The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

(DPRK)

• Reframing North Korean Human Rights

• Interview: Understanding North Korea

• The Motive Force Behind Isolation & Nuclear Dev.

• Democratic Centralism in the People’s Korea

• North Korean missile test: a response to U.S. provocations

• Massive ‘war games’ underway

• Why do North Korean defector testimonies fall apart?

• Social Science as Fairy Tale (famine methodology)

• In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report

• DPRK Socialist Constitution

• Everyday life in Pyongyang (photo album)

• Everyday life outside of Pyongyang (photo album)

“Because the total armed forces of the ROK were under the complete control of the US until 1994, the US could deploy hundreds of thousands of troops from the south Korean army to Indochina, where they would fight for the US in the Vietnam War. Since then, the ROK has maintained control of their armed forces except in wartime, when a US general is required to take over. This has not stopped tens of thousands of ROK troops from being deployed to fight with the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. “A military exists to wage war. War-making can be defensive, what it’s supposed to be, or aggressive, what it shouldn’t be, but almost invariably is where the United States is concerned. Andrew Bacevich, a US historian and retired career US Army officer, points out that the function of the US military is not self defense, but ‘power projection’—the use, or threat, of violence to impose Washington’s will on other countries. Self-defense is what Homeland Security does. Washington’s granting the ROK control of Washington’s Power Projection Platform in the Pacific 155 the South Korean military in peacetime, i.e., when it’s not fulfilling its primary power projection function, is tantamount to the United States yielding control of an asset when it’s not in use but insisting on full command when it’s needed. In other words, Washington’s ceding peacetime operational control of its East Asian army in reserve—a military which has been historically used as a US auxiliary power projection force in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq—was nothing more than a sop to mollify South Koreans” (Gowans 154-55).[4]

• Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom by Stephen Gowans