Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/18/24 Tim Shorrock on the Dangerous and Avoidable Escalations with North Korea

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

Tim Shorrock joined Scott on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss North Korea. Although the news has been dominated by Israel and Ukraine, tensions have been rising on the Korean peninsula as well — especially as Biden has worked towards remilitarizing Japan. Shorrock and Scott discuss what’s happening, look at how close we got to a deal under Trump and revisit why this is all George W. Bush’s fault. Discussed on the show: “An Open Letter to Independent Lens about ‘Beyond Utopia’” (Medium) Tim Shorrock is the author of Spies For Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing and a regular contributor to The Nation and the Korea Center for Investigative Reporting. Follow him on Twitter @TimothyS. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, January the 18th, 2004, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Enough Already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, as of today, 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Wharton.org at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show, all your favorite pod catchers and video sites and things.

And you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton's show. All right, and I'm happy to welcome back to this show, Tim Shoreock. He is the author of the book Spies for Hire and is a real, expert on American Korea policy. You can follow him on patreon.com where he has a brand new post that just went up beyond utopia, another false narrative about Korea. Welcome back to the show. How you doing, Tim?

I'm doing well, thanks, Scott. Well, I'm very happy to have you back on the show, and, you know, I'm grateful that I have you to rely on. A friend sent me this article by a guy named Carlin that I don't know, but I know. You do. But it was also, it was co-authored by Siegfried Hecker. And I do know, I don't know him, but I know about him. I know he's the guy that was allowed to go and tour the Yongbyong nuclear reactor in North Korea in, I believe, 2004. And is widely considered, and I believe by you as well, to be the West's foremost expert on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. And very successful. one apparently according to his latest piece here they estimate that they have as many as 50 atom bombs now in there i don't know if that's really right the previous estimate i had heard was a couple of dozen which is still more than enough and then but quite alarmingly tim they say in this article

i guess essentially while everybody's looking at eastern europe and the middle east the north koreans have completely scrapped their previous doctrine going to back to the grandfather and the end of the Cold War that we want to try to cozy up to the United States. And that has, that policy has now failed so abjectly that they have now completely abandoned it. They are now turning toward China and Russia. And they're preparing for war, even nuclear war with South Korea, Japan, and the United States right now. And I don't know, man, Joe Biden's in charge, so I'm expecting the worst. I know that Biden is absolutely as intransigent as Obama and W. Bush before him on this issue, unlike Bill Clinton and who I hate to give credit

for anything, but he did, and Donald Trump did try to do something here. But so I wonder, first and foremost, can you talk to me about that? Do you agree with them that right now in North Korea there is a major revolution in their foreign policy doctrine against the United States and toward violent conflict? No, I don't agree with their analysis. I think there's some accuracy in it. I think they really miss how much the U.S. under Biden and also Trump have escalated the situation vis-à-vis North Korea.

But let's just start with what you just reviewed there. The situation on the Korean Peninsula is very tense, worse than it's been for years, in part because the attempt by President Trump and former South Korean President Moon Jae-in to make the peace with North Korea failed because there was an agreement on the table in 2019 between Trump and Kim Jong-un. under which the North Korean side would have shut down about 80% of its nuclear facilities. And they wanted the United States in return to end some of the sanctions, the most recent sanctions that were imposed on them in 2017 and 2018. And that was rejected by Trump and his national security team. And since then, relations have plummeted. And, you know, they came very close to an agreement.

And I think, you know, we look at that period, you know, the tensions were really reduced. And there was, there was, south and North Korea had some very important military agreements themselves of de-escalation at the border on the DMZ. But since 2019, the North Koreans have, you know, after they stopped testing long-range missiles, they've continued to test and gotten much more sophisticated in their missile capability. They have not tested another nuclear weapon, and I must say that they, although they, you know, this number that they claim, you know, Hecker claims about the number of nuclear weapons they have sounds pretty high, but they have yet to put a nuclear weapon on a missile and have that, you know, be tested. So that hasn't happened yet. So, you know, I don't, I think they've

exaggerated the situation a little bit. But in terms of escalation, there's been all these North Korean tests of all kinds of, you know, weapons. But what has Biden done? Biden, Last August, created a, with the right-wing leaders of South Korea and Japan, a trilateral alliance linking the three militaries together in an unprecedented kind of alliance. And this didn't get much attention here. But it's the first time since Korea was colonized that one part of Korea is linked formally militarily with the Japanese military, Japan being their former colonizer, right? And of course, the combination of the U.S., South Korean, and Japanese military is very powerful. And North

