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During the Korean War the overwhelming amount of violence was committed by the U.S. and its allies. North Korea was largely reduced to a moonscape by a relentless U.S. air and naval bombardment. Near the war's end a dam was destroyed, resulting in widespread drowning and a subsequent famine. This was a clear war crime.

I am not excusing the North Korean regime of today, but back in 1950, it was based on a popular political movement that had resisted the Japanese occupation. The Southern regime that the U.S. supported was largely made up of Japanese collaborators.

The clear evidence that the North enjoyed overwhelming popular support in that conflict is attested to by the following facts:

* during and before that conflict, there were guerrilla forces sympathetic to the North operating in the South, whilst every attempt to foment guerrilla opposition to the Northern government failed dismally. (This experience was repeated in the Vietnam War.)

* a whole battalion of the South Korean army defected to the North shortly before the outbreak of that war.

* that, in the early stages of the war, they came close to defeating the Southern government with very little material aid from the USSR or China (Even General McArthur once expressed his disbelief, and, almost, his disgust, that so little material aid had been given by the supposedly fraternal USSR to North Korea at that stage.)

* during the first counter-offensive against the North there was a horrific toll of civilians in the south murdered because they were deemed to be sympathetic to the North (I seem to recall the figure of 100,000 in Gavin McCormack's "Cold War, Hot War")

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Clearly, Paul.L is not here to discuss the evidence. He is here to only to add noise in order to make it more difficult for others to gain a clear understanding of past historical events which have brought about the world we live in today.

And I won't be holding my breath waiting for Paul.L to produce evidence that I have "sought to redeem the reputation of the Soviet Union".

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Thanks Forrest Gump, Ludwig,

Ludwig, you are correct. It can be demonstrated, for, example, that the overthrow of the Iranian government of Mohamed Mossadeq by the CIA in 1953 led to the Mullahs coming to power in 1978 and at the CIA subversion of the Afghan government from 1978, even prior to the Soviet military intervention, led to Taliban rule in the late 1990's.

However, not all reactions to U.S. meddling have been negative. At the moment, much of Latin America is governed by governments that, in practice, have demonstrated commitment to social equity and democracy, including that of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Hugo Chavez in Venezula

As I wrote above, I believe that the movement referred to as 'communism' was real enough. It was the main embodiment of the aspirations of forward thinking intellectuals and ordinary people who wanted something better than the system had led to the impoverishment of ordinary people, repeated economic crisis and the catastrophe of the first world.

It's now obvious that that movement was flawed from the beginning, but it seems that most of its early leaders had their hearts in the right places. The tragic fact that Stalin felt it necessary to murder nearly all of them in the 1930's would seem to confirm that.

Naomi,
Sorry I meant Dagget,

I have to give it to you Dagget, You are clearly a far more prolific debater than I will ever be. I suppose when you are regurgitatin Naomi Kleins worldview the words just flow easier. Or Something.

I simply don’t have the time or the energy to refute ALL of your nonsense.

What I notice is that you are now backpedaling again on your ridiculous claim that the Soviet Union was NOT EVER expansionist.

You entirely disregarded those quotes which I supplied from Kruschev and Breznev detailing their goals. I present clear evidence which rebuts entirely your position and you don’t even break stride, you just move on to some other ridiculous assertion. You ended the debate on privatization issues the same way. Just staunch refusal to accept the evidence.

And then you retort with ridiculous things like rumsfeld being involved in the sale of lightwater reactors to North Korea. Did you miss the part where BILL CLINTON signed off on the deal? You know, The White House. And please tell me how THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH SOVIET EXPANSIONIST TENDANCIES

You still haven’t addressed the obvious and valid assertion that the Soviet behaviour regarding the liberated countries of WW2 is NOT indicative of their behaviour afterward. And the reason why is obvious. Stalin had most of Eastern Europe to gain without any more fighting. So he kept his word and he cleaned up. Evidence regarding Stalins treatment of Yugoslav, Korean, Vietnamese, Greek, whatever, just IS NOT RELEVANT. The actions of the Soviet Union during the Berlin Crisis and afterwards was entirely at odds with those earlier decisions.

You say >> “During the Korean War the overwhelming amount of violence was committed by the U.S. and its allies.”

