Root Cause of Korea’s Division

• Kim Hoon 

• Source: Al Mayadeen English

Since the first days of its occupation of half of the Korean peninsula, the US has egged south Korea on to oppose north Korea and doggedly hampered the peaceful and independent reunification of Korea.

Seventy years have passed since Korea was divided into north and south.

During this period the Korean nation has experienced innumerable miseries and sufferings.

The Korean nation had lived as a homogeneous nation on the same land for 5 000 years before it was divided in modern times. Its division is one of the worst tragedies in the contemporary world. 

Who, then, caused this tragedy, and what is the obstacle to Korea’s reunification?

Who Divided Korea?

It is the US that divided the Korean nation.

The US thrust its aggressive claws into Korea in the mid-19th century. The situation created after the end of the Second World War provided it with a golden chance for realizing its insidious design for Korea. 

Korea, which had been under Japan’s military occupation (1905-1945), should have become an independent sovereign state when the Second World War was brought to a close and Japan was defeated.

However, the US, regarding Korea as an important strategic point for gaining hegemony in Asia and other parts of the world, unilaterally proclaimed out that it would exercise control over Korea south of the 38th parallel of the north latitude. On September 8, 1945, nearly one month after Japan’s unconditional surrender (August 15, 1945), the US troops landed on the southern part of Korea in the guise of “liberators”.

As a result, Korea, neither a war criminal state nor a defeated one, was divided into two parts and its tragedy of national division started.

The line along the 38th parallel bisecting the Korean peninsula was a demarcation line invented by the US at its discretion. The allied nations had made no agreement with regard to the line. The invention of the line was a flagrant violation of previous international agreements on the Korean issue. The then US President Harry Truman confessed: The issue of defining the 38th parallel as the demarcation line to divide Korea has never been discussed among the Allies; it was what the US proposed as a practical solution to solve the Korean issue when the war machines of Japan had been suddenly collapsed.

If the US did not think out the 38th parallel or if it did not conquer half of Korea, there would have been no reason for the country to be divided.

And the Korean war (1950-1953), ignited by south Korea at the instigation of the US seeking to occupy the whole of Korea and recorded as the fiercest war after the Second World War, would not have been broken out.

Major Obstacle to Korea’s Reunification

Since the first days of its occupation of half of the Korean peninsula, the US has egged south Korea on to oppose north Korea and doggedly hampered the peaceful and independent reunification of Korea.

Over the past 70 years Korea has witnessed several events which give hope for and optimism about reunification in Korea: Early in the 1970s the historic July 4 North-South Joint Statement with the three principles of national reunification—independent and peaceful reunification and great national unity—as its main contents was announced; in 2000 an inter-Korean summit meeting was held as the first of its kind since the country’s division and the June 15 Joint Declaration was adopted with the principle of By Our Nation Itself as its gist; in 2007 the October 4 Declaration was adopted as the action program for the former declaration.

Each time the entire Korean nation became elated with the hope for reunification and the international community supported and encouraged them.

On the contrary, the US would each time aggravate the situation in the Korean peninsula and lay grave obstacles in the way of the development of north-south relations by staging frantic war games and kicking up extreme rackets to suffocate the DPRK.

It pretended to be interested in the development of inter-Korean relations and its reunification, but in fact, hindered the movement for reunification in all aspects.

A typical example is the large-scale military exercises the US and south Korea wage around the Korean peninsula.

For 46 years the US and south Korea have waged various military exercises under different code names―Freedom Bolt, Team Spirit, Key Resolve, Foal Eagle, and Ulji Freedom Guardian, starting from Focus Retina in 1969. Even nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and other nuclear strike means were involved in them.

Recently the US advanced the “tailored deterrence strategy”, a plan for a preemptive nuclear strike against north Korea, and is making desperate efforts to carry it out, putting a spoke in the wheel of inter-Korean relations and driving the situation in the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

It is not fortuitous that south Korean mass media commented that whenever north-south relations showed signs of improvement they suffered a setback; the United States must be maneuvering at the bottom of this.

Korea’s reunification is related not merely to the destiny of the Korean nation. It has a direct bearing on the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the rest of northeast Asia and the world.

If the US withdraws from south Korea and takes its hand off Korea, a situation decisively favorable for the peace and security of the Korean peninsula and the rest of northeast Asia, to say nothing of the reunification of the Korean nation, will be created.

The US troops must get out of south Korea at once.