North Korea
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Today, the space to negotiate peace on the peninsula remains accessible as both Koreas and the United States are not only aiming for peace and denuclearization, but on genuine economic cooperation.
Illustration by David Plunkert.
N ANY DEEP national division, political peace is critical. The absence of a formal peace treaty between North Korea and South Korea and the U.S. is an enormous barrier to a new future. Yet easily overlooked is that lasting peace also requires decades-long work of people-to-people engagement.
Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has spoken of “the danger of a single story.” In few places is that danger more real than between North Koreans and Americans who are profoundly misinformed about each other after 70 years of mutual isolation.
CHRISTIANITY IS THE ONLY religion in North Korea that is considered to be strictly a foreign religion. North Korea considers Christianity to be the forefront of American imperialism. The country is taught that Christian missionaries in the 19th century came to Korea to indoctrinate the people with Western civilization. Then, in the Korean War, the U.S. soldiers who massacred their people were depicted as Christian crusaders. To fan these flames, the largest group of Koreans who opposed communism when the government was established in 1945 was the Christians. Therefore, in North Korea, Christians are likened to spies, foreign imperialists, and anti-government traitors.
Despite this, Christianity has been allowed to persist in North Korea. The vast majority of churches were destroyed during the early years of communism in North Korea, but in 1989 Kim Il Sung brought life back to Christianity by rebuilding the home church of his mother. Since then, two other state churches have been erected: one additional Protestant church and one Catholic church.
TWO-THIRDS OF A CENTURY after the Korean War, most Americans do not know what happened in that conflict or how it impacts the Korean Peninsula even today.
In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. The U.N. intervened, and in the three years that followed the U.S. Air Force dropped more tonnage of bombs on North Korea than were used in the entire Pacific theater during World War II, including more than 30,000 tons of napalm. The U.S. destroyed 80 percent of the North’s infrastructure and 50 percent of its cities. The capital city of Pyongyang was wiped off the map.
“Over a period of three years or so, we killed off—what—20 percent of the population,” said Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War. Historians believe that between 70 and 80 percent of the deaths were civilians.
Nearly 40,000 U.S. soldiers died and more than 100,000 were wounded in what has been a “forgotten war” in the United States. North Koreans, however, have never forgotten the war that resulted in millions of casualties in their country. For 65 years, they have lived under that war’s vivid memory and evolved into one of the most militarized states in the world.
The root causes of the problem
Technically, the Korean War never ended. The armistice treaty signed in 1953 reinstated the government of South Korea, suspended open hostilities, created the Demilitarized Zone, and allowed for the release of prisoners of war, but it was not a permanent peace treaty between nations. No peace treaty has ever been signed. “We have won an armistice on a single battleground—not peace in the world. We may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest,” said President Dwight Eisenhower.
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Like Torrey, Korean Christians who support reunification see it as a political and religious goal. And although it’s an uphill struggle, they believe with faith anything is possible.
People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on a cancelled summit between the U.S. andNorth Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, May 25, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
The historic meeting was set for June 12 in Singapore, but was cancelled by Trump this month. The U.S. approach to this meeting was concerning. Trump felt that the U.S. did not have to do anything to prepare for the June meeting. He continues to keep a military presence in South Korea with joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises that have always been a threat and irritation to North Korea. The mere presence of 25,000 U.S. Troops in South Korea heightens the suspicions and anxieties of Kim Jong un and the North Korean people. Trump has become blind to the need for diplomacy.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un raise their hands at the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, April 27, 2018. Korea Summit Press Pool/Pool via Reuters
Even though many view this summit with cynicism, it is an important step towards any possibility of peace on the Korean peninsula. The summit was historic because Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in met for the first time and agreed to end the Korean War. They also agreed on the Panmunjom declaration which seeks a denuclearization of the peninsula. Russia, China and Japan have also welcomed the agreement.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shake hands at the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, South Korea, April 27, 2018. Korea Summit Press Pool/Pool via Reuters
Moon greeted Kim at the military demarcation line where the men smiled and shook hands. In an unplanned move, Kim invited Moon to step briefly across into North Korea, before the two leaders crossed back into South Korea holding hands.
