From: orwell@erich.triumf.ca (BALDEN, RON)
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d
Subject: Re: Korean War (Was: Re: A pacifist's call for conditional ...Somalia)
Date: 31 Dec 1992 16:54 PST
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A few more comments on Doug Foxvog's comments (dfo@tko.vtt.fi) --
on my comments -- but we are not, I think, in any fundamental disagreement:

> 
>>The U.S. intervened in
>>support of a murderous right-wing dictatorship, hardly analogous to D-Day.  
> 
>The invasion was similar, landing troops into an area occupied by an 
>invader.  The allied government being supported was far different.
> 
>>I haven't yet studied the history of the Korean War in sufficient
>>depth so as to be able to refute all the "standard lies" in detail (I
>>*have* done this for the U.S.-Vietnam War), but I know enough to
>>recognize them. 
> 
>I stated no opinion on US involvement in Korea.  My comment in no
>way supported it, i just was noting a misuse of terminology.  As a
>matter of fact, i do not support that US intervention, which should have
>been clear in my original article.
> 
It was clear.  To my mind, the question of fact that is at issue
over the use of the word "invasion" is the following:

In the case of Vietnam, the *full-scale* invasion of South Vietnam
by U.S. military forces began in 1965 under the cover of an
"invitation" extended by a quisling Saigon regime which had
been installed and supported by the U.S. from the outset of
its undermining of the 1954 Geneva accords.  (Ngo Diem being
the U.S. puppet from 1954-63.)  The Saigon regime --
all Catholics (and former collaborators with their French colonial
masters) in a country that was 94 percent Buddhist --  had the support
of no more than 5 percent of the population (i.e. their fellow Catholics).
If you install your own puppets, and they then "invite" your military
forces in to "defend" their country from "internal aggression"
it is still a military invasion of a country in the conventional pejorative
sense, or the word has no meaning.

Now, in the case of South Korea (and remember, the partition of Korea was
solely a creation of the Cold War) the question at issue to my mind is
whether the government of Syngman Rhee had *any* popular legitimacy.  If
memory serves, (and I promise to not discuss this again until I've read
more) Rhee actually *lost* an election that was held a month or so before
troops crossed the 38th parallel on  June 25th, 1950.   I find it
plausible that Rhee actually provoked the conflict in order to remain in
power.  To quote Richard Barnet in "Intervention and Revolution: The
United States and the Third World" (1972, a valuable study of U.S.
counterrevolutionary foreign policy since WWII): 

""Although the South Korean army also thrust north of the 38th parallel
on the morning of June 25, 1950, it seems clear that the North Korean
army struck first.  But it was hardly the unprovoked attack from the
blue that the State Department likes to recall.  The events of June
25 were preceded by more than two years of guerrilla warfare, border
raids initiated by both sides, and mounting threats by South Korean
President Syngman Rhee to conquer the North.  ... As 1950 began, Rhee
declared that he was prepared to "unify our territory by ourselves,"
even at the cost of "bloodshed and civil strife." He mobilized his
armies.  According to MacArthurs's chief of intelligence, Charles A.
Willoughby, at the time of the attack "the entire ROK army had been
alerted for weeks and was in position along the 38th parallel."  In
March Rhee broadcast to North Korea that the hour of their liberation
was at hand.  Threats to march north mounted throughout the spring.
Guerilla warfare in the South also continued, and the Rhee government
stepped up its arrests.""  [Barnet, pg. 83 in 1972 Mentor paperback
edition (reprinted 1980 in a different format)]

Again, from memory, I believe that U.S. forces essentially took over
control of the local Korean secret police (or at least did nothing to
destroy their power) which had been organized and trained by the Japanese
during their occupation (1910-45) of Korea, and it was this secret
police which were Rhee's power base.  


>... It appeared to me that you were
>indicating something that was especially evil about "Western industrial
>democracies".
> 

Not an unreasonable inference, although my actual intention was to indicate
that there was nothing especially evil about *U.S.* foreign policy insofar
as its formulation was (and is) completely undemocratic.

Ron Balden

Newsgroups: alt.activism.d