South Koreans Defy Biden's Man in Seoul

"The D.C. establishment backed Yoon because he was what they have wanted for decades"

Drop Site News

... While the arrogance of his statement was stunning (how can mass murder be dismissed as not measuring up to "our standards"?) so was Carter's reasoning: the uprising and anguish in Kwangju had been reduced to another global Communist plot, one more nagging dilemma for American diplomats fighting in the trenches of the Cold War. The national security mentality was personified by Holbrooke, who had worked his way up the State Department ladder by dutifully serving United States interests in Vietnam and the Philippines before being named Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific by Carter. As Bruce Cumings reminds us in his penetrating introduction to this book, Holbrooke suggested to Congress during the crisis that Americans were paying far too much "attention to Kwangjoo" without proper consideration of the "broad questions" of Korean and U.S. security inter- ests. General John Wickham, the U.S. military commander in Korea who signaled U.S. support for Chun in an infamous interview with the Associated Press in August 1980, later suggested that Koreans were "lemmings" who would follow anybody with a military uniform. And who can forget that, eight months later, Chun Doo Hwan, the man responsible for the carnage in Kwangju, was walking the corridors of the White House as an honored guest of President Reagan? #KwangjuDiary #ChunDooHwan #Reagan #PresidentReagan #USA #FOreignPolicy #HumanRights #CarterAdministration #Carter #PresidentCarter #BruceCumings #TimShorrock #JohnWickham #GeneralJohnWickham in #Korea #SouthKorea

From Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age (1999)

Most of the South Korean oppositionists believed President Carter's human rights diplomacy was at work and had great expectations for it. They interpreted the upsurge of anti-Americanism in Iran after the revolution as the outcome of the administration's miscalculated support for the Shah...... the citizens of South Korea, like people in similar straits in the Philippines and Indonesia, quickly learned that President Carter had no desire to offend a friendly military dictator at the height of the Cold War. Early in the morning of May 27, the 20th Division of the Korean Army invaded the city center of Kwangju and crushed a ragtag army of young students and workers who had taken up arms against the military and decided to fight to the end. As the press flashed images of dead and shackled rebels being dragged through the streets of Kwangju, Carter's military and security advisers, led by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke, coldly explained they had instructed U.S. commanders to release the Korean troops from the U.S.-Korean joint command to restore "stability" in South Korea and "maintain the national interests of the United States" in East Asia. Their words conveyed the message, well understood in Korea since the 1940s, that American officials viewed the Korean peninsula as a problem child of U.S. foreign policy, its people and their democratic notions an annoyance at times of global tension.The tone was set on June 1,1980, by President Carter himself in a nationally televised interview on CNN. After admitting that "there is no doubt....democratization has been given a setback" in Korea, he was asked by journalist Daniel Schorr if U.S. policy in Korea reflected the conflict between human rights and national security then raging within his administration. "There is no incompatibility" between the two concepts, Carter snapped. In his judgment, he told Schorr, South Korea in 1980 typified a situation where "the maintenance of a nation's security from Communist subversion or aggression is a prerequisite to the honoring of human rights and the establishment of democratic processes." While he of course preferred to see "every nation on earth democratic," the United States "can't sever our relationships with our allies and friends and trading partners and turn them all over to Soviet influence, and perhaps even subversion and takeover, simply because they don't measure up to our standards of human rights."... #KwangjuDiary #JaeEuiLee #KapSuseol #NickMamatas #TimShorrock #BruceCumings #Korea #SouthKorea #NorthKorea #Carter #PresidentCarter #Holbrooke #RichardHolbrooke #AntiAmericanism

> The issue this time is the plan by Prime Minister #ShinzoAbe to alter a key provision of Japan’s peace constitution to allow Japan’s “Self Defense Forces” to take part in overseas military operations for the first time since World War II... who is this prime minister who has won the trust of the #ObamaAdministration while earning the enmity of the growing majority of its own citizens?
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/could-japan-become-americas-new-proxy-army/
#TimShorrock on #AbeShinzo and #JapanAsProxyArmy #Obama #PresidentObama
Could Japan Become America’s New Proxy Army?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to alter a key provision of Japan’s constitution to lift the country’s 70-year ban on foreign deployments.

The Nation
> ... the narrative around Abe’s legacy put forth in the media following the assassination overshadows just how unpopular Abe was with the public in his final years. Despite becoming the longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s history, his administration was mired in multiple corruption scandals and alleged cover-ups, which led his approval ratings to drop to an all-time low.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/shinzo-abe-assassination/
#TimShorrock on #AbeShinzo #ShinzoAbe, an chance to tell #MassMedia that
#DeathIsNotPerfume
The Misremembering of Shinzo Abe

In the wake of the former prime minister’s assassination, his antidemocratic legacy has been whitewashed—and his death has renewed calls for revisions to Japan’s pacifist Constitution.

The Nation

> The idea of the “#GwangjuCommune” is so popular that the city also gave an honorary citizenship to #GeorgeKatsiaficas, an American academic who has written two books about the impact of #Gwangju on #AsianSocialMovements... The Kwangju Democratization Movement went down as an inspiring moment for human freedom and dignity not only in Korea’s national history but also in the world’s.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/kwangju-uprising-and-american-hypocrisy-one-reporters-quest-truth-and-justice-korea/
#TimShorrock #GwangjuUprising #GwangjuRebellion

The Gwangju Uprising and American Hypocrisy: One Reporter’s Quest for Truth and Justice in Korea

A personal story from a longtime Nation writer.

The Nation
Finally watched this 15-minute documentary about #KoreanDemocracy movements. They got me reading #TimShorrock articles, which led me to #JonMitchell and other #KeyPeople, KeyDocuments:
> Here’s how the Washington Post reported on.. [Shorrock's writings]
> The massacre still burns hotly in the memory of South Koreans today, and two former South Korean presidents are now in prison on charges of treason for their alleged role in ordering the massacre…
https://timshorrock.com/documents/
#KwangjuMassacre
GWANGJU 5.18

The Gwangju Uprising and the Origin of the Cherokee Files BY TIM SHORROCK Many people know my byline from a series of stories I wrote in 1996 about the Gwangju Uprising and the U.S. role

THE SHORROCK FILES