[News] How 70 years of CIA deceit and mainstream media convinced the public that North Korea was the Bad Guy and the U.S. was the Good Guy

Anti-Imperialist News news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Dec 17 19:52:35 EST 2020


https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/12/17/this-book-turns-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-north-korea-upside-down/
This
Book Turns Everything You Thought You Knew About North Korea Upside Down
By Jeremy Kuzmarov <https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/jeremykuzmarov/>
- December 17, 2020
------------------------------
[Source: rand.org <https://www.rand.org/topics/north-korea.html>] *How 70
years of CIA deceit and mainstream media complicity convinced the American
public that North Korea was the Bad Guy and the U.S. was the Good Guy—when
it was almost always the other way around*

In the United States today, North Korea is the standard reference point for
modern-day totalitarianism: a land of darkness that is considered a
dangerous security threat because of the development of nuclear missiles
capable of striking the U.S.

A.B. Abrams’ new book, *Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War
with American Power* (Clarity Press, 2020)
<https://www.claritypress.com/book-author/a-b-abrams/>, shows that the
common perceptions in the U.S. of North Korea are mostly wrong.

Though the Kim dynasty has ruled through autocratic methods, it has also
adopted rational and at times intelligent policies, which have enabled
North Korea to weather unprecedented outside hostility and develop into
something of a military powerhouse.

Between July and November 2017, North Korea successfully test-fired three
intercontinental range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and a more sophisticated
miniaturized thermonuclear warhead, which demonstrated beyond much
reasonable doubt that one of America’s oldest adversaries had gained the
capability to strike the U.S. mainland, with U.S. intelligence later
confirming the viability of both ICBM designs tested as well as their
warheads.[1]

North Korea as such is no military pushover and may be gaining the upper
hand in the long war with the United States—which is a source of pride for
its people.
Unnamed North Korean ICBM on 22-wheel transporter erector launcher on
display at a military parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of the North
Korean Workers Party in October 2020. [Source: dprk360.com]
<https://dprk360.com/inside-north-korea/75th-anniversary-of-the-dprk-workers-party-founding-day-high-resolution-photos/2026/?fbclid=IwAR0MgfRjRgzfRTS-f4hVinhf9BokrlXRFuZgqehY9pp8eRFAxJuI0uCZQQE>
Engagement
Range of Hwasong-15 ICBM [Source: militarywatchmagazine.com]
<https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/target-washington-north-korea-marks-three-years-since-demonstrating-nuclear-strike-capability-across-u-s-mainland>
Amidst
the backdrop of U.S. sanctions, Pyongyang has recently undergone a major
construction boom. [Source: 38north.com
<https://www.38north.org/2017/07/hferon071817/>] *Roots of the Conflict*

The conflict between the U.S. and North Korea, or Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK), is rooted in North Korea’s defiance of the
U.S.-led world order.

The DPRK’s founding father, Kim Il-Sung, was the son of prominent Korean
nationalists Kim Hyong Jik and Kang Pan Sok and a leader of the Manchurian
partisan exiles in the Soviet Far East who fought against Japanese colonial
occupation.

During Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945, it promoted
industrialization and built the Suiho dam—the second largest in the world
after the Hoover dam—while also developing a draconian surveillance
apparatus and repressing political dissent.

The United States followed Japan in its hostility to left-wing, nationalist
movements, and construction of a police state apparatus in South Korea,
which relied on many former Japanese collaborators.

The U.S. had divided the Koreas artificially at the end of World War II and
installed a client regime in the south led by Syngman Rhee, who was flown
in on General Douglas MacArthur’s plane after having spent years in exile.
[Source: nknews.com
<https://www.nknews.org/2012/02/the-u-s-and-the-1945-division-of-korea/>]

CIA reports from the time showed a stark contrast between Kim and Rhee’s
leadership.

Under Kim’s direction, industrial output and state industry increased
exponentially in the DPRK, with average salaries of factory and office
workers increasing by 83 percent. A successful program of land reform also
offered new opportunities for rural farmers, and many benefited from
state-subsidized health care and education.
Syngman Rhee (right) waltzes with General Douglas MacArthur. [Source:
wilsoncenter.org
<https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/left-right-and-rhee>]

The Rhee government, by contrast, triggered a social rebellion through
economic policies that were designed to tie South Korea’s economy with
Japan—which the U.S. was trying to build up as a junior partner in the Cold
War—along with a heavy reliance on Japanese collaborators and intolerance
for dissent.

