Koreans see the Yankees as foreign interlopers. They blame the US for dividing Korea after 1945, denying them independence and meddling in Korea for the US's own self-interests. During the Korean civil war of the 1950's the US bombed Korea back to the Stone Age, and killed several million of their ancestors. They see the US as having blocked Korean independence and reunification for over 70 years.

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I've been touring around South Korea (ROK) since mid-October. For about 10 of those days I was with a group of US Korean War veterans. The ROK Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs sponsors a Revisit Korea Program. They even pay for airfare and accommodations of organized groups to "express gratitude to Korean War veterans from 21 UN allied nations and build their pride by allowing them to witness how Korea enjoys peace and prosperity thanks to their noble sacrifices and dedication". As a veteran, I managed to "stowaway" with the group tour even though I was never stationed in Korea.

The ROK gives an honored status to the aging veterans that were in Korea during the 1950 to 1953 "United Nations Police Action" (i.e. Korean War). Those veterans that came after 1953 are included as "Peacekeepers" since the Korean War has never officially ended. All are honored as heroes and even give "Hero" lapel pins; along with a lot of pomp, ceremony and a "Thank You Banquet".

The ROK has a lot of military and economic self-interest in buttering up Yankees. They call it "reinforcing the alliance and pursuing cooperative partnership for the future". The hotel staff even had to line up and applauded the American vets upon their arrival. I was embarrassed for the staff, even if they weren't. It was a demeaning display.

Other Koreans see the Yankees as foreign interlopers. They blame the US for dividing Korea after 1945, denying them independence and meddling in Korea for the US's own self-interests. During the Korean civil war of the 1950's the US bombed Korea back to the Stone Age, and killed several million of their ancestors. They see the US as having blocked Korean independence and reunification for over 70 years.

Today, South Korea is not much higher than that of a US semi-colony. The US has 30,000 troops occupying Korea and still maintains wartime operational control of the ROK armed forces. Whoever controls the army has ultimate control of the nation. I applaud the new South Korean President Moon Jae-in for saying his government is "increasing efforts to take back wartime operational control of its military [see link ]."

After several days of formal "hero" events that included ceremonies, speeches, dinners and group photos, our veteran group toured Seoul, the DMZ, and Panmunjom, Incheon, Busan and many other locations. We went from one war memorial, POW camp, cemetery and all you can eat Korean buffets after another. We gazed at pine tree covered hills named Pork Chop, White Horse, T-Bone, Old Baldy, Bloody Ridge, Heartbreak Ridge, and Punchbowl.

Today those hills don't looked any different than the thousands of others in Korea. I certainly wouldn't die for any of them, but a lot of Americans were ordered to, and 54,246 did. In 2017-dollars the war cost was $600 billion, in addition to hundreds of billions of more dollars spent on the "peacekeeping mission", and military and financial aid to South Korea.

To pass the hours on the bus our American retired-military expat tour guide showed Korean War movies. One scene in the 1959 movie Pork Chop Hill has an African-American soldier saying, "I ain't gonna die for Korea, what do I care about this stinking hill?" The anti-war and historical pre-civil rights movement message is highly charged in that scene: firstly, the movie has many anti-war messages mixed in with the themes of duty, righteous patriotism and evil communism; secondly, the US Army was just starting to integrate during the Korean War and many white soldiers questioned the loyalty and courage of black soldiers. Gregory Peck, as Lieutenant Joe Clemons, runs roughshod over him so that he can join the "exclusive club" of white soldiers.

Whoosh!---all those anti-war messages from the 1950's went over the heads of most of the vets on the bus, as they would other US audiences today. Instead the vets related to the last line in the movie that, "Millions live in freedom today because of what they did". That 'thank you for your service' is total nonsense and propaganda.

Nobody is free today because US soldiers died on Pork Chop Hill. The hundreds killed on Pork Chop Hill were just negotiating pawns. Thousands of other Americans died as pawns fighting for other meaningless hills too, and that is the real message of the movie. As with Pork Chop, many of those hills are in the Iron Triangle Area above the 38^th Parallel. Each side of the war was playing king on the mountain to jockey for an advantage in the 1953 armistice negotiations at Panmunjom.

A lot of lives could have been saved if the US had just agreed in 1951 to redraw the armistice line at the original dividing line at the 38^th Parallel. Instead the US wanted to hold the Imjin valley area above the 38^th because of its strategic position and to deny the North the fertile rice producing valley. After 2 years of haggling and 20,000 more US casualties the US agreed to a stalemate.

Another scene in the movie Pork Chop Hill has the American negotiator lecturing the communists that "Pork Chop Hill is not worth a single human life". If the hill was not worth a single human life, then why did the US keep ordering soldiers to their death? The move didn't ask that question out loud, but it was there for those that could understand it. Two months after Pork Chop Hill the armistice was signed.

After the Korean War the US public went through an anti-war "Korean War Syndrome" similar to the "Vietnam War Syndrome" distaste for insane, genocidal and disastrous wars. Hollywood even put out movies such as Pork Chop Hill (see trailer) and "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" that had anti-war messages mixed in with the patriotism, duty to follow orders, esprit de corps and glory of combat required by the censors to get the Pentagon's blessing and money. In the 1970's the TV series M*A*S*H would use the Korean War setting for its anti-war message. Most viewers had already forgotten the US's agony, shame and war crimes during the Korean War, and the US was repeating them again in Vietnam.

