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FTR #1142 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
NB: This description has material that was not in the original broadcast.
Introduction: Fleshing out the deep politics underlying the life and death of Park Won-soon, this program builds on the foundation of first two programs in the series. Park Won-soon’s criticism of Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea, his advocacy of reconciliation between the two Koreas and his suit against the leadership of the fascist Shincheonji mind control cult (overlapped with the Unification Church), all bear on the political and economic dynamics of the Second World War, the Cold War, the Korean War, and the cartel arrangements that constitute a critical, though largely invisible, underpinning of the events of the Twentieth and Twenty-First centuries.
Essential to an understanding of these overlapping events is the landmark text Gold Warriors by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688, 689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the subject material of that consummately important book.)
Indeed, one cannot properly analyze the partition of Korea after World War II, the Korean War and the Cold War as separate events. They are interconnected and, in turn, are outgrowths of the complex politics of the Second World War and the actions and attitudes of Chiang Kai-shek’s narco-fascist dictatorship.
Although nominally a member of the Allied nations, Chiang’s Kuomintang government was primarily concerned with fending off Mao Tse-Tung’s communist armies and worked with the invading Japanese in critical areas. In particular, the Kuomintang’s profound involvement with the narcotics trade helped drive its trading with the Japanese.
The program begins with the obituary of general Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose service in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II has been a focal point of controversy in South Korea. General Sun-yup embodied the ongoing controversy in Korea over Japan’s occupation and the subsequent unfolding of events leading up to, and including the Korean War.
Again, the Japanese occupation of Korea was a major focal point of Park Won-soon’s criticism. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a puppet state that imperial Japan had established in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunting down Korean guerrillas fighting for independence . . .”
A little known factor in the development of the Korean partition and Cold War politics in Asia was the involvement of Chiang Kai-shek, his wife (the former Mei-Ling Soong, sister of Chiang’s finance minister T.V. Soong–the wealthiest man in the world at the time) and advisers in the Cairo Conference of 1943 and the subsequent Tehran Conference with Stalin and Churchill.
According to Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who flew the Kuomintang interests to Tehran from Cairo, Chiang and company were a driving force in setting the stage for war in Korea and Indochina.
While in Okinawa during Japan’s surrender in World War II, Colonel Prouty was witness to the early commitment of decisive military resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States. His response was direct and surprising: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t never goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943–45? . . . .”
To appreciate Chiang’s influence in the Cairo and Tehran conferences, it is important to understand that he was “working both sides of the street” in World War II.
American military supplies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Burma Road at great risk and cost to Allied servicemen found their way into the hands of the Japanese, courtesy of KMT general Ku Chu-tung and his organized crime brother.
General Ku Chu-Tung commanded a devastating operation against the Chinese Communist New Fourth Army, illustrating why the Seagraves called him “one of the most hated men in China.”
Although obscured by the sands of time and propagandized history, Ku-Chu Tung’s actions illustrate why General Joseph Stilwell held Chiang Kai-Shek in contempt. Stillwell not only (correctly) viewed Chiang Kai-Shek as a fascist, but (correctly) saw him as an impediment to optimizing Chinese resistance to the hated Japanese invaders.
Collaborating with Kodama Yoshio, the Japanese crime boss and Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Ku brothers swapped U.S. lend lease supplies for drugs.
It is important to note the role of the Black Dragon Society in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Dragon, along with Black Ocean, are key Japanese ultra-nationalist societies and the apparent forerunners of the Unification Church and, possibly the overlapping Shincheonji cult that was sued by Park Won-soon.
Kodama played a key role in the Unification Church, as discussed in FTR #‘s 291 and 970.
Acquiring key strategic raw materials for the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force, Kodama bought many of these directly from the chief of Kuomintang secret service, General Tai Li, who was paid directly in heroin.
Before turning to the subject of the Korean War and its decisive influence on the disposition of global wealth and the resuscitation of the global cartel system, we recount the assassination of Kim Koo, an important Korean patriot, whose advocacy of reunification for Korea placed him in the crosshairs of American Cold War strategists. (Park Won-soon was called a “commie” for advocating reconciliation between the Koreas.) ” . . . . In June 1949, General Kim Chang-Yong, Rhee’s close advisor and Chief of Korea’s Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC)—founded by and patterned after the CIA—conspired with American intelligence officers and a young lieutenant to assassinate Kim Koo. On June 26, 1949, while the seventy-three-year-old Kim was resting in his second-floor bedroom, Lieutenant Ahn Do hi walked past three policemen standing guard outside, entered the house, proceeded to Kim’s bedroom, and shot him to death. . . .”
On the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War, John Foster Dulles was in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio. It is not known just what they were doing, but Foster directly foreshadowed the impending (and allegedly unanticipated) North Korean invasion in a speech just before the commencement of hostilities.