Image via Mattis Kaminer / Shutterstock.com
Lawmakers from North and South Korea are reported to be negotiating the details of a joint statement that could outline an end to the 1950-1953 Korean conflict that ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
FILE PHOTO - John Bolton speaks at CPAC, Feb. 24, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
John Bolton is a menace, a “warmongering lunatic” writes Damon Linker, “a dangerous uber-hawk” in the words of former national security officials Colin Kahl and Jon Wolfsthal. Throughout his career, Bolton has been a consistent advocate for war as an instrument of national policy. He opposes the Iran nuclear deal and dismisses the value of negotiating with North Korea, urging instead the use of military strikes and the policy of regime change.
As Trump and Kim Jong-un approach possible conversations, here are 3 truths for American Christians to keep in mind.
U.S. ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich and her husband talk with Pope Francis during the traditional exchange of the New Year greetings in the Regal Room at the Vatican January 8, 2018. REUTERS/Andrew Medichini/Pool
"Nuclear weapons must be banned," Francis said, quoting a document issued by Pope John XXIII at the height of the Cold War and adding that there is "no denying that the conflagration could be started by some chance and unforeseen circumstance".
NORTH KOREA'S hydrogen bomb test in September came as no shock to observers in South Korea. It was timed to protest the annual joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises. These “war games” are viewed by North Korea as a deadly provocation and as preparation for invasion and regime change.
The saber rattling and war of words by the U.S. and North Korean administrations reached a dangerous level this fall when President Trump, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly, threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. To use such bellicose rhetoric at a forum that seeks political solutions to the world’s problems was particularly grave and reprehensible. It flies in the face of Christian values as well as the principles of universal human rights on which the U.N. is founded.
In September, U.S. planes crossed the demarcation that separates North and South Korea in the East Sea. In response, North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, issued counterthreats to shoot down U.S. strategic bombers. Ri’s remarks betray North Korea’s fears of a pre-emptive strike by the U.S. and the “decapitation” of North Korea’s leadership. Since then the situation has gotten worse.
A family exits after clearing immigration and customs at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, U.S. September 24, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan
The current ban, enacted in March, was set to expire on Sunday evening. The new restrictions are slated to take effect on Oct. 18 and resulted from a review after Trump's original travel bans sparked international outrage and legal challenges.
Two realities here in South Korea seem unknown or underappreciated in the U.S. First is the fact that the Korean War has not ended. There’s no treaty, and no permanently recognized peace — only an agreement 60 years ago to cease actual hostilities.
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"It always requires two people, two separate actions, to launch, steal, sabotage, or tinker with an atomic warhead," Peter Zimmerman, nuclear physicist and State Department consultant wrote for USA Today. "This is the inviolable two-person rule intended to prevent misuse of a nuclear weapon."
Aug. 9 is a good day to remember that the United States stands alone in the fire and fury we have brought to the world. There is only one nation that has used a nuclear bomb on people — the United States, and we did it twice in one week. The United States dropped the "Little Boy" bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945; three days later we dropped the "Fat Man" bomb on Nagasaki. More than 100,000 died instantly that week, and tens of thousands more in the weeks to follow.
The point is not that North Korea should be given free-reign by the international community to develop any and all weapons that it so chooses. But Gollwitzer would have American Christians remember that they are called to be a political influence in the service of peace. For Gollwitzer, you can tell whether Christians have understood the gospel by whether they reject war under nuclear conditions: “the ‘Yes’ to the Gospel and the ‘No’ to war today must go together — or both will be lost” (Demands of Freedom, p. 136.).
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OF THE MORE than 60 countries I have visited as a journalist, North Korea is by far the strangest.
As part of a five-person delegation from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), I visited North Korea for one week in spring 2010 at the invitation of the Korean Christian Federation, the government-sanctioned Protestant denomination in North Korea.
From the moment we touched down in Pyongyang, we were “minded” 18 hours a day by two leaders of the KCF. We saw only what they wanted us to see and spoke only with those who were part of our official itinerary. North Koreans are forbidden to speak—or even make eye contact—with foreign visitors.
One morning before our minders showed up, I went for a short walk with another delegation member. I carried my camera and took a few photos. When we returned to the hotel, our minders were waiting for us in the lobby with several government officials. I was instructed to scroll through all my photos and was told which ones I could keep and which were to be erased on the spot.
Pope Francis talks to journalists during a press conference on his return flight from Cairo to Rome April 29, 2017. REUTERS/Gregorio Borgia/Pool
Pope Francis said on Saturday a third country, such as Norway, should try to mediate the dispute between North Korea and Washington, to cool a situation that had become "too hot" and posed the risk of nuclear devastation. Francis said he believed "a good part of humanity" would be destroyed in any widespread war.