Bush Wants Peace Treaty with Pyongyang
There is only one catch:
Before President George W. Bush leaves office, he hopes to sign a formal peace treaty putting an end to the Korean War, the top U.S. envoy to Seoul said yesterday.
It is all contingent, however, on North Korea taking steps to get rid of its nuclear weapons.
If a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War is contingent on Pyongyang giving up their nuclear weapons it is never going happen. First of all Pyongyang has no intention of ever giving up their nuclear weapons and secondly the North Korean regime cannot agree to a peace treaty with the US because they need the threat of an American attack to legitimize their military first policy that has lead to widespread poverty and famine of the North Korean people. A peace treaty removes the very reason for the siege mentality over their people that the North Korean regime promotes.
But we aren't really asking for denuclearization, are we?
What you hear these days is "taking steps" — which shows how far we have come in shoving our heads up our bums pretty much all the way around —- except for Japan…
I beg GI Korea's indulgence on this next comment:
The Daily NK has a post up about another major NKHR conference in Seoul this month on the 21st.
http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00100&a...
You all know how much coverage the DC conference did not get.
You probably read my moans about that and the need to take advantage of broadban video access on the internet to achieve one of the primary goals of these NGOs and the primary goal of a conference like this — getting the word out to people who are not already focused on the issue.
So, like back in 2005, I am putting messages out around the K-blogpshere:
if anybody in Korea is willing to film parts of this conference, I would love to do brief edits for them and get them up on the internet where they can be viewed 24/7. (With the spread of You Tube, and Korean society’s awareness of broadban access, perhaps there are already some people who are going to get parts of this conference up. My fingers are crossed…)
I didn’t put messages out for the DC conference until just before it happened and didn’t get any replies.
In 2005, we had about as much time before the conference when I started asking, and I did get 1 person who replied and the result was this webring:
http://www.usinkorea.org/North_Korea/videos/conference/
A tripod would have made the videos much more viewer friendly, but the two of us connecting through cyberspace got more video coverage of the 2005 event than I can find on the recent Washington conference…..
If anybody might be interested in filming some of the conference is worried about permission, I emailed several of the NGOs and speakers who we filmed in 2005. None complained. Some sent me a text of their comments that I could include on the webpages. David Hawk was surprised to see he was taped but said he liked it.
Some of the people connected to these NGOs might/probably read this blog and might read this message, and if capturing such lectures or panel discussions in film like this is taboo, you can let me know…
It wouldn’t make sense to me since the point is to get the message out to a wider and wider audience.
Anybody interested in filming these events could also ask for permission or I could send emails to the groups asking ahead of time or again like I did last time when I have finished getting them up for them to see what I did with them…
I really hope someone will have the desire and opportunity to get parts of this conference up on the internet.
With the amount of K-bloggers interested in North Korea – including their Human Rights abuses – and the amount of people who own camcorders these days – you would think 2 or 3 people could be lined up who can get some coverage of these events…..
you can email me at usinkorea@hotmail.com
Sounds like we are going to declare victory and head home. Well, we do need the Army for other tasks, and if Korea is not capable of defending itself now, it never will be. Time to cancel all the Korea centric stuff on AFN and start pushing Arabic and Farsi. Somebody has to be the bill payer for the Surge.
Why don't NK sign a peace treaty with the South Koreans instead?
Then they would not be "technically at war" (as you see the phrase endless repeated in every single news article) with each other.
I know they officially signed the ceasefire with the Americans, but if they at least made a start with the South it might make getting a railway link a bit easier 🙂
But then would that make SK at war with the US?
I can see this a complete legal and political quagmire but you've got to start somewhere.
Jon, South Korea is not the bump in the road on the railway link. In fact, the ROKs have been the main motivators behind the link, to the point of loaning ROK construction equipment to the Norks. The problem seems to be north of the DMZ. I suspect that some of the reluctance may stem from the (likely) pitiful state of North Korea's railroads.
Jon,
I think you are wrong when you say the ROKs signed the ceasefire with the Americans.
To the best of my knowledge, the ROKs actually refused to sign the 1953 Armistice. It was the UNC Commander at the time (Clark ?) who signed the Armistice on behalf of all UNC forces (minus the ROKs, who have never been a member of the UNC).
The ROKs wanted to continue the war, but like we see today in Iraq, it is your coalition partners that usually get fed up with the whole "limited war" concept and are willing to force you to settle for a half-victory.
Having served in Korea for many years (and several as a troop commander), I have always sensed an underlying tension between US and ROK headquarters and their distinctly separate agendas. The whole "Kapshi Kapshida" thing is a meaningless ploy that provides top cover for the intense bill-paying battles that go on. A senior US officer said it best when he stated that "it is the US-ROK Alliance that's killing us!"
That bogus alliance started in 1953 when the ROKs refused to sign the armistice. Now that the ROK's agenda has become apologetic toward the North, it should be no surprise that the ROKs are using Alliance rules to hamper US interests.
thanks for the info Sam, so it really should be the UN signing the peace treaty with the north, not the US.
Been saying it for a couple years now: The USA serves no purpose in Korea. Lets take our toys and troops and go home. We have bigger fish to fry. The ROK can take care of herself, or not, either way it should not be the job of the USA to care for this ungreatfull country.