Kodama recruited thousands of yakuza soldiers and Japanese World War II veterans to fight for South Korea, dressed in Korean uniforms.
Next, we highlight the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agreement which falsely maintained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occupied during World War II and that the (already) booming nation was bankrupt and would not be able to pay reparations to the slave laborers and “comfort women” it had pressed into service during the conflict.
Japan was not bankrupt at all when John Foster Dulles negotiated the Treaty. U.S. bombing left critical infrastructure intact, and the infusion of war loot helped boost the 1951 Japanese economy above its pre-World War II peak.
Foster Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curious presence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War, his prescient foreshadowing of the conflict just before the North Korean invasion and the role of these events in shaping the post World War II global economic and political landscapes may well have been designed to help jumpstart the Japanese and German economies.
The Korean War did just that. ” . . . . A substantial infusion of money into this new Federal Republic economy resulted from the Korean War in 1950. The United States was not geared to supplying all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pentagon placed huge orders in West Germany and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of booming good times. . . .”
Indeed, John Foster Dulles’s world view enunciated a philosophy altogether consistent with those aims: ” . . . . He churned out magazine and newspaper articles asserting that the ‘dynamic’ countries of the world–Germany, Italy, and Japan–‘feel within themselves potentialities which are suppressed’ . . .”
Those economies, the cartels that dominated them and the Dulles brothers Cold War strategic outlook are dominant factors in the deep politics underlying the life, and death, of Park Won-soon.
1. The program begins with the obituary of general Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose service in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II has been a focal point of controversy in South Korea. General Sun-yup embodied the ongoing controversy in Korea over Japan’s occupation and the subsequent unfolding of events leading up to, and including the Korean War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a puppet state that imperial Japan had established in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunting down Korean guerrillas fighting for independence . . .”
Paik Sun-yup, South Korea’s first four-star general, who was lionized as a Korean War hero by the South Korean and United States militaries but dismissed by many in his country as a traitor, died here on Friday. He was 99. . . .
. . . . Though widely credited for leading his troops in a pivotal battle of the Korean War, Mr. Paik was a divisive figure in his home country. In 2009, a South Korean presidential committee put him on a list of “pro-Japanese and anti-nation” figures who had collaborated with Japanese colonizers during their rule of the Korean Peninsula. . . .
. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a puppet state that imperial Japan had established in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunting down Korean guerrillas fighting for independence, though Mr. Paik said he had never engaged in battles with them.
He was a first lieutenant when Japan was defeated in World War II and Korea was liberated. After the country was divided into the pro-American South and the Communist North, Mr. Paik was among the Koreans in Japan’s colonial military who were recruited when the United States was helping to build a military for the South. . . .
. . . . IF Paik Sun-yup is called a ‘hero,’ what does that make Korean independence fighters who lost their lives at the hand of his old Manchuria unit?” asked Kim Won-woong, the head of Heritage of Korean Independence, a group recognized by the government for its members’ struggle for independence.
“If he really wanted to be treated like ‘a Korean War hero,’ he should at least have expressed repentance and remorse for his pro-Japanese deed,” Mr. Kim added, in an interview published last year. “But he never has.”
2. The Cold War in Asia, including the Korean War and attendant institutionalization of the Americanization of Golden Lily profits had its genesis in the influence of the Kuomintang in the Cairo and Tehran talks during 1943.
In addition to Chiang Kai-shek himself, his wife (the former Mei-Ling Soon, sister of T.V. Soong) played an important part in the negotiations.
. . . . Although the alliance between the West and the Soviet Union during WWII had been welded in the heat of battle, it had never been on too firm a footing. This was especially true of its structure in the Far East. The Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, was as much a dictator as either Hitler or Mussolini. . . .
. . . . In this climate, President Roosevelt maneuvered to have Chiang Kai-shek join him in Cairo or a November 22–26, 1943, meeting with Churchill. Roosevelt wanted to create the atmosphere of a “Big Four” by placing Chiang on the world stage. Chiang appeared in Cairo, along with his attractive and powerful wife, Madame Chiang Kai-shek—nee Mei- Ling Soong, daughter of Charlie Jones Soong and sister of T.V. Soong, at that time the wealthiest man in the world [and Chiang Kai-shek’s finance minister—D.E.]. Few pictures produce during WWII have been more striking than those of Chiang and Roosevelt “apparently” joking with each other on one side and an “apparently” convivial Churchill and Madame Chiang smiling together on the other. . . .
. . . . With the close of the Cairo Conference, the Churchill and Roosevelt delegations flew to Tehran for their own first meeting with Marshal Stalin. This much was released to the public. A fact that was not released, and that even to this day has rarely been made known, is that Chiang and the Chinese delegation were also present at the Tehran Conference of November 28-December 1, 1943. . . .
