On the third day of joint US-So. Korean military exercises on North Korean border, activist, writer, and scholar Seoul-born Christine Ahn speaks about the necessity of securing a peace treaty between the two Koreas and the so far insurmountable obstacles to doing so, the most important of which is the client state relationship that South Korea has with Washington and how the US uses the conflict with the North in its efforts to counter China economically.
She speaks about the difficulty the new So. Korean president, Moon Jae-in, has in standing up to Washington, given that the US would exert control over the South's army in any conflict with the North, although Moon has promised that there will be no war on the peninsula during his presidency.
One of the problems, Ahn, notes, is determining exactly what is the Trump administration's position since while Sec of State Rex Tillerson tries to assure the world and Kim Jong-un that overthrowing his regime is not the US objective, CIA Director Mike Pompeo says publicly that it is. The ongoing exercises appear to substantiate Pompeo's goal since it includes preparation for regime decapitation.
Ahn also takes the listener back to the earlier history of the South when it was dominated by US backed dictators while the North benefited from its trade with the East European Socialist Bloc during the Cold War up to the time of impeached president Park Geun-hye who created an extensive blacklist of political and artistic critics of her administration which included Ahn, herself, who tells about finding herself of Park Geun-hye's âno flyâ list.
Park Geun-hye, she notes, was ready to forgive Japan for its abuse of 200,000 Korean women who were forced into roles as âcomfort womenâ for the Japanese army during its occupation and was ready, under pressure from Washington, to make South Korea part of a military alliance with Japan and the US, despite the unpopularity of Japan among the South Korean public.
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