Fifth Column Watch: The USFK, Free Speech, and Subversion

Nothing really surprising here:

North Korea on Tuesday criticized the U.S. military for giving American names to certain areas in South Korea, arguing that it is part of a ploy to “permanently Americanize South Korea.”

Americanize South Korea? Perhaps you can be forgiven for suggesting that if you live in an oppressed, suffocated, isolated tyranny where reading up on current events can get you killed. Since we’re on the subject, where has the U.S. military given an American name to a place that isn’t a U.S. military installation? But here, I think, is the interesting part:

“This is a brazen-faced act aimed at infusing the idea of U.S. worship and U.S. phobia into the South Koreans in a bid to benumb their consciousness of national independence and permanently Americanize South Korea,” the North Side Headquarters of the Nationwide Special Committee for probing the Truth behind the GIs’ Crimes said in an article carried by the North’s official new agency, KCNA.

The headquarters is a North Korea branch of an inter-Korean organization tasked with delving into alleged civilian massacres by the U.S. military during the 1950-53 Korean War. The body was established by civic groups of the two Koreas in 2000.

Notice the benign, value-neutral, and mind-numbingly dishonest term:  inter-Korean organization.  As if anyone in North Korea, on his own initiative, just decides to form or join a political organization of any kind.  It’s another excellent application for the term “unifiction,” any pretense of political unity that is in jarring disharmony with reality, as if using The Force will make it so.  Do just a little research, and it’s apparent that this “inter-Korean organization” is a transparent pawn of the North Korean propaganda machine (see reports here, here, and here, repeating the long-discredited fabrication that the U.S. used bioweapons during the Korean War; exposed by the opening of the Soviet archives, per Jasper Becker’s “Rogue Regime.”).

In my testimony, I said that some crime by U.S. soldiers anywhere is a statistical certainty, and that those seeking to exploit every incident involving them will always find something to exploit, even if they have to make it up or provoke it themselves.  I guess this info adds some context to their motives, and reveals much about the perspectives of “vigilante” groups that just happen to show up right at the moment — with cameras — when GI’s and Koreans commence brawling. Again, some GI’s make themselves easy targets when they act like drunk asshats, go to off-limits areas, or break curfew. Since expecting competent law enforcement from the Korean police would be asking too much, our commanders need to understand that plucking people like that off the streets and pulling their pass privileges is a SAEDA issue.

Korea needs to learn to distinguish between free speech and subversion by elements acting in concert with the enemy. These groups are not interested in justice, reform, or accountability for crime, all of which are legitimate motives. Their desired end state for these groups is unification under Kim Jong Il’s terms, and to that end, they will continue to take advantage of every crime or trespass.  Should Korea be expected to ignore bad behavior by Americans?  Not at all.  Let Koreans who wish to do so say what they want, film what they want, and go where they want, but if they take their orders from the enemy in Pyongyang, then South Korea ought to be able to break that link, and if necessary, charge them with conspiracy.

That, in turn, requires South Korea to define the term “enemy,” because ultimately, it’s South Korea’s job to control the conduct of its own citizens, just as it’s ultimately our responsibility to control our own troops. If North Korea isn’t an enemy, then we are in a unilateral information war we won’t win, and the alliance is overdue for a drastic overhaul.