THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS AND PRESIDENT
The primary impediment to peace in Korea is located thousands of miles from Korea in Washington, D.C. We respectfully demand that it get out of the way.
To: The United States Congress and President
While U.S. mass media ignores or demonizes the people of North Korea, it is all too easy to forget that there are millions of children, factory workers, and peasants being brutalized by cruel U.S. and U.N. sanctions.
A century ago, Woodrow Wilson promised self-determination to smaller nations but denied it to Koreans, and gave the Empire of Japan the green light to continue its colonialist violence. After the Pacific War, the U.S. and the USSR split the country in two. Syngman Rhee — a George Washington University graduate just like Juan Guaidó — was imported to serve as dictator of South Korea. The United States labeled anyone who resisted him a “communist” and helped Rhee torture and kill them.
The Korean War resulted from the division of the country and subsequent provocations from both sides, one of them heavily backed by the United States. The U.S. military invaded the North in the autumn of 1950 and destroyed the country, flattening nearly every city. The United States has retained wartime control of the South Korean military, maintained a major occupation of South Korea, and refused to allow a peace agreement to end the war ever since.
In the past two years, the democracy-loving people of South Korea have brought Moon Jae-in to power and the U.S. and North Korean leaders together. As a result, North Korea has not tested any new missiles, has returned U.S. soldiers’ remains, and has begun dismantling nuclear sites and demilitarizing the Demilitarized Zone. The United States has scaled back its threatening war rehearsals.
Now the United States needs to support an end to the war. Petty impediments like partisanship and major disagreements on unrelated topics need to be set aside for the sake of peace. Nuclear war, scientists now understand, is not containable. If it happens on Earth, it threatens the whole Earth. Those unable to act against the risk of the mass killing of people distant and different from themselves still can and must act against the risk of nuclear apocalypse.
Sanctioning the people of North Korea for decades has utterly failed to accomplish anything other than great human suffering. It is time to end the war, end the sanctions, allow families to reunite, and begin planning to bring U.S. troops home to the United States.