Critical Perspectives on U. S. Foreign Policy
by Eoin Higgins
For the consumer of US corporate media, the idea of a nuclear armed North Korea is a terrifying threat. Almost every day for the last two weeks, print and television media have amped up the potential danger of a devastating military strike from the isolated peninsular nation.
“North Korea Keeps Up Its Provocations,” read a headline at The Atlantic ( 9/14/17). “North Korea Threatens to ‘Sink’ Japan, Reduce US to ‘Ashes and Darkness,’” reported CNBC ( 9/14/17). Vox ( 9/22/17) told readers “Why North Korea’s Latest Threats Are Far More Serious Than Its Typical Bluster.”
The North Korean government is not operating in a vacuum. Yet the reasons for North Korea’s militarization—the country has the fourth largest army in the world—and the historical context for its conflict with the United States are seldom honestly discussed in corporate media.
The Korean War, in which the United States invaded the North on behalf of South Korea, claimed the lives of over 2 million North Koreans. The US dropped as many munitions as it had dropped on the entire Pacific Theater in World War II—a four-year conflict ranging over tens of millions of square miles, as opposed to the 46,541 square miles of North Korea—and the war has never been officially ended.
After citing a source who says North Korea is “paranoid that the United States is going to eliminate them,” Wired ‘s Brian Barrett ( 9/19/17) wrote, “One can trace that paranoia back to the Korean War”—followed by a reasonable description of why the fear of attack was justified. “In 1950, then–US President Harry Truman said that he was prepared to authorize the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict.” The millions of actual deaths North Korea had suffered during the war—out of a population at the time of less than 10 million—were not noted as contributing to the country’s “paranoia.”
As Hyun Lee put it to FAIR’s CounterSpin ( 4/7/17), the circumstances surrounding US/North Korea relations make the latter’s desire for powerful weapons understandable—even rational:
The US and South Korea hold annual joint military exercises on the North Korean border—exercises that are explicitly rehearsals for an eventual invasion of the North.
