea borders, Japan, which lies nearby across the Sea of Japan, and the United States, which regards itself as an Asia-Pessage. civic power. So Korea was long a tributary of its much larger neighbor, China, after Japan modernized and fell under the compulsion of its capitalist economy to seek markets for its

industrial products and sources of raw materials and investment opportunities and territory to settle its surplus population, its eyes fell upon Korea and also Korea's neighbor, Manchuria. The Sino-Japanese War was fought over the question of who would control Korea. Would it be China or Japan? Well, the Japanese won the war and therefore brought Korea under their domination. Russia was also interested in Korea, and it was particularly interested in Korea as a warm water port. Well, Japan and Russia fought the Russo-Japanese War over the control of Korea and Manchuria, a war which the Japanese won and the Russians lost,

much to the consternation of the West, or this is the first time a Western power had fell to an eastern country. And then finally, the United States fought Japan over control of all of East Asia, and when it defeated Japan in 1945, his intention was to succeed Japan as the hegemonic power in East Asia, including as the hegemonic power in Korea. Yeah, so there's a lot of history there. There's a sense of being surrounded by powerful nations, especially as time goes on. And the Japanese occupation of the peninsula in the several decades leading up to World War II, I think, is important for many reasons, including the fact that

there is a sort of continuation once the U.S. takes over of certain figures who acquiesce themselves to Japanese occupation and still in the country to this day. I think there's a lot of sort of debate and historical friction over the colonial legacy of Japan and its continued influence under U.S. colonialism in the southern part of the peninsula. So can you just discuss this occupation of Japan or this occupation by Japan of Korea, specifically? specifically leading up to World War II? Yeah. Japan formally colonized Korea in 2010.

1905, it declared Korea a protector. At 1910, it formerly colonized the country and remained the colonial power for the next 35 years. And these were very harsh years for Koreans. Korean culture was canceled. It was outlawed. All Korean political organizations were disbanded. Korean newspapers were prohibited, public gatherings were prohibited.

The education system was Japanese. Koreans were forced to speak Japanese, to take Japanese names, to worship at Shinto shrines, even though Shintoism, the traditional religion of Japan, was foreign to Korea. And Koreans were coerced into service as conscripted laborers. and they were sent to every corner of the empire to satisfy the requirements of Japan's military and economic expansion. So in 1941, one of every 17 Koreans was in Japan, working in Japanese factories.

By 1944, one in eight had been relocated outside of Korea to other parts of the Japanese Empire, where they were used as laborers. And at the close of World War II, one-third of industrial workers in Japan were Koreans. At the same time, Korea was transformed from a territory whose agriculture had sustained a Korean population into a Japanese granary. Agriculture was steered away from meeting Korean needs to meeting Japanese needs. So the Japanese ate more Korean rice per capita than the country.

Koreans did. So Korea, you know, became the means to Japanese ends, so a territory that existed to serve Japan and not to serve Koreans. Was there a struggle against Japan leading up into these years, like an independent struggle and was there an ideological line of that struggle? Can you talk a little bit about that resistance before World War II even popped off? There was a resistance against the Japanese, both within Korea. And many Koreans fled to neighboring Manchuria, part of China. One of the people who had fled to Manchuria was Kim Il-sung, who had later become the founder of North Korea.

But yes, there was a guerrilla struggle, kind of an insurgency against, the Japanese within Korea during those years and also a struggle against the Japanese in Manchuria. The Japanese had colonized essentially Manchuria, establishing a puppet state called Manchukuo. And Koreans were involved in the struggle against the Japanese colonial or Japanese colonialism in Manchuria as well. I see. So now that we have some of the historical context, and of course that's cursory and summarizing very complex and long history. Let's move towards World War II

in the Korean War itself. And in your book, you say that after World War II, quote, Koreans looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 had inaugurated the anti-colonial movement, and the Bolsheviks inspired the wretched of the earth to emancipate

themselves, a project to which the Soviet Union contributed it admirably. End quote. Can you talk about this dynamic and the role that the Soviet Union and communism more broadly played in these years leading up to and through World War II? Yeah, and I think this is an important point that's often missed and overlooked. Most Koreans found themselves in a dual debased condition.

I mean, most were peasants, as I've mentioned before, exploited by the landlords. So that was the first debased condition. And they lived in a country oppressed by the Japanese. And that was the second debased condition. So it wasn't pleasant to be a Korean, or for most Koreans. It wasn't a pleasant experience. And such a people couldn't help but be inspired by a Soviet Union that called for the end to the exploitation of man by man, and an end to the division of the world into oppressor and oppressed nations.

Moreover, the Soviet Union was not only calling for an end to the war. these debased conditions. It was showing how they could be overcome. So, for example, the Soviets had given land to the peasants and ended the rule of the landlords, something that would certainly appeal to Korean peasants who toiled under the oppression of Korean landlords. Lenin had called for the colonial oppressed to throw off their chains, and this call quite naturally endeared Koreans to the communists. The USSR, had emerged victorious from the greatest colonial war ever waged. I mean, that of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union,

impelled by the German imperialist name of enslaving the peoples of Eastern Europe. I mean, doing in Eastern Europe what the Americans had done in the American West and the British had done in India. And the Soviet victory in this colonial war was an inspiration to colonize people everywhere, Koreans included. What's more, communists were at the forefront of the resistance against Japanese colonialism. I mean, Kim Il-sung and Mao Zedong being major figures in the resistance. And finally, the Soviet economic model provided an inspiration for oppressed people looking for a way to modernize and industrialize.

So when you put all of these things together, you're looking at a model that becomes very inspiring to correct. Yeah, absolutely. And in direct contradiction to that, to the Soviet Union and to the spread of communism, of course, was the United States. So can you talk about their role in these years leading up to the official bisection of the country and sort of what their interests were on the peninsula and in the region more broadly? Yeah. I mean, the United States had the same interests in East Asia that the Japanese had. And that was to exploit the region as a market. and as a source of raw materials, and as a sphere for investment. And Koreans hated the United States, and they hated the United States because they saw the country quite correctly as another imperialist power, no different from the Japanese. I mean, Washington had blessed Japan's colonization of Korea.

