patrick.net

This is an older series written for the Asia Times but well worth reading especially part 3.

Part 1. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LB25Dg01.html

Part 2. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LB26Dg01.html

Part 3. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LB27Dg01.html

It's absolutely impossible for Americans, Western public opinion and global public opinion to understand what's at stake in the Korean nuclear dossier without understanding how the memory of the Korean war burns so vividly in Pyongyang among the old revolutionaries - and how it has been forever imprinted on the DPRK's national security strategy. Israel can always get away - literally - with murder ("eliminations") and maintaining a vicious occupation, not to mention keeping a "secret" nuclear arsenal. North Korea at least should be granted a fair hearing.

The US air war on North Korea was an incredibly vicious bloodbath. Washington bombed the DPRK with more napalm than it used on Vietnam - with even more devastating effects, because the DPRK had many more large urban centers (18 out of 22 were almost completely wiped out) and urban industrial infrastructure than Vietnam. In only four months, from June 1950 to October, B-29s discharged more than 860,000 gallons of napalm over North Korea.

Not surprisingly, and as in Iraq and AfPak decades later, the Pentagon hailed its "precision bombing". When China stepped into the war, Washington's air war went on overdrive, not only destroying most North Korean towns and cities but at the end of the war smashing huge dams that supplied water for no less than 75% of the DPRK's food production.

Part 4. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LC02Dg01.html

#NorthKorea #War #History #CakeWalkDiplomacy