WORLD AFFAIRS

Coping with threats

Even five decades after it first waged a war on the people of North Korea, the U.S' hand is visible behind every plan to hinder North Korea's progress towards becoming a fully independent nation.

SUNEET CHOPRA

The concluding article in a two-part series.

PYONGYANG conjures up so many different images: a city that from 1925 to 1945 resisted Japanese imperialism; that was virtually razed to the ground by the United States during the course of its invasion and war between 1950 and 1953, but rose out of the ashes like the phoenix; and the capital of a state recently described by President George Bush as one of those that constitute 'the axis of evil'!

On the 90th anniversary of the birth of Kim II Sung, the heroic young revolutionary who fought in and led the resistance to both Japanese and U.S. imperialism, built up the Workers' Party of Korea and steered the country on the path to socialism, and who is universally and lovingly addressed as "the Great leader" (not unlike the word "Mahatma" that comes before the name 'Gandhi' in India), you see a bastion of socialism that is not likely to fall with a huff and puff from Washington.

DEIRDRE GRISWOLD
President Kim Jong Il waves to marchers on the 70th anniversary of the Korean People's Army in April 2002.

The secret of its strength is underpinned by three factors: a party that was armed and able to defend itself and the people from its very inception in the anti-Japanese struggle; a fiercely independent position, based on self-reliance in theory and practice that allowed the Workers Party to emerge as a distinct entity both among its people and in the world; and a social basis in collective activity, ranging from agriculture to culture that is directed by the ideology of socialism and instills confidence in them.

Not many countries can present such an integrated system of allround self-defence. No wonder that the U.S. President was at his most cantankerous when he faced massive demonstrations in South Korea (that part of the Korean peninsula that is today prevented from uniting with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK, only on the basis of the U.S. armed strength stationed there). Truth was bitter and painful for the U.S.

One has only to walk along the Taedong river and see the U.S. spy ship 'Pueblo' moored on its banks. This is the very spot where the great grandfather of President Kim II Sung, King Ung U, had sent burning boats to set fire to the U.S. vessel Sherman in 1866, whose sailors looted Korean treasures from imperial tombs after forcibly coming up-river. The fact that the Korean chose to moor the spy ship at the very spot where Sherman was sunk shows that the Koreans have a long memory, and that is inconvenient for President Bush.

Recently this writer had been to Sin Chon, about 160 km from Pyongyang, where one of the many atrocities during the invasion of Korea by the U.S. and some 15 of its allies in 1950, was committed. The site of the Sin Chon massacre reminded me of the things one saw in Sachsenhausen, one of Hitler's concentration camps near Berlin. And yet the world knows so little about it.

On October 17, 1950 a certain Lieutenant Harrison issued the following order: "My order is the law. Outlaws will be shot to death. Destroy all red bandits to free North Korea from the Communist monsters. Hunt and kill all the Communist Party members, civil servants and their families. Kill their sympathisers too." This amazing order of a low-ranking officer led to the massacre of 910 people - 410 were men, 304 women and 196 children. A later order describes the women and the children in vile terms. Clearly the language reflects a racism no less than that of the Nazis.

The atrocities are uncannily similar. The women and children were separated and kept in warehouses, while the men were forced into a bunker nearby. The killings were done by pouring petrol into the rooms and igniting it with grenades.

DEIRDRE GRISWOLD
Inside the U.S. spyship Pueblo, which is moored on the banks of the Taedong river.

One of the survivors, Chu Sang Won, who was a boy of five at the time, described the incident to this writer. "I was very young then, when we saw these men with pale skins speaking a strange language. We were afraid. I am still haunted by the memory of how my mother and I were separated. We were brought to this warehouse. It was very cold, so I crawled into a corner where there was some cloth. That is probably how I survived. We remained hungry a long while. Then someone came and sprinkled petrol inside and set fire to it. The room was extremely hot and I fainted. When I came to, the door was open and there were dead bodies all round. I crawled over them and went outside, where I was found by an old man of our village, Che Hong Ya, who had come looking for the bodies of his daughter and daughter-in-law after the U.S. soldiers had left. He then handed me over to the family of Kim Sin Kum who brought me up like her own child."

Chun Sang Won's story could be that of over 100,000 others in this area alone, where 35,383 people were killed, 19,149 of them men and 16,234 women. And the killings were pathological. Hundreds of skulls have been found with nails hammered into them. The head of U He Yun, the principal of a primary school, was sawed off while he was alive. Others were skinned alive or had their eyes gouged out. Pregnant women had their stomachs slit, a mill worker had two carts tear his body apart, while Sim Jong, a women's league leader who was nine months pregnant, had a wire put through her nose and was dragged around the area, and then was beaten to death. If the U.S. Army and administration thought this would terrorise the Koreans, they were proved horribly wrong.