Before the official outbreak of the Korean War, the Rhee regime, with the
support of U.S. military and police advisers, had killed at least 100,000
of its own people, including through the brutal suppression of a left-wing
uprising in the southern island of Cheju-do.

In the late 1940s, the Kim regime promoted the peaceful reunification of
the Koreas through free elections. The U.S. government blocked these
elections because they knew that Kim would win—similarly to Vietnam in 1956
when they knew that Ho Chi Minh would win at least 80 percent of the vote.

Despite a professed commitment to democracy, the U.S. trampled on Korea’s
sovereignty in order to fulfill its imperial ambitions in Southeast Asia,
which the U.S. had ringed with military bases due to its victory in the
Pacific War.
*The Korean War*

The official narrative maintains that the North started the Korean War by
invading South Korea on June 25, 1950. However, Abrams’ account provides
strong evidence that it was the other way around.
An American paratrooper paints “The End” on a portrait of Kim Il-Sung.
[Source: pininterest.com <https://www.pinterest.com/pin/5840674494212337/>]

Bent on achieving what he could never do through the ballot box, Rhee’s
forces staged raids into the North, and then on June 25th struck first when
they attacked the border city of Haeju. The South Koreans would later amend
their claim to state that they had attacked Haeju at a later date as part
of a counter-offensive—long after announcing the successful capture of the
city.

American government officials at the time were elated by the outbreak of
the Korean War–Secretary of State Dean Acheson said that “the Korean War
came along and saved us.”

This was because it gave an excuse to prevent major cutbacks in military
spending after World War II, and strike a blow at communist China, which
entered the war in support of the DPRK.
Dean Acheson (right) and President Harry S. Truman plan for war in Korea.
[Source: koreanwarlegacy.org
<https://koreanwarlegacy.org/chapters/prewar-context-western/>]

Furthermore, the United States military used Korea, like Vietnam
subsequently, as a testing ground for new weapons systems, including
super-bazookas and napalm, or jellied gasoline, which burns the flesh.

The North Korean population also served as guinea pigs for medical
experiments on prisoners of war (POWs), and for techniques of germ warfare
that had been learned from Japanese war criminals who had been secretly
invited to give lectures at the U.S. Army Biological Warfare Center at Ft.
Detrick, Maryland, at the end of World War II.
[Source: whowhatwhy.org
<https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/05/14/did-us-deploy-bioweapons-during-korean-war/>]


General Douglas MacArthur, who had previously led the war effort against
imperial Japan, stated that as one who had seen as much “blood and disaster
as any living man,” he had never seen such devastation as that experienced
in Korea during the Korean War. “It just curdled my stomach the last time I
was there.” Subsequently MacArthur referred to the war as “a slaughter
never heard of in the history of mankind.”

According to the Truth Commission that was established decades after the
war ended, South Korean (ROK) troops committed six times more atrocities
than the North Korean People’s Army (KPA). American troops also torched
villages, raped local women, and committed dozens of massacres, some of
which were motivated by pure racial bigotry.
Summary executions carried out by the South Korean army under U.S.
oversight at Taejon in the summer of 1950. [Source: wikipedia.org
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre#/media/File:Execution_of_South_Korean_political_prisoners_by_the_South_Korean_military_and_police_at_Daejeon,_South_Korea,_over_several_days_in_July_1950.jpg>]


A fighter pilot, David Tatum, told *Time *magazine that “I figured if we
had to kill ten civilians to kill one soldier who might later shoot at us,
we were justified.”

Retreating American forces destroyed cultural relics such as the shrine of
Mo Ran bon and the Yen Myen Sa temple of the Buddha in Pyongyang and
tortured and mistreated POWs far more systematically than the North Koreans
and Chinese.
Painting of American brutality at the Sinchon Museum of American War
Atrocities in North Korea. [Source: peacehistory-usfp.org
<http://peacehistory-usfp.org/korean-war/>]

The losses North Korea suffered during the war had few parallels in
history, with conservative estimates placing the death toll at 20 percent
of the population. The U.S. Air Force dropped between 635,000 and 698,000
tons of bombs compared to 503,000 tons dropped on the Japanese empire
during the entirety of the Pacific War.
Thatched huts go up in flames after B-26 bombers unload napalm bombs on a
village near Hanchon, North Korea, on May 10, 1951. [Source:
peacehistory-usfp.org <http://peacehistory-usfp.org/korean-war/>]

In November 1950, a single American firebombing raid on the city of Sinuiju
destroyed 2,100 of the 3,017 state and municipal buildings, 6,800 of 11,000
houses, 16 of 17 primary schools, and 15 of 17 places of worship. Eighty
percent of the deaths caused by the bombing were women and children, with
survivors forced to live in underground caves. The attack was intended to
maximize casualties beginning with the use of incendiaries followed by
explosives, and time bombs which prevented rescue work.

