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Why does North Korea feel so threatened by the United States?


Canada and the United States co-hosted an international conference in Vancouver on January 16 to discuss how to deal with North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

But the guest list at the gathering could only serve to antagonize North Korea. Most of the participants were foes of the country during the Korean War. And neither of the country’s main political allies, China and Russia, were invited.

The conference’s focus on tightening economic sanctions, including blocking supply ships headed for North Korea, will only increase the resolve of the country’s leaders to develop its nuclear weapons program.

Why does North Korea feel so threatened by the United States? To understand that, we need to examine the historical context of the current conflict.

Korea was ruled by Imperial Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War Two when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as part of an agreement with the United States, and liberated the northern part of Korea. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south.

But both the north and south claimed to be the legitimate government of all Korea. The disagreement eventually escalated into the Korean War in 1950 with the Soviet Union and China supporting the north and the U.S. backing the south.

It was a brutal war. American planes dropped approximately 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea during the three-year conflict (including 32,000 tons of napalm). That’s more than the U.S. dropped in the entire Pacific theatre during the Second World War. North Korea suffered an estimated 1.3 million civilian and military casualties. The country’s infrastructure was decimated and their towns and cities obliterated.

To Kim Il-Sung, leader of North Korea at that time (and the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un), the U.S. harboured the same imperialist ambitions as the country’s former Japanese occupiers. North Korea has never stopped fearing an American invasion, a concern reinforced by the growing U.S. military presence in the region.

The U.S. has nearly 40,000 personnel in Japan and 35,000 in South Korea and uses Guam as a permanent staging area for aircraft. It maintains the Seventh Fleet in Japan with 70 ships and submarines, 140 aircraft and 20,000 sailors. It provides nuclear umbrella protection to Japan and South Korea.

In 2003, North Korea felt there was no safety to be had from an American nuclear attack under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signed in 1970 after the U.S. and other nuclear nations steadfastly refused to meet their obligation to disarm under the treaty, and so started its own nuclear weapons program.

The nuclear nations responded with trade sanctions. As North Korea has pursued its nuclear program, it has been sanctioned nine times by the UN security council, including as recently as December 2017.

With the failure of the NPT to achieve nuclear disarmament, a call for another approach began in 2010 known as the Humanitarian Initiative, which resulted in the Humanitarian Pledge. The pledge posits that nuclear weapons, because of their indiscriminate and disproportionate effects, should be declared illegal under international humanitarian law. This legal argument is the cornerstone upon which a United Nations resolution that established a mandate for nuclear weapons ban treaty negotiations was adopted in October 2016. Ironically, North Korea was the only country possessing nuclear weapons to vote for the resolution. This fact was never mentioned at the Vancouver conference. Neither was the possibility of nuclear disarmament, its participants seemingly blind to the one viable solution that will bring North Korea to the bargaining table.

On July 7, 2017, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was successfully negotiated. One hundred and twenty-two nations signed the treaty, a majority of the members of the UN, to prohibit nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons. It’s a profoundly historic agreement, recognized by the awarding of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of NGOs who promoted the treaty.

But Canada has been dismissive of the treaty – our Prime Minister has referred to it as “sort of useless” – because nuclear nations, particularly the U.S., have refused to endorse it. Canada’s wish to be seen as a team player in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) seems to be influencing its position – nuclear weapons are an integral part of NATO’s war fighting strategy. NATO has stated that it will not give up nuclear weapons as long as they exist, setting up an illogical loop that precludes any possibility of nuclear abolition.

Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur has stated that Canada is in a unique position to strengthen the norms around the illegality of nuclear weapons. It is a nation that chose not to acquire nuclear weapons after WWII. Its support of a nuclear weapons ban would be a significant step in making the world a safer place.

The Trudeau government will remain obedient to the Trump administration unless public pressure can be brought to bear to make our government understand that Canadians will no longer tolerate their lives being held captive by nuclear weapons.

Mark Leith is a board member of Canadian Physicians for Global Survival.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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