Michel Chussodovsky

US War Crimes committed against the Korean Nation (1950-53)

“Fire and Fury” was not invented by Donald Trump. It is a concept deeply embedded in US military doctrine. It has characterized US military interventions since the end of World War II.  

What distinguishes Trump from his predecessors in the White House is his political narrative at the 2017 United Nations  General Assembly. 

President Harry Truman from the very outset of the Korean War (1950-53) was a firm advocate of “Fire and Fury” against the people of both North and South Korea. General Douglas MacArthur, who had actually carried out the atrocities directed against the Korean people, appeared before the US Senate and acknowledged the crimes committed against the Korean Nation:

“I have never seen such devastation,” the general told members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. At that time, in May 1951, the Korean War was less than a year old. Casualties, he estimated, were already north of 1 million.

“I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man,” he added, ” (quoted by the Washington Post, August 10, 2017)

Confirmed by US military documents, both the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have been threatened with nuclear war for sixty-seven years.

In 1950, Chinese volunteer forces dispatched by the People’s Republic of China were firmly behind North Korea against US aggression.

China’s act of solidarity with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was carried out barely a few months after the founding of the PRC on October 1, 1949.

Truman had contemplated the use of nuclear weapons against both China and North Korea, specifically as a means to repeal the Chinese Volunteer People’s Army (VPA) which had been dispatched to fight alongside North Korean forces. [Chinese Volunteer People’s Army, 中國人民志願軍;  Zhōngguó Rénmín Zhìyuàn Jūn].

It is important to stress that US military action directed against the DPRK was part of a broader Cold War military agenda against the PRC and the Soviet Union, the objective of which was ultimately to undermine and destroy socialism.

Extensive war crimes were committed against the Korean Nation in the course of the Korean war and its aftermath.

Every single family in North Korea has lost a loved one in the course of the Korean War.

In comparison, during the Second World War the United Kingdom lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the US lost 0.32%. During the Korean war, North Korea lost 30% of its population.

These figures of civilian deaths in North Korea should also be compared to those compiled for Iraq by the Lancet Study (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health). The Lancet study estimated a total of 655,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, in the three years following the US-led invasion (March 2003 – June 2006).

The US never apologized for having killed up to 30 percent of North Korea’s population. Quite the opposite. The main thrust of US foreign policy has been to demonize the victims of US-led wars.

There were no war reparations. The issue of US crimes against the people of Korea was never addressed by the international community. And today, the DPRK is tagged by the Western media as a threat to the security of the United States.

For more than half a century, Washington has contributed to the political isolation and impoverishment of North Korea. Moreover, US-sponsored sanctions on Pyongyang have contributed to destabilizing the country’s economy.

North Korea has been protrayed as part of an “axis of evil”. For what?

The unspoken victim of US military aggression, the DPRK is portrayed as a failed war-mongering “Rogue State”, a “State sponsor of terrorism” and a “threat to World peace”. In the West but also in south Korea, these stylized accusations become part of a consensus, which we dare not question.

The Lie becomes the Truth. North Korea is heralded as a threat. America is not the aggressor but “the victim”.

Washington’s intent from the very outset was to destroy North Korea and demonize an entire nation. The US has also stood in the way of the reunification of North and South Korea.

People across America should put politics aside and relate to the suffering and hardships of the people of North Korea. War veteran Brian Willson provides a moving assessment of the plight of the North Korean people:

“Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war, especially from the continuous bombing, much of it incendiary and napalm, deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country. “Every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, and village” was ordered bombed by General MacArthur in the fall of 1950. It never stopped until the day of the armistice on July 27, 1953. The pained memories of people are still obvious, and their anger at “America” is often expressed, though they were very welcoming and gracious to me. Ten million Korean families remain permanently separated from each other due to the military patrolled and fenced dividing line spanning 150 miles across the entire Peninsula.

Let us make it very clear here for western readers. North Korea was virtually totally destroyed during the “Korean War.” U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s architect for the criminal air campaign was Strategic Air Command head General Curtis LeMay who had proudly conducted the earlier March 10 – August 15, 1945 continuous incendiary bombings of Japan that had destroyed 63 major cities and murdered a million citizens. (The deadly Atomic bombings actually killed far fewer people.).Eight years later, after destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerance of another.

Virtually every person wanted to know what I thought of Bush’s recent accusation of North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” I shared with them my own outrage and fears, and they seemed relieved to know that not all “Americans” are so cruel and bellicose. As with people in so many other nations with whom the U.S. has treated with hostility, they simply cannot understand why the U.S. is so obsessed with them.” (Brian Willson, Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, October 12, 2006 emphasis added)

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-long-war-against-the-korean-nation/5624689