Korea has always feared an attack by the U.S. And so they see this as a very formidable alliance arrayed against them. And it wasn't long after this three-way agreement was reached, that Kim Jong-un traveled to Russia to meet with Putin and you know toward his missile and weapons facilities in the Pacific part of Russia and and of course you know the foreign minister from North Korea is is in Moscow now I believe but she was there this week you know so there's been this gradual escalation and you know the escalation on the U.S. side is pretty big I mean for the first time ever, you know, they send a P-52 that are capable of dropping, you know, nuclear weapons. They actually landed it in South Korea. And then they've had these trilateral military,

military, you know, practices, military drills with the South Korean and Japanese military. And so, you know, this is an escalation. And I think the authors of that piece, you know, as knowledgeable as they are, have sort of de-emphasized the U.S. escalation and only focused on the North Korean. And I think that's a mistake. Yeah. Well, I'm with you there. And, you know, in fact, I'd like to go back and talk all about the American side of this, even going back further, if you like, because, of course, America is the world empire.

And also, we're Americans. And so it's incumbent upon us, sort of, whatever. It's our responsibility to talk about our government's negative. role in all of this and their refusal to negotiate when they could have that still does leave the North Korean regime's position and all that open to question about how they are even if you call it a reaction or you know blowback or what have you that um there going to be real consequences to them deciding well like for example you're talking about they decided to go and start talking with Putin and all this kind of thing where I guess I wonder about that part of

the Hecker article where they had this doctrine of trying to get along with the United States, if only Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney and Barack Obama would let them, right? But that now they've quit that, that now they're just, forget it, turning back to their West. Well, you know, they did try. I mean, there was about a 20-year period when there was on and off talks, negotiations, you know, some fairly extensive, you know, where there was this engagement that, you know, really did reduce tensions for quite a long time. And, you know, they thought they had, you know, come pretty far when there was these direct talks between Trump and Kim. And, you know,

if you look during that time, you know, tensions were reduced considerably. And, and there was talk of, you know, formally ending the Korean War, having a formal peace agreement, which has never been signed. It was only ended through an armistice. So, you know, there's a technical state of war that still exists with just an armistice. And, you know, that would have been a huge step to have a formal end to the war. But those negotiations and any kind of agreement like that that didn't end with, you know, immediate denuclearization, of North Korea, its removal of all its nuclear weapons, was scorned by the, you know, the national security infrastructure, the national security people in Washington and all the think tanks and within inside the government. And, you know, there was tremendous opposition, if you remember,

to Trump's even talking with the North Korean leader. You know, all the, you know, CNN, MSNBC, they all, you know, ridiculed Trump for, you know, talking with a dictator, as did Biden. And, you know, to the, hey, don't understate it, Tim. I mean, they went completely berserk. The Democrats, they went nuts. Yeah, the Democrats had Trump's lawyer testify before Congress right as he was meeting with the Koreans. And they had this narrative, if people will remember, the narrative was that ooh that crafty kim he's just going to walk all over trump and if trump makes

any agreement of any kind here the narrative is set that what has happened is that wily korean completely manipulated and walked all over that idiot trump just in case he made a deal to say essentially whatever he's doing Putin's bidding or whatever it was right they went on and on about this and they and you know and you know to be fair i mean trump himself made it all personal and about him you know like all their great friends and everything and he loves me etc etc uh you know i don't really think trump had much of an interest in actually solving the korean problem but we went further and during the first meeting he brought john bolton with him and bolton really did sabotage the first meeting, right?

