May 7, 2013

South Korean President Park Geun-hye is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on May 8 as part of a U.S.-South Korean summit taking place over the coming days in Washington, D.C. In late April, the Workers Solidarity Student Group --the student section of South Korea's International Socialist Tendency, Workers Solidarity All Together--issued this statement about Park's upcoming visit.

AMID THE continuing rise of military tensions on the Korean peninsula, South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, will make her first visit to the U.S. since her inauguration in late February, for a U.S.-South Korean summit.

During her visit, she is likely to discuss strengthening the U.S.-South Korea military alliance. "President Park's visit underscores the importance of the U.S.-South Korea alliance as a linchpin of peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in the Asia Pacific region," according to a White House statement. South Korea's Blue House similarly stated that the visit is "an important opportunity to take the broad strategic alliance [of the U.S. and South Korea] to new heights."

But in plain language, this means that the U.S. and its South Korean partner--the main forces responsible the crisis on the Korean peninsula in the first place--will be getting together to add fuel to the fire. While South Korean right-wingers are excited by the use of the term "linchpin," the end result will be the further entanglement of South Korea in the instability of East Asia.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye

As socialists, we oppose all nuclear weapons, and we reject North Korea's bellicose behavior, including its development of nuclear weapons. North Korea's nuclear ambitions don't contribute to peace on the Korean peninsula. However, North Korea's provocations should be viewed as the result--not the cause--of the current crisis.

In fact, it has been the U.S.-South Korea alliance of the past 20-plus years that has threatened peace on the Korean peninsula. And it's the U.S., the world's most heavily armed military power, and South Korea, which spends more on its military each year than North Korea's entire GDP, that should be held accountable for the current situation.

The recent increase in U.S. aggression is the crucial context for understanding the current crisis. The "Key Resolve" military training exercises that began in March were much larger than those in previous years and were designed to demonstrate the U.S. capacity to attack North Korea with its state-of-the-art offensive weapons.

In the last two months, the U.S. mobilized a nuclear submarine, B-52 bombers, B-2 Stealth bombers and F-22 Stealth fighters on the Korean peninsula, displaying their ability to use nuclear weapons to incinerate North Korea whenever they please. At the same time, U.S. officials preach about the "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" and "a nuclear-free world" with nauseating hypocrisy.

The Obama administration's "pivot to Asia" to confront what it considers to be its chief global competitor, China, also helps to explain the dark clouds gathering over the Korean peninsula. Between 2009 and 2011, the number of U.S. troops in South Korea increased from roughly 26,000 to 37,000 while in Japan they jumped from 41,000 to 87,000.

Using the pretext of North Korea's "nuclear arsenal," the U.S. has also upgraded its East Asian missile defenses, deploying 50 percent of its missile interceptors on the West Coast, while sending Aegis destroyers equipped with missile defense systems to waters off the Korean peninsula. The U.S. also plans to deploy its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in Guam.

The Park Geun-hye administration has also exacerbated the crisis on the Korean peninsula. President Park has agreed to a "combined counter-provocation plan" with the U.S., preemptively granting the U.S. the power to intervene in any national conflict on the Korean peninsula. She has also approved an order to "counter aggressively from the start, without any political consideration" in the event of a military confrontation with North Korea.

IT IS in this context--amid threats and displays of military force against North Korea--that Park Geun-hye visits the U.S.

Some observers may expect the summit to extend a message of reconciliation to North Korea. But the U.S. and South Korean governments' proposal of conditional "dialogue" is hypocritical. For the last 20 years, the harsh sanctions against North Korea imposed by the U.S. and South Korea provoked North Korea's nuclear threats, not to mention the provocative military exercises and saber-rattling more recently. And in any case, such invitations to "dialogue" have in the past been fraught with the potential of greater conflict rather than the beginning of peace.

The U.S. also hopes to use the summit to make the case for greater trilateral cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the U.S.--again using the pretext of threats from China and North Korea. "U.S. officials have played a prominent role in encouraging better relations between the governments of South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe," according to an early May report in the Wall Street Journal.

Furthermore, the U.S. government is also likely to push for South Korea's adoption of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (a free-trade agreement aimed at restraining the increase of China's economic power in Asia while defending U.S. interests in the region), its introduction of various weapons systems, and an increase in South Korea's share of joint defense costs paid to the U.S. But these policies only serve U.S. interests, while victimizing South Korean workers and citizens. This money should not be spent on weapons, but on the welfare of the population.

We must oppose the U.S. and South Korean governments' discussion of any plan to "strengthen" the U.S.-South Korea military alliance while ratcheting up threats against North Korea. This will only worsen the crisis on the Korean peninsula. All progressive students who yearn for peace on the Korean peninsula should stand together in protest of Park Geun-hye's visit to the U.S.

Translation by Chris Kim