TBC

cont,

Not only is this totally irrelevant to the subject at hand (which you clearly have difficulty sticking to), I think the people of Sth Korea would have something to say about it. And THE NORTH INVADED. You don’t get to choose proportional response when you invade a country. Furthermore, that dastardly body, the UN, took exception to this invasion and decided to use force to protect South Korea. I for one; and I pretty sure there are quite a few Koreans of all stripes with me on this; believe the South Koreans are thanking their lucky stars day and night that they weren’t overrun by the communists

Quote >> “After another visit by Kim to Moscow in April 1950, Stalin approved an attack. North Korea agreed to send to the Soviet Union 9 tons of gold, 40 tons of silver, and 15,000 tons of monazite concentrate as payment for additional Soviet arms, ammunition and military technical equipment” http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=va2.document&identifier=5034BECA-96B6-175C-9358D5205FA9A9F8&sort=Subject&item=Korea,%20DPRK,%20Soviet%20Economic%20and%20Military%20Aid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

Whether the people of the North were happy with their gov’t then or not is irrelevant. Do you really think the Germans, Polish, Czech, Rumanians would have chosen to live under the Communists? The Korean War was one of a number of attempts to spread communism throughout the world.

“When parts of South Korea were under North Korean control, political killings, reportedly into the tens of thousands, took place in the cities and villages. The communists systematically killed former South Korean government officials and others deemed hostile to the communists ...”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

This was pretty typical communist behaviour whenever and wherever they were encountered. The did exactly the same thing in Vietnam, where they murdered anyone associated with the gov’t including town officials and schoolteachers.

By the way, I couldn't help laughing when I read this gem of wisdom. >> " CIA subversion of the Afghan government from 1978 ... led to Taliban rule in the late 1990's"

I see. Not the bloody war against the brutal red army. Not the help the west gave to help the Afghans evict the red army. It was the "meddling before 1978". WOW

I will try my best to finish writing the PhD thesis necessary to respond to each and every one of Paul.L's illogical, fallacious or irrelevant arguments, but please don't expect too much in 350 words left to me, today.

Paul.L,

Nothing that you have written here negates my essential argument about the Korean War. As I have demonstrated, the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that it was the Northern government, based upon guerrillas who had resisted the Japanese, rather than the Southern government, based largely upon those who had formerly collaborated with the Japanese, who enjoyed popular support.

OK, it seems as if the North Koreans, as well as South Koreans and the U.S., stand accused of having committed atrocities. Not knowing much about those claimed atrocities, I can comment little, except to say that they would have occurred in the context of a brutal civil war. The people in South had endured years of savage repression under a brutal regime based upon former Japanese collaborators which was imposed upon them in 1945. I imagine that when areas of the South had been overrun, that many of the local people were not prepared to treat those who had associated with that regime very tenderly.

Paul.L attempts to depict the betrayal of socialist movements in the West at the end of WW2 including at least Greece, Italy, Vietnam and Yugoslavia and Iran, as an aberration, but completely disregards the subsequent treatment of Vietnam and Laos, and, it would also appear, North Korea, as attested to none other that General McArthur (I can't cite the precise source of this, but I read it in "Korea the Unknown War" by Bruce Cumings and Jon Halliday).

Also. the Sino-Soviet split occurred as a result of Russia largely abandoning its Chinese ally and withdrawing the military and economic aid that it so desperately needed to confront the the threat from the U.S. following the very costly Korean War.

Also prior to WW2, Stalin had infamously sold out socialist movements in at least Spain, the UK, Germany and China.

Paul.L wrote at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2121&page=0#44902
"Stalin had most of Eastern Europe to gain without any more fighting. So he kept his word and he cleaned up."

Paul.L wrote at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2052&page=0#44789
"As I’ve already said, the Allies divided up Europe into spheres of influence and Greece was agreed to be part of the free world."

Why Stalin have any more right to entrust the fate of the people of Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, etc. to Churchill than did Churchill have to entrust the fate of the people of Eastern Europe to Stalin?

Paul.L wrote: "The Greek people themselves ratified this decision by NOT electing the communist/socialists."

The elections were problematic in a number of ways, most obviously the fact that they were conducted under a cloud of right-wing terror against a defenceless left disarmed as a result of Stalin's deal with Churchill. To get a more more concrete picture of what this meant to the Greek people, check out the image at http://www.answers.com/topic/tagmata-as-jpg linked to from http://www.answers.com/topic/greek-civil-war The caption reads "Anti-communist militiamen display their victims".