That's something that Koreans didn't forgive the United States for. And they blessed Japan's colonization of Korea in return for Tokyo blessing the United States colonization of the Philippines. So in the view of Koreans, these two countries were robber countries. I mean, they were going to seek to loot Korea and the rest of the world. That's what they did. Kim Il-sung made fun of Sigmund Rhee. Sigmund Rie was this anti-communist that Washington picked as the first president of South Korea. And he made fun of him because Rhee had spent over four decades in the United States during the period of Japanese colonialism in Korea,

lobbying Washington to free Korea from Japanese rule. Well, Kim said this is like asking a robber who waits outside your house to help you evict the robber already inside your house. So Koreans, with the exception of people like Sigmund Rhee, had no illusions about what the United States. States was, namely a predator, you know, wading outside their door to rob them once the Japanese were evicted. Yeah. But before we get to the 1948 sort of cutting up of the country, I sort of wanted to linger a little bit here on World War II specifically. So you have this Japanese occupation of the peninsula. Then you have World War II. Can you talk about Korea during World War II and sort of what Japan's defeat at the hands of the U.S.

sort of meant for them at that moment, and then we'll move forward into 1948 and beyond? Yeah, well, during World War II. I mean, the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor or attacked Hawaii. It's often not acknowledged that Hawaii was a colony at that point and not a state. And the intention of the Japanese waging their war in East Asia was, as they put it, to unify or rather to, to recover the colonial possessions of the United States, of Britain, of the Netherlands, and of France, and to fold them into the Japanese co-prosperity sphere, which is essentially the Japanese Empire, but the Japanese presented this as if it was some kind of humanitarian mission to save

East Asians from their oppression by Western imperialism. And at this point, I mean, as I pointed out, the Japanese had already colonized Korea. They'd colonized Taiwan, it colonized Manchuria, and they were plundering those territories and using them for Japanese purposes and for the purposes of expanding the Japanese empire. So Korea was being very thoroughly exploited by the Japanese during the Second World War. But there were some Koreans who had taken up arms against the Japanese, not, I mean, before the Second World War beginning in the early 1930s, but they continued their guerrilla struggle against the Japanese, for example, as part of armies in the Chinese Communist Party or as part of armies in the Soviet Union. Kim Il-sung, for example, was a commander in some Chinese Communist Party armies and also in a Soviet army. So the struggle against Japanese colonialism by Koreans continued in the Second World War,

and those Koreans who were struggling against the Japanese regarded themselves as allies of the United States and of Britain, on the anti-fascist side. That's really interesting. And then, of course, the end of World War II comes. Japan is utterly defeated. And then in 1948, the Republic of Korea, South Korea, and North Korea, the DPRK, were established. Who led the two different states after their founding? Maybe you could talk a little bit about the Quizlings, which we alluded to earlier.

And then what the reaction from the Korean people broadly, was to the formal bisection of their country into two specific states okay and just briefly though before I get into it I should also point out

in 1945 and I alluded to this earlier the Koreans established a republic for themselves and this was before the United States arrived on the Korean Peninsula

they established what they called the People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of Korea was allowed to flourish in the Soviet occupation zone. The Soviets established their occupation zone about three weeks before the Americans arrived on the peninsula. And when the Americans arrived to set up their occupation zone,

representatives of the People's Republic of Korea went to meet them, and they were ignored, and the U.S. refused to recognize the republic and immediately went to war with it. But I can talk about that a little bit more later. In 1948 was the year that the Republic of Korea was established. And I should point out that the Republic of Korea was established before the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was established.

The Republic of Korea was established first. So over the objection, actually, of most Koreans, who saw this American project, and it was an American project of establishing a Republic of Korea as an attempt to create a permanent political division of their country. Few Koreans wanted this. What they wanted was a unified, independent, communist Korea, because as I pointed out, they were inclined toward communist politics. But the only way Washington could prevent Korea from becoming a communist state, or at least a country with a robust leftist agenda, was to artificially implant an anti-communist police state in the U.S. occupation zone to crush the political aspirations of Koreans who favored a unified communist country. And this would have to be a very robust police state because, as a, pointed out, most Koreans aspired to have communist politics within a unified state.

And the United States had no intention of establishing a South Korea that was communist. You know, as I'd mentioned, the peninsula had been divided at the end of World War II into two occupations on, so an American one and a Soviet one done to accept the Japanese surrender. By agreement, the division was to last no longer than five years. Before the five years elapsed, elections were to be held for a pan-Korean government. And it was clear to Washington that the election would be won by anti-imperialist, pro-communist forces, who would oppose a continued U.S. presence on the Korean peninsula. Even worse, U.S. officials had decided that, as they put it, communism,

could get off to a better start here than anywhere else. And one of the reasons for that was because the Japanese had industrialized Korea. So there was already an industrial base. The Koreans wouldn't have to start from scratch. So Washington had a choice. I mean, they could lose all of the peninsula, or they could keep the half of it. They already controlled. And Washington chose to keep the half of control by creating a puppet state.

And it very slyly claimed that the state it created was the sole legitimate state in Korea, representing all Korean. Well, the only response for Koreans who held out the hope of a Korean Korea and not an American Korea was to reply by creating their own state in declaring it to be the sole legitimate state of Korea. And that was how the DPRK was founded. And that was how the division between an American Korea and a Korean Korea arose. Now, who are the patriots and who are the traitors? Well, the DPRK was founded by the anti-Japanese guerrillas, these people who had been fighting the Japanese since the early 30s to liberate Korea. The Republic of Korea was created by,

the United States and staffed at the highest levels of the military by Koreans who had served as officers in the Imperial Japanese Army. So it was by the design of the United States, a traitor state. And the only reason it had to be a traitor state was because if it was going to be an anti-communist state, the United States couldn't find anyone to staff the administrative day-to-day roles of the state because most Koreans lean toward communism. The only ones they could find to fill that role were those who had collaborated with the Japanese, who were anti-communist and were quite willing to collaborate with the United States. So in effect, a puppet or a traitor

state was set up by the U.S. using many of the, I mean, what weren't some of the leaders trained and educated in the U.S., and then you also had those that acquiesced to Japanese colonialism, taking positions high in the government as well. Is that fair? Yeah, I mean, Sigmund Rhee, who was selected as the first president of South Korea, had not been present in Korea during the entire period of Japanese colonialism. And one of the reasons he was selected, not one of the reason, I mean, the major reason he was selected by the United States to become the first president it was because he did not have collaboration as taint.