Well, especially the second meeting. I mean, I mean, the one that in 2019 in in Hanoi, Vietnam, you know, Bolton writes about it in his book about how that agreement would have been a disaster and would

have sold the U.S. down the river and so on and so forth. Oh, that's the one I was calling the first. It wouldn't have been a significant, significant agreement. If they had, if they had, you gone there. And of course, this was, you know, strongly desired by the South Korean government at the time and the Korean people. You know, since then, you know, moon after moon, you know,

Korean presidents only served one term, five-year terms. Since then, an extreme right-winger was elected in a very narrow margin of this guy, Yun. And he's also very pro-Japanese. And the agreement, you know, this trilateral agreement that he reached with Biden and Kishita of Japan, he basically sold out, you know, Korean interest, you know, by saying, you know, Japan did not ever have to pay for the war crimes they committed in terms of like using slave labor and these so-called comfort women during World War II. He put, let them off the hook completely. And, you know, When I was in Korea last April, people in South Korea were really angry at UN government, which is very unpopular. But, you know, Biden and this people, Blinken, have been trying to get Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. to line up militarily, you know, since the days of the Obama administration.

And, you know, under Obama, the situation was extremely tense as well. And the same people making the same policy, right? They say, oh, we're open in negotiation with North Green anytime, but only if they agree beforehand to, you know, get rid of their nuclear weapons. Only if these negotiations lead to denuclearization. They don't, you know, they don't even try to, like, you know, have an arms control agreement or just or even try to reduce tensions. Right. And so they, you know, and they make it sound like, oh, they're really interested in, in talks, but they're not. And, you know, Biden himself when he was running for president, you know, he attacked Trump for, you know, giving legitimacy to this dictator in North Korea following, you know, these liberal press attacks that you talked about for.

And but, you know, by saying that, he was also criticizing President Moon of South Korea, who had also, you know, met several times with Kim. And, you know, actually reached some significant agreements. And so he was basically, you know, they basically scrapped the whole idea of this kind of, this kind of diplomacy. And after all, you know, diplomacy is not a way to talk to friends, right? It's the way to deal with enemies. That's what diplomacy is all about. Right. Well, now. They've totally failed at. They've totally failed at this.

And instead, this huge military buildup. I mean, you know, I saw it for myself. I'd never been to Okinawa last year. when I went to Okinawa, I was just stunned by the number of military bases there and their dominance of the U.S. military in Okinawa. It's absolutely amazing to see all these bases and they're building new ones. And so, you know, of course, they're gearing up for a war with China and they want South Korea and Japan to be part of that in case there's a war over Taiwan. But there's no respect whatsoever for the sovereignty of Korea, its desire for peace, its desire for, you know, eventual unification or some kind of agreement with North Korea. And I just think that the Biden policy has been a travesty.

And it's very, very dangerous. And, you know, by these various commentators focusing only on the North Korean military buildup. and just not even talking about what the U.S. is doing, I think it really is fooling the American people, and it's propaganda. It doesn't deal with the fact that we are a huge imperial power, have been in that area for 80 years, practically, and have refused really to engage with North Korea that entire time. Hey, you guys, did you know that I don't just write books? I publish them.

Well, the Institute does, and I'm the director, so yeah. 13 of them now, including my four. We published five more in 2023. Lori Calhoun and Tom Woods books about the COVID regime, Joe Solis Mullin on the fake China threat, Jim Bovard's latest last rights, and our managing editor, Keith Knight's, domestic imperialism. And we've got more great titles coming in 2024.

Check them out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books and help support our anti-government efforts at libertarian institute.org slash donate. And thank you. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets.

If you've got any savings left at all, you need to protect them. You need to put some at least into precious metals. Well, Roberts and Roberts can set you up with the best deals on silver, gold, platinum, and palladium, and they've been doing this since 1977. Hey, if you just need some sound advice about sound money, they're there for you, too. Call Tim Fry and the guys at 800, 8749760. That's 800, 8749760, or check them out at rrbi.com. That's rrbi.com.

