The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), North Korea, or Communist Korea is one of the most systematic targets of the pejorative and slanderous propaganda carried out by capitalist-controlled media at a global scale. But the DPRK has never succumbed to Washington’s intimidation. This has generated, around the world, admiration for the very fact of its survival; and solidarity for the courage with which it faces so much negative propaganda.
Pyongyang has never shown signs of wavering in the face of such threats and, on the contrary, it has even dared to develop a reduced arsenal of nuclear weapons for self-defence in the event that the United States tries to assert its dominance by launching another war like the one it carried out in the 1950s.
In the wake of the most recent US military provocations against North Korea and the usual firmness of its replies, the US journalist Mike Whitney has published a comprehensive article in the digital magazine Counterpunch recalling that:
“Washington has never made any effort to conceal its contempt for North Korea. In the 64 years since the war ended, the US has done everything in its power to punish, humiliate and inflict pain on the Communist country.” “Washington has subjected the DPRK to starvation; it has prevented its government from accessing foreign capital and markets; it has strangled its economy with crippling economic sanctions; and has installed lethal missile systems and military bases on its doorstep.” “Negotiations aren’t possible,” says Whitney, because Washington refuses to sit down with a country which it sees as its inferior. Instead, the US has strong-armed China to do its bidding by using their diplomats as interlocutors who are expected to convey Washington’s ultimatums as threateningly as possible. The hope, of course, is that Pyongyang will cave in to Uncle Sam’s bullying and do what they are told.”
“There’s no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans, who get their news from FOX or CNN, may differ on this point, but if a hostile nation deployed carrier strike-groups off the coast of California while conducting massive war games on the Mexican then they might see things differently. They might see the value of having a few nuclear weapons to deter that hostile nation from doing something really stupid.” According to Whitney, “the only reason Kim Jong Un hasn’t joined Saddam and Gadhafi in the great hereafter, is because the DPRK has the capacity to reduce Seoul, Okinawa and Tokyo into smoldering debris-fields. Absent Kim’s WMDs, Pyongyang would have faced a pre-emptive attack long ago and Kim would have faced a fate similar to Gadhafi’s. “Nuclear weapons are the only known antidote to US adventurism,” says the journalist.
“In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry.” The United States killed over 2 million people in a country that posed no threat to US national security.
Like Vietnam, the Korean War was just another muscle-flexing exercise the US periodically engages in whenever it gets bored or needs some far-flung location to try out its new weapons systems. The US had nothing to gain in its aggression on the Korean peninsula. “In the US, most people think the problem lies with North Korea, but it doesn’t,” explains Whitney.” The problem lies with the United States; it’s unwillingness to negotiate an end to the war, its unwillingness to provide basic security guarantees to the North, its unwillingness to even sit down with the people who –through Washington’s own stubborn ignorance– are now developing long-range ballistic missiles that will be capable of hitting American cities. According to Whitney, “relations with the North can be normalized, economic ties can be strengthened, trust can be restored, and the nuclear threat can be defused. The situation with the North does not have to be a crisis, it can be fixed. It just takes a change in policy, a bit of give-and-take, and leaders that genuinely want peace more than war.
*Manuel E. Yepe, is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana. He was Cuba’s ambassador to Romania, general director of the Prensa Latina agency; vice president of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television; founder and national director of the Technological Information System (TIPS) of the United Nations Program for Development in Cuba, and secretary of the Cuban Movement for the Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples.
www.englishmanuelyepe.wordpress.com
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