So it was believed, therefore, he would be acceptable to South Koreans, or at least more acceptable than the other candidates, all of whom had collaborated either with the Japanese or part of the tiny landlord class that were reviled by Koreans. But the military and the colonial or the police force were dominated by people, who had either served in the Japanese Imperial Army or in the Japanese Colonial Police Force. I see, I see. So, yeah, just to summarize quickly, so after Japan is defeated in World War II, there's a supposed to be temporary sort of division from like the peninsula between the U.S. and the Soviets

to take over the country from Japanese occupation while ostensibly there is a transition to open elections in a democratic unified Korea. Then, of course, the U.S. sees that this is an opportunity to go back on that promise and just take over South Korea as a sort of puppet state and an anti-communist bulwark. And so in South Korea, it's often presented to us in the West is like, South Korea is this wonderful, open democracy, and the DPRK is this brutal authoritarian regime. But, of course, the anti-communist South was brutal and authoritarian. in every sense of the word.

Before we move on, can you talk a little bit about, like, what communists and just dissidents more broadly in South Korea faced in the form of government repression for their political beliefs? Yeah. And, you know, you talked and talked about how there's lots of propaganda about the DPRK and how the DPRK, or the view of the DPRK in the United States has been distorted by media, mystification. and dishonesty. Well, the same could be said about South Korea because the portrayal is completely distorted and unrepresentative of reality.

As you mentioned, I mean, South Korea, established by the United States as an anti-communist state, was for decades and decades ruled by military dictators who are very viciously. anti-communists who ran a police state that was Gestapo-like. And, you know, when people from the American Civil Liberties Union would go and visit South Korea, there would be a goss at what they would find. They'd find that, you know, leftists, communists, anyone who had something nice to say about

the DPRK could find themselves locked up in dungeons. And the South Korean government had established concentration camps, concentration camps in which communists were immured. At one point, they had so many people that had been jailed, who were leftists opposed to the South Korean government, that they had no room left, and that's why they had to build concentration camps to hold them. A fascinating aspect and the grim and horrific aspect of Korean history, which is often overlooked because there's an obsession with the Korean War.

But for me, a far more interesting period is the period that precedes the Korean War from 1945 to 1950 when there is a massive guerrilla struggle in the South, huge guerrilla struggle in the South, against this. anti-communist police state that have been established by the United States. We don't hear much about that. We don't really hear anything about that. But it kind of exemplifies the fact that, as some people have seen the Korean wars, essentially a war of the United States on the Korean Peninsula, a war that is waged through its instrument, which is the state it established, but South Korea.

Well, let's talk about Kim Il-sung specifically. He's obviously an important figure in this. So I was hoping that you could kind of talk about who he was, why he was supported by the people, and how he sort of rose to lead the DPRK in those early years. Yeah, I have a chapter on Kim Il-sung, and it's titled The Patriot. And it begins with a quote from Bruce Cummings,

the leading U.S. historian on Korea. And the quote is, when the leading scholar of Korean communism, De Suxu, was finally allowed to explain the real story to a large audience of young people in Seoul in 1989, upon hearing that Kim Il-sung was in fact a hero of the resistance, they burst into applause. That, in short, is who Kim Il-sung was. He was a hero of the anti-Japanese resistance.

Kim was so important as a guerrilla leader that the Japanese established this special Kim unit to hunt them down. And they staffed it with Korean traders who would later be recruited by the Americans to play leading roles in the South Korean military. Kim had spent 13 years leading the arm struggle against the Japanese, or I shouldn't say leading the arm struggle, but as part of the arms struggle against the Japanese. Japanese, there were other leaders. And on the eve of his return to Korea after the Japanese surrender, the top Korean leaders of the resistance agreed that owing to Kim's reputation and his charisma and his abilities and his accomplishments, that he should become the principal political leader of a liberated Korea. He wasn't selected by the Soviets, as a lot of U.S. propaganda would suggest.

I mean, Sigmund Rie was selected by the United States. And so it sometimes argued that, well, that Kim Il-sung was selected by the Soviets. But he was chosen by his peers and the resistance. And the Soviets actually never fully trusted Kim Il-sung. But within their occupation zone, they allowed the Koreans to administer their affairs independently

and to promote Kim as the, leader of the provisional government. I mean, he had credibility owing to his many years experience in the guerrilla struggle and his devotion to Korea's national liberation. So it's fair to say that the Soviets had a much more hands-off policy towards the north than the U.S. did towards the south, obviously, right? Absolutely. So as I mentioned, I mean, when the Americans arrived on the peninsula, they refused to recognize the People's Republic of Korea. The Soviets arriving about three weeks earlier simply faded into the background

and allowed the Koreans to organize, you know, governance of the country as they saw fit, which was easy to do because they were already inclined toward communist politics anyway. So this was acceptable to the Soviet Union. I see. Did Kim Il-sung have, I mean, I know he had a political relationship, but if you could shed some light on it, the relationship between him and Stalin and Mao, because of course you have the Soviet Union, you also have after 49 the Chinese communists in power in China. So can you talk a bit about those relationships and what you know about them? Well, as you pointed out, I mean, Kim did have a relationship with the Chinese, which is one. of the reasons why he wasn't entirely trusted by the Soviets. And, you know, within the DPRK, there were some factions. There were the Koreans, such as Kim Il-sung, who had been in Manchuria, fighting the Japanese. There were Koreans who had remained in Korea. There were Koreans that

had fought with the Chinese, and there were Koreans that had associated with the same. And there were Koreans that had associated with the Soviet Union. And there's a history, which I guess you won't go into, but there's a history about how those factions struggled for control of the DPRK after the DPRK was established. But Kim had connections with the Chinese Communist Party. He had been a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Later in the war, as the Japanese became more effective in hunting down the guerrillas, he retreated into the Soviet territory where he became part of a Soviet Union or Soviet Union

unit. So he had connections with the Soviet Union as well. And part of the philosophy that Kim had developed, the so-called philosophy as Ushay or self-reliance, really comes out of the fact that you had Chinese influences and Soviet influences. And Yushai was essentially the idea that it was time for Koreans to pursue a communism that was specific to Korea and not one that was mimicking the Chinese communism or mimicking Soviet communism,

that Koreans had unique circumstances in history, and therefore they needed to develop their own unique approach to their revolution. Yeah, so is it fair to say that Jusay is like a mixture of Soviet and Chinese communism infused with Korean self-determination and Korean nationalism and maybe even a little Korean mythos in there as well? Yeah, but I think that what Kim was becoming frustrated with, with Korean communists who would say, well, we need to do X because that's what they did in