Many veterans and the public cope with their cognitive dissonance by saying the Korean War was "worth it". They point to South Korea and they can't imagine how any Asian country could possibly become "prosperous and democratic, a miracle really" without the US first bombing it back to the Stone Age and killing millions of their people [irony inserted]. Americans must be among the most indoctrinated people in the world to believe the mythology that US wars are about freedom, democracy and human progress. Human progress and Korea would be a lot better off without US wars.

The Pentagon, politicians and the mainstream media do their best to keep the public so distracted that they get war-amnesia. Gore Vidal coined it the United States of Amnesia. President Reagan's cure for the stubborn Vietnam War memory was to invade the small, weak, and poor little island of Grenada in 1983, thus wipping out the public's memory of Vietnam. Once the fog of peace cleared, the US resumed it binges of serial mass murder in illegal wars of empire. The main stream media cheers it on, war profits skyrocket, and the public sits on the couche watching football and eating delivery pizza.

Most people don't even remember that the US is still in illegal wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; as well as terrorizing other brown people all over the world. Who is going to remember the Korean War when the mainstream media loops clich'es 24/7 about North Korea and Kim Jong-un: "paranoid, unpredictable, dangerous, can't feed his own people and threatening to nuke the US mainland"?

Who is going to remind the US public that Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman, and generals Omar Bradley and Curtis LeMay were paranoid, unpredictable, and dangerous and threatened to nuke North Korea, China and Russia in the 1950's? MacArthur recommended using 30 to 50 nuclear bombs on North Korea and China. Truman publicly threatened to use the atomic bomb, and he sent nukes to the Far East so they would be available. MacArthur wanted World War 3 and would have caused nuclear humanicide if Truman had not fired him during a rare moment of sanity.

The US even practiced dropping simulated nuclear bombs from B-29 Superfortress onto North Korea. At the time the North Koreans did not know they were practice or if they were about to be nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki style. Fear and terror is the US psychological warfare weapon, and the US has not stopped threatening North Korea with nuclear bombs; in violation of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty bans nuclear powers from threatening non-nuclear powers with nuclear weapons. The logic is that for a nuclear power to threaten a non-nuclear power would encouraged proliferation, and that is exactly why North Korea has developed its own nuclear deterrent.

It would be nai've for me to think that I could understand Korean politics and their culture as a tourist. However, there are some obvious tells that the South Koreans have a strong desire for reunification with the North. They mention it at every opportunity. The desire for reunification was essentially put to a referendum with the election of President Moon Jae-in earlier this year. Moon was elected on a liberal platform that included better relations between the two Koreas similar to the liberal "Sunshine Policies" that won President Kim Dae-jung the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

Reunification means different things to different people. For conservatives and US foreign policy neocons, reunification means a regime change in North Korea and its absorption by the South. For liberals, reunification means peacefully bettering relations, family visits and tourism, and economic and industrial cooperation; and even some day far in the future a combined federation.

Reunification is not a pipedream. Eventually it will happen because both North and South want it to happen. Naysayers who say that it is impossible need only look at how bad relations were between the US and communist China from 1949 until 1972. Once the ice was broken with a visit to China by a US ping pong team in 1971, then a year later President Nixon made a historic state visit and took the necessary steps towards formal recognition of the People's Republic of China and full diplomatic relations. Diplomacy works when the US works it. The US could be instrumental in the normalization of relations with North Korea instead of constantly putting up roadblocks. North Korea has shown much more interest in normal relations with the US and its Southern cousins than the ignorant mainstream media acknowledges.

A unified Korea would be an economic dynamo in the best interests of both North and South Korea. That raises the hair on the back of the neck of the Japanese, and they raise obstacles to Korean reunification, too. Combining North Korea's trove of natural resources and cheap labor with South Korea's dynamic economy would be a powerhouse that would be a challenge even to China.

A lot of special interests in the US, Korea, Japan and China want to prevent Korean reunification. That presents a strong challenge for strong leadership in South Korea. Nobody else is likely to give Korea independence and reunification except Koreans. That would be a hill worth Koreans fighting for, and a bridge worth them crossing.

Authors Bio:

David is a columnist writing on foreign affairs, economic, and political and social issues. He is an honorary Associate Editor of The Greanville Post, and a former Senior Editor of OpEdNews.com. His articles have been published by OpEdNews, The Real News Network, Truth Out, Consortium News, Global Research, The American Herald Tribune, and many other publications.

He is active in social issues relating to peace, race relations and religious freedom, homelessness and equal justice. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete for Peace, CodePink, and International Solidarity Movement.

In 2019 David spent 2 months in Russia on one of his frequent people-to-people peace missions. In 2017 David spent 3 weeks in South Korea researching the Korean War of 1950 to 1953. In 2016 David spent 10 weeks in Palestine with the Palestinian lead non-violent resistance group International Solidarity Movement, and returned again in 2018. In February of 2015 he was part of a people-to-people delegation to Cuba with CodePink. In November of 2015 he was a delegate with CodePink to Palestine to show solidarity with Palestinians.

David has a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the University of Maryland and attended classes at George Washington University for a certification as a financial planner (CFP). He is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania program as a Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA).

David is a Special Forces combat veteran of the illegal U.S. war of aggression against the people of Vietnam. In 1999 he returned to Vietnam for 3 weeks on a mission of reconciliation and peace.

In 2009 David retired from Morgan Stanley after 35 years as a Senior Vice President, CIMA and CFP.

David resides in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. His hobbies include boating, RV'ing and motorcycle touring. He is also a licensed skydiver (USPA-inactive), with over 300 free-fall parachute jumps.

[His articles are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License.]