Summary:
Another dodgy writer from Veterans Today, but I thought this article was very informative and gives some idea of why the North Koreans are so terrified and behave the way they do. [Editor’s note: As Trump continues to ratchet up the tensions with North Korea, it is worth reminding ourselves of why the North Koreans are so scared of the US and why they have such a burning hatred for the Americans and their South Korean collaborators. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were slaughtered by the brutal and cruel Nationalist regime that the US installed in Seoul after the Japanese occupation ended post WW2, millions more were killed, wounded or made homeless in the four years of war from 1950 to 54 that pitted the North against South, backed by the Soviet Union and United Nations respectively.
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Another dodgy writer from Veterans Today, but I thought this article was very informative and gives some idea of why the North Koreans are so terrified and behave the way they do.
[Editor’s note: As Trump continues to ratchet up the tensions with North Korea, it is worth reminding ourselves of why the North Koreans are so scared of the US and why they have such a burning hatred for the Americans and their South Korean collaborators. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were slaughtered by the brutal and cruel Nationalist regime that the US installed in Seoul after the Japanese occupation ended post WW2, millions more were killed, wounded or made homeless in the four years of war from 1950 to 54 that pitted the North against South, backed by the Soviet Union and United Nations respectively. That war has never officially ended, there is no peace treaty, just an uneasy ceasefire standoff.
According to estimates by South Korea’s Truth Commission, up to 100,000 unarmed South Korean civilians became victims of massacres committed during the Korean War (1950-1953) by the South Korean armed forces and police. Most of the estimated 1,222 massacres took place during the first few months of the war.
The Korean People’s Republic officially formed just two days prior to the first arrival of U.S. forces was almost immediately shunned by the U.S. who decided its preference was to stand behind conservative politicians representing the traditional land-owning elite. The U.S. helped in the formation on September 16 of the conservative Korean Democratic Party (KDP), and brought Syngman Rhee to Korea on General MacArthur’s plane on October 16 to head up the new party. Rhee, a Korean possessing a Ph.D. from Princeton (1910) and an Austrian wife, had lived in the United States for more than 40 years.
To his credit he had detested the Japanese occupation of his native country, but he hated the communists even more. Just before Rhee arrived to begin efforts to consolidate his power in the south, long-time resistance fighter Kim Il Sung returned from exile to begin his leadership in the Russian occupied north. As a guerrilla leader Kim had been fighting the Japanese occupation of China and Korea since the early 1930s.
Rhee and his U.S. advisers quickly concluded that in order to build their kind of Korea through the KDP they must definitively defeat the broad-based KPR. While Kim, with the support of the Russian forces in the north, was purging that territory of former Japanese administrators and their Korean collaborators, the USAMG was actively recruiting them in the south.
In November the U.S. Military Governor outlawed all strikes and in December declared the KPR and all its activities illegal. In effect the U.S. had declared war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and set in motion a repressive campaign that later became excessively brutal, dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south.
In December 1945 General John R. Hodge, commander of the U.S. occupation forces, created the Korean Constabulary, led exclusively by officers who had served the Japanese. Along with the revived Japanese colonial police force, the Korean National Police (KNP), comprised of many former Korean collaborators, and powerful right-wing paramilitary groups like the Korean National Youth and the Northwest Youth League, the U.S.Military Government and their puppet Syngman Rhee possessed the armed instruments of a police state more than able to assure a political system that was determined to protect the old landlord class made up of rigid reactionaries and enthusiastic capitalists.
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