Soviet Union and then contending Korean communists who are associated with the Chinese saying no we need to do why because that's what they're doing in China he found this frustrating and he said well we have to decide what's right for Korea and not mimic the Chinese and not mimic the Soviets I see did after the DPRK was established did it have did it lend assistance or at least solidarity and support to other decolonial, anti-imperialist or revolutionary movements and struggles in the years and decades after their establishment? Was there that sort of passing along, that internationalist solidarity to liberation struggles? Absolutely, and there still is. And it makes a very interesting contrast

with South Korea. For example, South Korea sent 300,000 troops to Vietnam to fight on behalf of the United States in return for injections of economic aid. So I say that not only was South Korea a traitor state, it's also a mercenary state. At the same time, the North Koreans were sending, not a lot, but they were sending some fighter pilots to fly missions against U.S. pilots on behalf of the North Vietnamese. They also sent advisors, military advisors, and also pilots to Egypt, to Syria, who participated in the 1967 war with Israel. They participated in the 1973 October War against Israel on the side of the Egyptians and the Syrians. and they remain also involved in kind of anti-colonial struggles in the Middle East.

For example, they play a large role in providing military advice today to Hezbollah, also to the Syrians, also to the Iranians. Apparently, Hezbollah, the leadership of Hezbollah was trained in North Korea. And some people have attributed Hezbollah's security. in the 2006 war against Israel, the only war Israel has ever lost, to the advice and training it received from North Korea military advisors. Fascinating. Fascinating stuff. So let's dive into what we here in the U.S. at least know as the Korean War. And of course, this is a multi-year conflict. We could spend hours and hours breaking it down. So this is by definition going to be

more cursory and summarizing of the events. But just sort of as a bird's eye, overview. Why did it break out? Who are the primary players involved? And maybe if you want to talk about what most Americans don't know about it or that they should know about it. Okay. I'll cover all those points. Another one I'd like to cover is first is what is the Korean war, because there are many views of what the Korean War was or is. One view is that the Korean war began in the early 1930s when Kim Il-sung created his first guerrilla unit and began to fight Korean traders who collaborated with the Japanese and who then formed the core of the U.S. created Republic of Korea. So according to this view, the Korean War is a war between the traders of

the ROK and their descendants and the patriots of the DPRK and their descendants. And so long as these two states independently exist, the war between patriots and traitors, you know, between those who oppose imperialism and those who collaborate with it never ends. Another view is that the Korean war began in 1945 when the United States arrived on the peninsula and went to war with the People's Republic of Korea and then continued that war against the successor to the People's Republic, which was the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The third view is that the war began in 1948 when the United States created a permanent political division in the nation by setting up, you know, in American Korea in the form of its traitor-led anti-communist Gestapo-like police state over the objections of the vast majority of Koreans. And that view as the preceding one sees the Korean War as a war of the United States against Koreans, whereas the first view sees,

the Korean War as a civil war between those who fought against imperialism and those who collaborated with it. But the conventional view of the war is that it began on June 20th, 1950, when North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel, which was the dividing line or the original dividing line between the Soviet and U.S. occupation zones. They crossed that parallel and immediately drove the South Korean army deep into the South. And one of the reasons they drove the South Korean army deep into the South almost immediately was because the South Korean government had very little popular support. This was something that was recognized by the CIA, and you can read declassified CIA reports today, which had predicted this collapse.

Well, the United States soon after intervened. And the United States had withdrawn its combat troops about a year earlier, but had left behind military advisors and secret agreements that put control of the South Korean military under the supervision of the U.S. military advisors. But the United States brought back combat forces. When it did, it drove the North Korean forces out of the south and then drove them deep into the north up to the Yalu River, which divides Korea and China. And at this point, feeling threatened, China intervened, and China and North Korea drove U.S. forces back across the 38th parallel, where the war bogged down for the next two years. The war ended in an armistice in 1953, and a peace treaty has done. never been signed. So officially, North Korea and China remained at war in Korea with the United States. What most Americans don't know about the war is that there is no moral or legal basis

for U.S. intervention in the war. I mean, there was no moral basis because the South Korean government was unacceptable to most Korean. And because the government was unacceptable, as I pointed out, That's why its army immediately collapsed. North Korea would have quickly won the war had the United States not intervened. Millions of lives would have been saved. And Koreans would have achieved the communist economic arrangement they aspired to. Fundamentally, the war was a civil war between Koreans. So a quarrel over how to organize the social, political, and economic life of the nation.

And at the heart of the quarrel was the question of equality. I mean, are people as individuals and peoples as nations equal or are some people or nations destined to lead others and to have rights and privileges senior to others? Should exploitation be prohibited or welcome? Should the country be integrated into the U.S. empire or independent? And who should form the governing elite? Should it be collaborators with the Japanese empire or those who, waged war against it.

I mean, these were questions at the heart of the conflict. Also, there was no legal basis for the intervention because there was no aggression across an international border. When North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel on June 25th, 1950, they crossed an imaginary line drawn in 1945 by two U.S. colonels who were asked to find or to draw line to separate U.S. and Soviet occupation armies. This was not an international border separating two countries. It had no legal validity. It was simply a dividing line between two Korean armies. And Koreans cannot invade Korea. Some pointed out that there's a parallel with the American Civil War

that you couldn't say when the north invaded the south or pushed into the south that it was invading another country all right yeah absolutely so i think it's really important um so this is a technically a civil war but again that was brought on by the bisection of the country by the u.s for u.s geopolitical global interests precipitating this conflict and what we know is the korean war this three-year period between 1950 and 1953 was really

an acute phase of a much broader historical process and a much longer fight and conflict in and around Korea for self-determination on behalf of the Koreans. And there's these

four major waves, right? So Kim Il-sung gets sort of the thumbs up from Stalin and Mao to move down through the 38th parallel to help liberate the South from U.S. occupation. There's that backlash where the U.S. joins with the South to push them back across all the way up to China. China gets involved, pushes them back down, and then there's this final upward push,

and that sort of ends in not a peace treaty, as you said, but as a basically a ceasefire. And to this day, there's still a demilitarized zone separating these two countries. Can you talk about just the, I mean, the brutality of, of the war, the casualties, the innocent civilians that were that were slaughtered in this war, et cetera, and just sort of bring the human element and the element of human suffering into it because I think that's an important part of this puzzle. Before I do that, I should point out, I mean, you pointed out that Kim Il-sung had the approval of Stalin and Mao to initiate the hostilities.

