Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: The North Korean crisis

Friday, Feb. 28, 2003 | 5:07 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

PARDON ME IF THIS sounds like something I have written before. Looking back over the past 10 years, my assistant has found several columns about North Korea. Most of them have been triggered by another aggressive act committed by that country. It used to be dictator Kim Il Sung and since his death it has become his son, Kim Jong Il. Both have proven to be skilled at poking their fingers in the eyes of the United States and then demanding some more financial aid or food for their starving country. They oftentimes get both and the money goes for military equipment and the food feeds soldiers, not starving children.

I'm not an expert on North Korea or foreign relations. My experience in that country was limited to the ground in front of my infantry company and the area I led combat patrols or defended outposts. Nobody higher in rank than a lieutenant colonel ever asked my opinion and that was a rare happening. Nevertheless, since leaving there in February 1953 I have spent long hours trying to understand the thinking of North Korean and South Korean leaders. Twice I have returned to South Korea to learn more about the thinking in that country, but similar opportunities haven't been provided by North Korea.

Read the following paragraph for example: "North Korean diplomats, talking about turning Seoul into a sea of fire and saying that the deployment of U.S. Patriot missiles into South Korea is a provocative step toward a declaration of war, appear to be part of an overall plan. These statements, along with refusing to cooperate with inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, have forced an already nervous White House into asking China to cooperate in cooling down their neighbor before war becomes a reality."

That paragraph was in a column published 10 years ago this month. Nothing has changed, except today the son is running the country. Yes, and China continues to refuse our requests to help cool down the rhetoric and actions of their small neighbor. By now our own leaders should realize that China is using North Korea to get the U.S. off that troublesome peninsula. Only a fool wouldn't recognize that North Korea is a cat's paw for China. The Chinese have no intention of helping the U.S. to calm down North Korea. I'm sure Secretary of State Colin Powell learned this when he was in Asia last week.

The testing of long-range missiles by firing them toward Japan, violating South Korean air space with a military fighter plane, and starting up their prime nuclear reactor are but a few of the latest irritations perpetrated by North Korea. In today's world it is difficult to find much humor in the news. However, North Korea must have made thousands of military veterans laugh a couple of weeks ago with an announcement by an army spokesman. The Associated Press reported that North Korea "will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement ... and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions."

The Armistice Agreement was made in 1953 and since then several hundred South Koreans, North Koreans and Americans have been killed or wounded. The most bloody year was 1968 when 17 Americans were killed and 54 wounded. That same year 145 South Koreans were killed and 240 were wounded. Of course, as Americans we find it difficult to forget the 1968 seizure of the USS Pueblo, resulting in the death of one sailor and the 11 months of brutal treatment the rest of the crew survived. A year later, two North Korean fighter planes downed an unarmed U.S. recon aircraft, killing 31 occupants. Yeah, it's been a great cease-fire that has resulted in the deaths of 62 Americans, with many more wounded since 1967. Now North Korea is going to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement?

There may be some dark humor in this threat, but in reality it is just one more deadly display of arrogance that can eventually lead to Korean War II. White House spokesmen don't see North Korean actions as a crisis. They had better think again, because long-range missiles with nuclear warheads and the continual supplying of weapons to renegade countries by the brutal North Korean regime spells serious trouble. It's one more chapter in a long saga that can only end in bloodshed sooner or later.

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