United States and North Korea:

United States and North Korea: Is Peace Possible?

North and South Korea have officially been at war since 1950, but the armistice signed in 1953 ended most of the armed conflict on the Korean peninsula. The United States, as part of a larger United Nation coalition of forces, played a pivotal role in pushing the North Korean and Chinese troops back past the 38th parallel and brokering an end to the armed hostilities and tens of thousands of American troops currently remain stationed in South Korea. Tensions remain high between North and South Korea as well as the United States, though, and besides an enormous army, North Korea now has nuclear weapons to further bolster its military threats as well. In this environment, identifying opportunities for a peaceful resolution to the fundamental differences that exist between North Korea and the United States represents a timely and valuable enterprise. To this end, this paper examines several juried articles to present a balanced view of the belligerents' respective positions, followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Every story has two sides, of course, and the ongoing struggle between North and South Korea is certainly no exception. Despite decades of economic deprivation, North Korea continues to expend much of its scarce resources in preparation for war and has repeatedly insisted that these steps are necessary in order to defend itself from further aggression by Western powers. Observers in the West maintain that North Korea has been actively seeking to reunify the two Koreas using military force while the North Korean leadership counters that the country is simply trying to defend itself from yet another invasion and occupation by foreign forces. Compounding the problem has been the lack of progress made at negotiating a settlement between North and South Korea in recent years, as well as North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons technology in 2006. For example, Lund emphasizes that, "North Korea has caused problems for the international community from the time of the Korean War, but dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons program has bested many world leaders of the last decade" (2009, p. 741). Even North Korea's staunchest and most influential ally, China, has been unable to help broker a peaceful solution. Following North Korea's withdrawal from the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty in 2003, the United States, China, Japan, North Korea, Russia and South Korea began what has been termed "the six-party negotiations" in 2003 in an attempt to resolve the differences between North and South Korea, but the on-again-off-again nature of these negotiations has been further constrained by North Korea's nuclear weapons program (Lund, 2009). Certainly, it is easy enough to place all of the blame on North Korea as being the instigator of these problems, but the situation is much more complex than the argument presented by Lund would suggest. For example, Lund emphasizes that, "North Korea continues to present difficult problems because the government uses nuclear technology as a chip in a larger game of international relations" (p. 742).

What Lund does not mention is that North Korea has a legitimate right to defend itself as well as a long history of being attacked by other countries. In fact, North Korea was even colonized by Japan for the first half of the 20th century and its people treated like second-class citizens or worse. For example, Hodge emphasizes that, "Knowledge of the 20th-century history of Korea is essential to understanding North Korean national interests and goals. Until the end of World War II in 1945, Korea had remained a single, ethnically and culturally homogenous country for over a thousand years" (2003, p. 68). Following the division of the peninsula at the end of World War II along the 38th parallel, North and South Korea became politically, ideologically and economically divided as well. In this regard, Hodge adds that, "By 1948, two governments, each claiming sovereignty over the entire peninsula, had been established: the Soviet-supported communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and the U.S.-backed Republic of Korea in the south" (p. 69).

The legacy of the Japanese colonization of North Korea has had a lasting impact on this division. For example, Hwallan and Kwon note that, "Japan's colonial rule lasted until the end of World War II. In 1945, Korea gained independence but was divided for the first time into South and North Korea" (2006, p. 39). In addition, Hwallan and Kwon (2006) report that new revelations about the harsh Japanese treatment of North Koreas during this occupation were made during the second half of the 20th century that can help explain North Korea's current perspectives about the need for self-protection and self-sufficiency, termed "Juche" in North Korea. During the lengthy Japanese occupation of North Korea, many North Korean men were drafted for manual labor and North Korean women were forced into service as so-called "military comfort women," a term that Hwallan and Kwon argue simply means "sex slaves" (p. 40).

Not surprisingly, the North Korean leadership considers Japan and, by extension, the United States, as being imperialist powers that are bent on regaining control of their country and once again subjecting its citizens to such brutal treatment. Indeed, no sooner had North Korea been freed from its Japanese taskmasters than it found itself at war with the West, but not everyone agrees that North Korea was solely responsible for starting the war in the first place. For example, Beal (1998) notes that in the West, "North Korea is said to be a regime which has invaded its neighbor and is a constant threat to the peace and stability of the region. In fact, the outbreak of the Korean War is a muddy story" (p. 14). In fact, what most observers in the West do not know, or chose to ignore, is the fact that Americans forces had been actively engaged in a series of military incursions into North Korea for months prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1950 (Beal, 1998).

The official position of North Korea has always been that the United States was the aggressor in 1950 and was responsible for starting the war, but Mccormack (1994) suggests that there is sufficient evidence that both sides were preparing for war at the time. According to Mccormack, "It is clear that both sides were in mid-1950 preparing for war, planning for it, and striving to get the maximum support from their respective 'patron'" (p. 27). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, archival data from the Korean War-era came to light that confirmed North Korea's preparations for war, but this evidence is countered by comparable evidence of preparations for war on the part of South Korea and the United States (Mccormack, 1994). As Mccormack put its, "Indeed the only hypothesis which fits all the known evidence is the unlikely one that both actually chose the same day to launch an assault (albeit on a small scale in the case of the South)" (p. 27).

It is reasonable to suggest that most people in the West accept without question the version presented in countless textbooks and media accounts that North Korea troops crossed the 38th parallel in 1950, thereby precipitating the Korean War, but it is clear that there is enough blame to go around. Unfortunately, the same can largely be said of the actions being taken by the opposing forces today as well. Besides its nuclear arms and ballistic missile programs, Bechtol (2005) reports that, "North Korea has moved more than 500 self-propelled, long-range artillery systems to areas just north of the demilitarized zone at sites that could literally target areas in and around Seoul on a moment's notice and potentially kill hundreds of thousands" (p. 75). The vast majority of the United Nations' forces that were dispatched to South Korea during the Korean War have left, leaving the United States as the primary foreign power ostensibly to counter this perceived threat from North Korea. The U.S. Army 2d Infantry Division, together with South Korean forces, is likewise poised near the demilitarized zone. The 2d Infantry Division is also supported by massive air power that could easily -- and quickly -- decimate North Korea just as air power was used during the Korean War to level hundreds of North Korean cities, towns and villages. According to Bechtel, "The 2d Infantry Division operates 30 multiple-rocket-launcher systems and 30 M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers" (p. 76).