You'll be glad you did. it. All right, you guys, it's anti-war radio on KPFK here in L.A. I'm Scott Horton talking with Tim Shoreock about North Korea and Biden's policy towards them and the danger of it all. Now, this is something that goes back to the Trump years. I know that we talked about this before, but I think it's kind of apparent underlying in everything that you're saying here, Tim, is that the North Koreans essentially are caught up in America's Cold War with China and our bases in South Korea and Japan essentially use North Korea as a pretext because they don't want to be that provocative against the Chinese

by declaring that that's what this is all really about. Yeah, it's a, it's really a bad and terrible situation. A lot of people in South Korea fear, you know, that they're going to be sucked into a war that will be in Korea. You know, it's going to affect Koreans, right? And so, you know, South Korea has had pretty good relations with China. They even had pretty good relations with Russia for a long time. But, you know, with this new right-wing leader and under Biden's policies, they've

been slowly sucked into this, you know, confrontation with China and Russia. And, you know, the conservative governments now in South Korea and Japan are going to going along with that. But I think in Japan itself, a lot of people are very, very, you know, very, very concerned about this and what it could do. You know, I think that, well, I don't, you know, I just don't see any hope in Biden making any kind of initiative. And the Democrats and the military industrial complex here in Washington, you know, as you say, you know, they want to keep the fires burning with North Korea because that's the way they can justify this huge number of bases. That's the way they can justify this massive military spinning. If you read the military

press, like defense news, publications like that, there's always, you know, American generals talking about like, you know, we're preparing for a war with China. You know, they're building new marine bases in the Pacific. They're expanding them, you know, they're trying to build. this U.S. Marine base in Okinawa, and you listen to these American generals, and they're all talking about the coming confrontation with China and how, you know, there's going to be a war, there's going to be a military confrontation, rather than, you know, trying to have some decent relationships with them again and trying to cool down the situation. They want to have this massive military structure. You know what, Tim, was a great tell.

about that was when they announced this nuclear submarine deal with Australia, and they said, well, by the time we're done constructing the pens and getting the submarines operational and everything, we expect all that to be ready by 2050. In other words, they're looking forward to long-term confrontation and militarization and the concept that we would have a perfectly good, peaceful coexistence with China worked out by then never occurred to them. Yeah, and the thing is, American commentators rarely look at the provocative nature of what the U.S. does, you know. I mean, look, Nixon went there.

They decided to recognize the People's Republic of China instead of Taiwan as a legitimate government of China. And they said, you know, they support the eventual unification of China. and Taiwan, and that is still official policy of the United States. But, you know, all this, you know, the U.S. is arming Taiwan, you know, a new government has just been, a new president has just been elected there, who wants to have, you know, more of a confrontational stance toward China. Yet a lot of people in Taiwan voted for other candidates that did not want to have this kind of confrontational, you know, war situation. And so, you know, like the U.S. is really pushing the most militarist

buttons it possibly can throughout Asia directed at China. And I think, you know, we as Americans need to look at how we, you know, fan the flames and how we are actions, particularly in Korea, you know, antagonize the other side and antagonize North Korea. And, you know, actually, The one sort of big change in North Korean policy on Korea itself is that, you know, in the last couple days, last couple of weeks, Kim Jong-un has been talking about they no longer support the peaceful unification of North and South, and they see South Korea as an enemy, and they don't want to, you know, they're going to abandon their governmental agencies that deal with, you know, relations with the South. And they're saying, you know, there's no chance of unifying North and South except in a war and giving up the idea of like a peaceful unification. And actually, you know, this is, that itself is quite a change. But I think they're looking at South Korea under this new government of Yun,

and what he has been saying and how he's been attacking, you know, his predecessors for, even engaging with North Korea, and they're saying, well, they've made a turn too. And they've signed this military alliance with Japan. So they are acting like an enemy. And so, you know, they've responded to that. I mean, this is not, this is not meant as a, you know, excuse for anything North Korea does, but you have to look at it through their eyes to understand their actions and what they say. And I think actually, when I was in South Korea, last year. And I met with some people I'd known for many years and known back to the 80s who'd been very active in the Democratic movement in the 80s when it was still a dictatorship in

South Korea. This one friend of mine said, you know, he no longer supports, you know, a unification. He just wants to see a free and open Korea where there's North and South Korea, but there's no foreign troops on, you know, in Korea in Korea. There's no foreign troops. in North Korea. There's only foreign troops in South Korea. You would like to see a situation where, you know, they coexist as two different countries, but people can travel back and forth and, you know, visit their families or, you know, visit the South, visit the North. He doesn't want to have necessarily a unified Korea, but they want to have a peaceful Korea where people can actually travel and go to the other country.

