Dear friends,
Warm greetings from the Korean Committee for Solidarity with the World People!
We send you this letter regarding the 65th year of the US’s military occupation on south Korea.
The national emblem of the US has an inscription of a white eagle, which is rare in the natural world. What it symbolizes is unclear, and many people think it is rather a symbol of aggression and war in the cloak of peace. If the white eagle is drawn on the map of the countries and regions where the US troops are stationed, the whole planet may be covered with a network of white eagles.
The place where the eagle has been squatting the longest is the southern half of the Korean peninsula in northeast Asia. The US military stay in south Korea that started with the end of the Second World War is over 65 years old century after century.
For what are the GIs staying in the south Korea so long?
The US-alleged justification has changed many times with the passage of time.
It was during the Second World War that a full-scale action began on the part of the US that had been looking over Korea avidly since the mid-19th century. At the Yalta Conference of the Soviet, American and British Summits concerning the postwar settlement, the White House maintained that Korea needed a guardianship for 20-30 years like the Philippines had undergone a 50-year period of guardianship. By this the US meant that because Korea had no “self-governing ability” since it had been under the Japanese imperialist colonial rule the great powers were duty-bound to develop Korea’s “self-governing ability” through joint administration before affording the sovereignty to country. Later, however, the Cairo Talks and the Potsdam Talks proclaimed that Korea should be sovereignty and independent and reaffirmed the need to implement the prior proclamation. None of the international conventions and agreements included such sentences or expression that acknowledged American occupation of Korea. Years later, when the Soviet Union declared a war against Japan and the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army launched the operation to liberate Korea in August 1945, the US hastily dropped A-bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then landed on south Korea in September 1945, without shedding any blood on the excuse of “disarming” the Japanese troops.
At the time they advertised their troops as “liberators” and “guardians” of south Korea. Five years later the US triggered the Korean War in order to expand their military rule all over the Korean peninsula. Suffering a serious defeat from the war, they had no other choice but to sign an armistice agreement an ignominious happening for them in three years.
The armistice agreement stipulated that a political conference of a higher level of both sides should be held to settle the question of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea. Contrary to the agreement, the US forged, by compelling the south Korean authorities, the south Korea-US Mutual Defense Pact that pronounced the perpetual military stationing of US armed forces. Until the Cold War came to an end that lasted for decades, the US used to raise the so-called threat of southern advance form the Soviet Union and southern invasion from north Korea for the justification of their military stay in south Korea. Now that the Cold War ended and the atmosphere of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation is prevailing, the US troops in south Korea are wearing their cloak of “deterrent combat forces for keeping peace and stability in Northeast Asia”. They talk about “relocation” and “arms reduction” alone, showing no sign of withdrawal.
The fair opinion of the world is against the America military stay in south Korea that has lasted century after century because all the justifications the US put up are persuasive to nobody, and moreover, they have become groundless at all.
The “disarming” of the defeated Japanese imperialists finished long ago; the period of “trusteeship”, which the US argued about, is over the so-called threat of “southward advance” disappeared with the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Why the US is so persistently pursuing prolonged stay of the GIs in south Korea is clear to everyone: It is because the White House regards the Korean peninsula, which is located at a geo-political vantage point as a strategic position in achieving its hegemony in the Northeast Asian region.
The American ambition has brought about a tragedy whereby the homogeneous nation that had been carried on a single bloodline for 5000 years is divided into two parts for more than 65 years.
The US troops’ existence in south Korea is not a simple stationing of a foreign army but the US’s military occupation and colonial rule of south Korea.
None of the many agreements and conventions concluded so far between the US and south Korea have any statement or expression that acknowledged south Korean sovereignty; they will vest special favours and privilege to the US.
The US is interfering in every affair of south Korea in political, economic, military diplomatic and all other spheres, laying stumbling blocks on the road of peace and reunification of the Korean peninsula.
The American troops in south Korea are only playing the role of the local implement of the White House’s Korea policy.
In June 2000 the top leaders of the north and south of Korea met for the first time in 55 years after national division and adopted the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration which can be called a landmark of reunification.
Following the declaration, the movement to clear the prolonged mistrust and confrontation and achieve reconciliation, cooperation and reunification has gained unusual momentum. The public opinion, however, is that Korea’s independent and peaceful reunification is impossible as long as US troops remain in the south. History itself is a substantial proof. If the July 4, 1972 North-South Joint Statement, the December 1991 North-South Agreement and the likes had been materialized, Korea would have achieved reunion. Whenever the south Korean people’s movement for independent national reunification mounted and the atmosphere of north-south reconciliation and unity came into existence, the US forces used to throw wet blanket by conducting different kinds of large-scale war rehearsals.
The international community is voicing the need to develop our planet into a free and prosperous world by achieving a stable and perpetual peace and security. To get rid of the old Cold War structure by driving the GIs from south Korea at once is what mankind wants to do.
The Korean Committee for Solidarity with the World People issues an appeal for the world progressive people whom wish the peace and reunification of Korea, to turn out in the struggle to withdraw the US troops from the south Korea and to achieve the independent and peaceful reunification of Korea.
With best regards,
The Korean Committee for Solidarity with the World People
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