North Korea or the United States: Who is a Threat to Global Security?

IN FOCUS, ANGLO AMERICA, MILITARISM, ASIA--PACIFIC, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, 11 Mar 2013

Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research

North Korea lost thirty percent of its population as a result of US-led bombings in the 1950s.

Most people in America consider North Korea as an inherently aggressive nation and a threat to global security.

Media disinformation sustains North Korea as a “rogue state”.

The history of the Korean War and its devastating consequences are rarely mentioned. America is portrayed as the victim rather than the aggressor.

US military sources confirm that 20 percent of North Korea’s  population was killed off over a three year period of intensive bombings:

“After destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, [General] LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”

It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.” (See War Veteran Brian Willson. Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, April, 2002)

Official South Korean government sources estimate North Korean civilian deaths at 1,550,000

During The Second World War the United Kingdom lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the US lost 0.32%.

During the Korean war, North Korea lost 30 % of its population. In the words of General Curtis Lemay:

There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders. (emphasis added)

Reflect for a few minutes on these figures:  If a foreign power had bombed the US and America had lost thirty percent of its population as result of foreign aggression, Americans across the land would certainly be aware of the threat to their national security emanating from this unnamed foreign power.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the North Koreans, who lost 30 percent of their population as a result of 37 months of relentless US bombings.

From their standpoint, the US is the threat to Global Security.

Their country was destroyed. Town and villages were bombed. General Curtis Lemay acknowledges that “[we] eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.”

There is not a single family in North Korea which has not lost a loved one.

Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war, especially from the continuous bombing, much of it incendiary and napalm, deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country. “Every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, and village” was ordered bombed by General MacArthur in the fall of 1950. It never stopped until the day of the armistice on July 27, 1953. (See War Veteran Brian Willson. Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, April, 2002)

These facts continue to be concealed by the Western media to sustain the “Axis of Evil” legend, which portrays North Korea as a threat and “rogue state”, to be condemned by the “international community”.

Genocide is defined under the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) as

“the deliberate and systematic destruction of, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”. Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

What is at stake is an act of genocide committed by the US. During the Korean War an entire civilian population was the target of deliberate and relentless bombings, with a view to destroying and killing a national group, which constitutes an act of genocide under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

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Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011).

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3 Responses to “North Korea or the United States: Who is a Threat to Global Security?”

1. satoshi says:

   12 Mar 2013 at 15:39

   Let me comment on two points:

   First: On genocide. The UN Genocide Convention was not applicable to the US military during the Korean War. (Note that the date of entry into force of the Genocide Convention was 12 January 1951. the United States ratified on 25 November 1988.) Even the 1949 Geneva Conventions were not applicable to the United States, then. (Note that the date of entry into force of the 1949 Geneva Conventions was 21 October 1950. The United States ratified the four of the Geneva Conventions on 2 August 1955 and the Third Protocol, on 8 March 2007.) Well, the United States is not a State Party to the ICC Statute of Rome. Therefore, the Genocide Convention does not effectively work to the United States. It is because, “Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.” (Article VI of the Genocide Convention) By claiming the theory of preemptive attack, the United States invaded Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council. (Nonetheless, the United States is one of the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council.) How many children have the US-led NATO forces killed so far since 2001, for instance? See, for instance, https://www.transcend.org/tms/2013/02/nato-rejects-un-report-on-death-of-afghan-children/ . No innocent civilians in Afghanistan? In Afghanistan, it does not bother the US-led NATO to be killing the so-called bystanders? It seems as if the United States has been out of international law. Is international law applicable to the United States only if the application of the law is beneficial to the United States?

   Second: On the necessity of reliable information on people in DPRK. The above article reports that the US forces killed deliberately some 30% of the population of DPRK. It was nothing but untold sorrows after sorrows. On the other hand, by the way, do you know what the DPRK authorities are doing, especially to their people? Let not DPRK’s tragic history caused by the United States justify another tragedy allegedly being occurred in that country. I saw some horrible drawings of torture in DPRK, reportedly drawn by a witness. Also I hear, from time to time, some rumors about serious human rights issues in DPRK. However, there is no substantial information from major mass media on that issue. That DPRK is a secretive country should not be an excuse for journalists unable to obtain important information. There are many North Koreans working in China, for instance. There are South Koreans who constantly liaise with their relatives in North Korea through their special route(s). Some relatives of North Koreans are working in some Asian countries (in addition to China) and/or in Western countries. DPRK is not a global threat but may be a regional threat, not because of their nuclear weapons but rather because of the possible exodus of millions of starving refugees from DPRK to the neighboring countries. Furthermore, it seems that DPRK is a great threat to their own people. However, first of all, we need reliable information. May I expect the TMS to manage to obtain any reliable report about that issue?

   —

   Note, by the way, that Prof. Chossudovsky, the author of the above article, is one of those who are warning of the danger of HAARP. Visit this website, for instance: http://www.riotusa.org/rich_text_2.html

2. satoshi says:

   12 Mar 2013 at 18:59

   PS.

   Tragedies of North Korean people by the United States, as Prof. Chossudovsky reports, during the Korean War is one thing. However, their possible serious human rights abuse by their regime is another.

   Some of a very little amount of information on human rights in DPRK:

   http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/north-korea?page=1

   http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/a-push-to-investigate-north-koreas-human-rights-abuses/

3. satoshi says:

   15 Mar 2013 at 14:35

   Three points plus alpha.

   1. According to the news from Geneva on 11 March 2013, the UN Human Rights Council is likely to launch an investigation on human rights records of North Korea, entitled “Crimes against humanity in North Korea must be probed by an international enquiry – UN expert”.

   Quote: “GENEVA (11 Mar 2013) – United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Marzuki Darusman, urged the international community to launch an inquiry to probe and further document “the grave, systematic and widespread violations of human rights and possible crimes against humanity in North Korea….” Unquote:

   Read more: http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13116&LangID=E

   2. The news video below reports on the existence of a prison camp in North Korea; reported on 13 March 2013.

   http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/around-the-world-abc-news/no-exit-inside-look-prison-camp-north-korea-024238426.html

   3. By the way, how about human rights records of the United States? How are the United States authorities treating prisoners in Guantánamo, for instance? How are the authorities treating Manning, for instance? Read relevant articles, posted on the TMS this week or of the past weeks.

   “North Korea or the United States: Who is a Threat to Human Rights?”