And that's been discovered. I'm not going to contest that, but I agree. But there still is some kind of ambiguity and argument about who actually began the conflict or who moved across the 38th parallel first. Some argue that that essentially has been decided and that it was the North Koreans who did it. And that may be the case.

But other historians argue that the matter is still ambiguous. U.S. because it could be that both sides intended to invade the other. And there's the question of exactly who precipitated it. It was certainly the case that Sigmund Rie kept talking about the move to the north. He was going to reunify the country. And even Washington regarded him as a hothead and were worried that he was going to precipitate a war. And they were worried that he was going to precipitate a war because they knew he would

lose. And for eight months before this hot phase of the war broke out, there were skirmishes along the 38th parallel, both sides making incursions across the line. And there's still a debate today about whether the South Koreans, on June 25th, the South Koreans moved north of the parallel, which then, triggered the decision by the north to move across the parallel into the south. But the point I want to make here was that both sides were intent on fighting a war against each other. Kim Il-sung had the approval of Stalin and Mao. Stalin had made clear that he wasn't going to intervene on Kim's behalf.

The Americans, on the other hand, didn't seem to be very keen, though, on Sigman-Re moving. to the north. But in terms of the humanitarian aspect in the suffering, I mean, the suffering was immense. Essentially, the United States incinerated the country. And this is something that U.S. military figures acknowledged years later. One of them said that in fact the United States had burnt, incinerated, vaporized, 20 percent of the population. That might be an exaggeration. I mean, other figures suggest 10 percent, but even 10 percent is quite substantial, and probably on par with the percentage of the Soviet population that was lost during the Second World War.

The United States so devastated North Korea that some people said with a touch of hyperbole that there was not a single building over two stories left in North Korea. Korea at the end of the war. And that's just the touch of hyperbole. I mean, the place is completely devastated, so much so that North Koreans had to build a life underground. They built caves. They lived in caves.

They lived in underground tunnels. Farmers lived in their tunnels during the day and came out at night to farm. There was total destruction. And an important point here is, I mean, we're always horrified by the prospects of nuclear war and nuclear war be horrifying, but you can achieve the same kind of destruction through conventional means. And, you know, the United States, after it intervened in 1950, and pushed the North Koreans to the North, all the way up to the Yalu River, and then we're pushed back by a peasant army. peasant army of Chinese and a peasant army of North Koreans. This was so embarrassing to the United States that there was thought, or at least the demand, that nuclear weapons be used. That was turned down by Harry Truman. But although they didn't use nuclear weapons, they essentially achieved the same thing through conventional means, through the use of incendiaries and napalm. They just burned the country to, the ground. Yang Hesuk was 13 in July of 1950 when war came to Imgeri, a tiny farm town 100 miles south

of Seoul. There were these very tall men, the U.S. soldiers, they were all standing around. We had to all gather, and if we didn't, they said they would shoot us all. First Calvary Division troops had forced the people of these two villages called Chukakri in M.K.R. to evacuate and get on the main road south. All the refugees in M.K.R. were forced to leave and follow the U.S. soldiers in the middle of the night. Jeng U.S. family was from the same area as Yang, and his parents and siblings were among the

hundreds of refugees who were led by U.S. troops to a place called Nogunri. As refugees gathered on nearby train tracks, eyewitnesses remember American planes beginning to circle, and then opening fire. Planes arrived and stayed above us for a long time. And they came in, and then boom, they started shooting. Refugees ran for cover under a railroad overpass, where for three days and three nights, they say they were fired upon by the 7th Cavalry, Fearful North Korean soldiers were among them.

Young Hesuk, surrounded by casualties, was hiding under her mother's hamps skirt when she heard her uncle cry out in pain. So I opened my eyes and said, is my uncle dead? And right then, something hit my eye. It hit me. It hit me, and my head went back like this, and something came out. My eye had fallen out. So I said, Mom, take this out for me, take my eye out. I have to take my eye out so I can bend over and live.

But my mom was hit so many times. I couldn't take it anymore. So I grabbed it and pulled on it. And when I did, it snapped. I could hear things snapping. And I threw it away. From my father's immediate family, his five-year-old son, Guffield Shung was killed.

He is my older brother. And Gushishong, who is my older sister and was two years old. So my parents lost both their son and daughter. Every war is horrible. But the Korean War, among American Wars, was the war that had the greatest proportion of civilian casualties. It was a very dirty war,

and that also demoralized American soldiers. They didn't quite know what they were fighting for, and they were forced to do things that they didn't do in World War II. For UN troops, it was becoming increasingly clear by the day that they were mired in a bloody conflict unbound, conflict unbound by modern rules of engagement. In order to break the communist will,

Americans stepped up their air campaign in North Korea. All of the cities in North Korea were essentially flattened. It got so that the pilots and the squadron leaders, etc. were complaining they had no more targets. A written directive to the 5th Air Force in North Korea had ordered that every installation, every town, every village be destroyed. The airstrikes were severe. Several times a day I heard B-29s flying by, terrifying sound even without the bombing. They dropped a lot of Nepalm and the palm had been a

invented at the end of World War II, but not used much. It was used indiscriminately across North Korea. I think that humanitarian aspect is incredibly important for many reasons, including to understand the trauma of the Korean people that had to go through that, whether it's 10 or 20 percent of the population, it's complete and utter devastation. an armistice was finally reached between the UN, China, and North Korea. It called for a cessation of hostilities and armed force until an official peace treaty is signed. North Korea was completely destroyed, not a building left standing. South Korea was completely destroyed.

China lost a million people. Mao lost his own son. And U.S. too. What do we accomplish after three years of destruction? We're left with where we started with the DMZ and the 38th parallel. But at home, Americans were tired of war and had long lost interest in events in Korea. Americans conclude that not that much was at stake in Korea. We're not going to World War III over Korea, and the communists aren't going to take over South Korea.