General Emmet O’Donnell, the head of the bomber command in Asia who
formerly oversaw the firebombing of Tokyo, testified that within three
months of the war’s outbreak “almost all of the Korean peninsula was just a
terrible mess”; as a result of the air campaign “almost everything is
destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name.”

In 1953, the U.S. Air Force targeted crucial Yalu river irrigation
dams–flooding whole towns and destroying the DPRK’s rice crop which the
already malnourished population needed to subsist. One report stated that
“the westerner can little conceive the awesome meaning which the loss of
this staple commodity has for the Asian–starvation and slow death.” These
comments epitomize the horrible human consequences of the Korean War, which
ended in stalemate with the country permanently divided at the 38th
parallel.
Scene of devastation from the Korean War. [Source: theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2017/05/03/why-do-north-koreans-hate-us-one-reason-they-remember-the-korean-war/>]


Afterwards, General MacArthur and other military commanders acknowledged
that they had underestimated the fighting capabilities of the Chinese and
North Koreans whom MacArthur described as “a tough opponent, well led.”

Today, North Koreans consider the Great Fatherland Liberation War a
victory, which solidified the legitimacy of the Kim dynasty. In the U.S.,
by contrast, the Korean War is little commemorated or talked about—largely
because it contradicts the nation’s righteous self-conception.
Monument in Pyongyang commemorating Great Fatherland Liberation War.
[Source: uritours.com
<https://www.uritours.com/blog/sights/victorious-fatherland-liberation-war-museum/>]
*The War Continues*

After the Korean War ended, U.S. intelligence reports indicated that the
Rhee government was actively contemplating launching another attack on the
North and had threatened use of the hydrogen bomb.

The Eisenhower administration’s Korea policy under NSC 5702/2, dated August
9, 1957, allowed U.S. forces to provide support for a unilateral ROK
military initiative against the DPRK.

By January 1958, the U.S. had stationed approximately 150 nuclear warheads
across four different weapons platforms in the ROK, which stimulated
development of the North’s own nuclear program through collaboration with
the Soviet Union.

Tensions boiled over in January 1968 when the KPA captured a U.S. Navy
surveillance warship, the U.S.S. Pueblo—allegedly in coordination with the
Vietminh who just seven days later launched the Tet offensive against U.S.
forces in South Vietnam.
[Source: usspueblo.org <http://www.usspueblo.org/>]

Cables since declassified show that the Pentagon was ready to use nuclear
weapons to force Pyongyang to comply with American demands over the
incident—much as threats to use them had helped to facilitate favorable
terms to the Korean War armistice.
Captured U.S. officers from the U.S.S. Pueblo. [Source: npr.org
<https://www.npr.org/2018/01/23/580076540/looking-at-the-saga-of-the-uss-pueblo-50-years-later>]


In April 1959, when a U.S. Navy aircraft was shot down over the Sea of
Japan by North Korean MiG-21 fighters after it had penetrated North Korean
airspace, President Richard Nixon in a state of inebriation gave
authorization for a nuclear attack that, according to CIA agent George
Carver, the military took seriously.

[Source: washingtonpost.com <https://www.washingtonpost.com/>]

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, though a tense military standoff endured
in which the threat of nuclear war remained high.
*Proxy Wars*

Besides enhancing the threat of nuclear Armageddon, the U.S.-North Korean
conflict resulted in proxy wars like in Vietnam, where North Korea
dispatched pilots to fly air defense missions for the Vietnam People’s Air
Force. Fourteen North Korean pilots were killed.

Former Vietnamese deputy defense minister and former Vietnam War pilot,
Tran Hanh, stated: “we found [the North Korean pilots] to be very brave.
Their national pride was so high…they feared nothing, even death.”

