-------------------------
Via WW News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 31, 1998
issue of WW newspaper
-------------------------
NEW
PENTAGON PLAN
U.S.
threatens invasion of north Korea
By
Deirdre Griswold
It
sounds crazy. A jarring piece of wild, Cold-War
rhetoric. How can it be taken seriously?
But
every thinking person must look carefully at the
new Pentagon doctrine on north Korea.
It
lays out a scenario for an all-out assault on
this small socialist country. The objective would
be to completely destroy the Korean People's Army
and the north Korean government in Pyongyang and
occupy the country with U.S. troops.
The
new military doctrine was laid out to reporters
at a "low-key briefing" in Seoul by a
"senior U.S. official" around the time
that President Bill Clinton was visiting south
Korea in November.
According
to an article by Richard Halloran in the Dec. 3
Far Eastern Economic Review, "Washington and
Seoul will then abolish North Korea as a state
and, the official said, `reorganize' it under
South Korean control."
An
article in the Nov. 23 Seattle Times, also by
Halloran, quoted the unnamed official as saying,
"When we're done, they will not be able to
mount any military activity of any kind. We will
kill them all."
These
threats are not being ignored by the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea. But it is not running
scared, either. The people of Korea know that the
U.S. miscalculated once before, losing over
55,000 troops before having to abandon its plan
to destroy the socialist part of the peninsula.
In
a Dec. 2 statement, the General Staff of the
Korean People's Army commented on press reports
about "Operation Plan 5027," the
Pentagon blueprint for a new Korean war.
The
KPA statement explains that the plan has five
stages. "The first stage is a `control'
stage. Under the pretext of `controlling' the
actions of the DPRK, the United States is to
amass its aggression forces in and around south
Korea and impose full-scale sanctions upon the
DPRK by blocking its sky, seas and border."
This,
the KPA notes, has already happened.
In
the next stage, the U.S. would launch long-range
artillery and air strikes at the DPRK. The KPA
says the U.S. has been stealthily deploying naval
and air forces around the area.
The
third stage would be a "ground offensive
operation" in which the U.S. would land
troops on both coasts of the DPRK and encircle
the capital. Next would be an expansion of the
occupation to the whole of north Korea.
The
final stage would be to put the north under the
control of south Korea--a U.S. puppet.
The
U.S. media have for some time been abetting the
Pentagon in providing a pretext for such
bare-faced aggression. Taking note of north
Korea's severe economic problems after four years
of catastrophic natural disasters, the media has
concocted the absurd line that the DPRK may
attack south Korea--which has twice the
population and is occupied by 37,000 U.S.
troops--"out of desperation."
However,
the Far Eastern Economic Review article was a bit
more candid. After revealing that the new war
plan is being drafted under instructions from the
American commander in Seoul, Gen. John Tilelli,
it continues, "Its fundamental shift in
strategy reflects the allied forces' belief that
the North Korean army is weaker than it was a few
years ago and could thus be more easily
defeated."
There
should be no doubt in anyone's mind who the
aggressor is here. The DPRK has 20 million people
and not one foreign base. The U.S. rings Korea
with planes, ships and bases, both inside south
Korea and in Japan.
North
Korea has never attacked the U.S. But Washington
fought a war there from 1950 to 1953 that killed
several million Koreans and leveled every
building over one story.
For
50 years, it has kept a tight embargo on the
country, preventing it from carrying out normal
commercial relations with most of the world. It
has divided Korea, so that sisters and brothers,
parents and children who found themselves in
different parts after the war could never be
reunited.
Two
days after the KPA statement, over 100,000 people
gathered in Pyongyang to show their readiness to
counter U.S. military provocation.
Since
then, the U.S. government has carried out its
completely unprovoked bombing of Iraq. For the
first time, B-1 bombers, which cost $2 billion
each, were flown in combat. With no debate in
Congress, the Pentagon dropped missiles costing
$500 million on Iraq.
But
all those sophisticated weapons of mass
destruction did not bring Iraq to its knees. The
assault just made U.S. imperialism more hated
around the world.
The
Korean people in this century have resisted
Japanese and U.S. invaders. They have fought
heroically and selflessly to be truly
independent. They are committed to preserving
their socialist system.
Any
grandiose war plans cooked up by Washington
generals drunk with their high-tech weaponry will
look entirely different in the cold, sober light
of day.
- END -
(Copyright WW Service: Permission to
reprint granted if source is cited. For more
information contact US Out of Korea Committee
39 West 14th Street, NY, NY 10011. info@usa-outofkorea.org
)
