Anniversaries ending in zero or five are likely to focus special attention on the lessons of history. None is more portentous than the 70th anniversary this week of the signing of the truce that halted the Korean War on July 27, 1953.
The date is an occasion for reminders of the horrors of the war, the danger of a second Korean War and endless debate on whether the truce should morph into a peace treaty or at least an end-of-war declaration. Until then, we're told, the Korean Peninsula is a battleground in a war that's never ended.
This claim is absurd. War means armed forces killing enemies, destroying cities and villages, also wiping out civilians in the crossfire. Since 1953, there have been incidents, such as the mining of the corvette ROKS Cheonan in 2010 with the loss of 46 South Korean sailors, or the downing of an American reconnaissance plane in 1969 with 31 airmen on board or the capture of the spy ship USS Pueblo in 1968 three days after a North Korean recon unit had come within 100 meters of the Blue House. Miraculously, none of these incidents led to a resumption of a large-scale armed conflict.
Peace cannot be defined by a statement saying we are at peace. After the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed at Panmunjeom, Chinese and American troops were seen popping out of their trenches and foxholes, standing up within easy shot of one another, knowing their lives were no longer in danger. Peace had broken out at last.
In a history full of surprises, the preservation of peace for all these years must be counted as miraculous. Countless celebrated peace treaties have fallen apart within a few years after they were signed, none so precipitously as the treaty reached at Versailles in June 1919. Scarcely 20 years later, in September 1939, German troops invaded Poland. World War II, far more terrible than World War I, had begun.
It would be impossible to predict a similar pattern after the signing of a Korean War treaty, but we can be sure the security of South Korea, enabling the rise of the South as not only an economic powerhouse but also a center of culture and artistic creativity, would be in jeopardy.
Victor Cha, who served as Asia director at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, summarized the problem after introducing his latest book, "Korea: A New History of South & North," co-authored with Ramon Pacheco Pardo, professor at King's College, London.
In answer to my question about what a simple peace declaration would accomplish, Cha, talking at the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies?in Washington, predicted it would "create a false peace on the peninsula" and "open a Pandora's box of issues" surrounding the future of American troops in South Korea and the United Nations Command, which have endured since the early days of the Korean War. Nor could Cha imagine that talks with the North on a full-scale peace treaty would result in changes regarding the North's missiles, weapons of mass destruction or the scale of its armed forces. Cha and Pardo as co-authors are realistic. For a millennium and more, as their book makes clear, Koreans have battled the odds, surviving on inner grit and guts. As the authors take us through the twists and turns of recent history, however, they are realistically hard on North Korea for obstructing the road to peace.
"North Korea has countered the Sunshine Policy with its own 'Moonshine Policy,'" they write, playing upon the name of Moon Jae-in, President Yoon Suk Yeol's predecessor, who met Kim Jong-un three times in vain pursuit of North-South reconciliation.
"The Moonshine Policy," they write, "particularly exploited the Sunshine Policy's implicit assumption that the nuclear and missile programs of the North were not the main problem." By the time Moonshine had ended, "the North had more nuclear weapons than before, had avoided a near-collapse of the regime, and had $3 billion in cash from the South."
Advocates of a peace declaration or treaty are not going to like this book. It provides a certain understanding, in 268 pages, including index, footnotes and bibliography, of the sweep of Korean history from ancient times to the present as well as a reality check on the fantasies of those who think more rounds of dialogue will bring about North-South unification.
Yet the authors are hopeful. While some Koreans "are opposed to unification," they suspect "most Koreans will rally behind the cause" ― and "will succeed, as they have done throughout history."
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) covers the confrontation of forces in Asia from both Seoul and Washington.
QOSHE - Korea's quest for 'peace' - Donald Kirkaccount_circleinfobrightness_mediumcancel
Anniversaries ending in zero or five are likely to focus special attention on the lessons of history. None is more portentous than the 70th anniversary this week of the signing of the truce that halted the Korean War on July 27, 1953.
The date is an occasion for reminders of the horrors of the war, the danger of a second Korean War and endless debate on whether the truce should morph into a peace treaty or at least an end-of-war declaration. Until then, we're told, the Korean Peninsula is a battleground in a war that's never ended.
This claim is absurd. War means armed forces killing enemies, destroying cities and villages, also wiping out civilians in the crossfire. Since 1953, there have been incidents, such as the mining of the corvette ROKS Cheonan in 2010 with the loss of 46 South Korean sailors, or the downing of an American reconnaissance plane in 1969 with 31 airmen on board or the capture of the spy ship USS Pueblo in 1968 three days after a North Korean recon unit had come within 100 meters of the Blue House. Miraculously, none of these incidents led to a resumption of a large-scale armed conflict.
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