 Daily NK head Park In Ho discusses the Korean War and its aftermath on Thursday June 26th. | Image: Daily NK |
The fourth
of Daily NK’s Round Panel Series took place on Thursday, June 26th,
with company head Park In Ho speaking about the Korean War and its
consequences for perceptions of the U.S. in both North and South Korea.
Park’s
explanation began with the conduct of the Korean War, which he described as
primarily civil in nature. He noted General Douglas McArthur’s failure to recognize
that China would enter in support of the North, and Stalin’s decision to allow Kim
Il Sung to invade the South at all. He also pointed to the U.S. decision to
join the fight as one source of societal cleavages to come.
He briefly
noted Kim Il Sung’s use of anti-American sentiment in the aftermath of the war
for political purposes, before moving on to the growth of similar sentiment in
the South, an area of particular expertise.
Decades
after the Korean War had ended and after the assassination of long-time leader
Park Chung Hee, the people of Gwangju rose up against a regime then headed by another
military man, Chun Doo Hwan. 180 people died in the subsequent crackdown, and the U.S. made
no attempt to stop it. This, he said, led many to question the role of the U.S. in South
Korea.
“Many
people had thought of the U.S. as a big source of support, but, as a result of the
Gwangju incident, people began to think the U.S. might represent a new type of
imperialism, and that the Korean War could have been manipulated,” he explained.
Popular
opposition to the U.S. intensified as a result, and it stayed high in the
years to come. This became abundantly clear in 2002, when two Korean
schoolchildren were accidently killed by a U.S. Army vehicle. South Koreans protested the deaths in huge numbers, believing them to have been deliberate, and many demanded the
pullout of U.S. troops. This, Park said, was in part the memory of Gwangju returning.
Finally, he
returned to anti-Americanism in the North. Nowadays there are two incompatible lines
of thinking in the North, he asserted: there is envy of the U.S., and curiosity
directed toward it. On the other hand, there is lingering acceptance of the
state’s anti-U.S. propaganda. In any case, the Korean War certainly left a deep scar in the collective
psyche of the North Korean people.
