Choice of the United States

The withdrawal of the US troops from the Korean peninsula has been a long-pending issue tobe solved since their occupation of south Korea after the Second World War. For nearly 70 yearsthe US has justified the stationing of its armed forces in south Korea on several ridiculous pretexts.

The US stationed its troops in south Korea in September 1945 on an absurd pretext of “disarming the Japanese troops” and divided Korea into the north and the south. It also started the Korean war (1950-1953) with the object of occupying and dominating the whole of Korea, hurling into the war its huge armed forces and even the troops of its 15 satellite countries in the name of the “UN Forces.”
          Having suffered in the Korean war a disastrous defeat, the first of its kind in its history, and signed the armistice agreement, the US still schemed to perpetuate its troops’ stationing in south Korea by forming the “ROK-US Mutual Defence Pact” after the war.
                         For several decades in the past when the Cold War constituted the foundation of the international politics and served as an omnipotent justification for interventions and high- handedness of the imperialist forces the US had advocated the need of stationing its troops in south Korea in order to “contain the southward advance” of the former Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has styled its troops in south Korea a “deterrent to dispute” and the “means of stability,” insisting that they are imperative for the security on the Korean peninsula and other Asia-Pacific areas. However, everybody knows that ever since the stationing of the US troops in south Korea, acute military confrontation and tensions have been running high on the Korean peninsula, far from peace and stability. It was the US which started the Korean war, one of the most devastating wars after WWII, and provoked the incidents of the armed spy ship Pueblo, the large spy plane EC-121 and Panmunjom, which brought the whole world to the brink of a thermonuclear war.

      Then, why does the US persistently refrain from pulling its troops out from the Korean peninsula? In a nutshell, it is because the US is ambitious for world supremacy. It has constantly pursued an ambition to occupy all of Korea with south Korea as a stepping-stone and form the military encirclement around the big countries including China and Russia with the Korean peninsula as a bridgehead. However, it is an anachronism. A “strategic partnership” is being established between the US and the big countries neighbouring Korea, though they had confronted with each other in ideology. The troops which had been stationed in some countries and regions are being withdrawn and military bases abolished. In the current of the times the question of easing tensions on the Korean peninsula and improving the DPRK-US relations is posed as practical demand. What is vital is to put an end to the US troops’ stationing in south Korea. Even those from the political and public circles and military strategic brainpower of the US are asserting that the US troops’ stationing in south Korea is unreasonable and thus they should be withdrawn.

    A senior fellow at a research institute in the US contributed an article to one of the US magazines, stressing on the condition that north Korea possesses nuclear, the GIs tens of thousands strong in south Korea could only be taken its nuclear hostage and, therefore, they must be withdrawn. The US cannot reduce the  DPRK to submission–this is the summing up of the DPRK-US confrontation continued for nearly 70 years. It must never forget the ignominious defeat it
suffered in the Korean war in the 1950s. It must also keep in mind that the Pueblo incident, the EC-121 incident, the Panmunjom incident and all others it had machinated against the DPRK were concluded with either its acknowledging submissions or offering apologies. The DPRK, which inflicted serious defeat upon the US in the past with military hardware far inferior to the US, has prepared a reliable nuclear deterrent at present. This is the fact worthy of special attention for the US, too. It is no more a possibility that a new provocation of the US on the Korean peninsula will lead to its doom. The wars it waged against Iraq and Afghanistan are explained as the main cause of the recent crises and weakening and crumbling of the US. That a new Korean war beyond comparison will trigger the complete collapse of the US is a truth that is as plain as noonday. There is another point that the US must see. As it cannot help but reduce its war  expenditure owing to a serious economic crisis, is it a wise policy for the US to keep on squandering money on the maintenance of its troops and military bases in south Korea, anachronistic and trouble- making?

The US must make a reasonable choice.