The Korean nuclear crisis: The Americans are right

Some commentators opined that the Korean crisis in the 1950s was (as usual) solely a creation of the United States due to the fact that it prevented North Korean popular leader Kim Il Sung from winning the election by favouring the pro-American dictator Syngman Rhee thereby precipitating the Korean War which divided Korea and led to the current standoff.

These pundits would only have to compare the states of the two Koreas to realise that the US indeed did a great favour to South Koreans by not letting them fall prey to the communist dictatorship of the "Hermit Kingdom". In fact it was Kim Il Sung, egged on by his Soviet backers and Mao Zedong, who invaded South Korea only to be repelled by a UN force led by General Douglas McArthur.

While the US initially favoured a military rule for South Korea, it has helped the rise of South Korea as an Asian Tiger by providing large amounts of economic aid and a security umbrella conducive to thriving free enterprise that saw living standards of the South Koreans improve dramatically.

When pro-democracy activist Kim Dae Jung (who later became the President and the proponent of the "Sunshine Policy") was hunted by agents of KCIA it was the US which sheltered him by granting political asylum and finally pressurized the military regime to restore democracy.

If the US had not decisively intervened soon after World War II in the Korean Peninsula, today South Koreans too would be spending miserable lives as walking skeletons under dictator Kim Jong Il who spends billions of dollars on nuclear weapons while his people starve.

It goes without saying that a country ruled by such a maverick leader should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Therefore, the US and Japan are quite correct in pushing for a tougher line against North Korea at the UN.

By Lakshan Wickrema, Kurunegala.

Send your letters to the Readers’ Corner via stmint@wijeya.lk