The Bush Administration recently pointed to the over-five-decades-long US military presence in South Korea as a successful model for Iraq. The implications of this comparison seemed to escape them. General Raymond T. Odierno, who oversees daily military operations in Iraq, called it “a great idea,” as if agreeing with the suggestion by a colleague to order take-out sushi for lunch.
In recent weeks, tens of thousands of South Koreans have demonstrated their opposition to a sweeping free trade agreement (FTA) signed on April 1 by the United States and South Korean governments. Although polls show that a slight majority of Korean citizens support the pact, Korean workers and farmers want their parliament to reject the agreement and have demanded that President Roh Moo-Hyun hold a public referendum on the issue. Leading politicians, including the former chairman of the ruling Uri Party, have participated in hunger strikes to protest the pact, and two activists have taken the extreme step of lighting themselves on fire to call attention to economic disparities in their country that will be exacerbated by the agreement.
In Pyongtaek, a small rice-farming town 31 miles south of Seoul, Korea, an extraordinary struggle is taking place. Villagers are refusing to hand over their land to the U.S. military, which plans to expand its base Camp Humphrey by three times and occupy 2,470 acres of prime farmland. The villagers didn’t imagine four years ago that their struggle would force policymakers to reassess the role of the U.S. military on the peninsula. But it has.
War is looming on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has declared that it possesses nuclear weapons. The United States is tightening an economic noose around the country in an attempt to force a regime change. The Bush administration is also keeping a military option on the table, a prospect that terrifies all the countries of East Asia, particularly South Korea. A terrifying spiral of tensions has resulted. The aggressive stance of the U.S. government has hardened North Korea’s position and threatened rapprochement between North and South. North Korea, meanwhile, is desperate to develop a deterrent that will prevent the Bush administration from following the Iraq scenario with a campaign of aerial bombing.