It didn't seem to be threatening to America's actual life and livelihood. Let's just forget about this. Some people dream of you. The luxury of forgetting the war was not possible on the Korean Peninsula. Three years of bloody conflict had left. both Koreas devastated, their cities flattened, and their economies destroyed. After the armistice was signed, the Korean Peninsula was basically a field of rubble. The United States dropped more ordinance on North Korea in that three-year war than we

dropped during the entire Second World War. Basically leveled the country. The southern side of the peninsula was no better. Everything was leveled. They were starting very much from scratch. Despite an influx of millions of American dollars to rebuild South Korea, the country remained among the world's poorest. Singh Mani, who, after the armistice continued his authoritarian regime, ruled over a government

rife with corruption and mismanagement. Tsung Manri ruled the country ostensibly as a constitutional democracy, but really in a very brutal and ruthless way, very clickish, focusing on providing benefits to his followers, punishing his detractors, and he essentially sought economic assistance from the United States and from other countries, but was using it largely to subsidize his own rule

and was not really putting it into an economic plan. In the countryside and in major cities, food and basic resources remain scant for years. I come from a small fishing village in the southeast of South Korea. You know, in my village, we didn't have electricity until I was in middle school. And I think I touched the baseball bat for the first time when I was in high school. I was raised in Gangnam, Akku Jong-dong in Gangnam, was Sai, the singer, sings about it. So I have a memory of that when it was just a field.

And it's none of these buildings. South Korea, people forget, was one of the poorest countries in the world. In North Korea, despite the complete destruction of its infrastructure, Kim Il-sung quickly oversaw the complete transformation of his country and rebuilt it in his image. After the end of the Korean War, the North Korean economy developed quite rapidly

because they had a great deal of support from the Soviet Union and from communist China. Economic growth in North Korea through the 50s after the armistice, and really into the early 60s, was clearly greater than that of South Korea. The U.S. from day one all the way up until the present day has a vested interest in at least maintaining the bisection of the country and at most seeing the regime or the government in the DPRK toppled

and utterly destroyed. And so the nuclear deterrent that the DPRK has, it really makes sense when you look back over this history of the relationship between the DPRK and the United States. States. And then here in the U.S., because there's such abysmal education about American history and geopolitics, most average Americans don't really understand, you know, the famous question, why do they hate us? And in Western and American corporate media, the DPRK is portrayed as this sort of lunatic madman rogue country overseen by, you know, a dictator that has no support from his

people and it plays into a bunch of orientalist tropes, but it also plays the historic role of obscuring what the U.S. actually did and continues to do on that peninsula. And so it's particularly grotesque, although the U.S. imperial history more broadly, this happens around the world, and will continue to happen as long as the U.S. is the imperialist hegemon. I want to just talk about the role that the U.S. continues to play, because of course this is not just some period of history that is over this the country is still divided into two separate states the u.s still has huge control over the south and that early quote that we opened with about three koreas the north the south and the american base is a gesturing to the fact of that u.s control and the fact that

the u.s has a huge um physical base in the capital of south korea if i if i got that right so can you talk about the the continued role that the u.s plays in the country yes it plays an enormous role. And the way to think about the role it plays is regards the country as a power projection platform. I say that because the United States does have a massive military base in Korea. It used to be in the center of Seoul, very large military base in the center of Seoul, which was originally a Japanese military base, which the Americans then took over. But that base is vulnerable to North Korean artillery. So the United States built a new base that is further away out of the range of the North Korean artillery. And it's not clear to me

whether it's the largest overseas base. Sometimes it's claimed to be, but there are other bases that some people argue are larger. But what's clear is it's a massive base. And it has been described as the largest power projection platform in the Pacific. And it's clear you look at the way in which the United States thinks about South Korea, that it thinks about South Korea as a military asset, as a power projection platform. I mean, it's geostrategically located. in a very significant place, close to Russian borders, very close to the Chinese, which the United States now regards as rival powers.

The United States has 27,000 troops on the peninsula, which maybe seem large, and it is a large number, but it's overwhelmed by the number of South Korean troops. 600,000 Korean troops, South Korean troops, and there are millions of Korean, South Korean troops in reserve. And essentially what the 27,000 South Korean, or rather U.S. troops in South Korea are, the nucleus of a U.S. East Asian Army in reserve. The South Korean military is completely integrated into the U.S. military. It's part of the U.S. military.

It's essentially a part of the Pentagon. And the United States maintains what is called operational control over the South Korean military. So a U.S. general has control of the South Korean military in times of war. And this has been true from the moment the South Korean military was created by the United States. I mean, this is a military that was created by the United States, that has always been controlled by the United States, remains controlled by the United States, and is built for expedition, that's built as an aggressive force, not as a defensive force, which is why 300,000, you know, South Korean troops could have been deployed to Vietnam to fight on behalf of the United States. I say that the United States created the South Korean military to fight communists. That's what the South Korean military has always done. They fought communists in the South between 1945 and 1950.

They fought communists in the north from 1950 to 1953. And they fought communists in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. And they're trained to fight communists in perhaps. a war with China. So, and if you look at the structure of the South Korean military, the kind of equipment it has, the way it's been put together, the way it's integrated with the U.S. military, it becomes clear that it's simply an instrument of U.S. foreign policy and an instrument of U.S. imperialism, but that shouldn't surprise us because South Korea has always collaborated with imperialist towers.

And obviously it does that because it was created by one imperialist power to serve that imperialist power as geopolitical aims. Yeah, incredibly important information and a paradigm through which to understand the current situation. And one of the things, one of the ways this manifests, this continued U.S. domination over South Korea and also like the propaganda emanating about the DPRK coming from the U.S. and Western media more broadly is, there's this portrayal that you often see in Cold War history, where the U.S. will do everything to destroy a people, destabilize their government, inflict murderous sanctions on countries, and then when that country gets mired in poverty

or struggles to maintain a robust economy or whatever the situation may be, the U.S. points at them and says, see, socialism doesn't work, right? And then the South, South Korea now is presented to us as this sort of industrial juggernaut on par with sort of like Japan's ability to create electronics and consumer goods for the world and cars as well. But South Korean society, which we don't hear about, is often marked by deep, radical inequality, incredible levels of poverty and conditions for the lower class, which is, you know, just completely inhumane as it is in the U.S. and across the world for, for, for, for. the poorest of the poor. I was just hoping that you can maybe talk a little bit about the economics here and the sanctions and the role that the U.S. has in sort of suffocating the DPRK's economy while infusing and uplifting the South Korean economy. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I mean, and part of the propaganda, they never tell you that Washington has done all in its power

to ensure that South Korea succeeds economically and has done. done everything it can to ensure that North Korea fails. And that's part of the larger propaganda program of arguing or persuading people that socialism can never work. And capitalism is the only route to prosperity. Because then you can point to South Korea and say, look at capitalist South Korea. Look how prosperous it is. And look at North Korea. It's a failed state.