The only effect this had was that 4,05,498 U.S. GIs (servicemen) were either killed or captured between 1950 and 1953; if we do not count those of Korean origin or from countries the U.S. had coaxed into the war with it. Perhaps such fierce resistance to the savagery unleashed on a small country that had just liberated itself from Japan must strike the U.S. President as evil. For those who wish to be able to attack and devastate countries at will, the North Koreans are a particular challenge.

Being present at the 70th anniversary of the Korean People's Army, and having travelled widely to see a people who have overcome natural disasters with "army discipline", and whose country is ably served by a defence force that builds roads, bridges, canals and other major construction projects apart from the normal functions of any country's army, one is not surprised to see how popular it is among the people. Moreover, the 'Army first' policy of this country must be hard for the U.S. to swallow. Since 1953, the U.S. has consistently refused to convert the armistice into a peace treaty. A visit to Panmunjon shows one how tense the border is to this day, with regular skirmishes and attacks. So the very existence of the DPRK in the teeth of the U.S. efforts to crush it must make it seem evil in the eyes of President Bush.

The first thing that strikes one about the life of the people here is the stress on the collective. Their culture is collective and its best manifestation is in the massive performances that they hold with tens of thousands of people involved and no one out of step. There were dances, torchlight performances and even children's presentations. Everyone can take part in them with a minimum of training. But behind it is an education system that allows all children to express themselves artistically. There is no unemployment and work is not arduous. There is, as a result, a fairly popular tradition among students, intellectuals, teachers, office-workers and army personnel of going to a collective farm for a month to plant crops or harvest grain.

Korea is a mountainous country with very little arable land. So it had to develop its industry. Industry showed a record growth up to the 1980s, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European states truncated its market. To add to this situation, the U.S. imposed a virtual embargo on its dollar trade. As recently as March 21 to 27, 2002, it held its biggest military exercises since 1953, involving 37,000 U.S. troops in Korea, as well as those in Japan and the island of Guam, with 6,50,000 South Korean troops to back them up. The efforts to counter this offensive cost this little country vital funds it needed to import enough food for its people. So we find that behind the much-touted food shortages is the hand of the U.S.

The U.S. hand is behind many of the problems that beset this small country. Even at Panmunjon on the line of armistice, we do not see the U.S. flag, but that of the United Nations. And the extent to which this 'behind the scenes' game goes on was evident from a ludicrous scene when an American visitor spotted a U.S. soldier behind the South Koreans (who are visibly guarding the ceasefire line now) and she trained her telelens on him. The speed with which he ducked for cover and fled was hilarious. One would have thought that he was being shot at. This is the behaviour of those who target the DPRK as 'evil'. Their actions are such that they are afraid to show their faces without a mask. So it is obvious that it is the U.S. that leads the axis of evil.

As for the Korean people, they made it amply clear through large demonstrations that Bush was not welcome in the South either. Before the exercises ended on March 25, Seoul began its parleys with Pyongyang once more and Bush's rhetoric was greeted with stony silence by the South. The North, however gave him the rap on the knuckles that he deserved. It also reminded him that it was he who was reneging on the $4 billion aid that the U.S., Japan, and other countries had promised to give Korea for a nuclear power reactor in return for the DPRK not using its alleged stock of plutonium to meet its power needs.

SUNEET CHOPRA
At the remains of the warehouse where 304 women were murdered by the U.S. forces in October 1950.

Mercifully, the DPRK is not dependent on U.S. funds. To meet the challenge of food shortages, three batallions of the Korean People's Army constructed the West Sea barrage spanning 8 km of the mouth of the Taedong in a record time of four years between 1981 and 1985. Ten hills had to be flattened and some 30 million cubic metres of stone had to be transported. This allowed for extension of farming to some 10,000 hectares of reclaimed land. The top of the barrage is equipped with a railway, motorway and sidewalks making travel much easier. A number of areas will receive drinking water from it. The barrage has three locks and 36 sluice gates and even ships can enter through it. Much more can be done for the Korean People if President Bush pulled back his forces and let the South and North Koreas begin their process of reunification.

The evil the U.S. has done to the Korean people is evident everywhere. But on April 25, when we saw the parades of the civil forces of this citizens' Army, which was attended by Kim Jong II, everyone present realised that confronting this state would harm the U.S. more than it would help. So the U.S. would do better to recall its forces, which are occupying the South, with 40 military installations there, and end the real evil that afflicts the peninsula today. This is the minimum condition for peace in East Asia and the U.S. ought to comply.