North Korean pilots who helped defend Vietnam from U.S. aerial attacks.
[Source: wilsoncenter.org]
<https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/north-korean-pilots-the-skies-over-vietnam>

Kim Il-Sung reportedly stressed the importance of assisting the Vietnamese
struggle in a 1965 meeting with a visiting Chinese delegation. He stated:
“If the American imperialists fail in Vietnam, then they will collapse in
Asia …We are supporting Vietnam as if it were our own war. When Vietnam has
a request, we will disrupt our own plans in order to try and meet their
demands.”
Kim Il-Sung (right) and Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.
[Source: nknews.org
<https://www.nknews.org/2013/08/the-colorful-history-of-north-korea-vietnam-relations/>]


A number of reports indicate that KPA forces participated in ground battles
alongside Vietcong insurgents and that KPA psychological warfare
specialists aided the Vietminh. President Kim Il-Sung stressed the
importance of fortifications in his discussion with the Vietminh
leadership, and instructed them to dig caves and place factories half
inside.
North Korean psychological warfare teams in South Vietnam. [Source:
wilsoncenter.org
<https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/north-korean-psychological-warfare-operations-south-vietnam>]


Besides the Vietnamese struggle, Kim Il-Sung provided economic and military
support to Egypt following the 1967 Six-Day War and during the 1973 Yom
Kippur War with Israel, which the United States was heavily supporting.

Also in the late 1970s, Kim’s regime dispatched 1,500 personnel to train
and advise the Cuban-backed People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola
(MPLA), which fought against U.S. proxies allied with apartheid South
Africa, and supported the African National Congress (ANC) and South West
Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) liberation forces in Namibia, and
Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe, which was a target of U.S.
sanctions.
Kim Il-Sung with SWAPO delegation in Namibia. [Source: asiabyafrica.com
<https://www.asiabyafrica.com/point-a-to-a/north-korea-africa>]

In 1982, North Korea contributed to Lebanon’s defense after it was invaded
by Israel with U.S. backing, and assisted Hezbollah in constructing an
underground armory, bunker and communications network that proved decisive
in thwarting Israeli war aims in the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War.
Kim Il-Sung and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser
Arafat. [Source: thesanghakommune.com
<https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/12/08/when-north-koreas-military-successfully-fought-zionist-israel-1973/>]


Since that time, North Korea has assisted Iran and Libya—before the 2011
overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi—to develop a nuclear deterrent, and dispatched
Special Forces units to Syria to engage jihadi forces backed by the U.S.
during its war to topple Bashar al-Assad.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho meets with Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad on December 4, 2018, in Damascus. [Source: timesofisrael.com
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/north-korean-fm-says-his-country-and-syria-face-same-enemy/>]


The above policies place in context the unremitting U.S. hostility toward
North Korea, and plans for regime change, which are designed to remove a
principal supporter of Washington’s global adversaries.
*North vs. South*

The U.S. first imposed sanctions on North Korea during the Korean War and
then expanded them in the 1980s, with the goal of completely isolating
North Korea from the world economy.

The DPRK nevertheless remained a strong economic performer compared to
other socialist bloc countries throughout the Cold War. This was in part
because of the high technical levels of education, even in rural areas, and
construction of amazing hydroelectric dams and the deepest underground
public railway system in the world, which benefited from DPRK’s experience
building underground defenses during the Korean War.
Built in the 1970s, the Pyongyang metro is one of the deepest in the world
at 360 feet underground. [Source: wikipedia.org
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_Metro>]

While the DPRK quickly rebuilt its infrastructure after the war, South
Korea remained one of the poorest countries in the world until Syngman Rhee
was forced out of power by student-led demonstrations in 1960.
Student protests that led to Syngman Rhee’s ouster in 1960. [Source:
libcom.org <https://libcom.org/history/1960-south-korean-student-protests>]

Under Rhee, 24% of ROK’s Gross National Product (GNP) relied on
prostitution that serviced U.S. soldiers who continued to occupy the
country. Kim Ae Ran, a 58-year-old former prostitute, said in 2009 that
“our government was one big pimp for the U.S. military.”
Comfort women in South Korea for the U.S. military. [Source:
military.wikia.org
<https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for_the_U.S._military>]


The South’s economy began to boom in the 1970s under General Park Chung
Hee, who provided more adept economic management than Rhee, and benefited
from massive injections of Japanese capital.

The former Director of South Korea’s Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA),
Brigadier General Kim Hyong-Uk, testified to the U.S. Congress in 1977,
nevertheless, that it was the North Korean population which “most likely
feels less deprived than their southern counterparts,” because there were
“no visible gaps between the haves and have-nots [in North Korea].”