its GDP is so much lower than that of South Korea than we don't talk about the reality of how this came about it hasn't always been the case that South Korea was more prosperous than the North Korea and when I say prosperous I'm just talking about GDP per capita I'm not talking about how that wealth has been distributed the United States for many years for decades was frustrated by the fact that North Korea was more prosperous and wealthy than South Korea.

I mean, North Korea almost was a model for people like Che Guevara, for example, who visited North Korea in the 1960s and talked about how North Korea was a model. It should be a model for Cuba. Pyongyang at the time was seen as one of the cleanest, most modern, most developed cities in Asia. But the United States had always tried to ensure that the North Korean economy would have trouble. So right from the very birth of North Korea, the Americans have imposed sanctions on the North Koreans and done all of the – they could to sabotage North Korean economic development. At the same time, they've done everything they could to hot-house the South Korean economy.

from providing massive injections of aid in return for the 300,000 troops that fought on behalf of the United States and Vietnam. South Korea has received aid from Japan, substantial aid from Japan. The United States ensured the South Vietnamese or created a captive market for South Korean products in South Vietnam. And it also allowed the South Koreans to pursue an economic model that they frowned upon elsewhere in the world. And it was a model that was similar to a Soviet model. It was a model that would embrace state-owned enterprises where necessary. It was a model based on import substitution. It was a model that involved industrial planning and multi-year plans.

It kind of mimicked what was going on in the Soviet Union. It was not a model of free trade, free enterprise, and free markets that the United States insist all other countries adopt. But the United States was willing to tolerate this model because the United States knows that this is the kind of model that leads to prosperity. And they were willing to allow the South Koreans to achieve a prosperity as part of this propaganda war, which would say that capitalism is superior to socialism.

And then the North Koreans ran into all kinds of problems when the Soviet Union dissolved. And part of the reason the Soviet Union dissolved was because of the efforts of the United States to undermine the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union dissolved, the North Koreans lost their markets. this became devastating to the North Koreans

and then there were various natural calamities that didn't help and after that sanctions were escalated North Korea there's no country that has been sanctioned for as long and as comprehensively as North Korea has the United States has deliberately and systematically,

undertaken a program for decades and decades and decades to undermine and sabotage North Korean economic development while at the same time undertaking a decades-long, deliberate and systematic program of lifting up the South Koreans. And at the end of the day, then we can, again, point to South Korea and say that's a model of capitalist economic development and point to North Korea and say that's a model of socialist economics and see capitalism is the only model that's going to deliver prosperity.

So it's all part of, it's a complete, you know, propaganda program. Yeah. And there's clearly the same parallel. Like with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there's parallels to Cuba, what happened to their economy in the 90s. Hell, what happened to Eastern Europe and the, and the former Soviet block in the 1990s and Russia itself in the 1990s as capitalism was brutally sort of unleashed in those areas and now we see multiple dysfunctional and even right wing far right fascist nationalist governments in eastern Europe you see places like the dprk and cuba who you know continue to survive against all odds and against the wishes of the u.s. empire for sure and the collapse

of the soviet union among many other things also deprived the world of a counter-hegemon to U.S. global power. And we might be seeing that once again with the rise of China. And this peninsula and Korea specifically are going to be a point of increasing interest as China continues to grow and as that conflict continues to develop that new Cold War, as it were, that seems to be developing between China and America continues to evolve. I guess a way to end this conversation and I've learned so much and I really appreciate you coming on and diving into this history and for writing this book. But just as a way to sort of end, end it. What are the hopes of the Korean people for the peninsula and importantly the prospect

of a United Korea going forward? And has there been any promising developments in that regard in the past few years? The only promising development, and this isn't something that would be welcomed by many people, what I'm about to say. But I'd say that the only promising development has been North Korea's manufacturer of nuclear arms and the means to deliver them to the United States. And I say that's promising because it effectively forecloses the possibility of the U.S. invasion of North Korea and the U.S. nuclear strike. You know, by substantially enhancing its means of self-defense, the DPRK has not only increased the probability of its survival, but it's also been able to reallocate resources from its military to its civilian economy,

allowing it to mitigate the effects of the world's longest and most comprehensive sanctions regime. As I mentioned, I mean, no country on earth has been sanctioned for as long or as broadly as the DPRK has. So nuclear arms on top of enhancing self-defense, it also has an economic implication. And it's not the implication that the United States government would have you believe, which is, well, they're so poor, they can't afford to spend money on nuclear arms. Well, in fact, because you've sanctioned them and because their economy has been burdened by those sanctions, if it was to continue to invest in a conventional military,

its resources, I mean, the percentage of its GDP that would have to allocate to the military would be crushingly large. So this allows the DPRK to escape the dilemma of, you know, whether we crush our civilian economy by investing in our self-defense or we invest in the civilian economy and neglect our self-defense with the result that we're invaded by the United States. The possibility of the United Korea is always present. I mean, all North Korea has to do is follow the East Germany. German path of allowing itself to be annexed by its neighbor and absorbed into the U.S. Empire. But, you know, the possibility of the United and Independent Korea really doesn't exist at this time. And I don't think well for some time to come. But it's the nature of anti-colonial struggles that they're often not short-term projects. I mean, Kim Il-sung

recognized that Korea's fight for freedom might last hundreds of years. In his autobiography, he wrote, you know, he said India won its independence from England, but only after 200 years. The Philippines and Indonesia took them 300 years to win their independence. Algeria, 130 years, Sri Lanka, 150 years, Vietnam, nearly 100 years. So, you know, it may take 200 years, it may take 300 years for Korea to win its struggle for freedom. But Kim Il-sung seemed to be committed or to believe to have hope or to believe implicitly that one day Koreans would be free. And is unification broadly conceived desired by Koreans in the