Well, now, Tim, we're running short on time here, but it's really worth emphasizing I think the danger of conflict here because, as you said, they have not proven that they have been able to marry a nuclear warhead to a missile. But they have launched a missile, at least one, high enough that all the mathematicians say

that even though its trajectory was different, it could have reached D.C. And I read a report, I don't know if it's true, but at least there's rumors that they're testing hypersonic missiles as well. They are. And, okay, so, and, you know,

maybe China's helping them with that not, I don't know. So, I mean, and they do have, and this is all W. Bush's fault from 2000 and to him and John Bolton, the access of evil speech, the sanctions, the withdrawal from the agreed framework over the lie of the secret uranium enrichment program, the adding them to the nuclear posture of view, and all of that is what provoked them into withdrawing from the NPT and their safeguards agreement with the IAEA and embarking on this nuclear weapons program at that time and they have tested a few and i believe the last test included an attempted boost with tritium which is sort of a half-assed h bomb so there's real danger here in war and i guess this is where

i thought hecker may have something that the americans think that if they just threaten everyone enough they'll just get their way but that keeps not working out for them and in this case they're talking about a small weak country that they imagine they can push around, but that is sitting on a pile, even if it's just 24. They're sitting on at least 24 atom bombs. And that's enough to kill a lot of people in South Korea and Japan, including a lot of Americans. And it's really important, like you just said, to go back to the origins of that until Bush turned his back on engagement with North Korea. You remember, President Clinton signed that agreement where they They actually shut down a nuclear facility for nearly 10 years, and he was very, very close to an agreement of almost, you know, basically normalizing relations with North Korea and ending the enmity, ending the war.

And when Bush came in, he said, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to, we're going to turn away from that. And he basically ripped up the agreement that Clinton signed. And, of course, the North Koreans saw that as, you know, why should they trust? the U.S. anymore. And by 2006, they did not have a nuclear bomb until Bush, until Bush threatened them and refused to talk to them and canceled those talks. 2006, that's when the bomb went off in North Korea. They didn't have it until that. So, you know, it's important to look back at that history and understand that, you know, how disastrous that refusal.

to negotiate was. And Obama basically just did nothing for eight years, right? Just held them at arm's length and said, endorse six party talks that never took place. And then that was just it, right? While the whole time they're adding to their atom bomb stockpile and improving their missiles.

Well, and they did this, you know, huge, you know, there's stories about, you know, the NSA penetrating its, you know, military control system and nuclear control system. And they were, they were trying to, you know, attack it, you know, electronically, basically, and mess it all up internally.

And they, you know, they did that. And then, you know, that was, that was war in another form. I mean, he was very, he was, you know, went on the offensive against, against North Korea. Yeah. And with the same people that are running Biden's policy now. I mean, Biden was part of that. He was vice president. Right.

And, you know, Tony Blinken was the deputy national security advisor. And his current, you know, Jake So. was also a, you know, a key aid to Hillary Clinton at that time. Right. You know, so like, you know, they've been carrying out this hard line, uh, for, for quite a long time. And I'm sorry, Tim, it's just not fair how fast time flies. We're out of time and got to go. Okay, thanks a lot, Scott. Thank you so much. Everybody, that is Tim Shoreock. His book is called Spies for Hire about the military contractors working for the national security state, very important stuff. And, uh, he has spent a lot of his life over there in Korea is a real expert. I'll encourage you to look at his

Patreon. The Shore Rock Files. He has a brand new one called Beyond Utopia, another false narrative about North Korea. Hey, thanks very much again for your time, Tim. Thanks, Scott. All right, you guys, and that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm Scott Horton. Check out the full interview archive, 6,000 of them now going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. Follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA. See you next week.