US Must Produce Policy
to End Impasse on Korean Peninsula
Despite repeated warnings and protests by the United States, Japan and South Korea, signs indicate that North Korea will proceed to launch another long-range missile soon.
The crux of the problem between Washington and Pyongyang is the presence of U.S. forces in South Korea. The United States sent its armed forces to Korea in 1950 to help South Korea repel a North Korean invasion. When the war became unwinnable by either side, an armistice was arranged in 1953. The United States and South Korea then concluded a mutual defense treaty under which the U.S. forces have been stationed in South Korea as a bulwark against possible renewed North Korean attack. Meanwhile, South Korea, with twice the population of North Korea, has built up a strong military establishment, supported by the United States and its own substantial economic development, while North Korea has been undergoing severe economic blight.
No military experts today believe that the North has the capability of launching a successful military adventure against the South, save the possibility of suicidal attack, if and when cornered by provocation from outside. In recent years, the United States has been arguing that its forces in South Korea would remain there forever, even after the reunification of Korea, in order to safeguard the peace and security in East Asia. To back up such an argument the United States asserts that the presence of U.S. forces in South Korea has been the major contributing factor to the maintenance, of peace in the region.
But this is an assertion that North Korea -cannot and will not buy. To North Korea, U.S. forces in South Korea are foreign intruders on their homeland. These are the same military forces that invaded and tried to exterminate them in 1950. The United States then sabotaged the 1954 Geneva Conference in order to stymie Article IV of the Korean Armistice Agreement, which envisioned the withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea. Moreover, the United States had, in breach of the armistice agreement,, brought and kept in South Korea a substantial amount of nuclear weapons until it removed them in 1991. It also has steadfastly refused to negotiate a conclusion of a peace treaty to supersede the agreement.
So long as U.S. forces are stationed in South Korea with their guns pointed at them, North Koreans are not able to sleep in peace.
If the United States cannot live with a North Korea armed with weapons of mass destruction, and still wants to have its forces stationed in East Asia, it needs to come up with a new comprehensive policy designed to realize the following: withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea to be implemented concurrently with substantial arms reductions on the Korean Peninsula, including North Korea's renunciation of missile programs; creation of a neutralized, disarmed and unified Korea; and arrangement for a regional security mechanism where U.S. forces can play a leading role for safeguarding peace in East Asia in cooperation with other countries of the region.
(Lee is a fellow at Korea 2000, an L.A.-based research council on Korean reunification.
He was the South Korean consul in Los Angeles from 1968 to 1971.)
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