These comments help explain the continued viability of the Kim dynasty in a
period when the North’s economic output was being eclipsed.
*Surviving the 1990s*

The 1990s were a particularly trying decade for the DPRK. In 1994, Kim
Il-Sung died, and was replaced by his son, Kim Jong-Il. The DPRK had
recently lost many of its key trading partners with the collapse of the
socialist bloc.

To add insult to injury, the country suffered a series of natural
disasters, including devastating floods in the breadbasket provinces in the
south and west, which destroyed 1.5 million tons of grain reserves that had
been stored underground. As well, 85% of the country’s power generating
capacity was lost and around 5.4 million people lost their homes.
Propaganda poster depicting Kim Jong-Il’s leadership during the arduous
march. [Source: youtube.com <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrmH6bAAFj0>]

Under normal circumstances, the international community would have
intervened to alleviate the humanitarian crisis known in North Korea as the
“arduous march.”

Rather, however, the Clinton administration pushed for the ratcheting up of
economic sanctions and blocked oil from coming into the country in an
attempt to sow discontent and facilitate regime change.
Clinton was the first President to meet with a North Korean official since
the end of the Korean War but adopted a cruel policy that was designed to
starve the country’s people into submission. [Source: 38north.org
<https://www.38north.org/2010/11/jomyongrok_chinoy/>]

CIA agents stationed on the Chinese border offered desperate farmers a bag
of rice for cow’s tails in an attempt to further ruin North Korea’s
agricultural economy. Without oil or electricity and the use of tractors,
cows were being used to plough the local fields, and so their removal was
designed to induce starvation.
*Deadly Geopolitical Game*

The North Korean people had long been pawns in a deadly geopolitical game
in which all measures of cruelty were adopted. A parallel was with Iraq,
where sanctions designed to undermine Saddam Hussein’s regime led to the
deaths of at least 500,000 children.

In the North Korean case, UNICEF and the World Food Program were prevented
from providing vitamin A supplementation to children, which resulted in the
deaths of at least 2,772 of them.

The impact of the sanctions on medical equipment related to reproductive
health was estimated to have killed 72 pregnant women and 1,200 infants in
the late 2010s.

The imperative of North Korea’s developing a nuclear deterrent in the face
of the sanctions and America’s regime change efforts was recognized by top
U.S. officials such as James Clapper, the director of national intelligence
under Barack Obama. He referred to the North Korean nuclear program as
“their ticket to survival.”
Kim Jong-Un inspects nuclear ballistic missile, Hwasong-14, on July 4,
2017. [Source: nhpr.org
<https://www.nhpr.org/post/how-did-north-korea-get-nuclear-weapons#stream/0>]


In June 1994, the Clinton administration nearly went to war over North
Korea’s nuclear program. The crisis started when Kim Il-Sung’s government
refused an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) request to inspect its
nuclear facility at Yongbyon because they felt they were being singled out
and that the inspection teams would be infiltrated by intelligence agents.

After the U.S. threatened a preemptive military strike, former President
Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang, met with Kim, and brokered an agreement
in which the DPRK agreed to freeze its nuclear program in return for new
nuclear reactors that did not produce weapons-grade plutonium along with
oil to help meet its energy needs.

Selig S. Harrison, a State Department official who played an important role
in the negotiations, later asserted that, while North Korea had lived up to
its end of the bargain and ceased operating the Yongbyon reactor, the
Clinton administration failed to adhere to its own commitments, notably by
failing to remove economic sanctions which the North saw as crucial to
solving its economic problems, especially its food shortage. The Clinton
administration further failed to provide promised oil deliveries or fund
light water reactors.[2]
Jimmy Carter with Kim Il-Sung in Pyongyang in June 1994. Carter helped
broker a deal in which the North Koreans agreed to halt their nuclear
program, though the U.S. did not follow through on its promises. [Source:
nationalpost.com
<https://nationalpost.com/news/world/us-foresaw-a-costly-victory-in-war-with-nkorea-in-1994>]


Having lost complete trust in the U.S. by this point, North Korea pulled
out of the nuclear agreement in 2002 and accelerated its development of a
nuclear weapon.
*From the Axis of Evil to Trump*

The George W. Bush administration poured gasoline on the fire when it
designated North Korea as part of its “Axis of Evil,” along with Iraq,
Iran, and other alleged state sponsors of terrorism.
[Source: usrussianrelations.org
<https://usrussiarelations.org/2/timeline/after-the-fall/77>]

The U.S. Congressional Research Service’s East Asia specialist, Larry
Niksch, wrote at the time that “regime change in North Korea [was] the Bush
administration’s main policy objective,” which was to be achieved through
renewed economic pressure through sanctions and interdiction of Korean
shipping lanes intended to provoke a collapse of government and, if this
failed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was considering a “broader plan
for massive strikes against multiple targets.”