North and the South almost universally, or is there lots of debate about that internally, to your knowledge? I think yes. I mean, unification is desired. I mean, unification is designed. The problem is that the United States doesn't desire it, and because the South Korean government is a puppet or an instrument of the United States, the South Koreans really, you know, despite the fact that they might desire unification, can't really move in that direction. I mean, there was an example just a few years ago where there was talk about connecting the South Korean and North Korean rail systems. South Koreans were very happy about this for economic reasons, which is they now have a direct route from South Korea into China. So this is something that was considered to decide a rate them. But the United States blocked it, which is interesting too. I mean, it just shows the absence of sovereignty in South Korea when the United States can block a proposal agreed to by the North.

and south right so and unfortunately i mean however much uh koreans want to unify their country they have to contend with the united states which isn't interested in a unified country unless it's unified under their control absolutely do you see any hope and this is the last question any hope at all in the continued rise of of china as a global and obviously regional power in like forcing that pressure in a certain direction? Or do you think that it's just going to make the U.S. double down as having a foothold in South Korea as much as long as they possibly can? I guess maybe both of those would be true.

I mean, there is an argument that conditions are sanguine in the long term for North Korea owing to the rise of China and its growing power, especially its power in East Asia. And that if that power allows, East Asian countries to exit the U.S. orbit that North Korea's future will be bright because it's situated in a dynamic region of the world. But on the other hand, I mean, as you pointed out, this isn't something that the United States is going to allow China to do without a struggle. And Korea can be a central part to that struggle against China. Absolutely. Well,

Keep our eyes on the region and on the peninsula. Our hearts are with the Korean people and hopefully the future of Korea as a unified, democratically controlled, ideally socialist peninsula. But we shall see. Stephen, thank you so much for coming on the show. The book is Patriots, Traitors, and Empires, The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom. I cannot recommend it enough. You will not understand the DPRK and modern-day Korean politics.

and their role in geopolitics if you do not understand this history, the history of both occupation and domination, but also the history of resistance by the Koreans themselves. Before I let you go, though, Stephen, can you please let listeners know where they can find this book and perhaps the rest of your work online? Yeah, you can find that book in my others at Baraka Books, and you can find my blog at Gowan's blog.

Wonderful. I will link to that in the show. show notes so people can find it as easy as possible. Stephen, it's been a real pleasure and an honor to have you on. I'd love to have you back on some time, specifically about the book you wrote on Syria. But in the meantime, be well, and let's keep in touch. Oh, thank you so much.

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You're going to be it. It's a bit more than it. Oh No, I'm here. No, this war, this night. The time back in the moon is away. On the last night, I'll give you.

I'll give you. But by the late 90s, as democracy ripened and with it a free press, harrowing truths about the war finally came to light and threatened to strain the long-standing alliance between America and South Korea. We finally had the civilian government. and there's more freedom of press than before. And the domestic media began talking about issues that were banned during the military dictatorship. Cé Sanghoun was a reporter for the Associated Press in Seoul in the late 90s.

One of the issues was the allegations that a lot of South Korean civilians were killed by the American military. One day I found this magazine page saying that the people from Nogunee area were handing a petition asking for the investigation of what they called a massacre and war crime by American military during the Korean War. And I thought this kind of allegation is something that Americans need to hear about. Che partnered with a team at AP's New York Bureau, led by Charles Hancock. The investigation was a very detailed, very arduous, onerous, drawn-out investigation. It wasn't easy.

The team began to interview survivors who described atrocities perpetrated by American military in the earliest days of the war. One of the worst was the massacre at No Gan Ri, where hundreds of South Korean civilian refugees were killed while they huddled under a train overpass. I tried to find Nogany survivors around the country. It kind of up the blood gate, of kind of hidden chapter. The chapter people knew about, but didn't talk about.

Over that way, there's still some bullets stuck in the wall. Over that way, there's still some bullets stuck in the wall. About here was where we were sitting. My younger brother hit under a corpse, under the belly. I said that was how you could survive. The stories from the Korean survivors are just horrible. And the key thing then was to find the Americans involved. We needed to find corroborations.

client corroboration. My colleague Martha Mendoza and I began making cold calls to these veterans. Homer Garza was a 17-year-old private with the Army's 7th Cavalry. He says he arrived at Nogunri just after the massacre ended. There was two tunnels side by side. When we got there, there must be about 300 South Korean civilians that were killed there. One thing I never forget, there was a woman, a mother, laying there on her back, and she had a little baby probably about not more than eight or nine months old, trying to nurse on a dead body there, you know. Garza contends American soldiers were not to blame for the massacre.

But along with other veterans, he has confirmed that their orders during the war, war were clear. We received orders that anything in front of us was the enemy. No matter who was in front of us, if they didn't shoot at you, you would shoot at them, yeah. Whether they was a male or a female. Che, Henley, and a team of AP reporters dug into the Pentagon's files. Many of them formerly classified.

What they found there supported the survivors' accounts. There were orders flying around the warfront to treat civilians as enemy. Orders from the very top command, the 8th Army, to stop any refugee movement across lines. This was just a prima facie case of a war crime. Targeting non-combatants has always been considered a war crime. and these were the first documents like this to be turned up. On September 29, 1999, the AP published the first piece of their investigative report. By the next day, Defense Secretary William Cohn had ordered an Army investigation,

which dragged on for many months. Somehow, my name got all the way to the Pentagon. And I got on the phone and he said, this is Colonel So-and-So says, We want to talk to you about no gunry. I said, neither one of you have been in combat, so you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're fighting to keep your ass alive. That's what you're doing.

Outrage South Koreans demanded an official apology from the U.S. But one never came. We know things happened which should not have happened. and that things happened which were wrong. President Clinton did not offer an apology. An apology would be an admission of culpability. What Clinton issued was a statement of regret, which of course simply says,

it's too bad this thing happened to you. We really feel sorry for you. When I began reporting, people asked, what are you trying to do? What is the political benefit of doing that? When you are still in confrontation with North Korea, and you still need the United States. I keep telling them, you know.

Just think about the mothers and fathers who lost babies and their brothers and sisters, family members, you know, during that episode. But when people saw Clinton expressing regrets about no one incident, people kind of surprised. And there's a lot of South Korea who thought that was not entirely honest for the Americans.