Is the West ready to talk peace with North Korea?

Pyongyang has said that it is ready to talk peace. Now the question is: Are we?

North Korea’s Bomb and the Road to Peace, THE HUFFINGTON POST, Andy Marra, May 4, 2010 I was born in Seoul. … I am left feeling more concerned about potential United States military actions against North Korea instead of North Korea attacking us. This past January, the world witnessed an unprecedented gesture by Pyongyang stating they will permanently dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for a formal treaty with the U.S. to finally end the Korean War. Washington, however, dismissed this historic offer and refused to engage in any meaningful dialogue.

Instead, the U.S. responded by conducting Key Resolve Foal Eagle, a full-scale military offensive exercise aimed at invading North Korea. At a Pentagon press conference on April 6, 2010, Defense Secretary Robert Gates threatened North Korea with the possibility of nuclear attack by warning, “All options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.”

It’s easy for us to label North Korea “crazy” if we don’t understand the set of historical events leading up to this current situation. It likely explains why the Korean War is often referred to here as “The Forgotten War.” The Korean conflict though, is not forgotten among many of us in the Korean community. Nor is it forgotten by North Korea with its near constant state of war mentality that influences their defensive relations with the United States.

We have to remember that the United States and the former Soviet Union divided Korea in half after Japan’s surrender in World War II. Instead of Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation, tens of millions of Korean families became separated. The United States made the decision to divide Korea in half by using a National Geographic map of the Korean peninsula. As a result, a Korean civil war broke out in hopes of reunifying the peninsula. But this civil war escalated into an international conflict, which is what many of us know today as the Korean War………….President Obama has said that his administration will work towards a world free from nuclear weapons. Yet the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, unveiled this past April shows that his policies are fundamentally no different from those of the previous administration. North Korea, along with Iran, remains on the list of potential targets for nuclear warfare, and military plans like OPLAN 5027 and Key Resolve Foal Eagle, full-scale, offensive military exercises that simulate a war with North Korea and include plans for preemptive nuclear strike, remain in effect. These aggressive military actions will only set the stage for increased hostility. North Korea will have the grounds to maintain and potentially expand its own nuclear arsenal leading to an expanded military presence throughout the Korean peninsula…………
Pyongyang has said that it is ready to talk peace. Now the question is: Are we?

Andy Marra: North Korea’s Bomb and the Road to Peace