By Stephen Gowans
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Although the US claimed to have withdrawn its nuclear weapons from south Korea
in 1991, Greg Elich points to a Korea Times article
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200411/kt2004110716361410220.htm that cites declassified documents of the “Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. government departments” showing US nuclear weapons were still resident in the ROK as recently as 1998.

The documents only cover the period to 1998; whether the US continued to deploy nuclear weapons in the south after that point is a matter of speculation. Still, we know the US claim that it didn’t have nuclear weapons on the peninsula from 1991 was fallacious. We also know that US hostility toward the DPRK has intensified since 1998; Washington’s own internal logic, therefore, would provide it with a compelling case to continue to deploy nukes on the Korean peninsula (as too would its aim to position strategic forces as close to China as possible.)

And then, there’s the north Korean claim, and Washington’s weird, “We don’t have nukes there, but we reject the demand to withdraw them” position. Of course, none of this proves anything. It may very well be true that there are no US nuclear weapons below the 38th parallel. But there’s reason enough to be suspicious.

The same Korean Times article cites a report from Japan’s Kyodo News Agency, that US “bombers flew simulation missions at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina to drop mock nuclear bombs on a firing range in Florida between January and June 1998.” The US has made no secret of the fact that north Korea is on a list of countries that are potential targets for a nuclear first strike. In the DPRK’s case, the tripwire, or at least, the basis for a pretext, is an invasion of the south.

Accordingly, the matter of where US nuclear weapons are deployed is less important than the reality that the US is in a position to launch a nuclear strike against the DPRK anytime it likes, from a variety of locations. It doesn’t need nuclear weapons on Korean soil to reduce the north to a smoldering ruin. All the talk about denuclearization, therefore, amounts to little without a US pledge to retire its aggressive, predatory approach of strangling the life out of the DRPK through unceasing military threat and economic warfare; it is, after all, the escalation of US hostility that is directly responsible for north Korea developing a nuclear deterrent in the first place.

Still, asking the US to desist from the project of battering down every door that stands in the way of its plundering the wealth of all countries easily crushed with a fair degree of impunity, is like asking a tiger to live on grass. No matter what, the DPRK will have to retain the ability to deal a telling blow in retaliation as a deterrent, if not through nuclear means, then through conventional weapons. Otherwise, like so many other countries, it will be fitted with the fetters of a draught horse, to be put to work for its new masters.

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