President Obama peers into North Korea from what he called “freedom’s
frontier” on March 25, 2012. [Source: apjjf.org]
<https://apjjf.org/2014/12/52/Christine-Hong/4244.html>

After a brief thaw in Bush’s second term, the Obama administration renewed
a hard-line approach, increasing economic pressure and informational war,
and launching cyber-attacks—the Stuxnet worm–on the DPRK’s nuclear
infrastructure.

Obama’s liberal base largely supported these policies alongside
conservatives because they had been conditioned to think of the U.S. as
fighting a good fight against an evil Asian communist regime.
Media demonization lends support to U.S. regime change operations. [Source:
spokesman.com <https://www.spokesman.com/blogs/hbo/2017/apr/20/kim-jong-il/>
]

For years, the mainstream media had demonized North Korea and broadcast
stories of North Korean defectors, who were paid for promoting
disinformation about the DPRK.

In 2017, Kim Jong-Un was condemned for assassinating his half-brother, Kim
Jong-Nam, at the Kuala Lampur International Airport in Malaysia, though a
Malaysian investigation did not find any proof that Kim Jong-Un was
involved. The North Korean security services were subsequently accused of
torturing to death an American college student, Otto Wambier, though proof
was again absent.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright indicated that she had been seriously
misinformed by anti-North Korean propaganda and prejudice when visiting
Pyongyang in 2000, stating that she had been briefed on what kind of weirdo
Kim Jong-Il was, but found him to be well-prepared for their meeting,
charming, smart, technically adept with regards to military matters, and
well informed.

The public’s stereotypical views about North Korea were reflected in the
2014 Hollywood film, *The Interview*, Sony’s top-grossing digital release,
which adopted “racist images and tropes,” according to one reviewer, and
celebrated the gory execution of North Korea’s caricatured leader.

Producer and star Seth Rogen admitted that he and other producers had made
relationships with “certain people who work in the government as
consultants whom I’m convinced are in the CIA.” The film was very clearly
part of a long-standing propaganda campaign that had succeeded beyond its
architects’ wildest dreams.

On the two occasions (2018 and 2019) when Donald Trump met with DPRK leader
Kim Jong-Un, he was widely ridiculed—Hillary Clinton referred to his moves
toward a deal with Pyongyang as “putting lipstick on a pig.” Forced to back
off further diplomatic overtures, Trump tried to gain leverage over North
Korea by pressuring China—a doomed strategy because the Sino-North Korean
relationship was not a neocolonial one where Beijing dominated Pyongyang.
Trump meets with Kim Jong-Un in the demilitarized zone bordering the two
Koreas in June 2019. [Source: cnbc.com
<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/30/trump-met-with-north-koreas-kim-jong-un-in-the-demilitarized-zone----here-are-the-photos.html>]


Abrams’ book is most significant in helping readers to understand the
DPRK’s long staying power and in debunking media stereotypes, which have
helped validate aggressive regime-change policies.

As much as Americans think that the North Koreans are crazy, North Koreans
have far more grounds for believing that the reverse holds true.

They are the ones holding the upper moral hand in a conflict that was
started by the United States and needs to be ended by it.
------------------------------

*Jeremy Kuzmarov <https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/jeremykuzmarov/>*
is managing editor of *CovertAction Magazine* and author of four books on
U.S. foreign policy, as well as an extended essay on the Korean War
called “Barbarism
Unleashed.” <http://peacehistory-usfp.org/korean-war/>
------------------------------

[1] Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima, and Anna Fifield, “North Korea now
making missile-ready nuclear weapons, U.S. analysts say,” *Washington Post,
*August 8, 2017; Jeffrey Lewis, “The Game Is Over, and North Korea Has
Won,” *Foreign Policy, *August 9, 2017.

[2] The U.S. claimed that North Korea violated the agreement by
proliferating missile and nuclear technology to Iran, Pakistan, and Syria,
and in 1998 North Korea began to test three-stage rockets in an attempt to
build its long-range ballistic missile capability.
------------------------------

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