3. After Franklin Roosevelt’s death in 1945, the role of Chiang Kai-shek and associates helped shape the postwar shape of Asia, setting the stage for the Korean War. Note that T.V. Soong was Chiang’s finance minister and the richest man in the world at that time.
His U.S. educated sister was married to Chiang Kai-shek and wielded great influence both in the Kuomintang administration and in the Cairo and Tehran discussion that set the stage for post-World War II in Asia.
. . . . How many of us realize that back in November 1943, when Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Cairo with Chiang Kai-shek, they were not only making plans for victory over the Axis powers in Europe, they were laying the groundwork for a follow-on period of warfare in eastern Asia, in Indochina (1945), Korea (1950 . . . . following the defeat of Japan?
Few historians seem to recall that also in Cairo was Chiang Kai-shek’s wife Mei-Ling, the American-educated sister of T.V. Soong, then the wealthiest man in the world, and she actually took part in the work of the conference along with activities of T.V. Soong’s Chinese delegates, who were Chiang’s advisers. . . .
. . . . Even more importantly, after these delegates of Chiang Kai-Shek and T. V. Soong had actively participated in Cairo in the planning for the post-World War II activities in the Far East, they flew on to Tehran . . . The fact that immediately following the Cairo Conference the Chinese delegation was in Teheran . . . . has not been recorded in the history books of this era. This is a most important omission. I was pilot of the plane that flew them there from Cairo. During the sometimes heated exchanges . . . . plans were made . . . . for a period of continuing warfare in Indochina, Korea, and Indonesia under the guise of that Cold War “cover story.”. . .
4. Having been born in 1949, I grew up with World War II as a critical element of my political, civic and cognitive upbringing. I vividly remember watching the documentary “Victory at Sea” on television as a child. As I have grown older, more knowledgeable and wiser, learning the truth about World War II has been very sad and painful.
In FTR #1095, we noted the historical background to the ongoing conflict with China–the brutal Japanese onslaught and the collaboration of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang narco-dictatorship with Japan’s attack and occupation.
As a boy, I was awed and moved by the heroism of American and Allied service personnel who braved the dangers of flying over the Hump to bring U.S. supplies to Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. Although officially allied with the U.S., Chiang Kai-shek’s forces were actually working “both sides of the street.”
We have encountered nothing more grotesquely tragic and disillusioning than the awareness that American military supplies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Burma Road found their way into the hands of the Japanese, courtesy of KMT general Ku Chu-tung and his organized crime brother.
Collaborating with Kodama Yoshio, the Japanese crime boss and Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the brothers swapped U.S. lend lease supplies for drugs.
In the passage below, it is important to note the role of the Black Dragon Society in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Dragon, along with Black Ocean, are key Japanese ultra-nationalist societies and the apparent forerunners of the Unification Church and, possibly the overlapping Shincheonji cult.
Kodama played a key role in the Unification Church, as discussed in FTR #‘s 291 and 970.
Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave; Verso [SC]; Copyright 2003, 2005 by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 41.
. . . . He [Kodama] was sprung from jail by [General] Doihara in April 1937, on the condition that he devoted his violent energies to looting China’s underworld. This epiphany, the transformation of Kodama from thug to super-patriot, was suggested by Black Dragon’s Toyama [Mitsuru], whose own stature as a patriot was affirmed in 1924 when he was a guest at Emperor Hirohito’s wedding. . . .
. . . . All proceeds were diverted from Chinese racketeers to Golden Lily, minus a handling charge for Kodama himself. Ultimately, Kodama was responsible to Prince Chichibu, and to the throne.
Princes were not equipped to deal with gangsters. Kodama saved them from soiling their hands. He converted narcotics into bullion by the simple method of trading heroin to gangsters for gold ingots. How brokers got the ingots was not his concern. He closed a deal with waterfront boss Ku Tsu-chuan to swap heroin for gold throughout the Yangtze Valley. Thanks to Ku’s brother, KMT senior general Ku Chu-tung, Japan also gained access to U.S. Lend-Lease supplies reaching western China by way of the Burma road, or on aircraft flying over the Hump from India. Once in warehouses in Kunming or Chungking, the Lend-Lease was re-sold to the Japanese Army, with Kodama as purchasing agent. . . .
5. General Ku Chu-Tung commanded a devastating operation against the Chinese Communist New Fourth Army, illustrating why the Seagraves called him “one of the most hated men in China.”
Although obscured by the sands of time and propagandized history, Ku-Chu Tung’s actions illustrate why General Joseph Stillwell held Chiang Kai-Shek in contempt. Stillwell not only (correctly) viewed Chiang Kai-Shek as a fascist, but (correctly) saw him as an impediment to optimizing Chinese resistance to the hated Japanese invaders.
Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave; Verso [SC]; Copyright 2003, 2005 by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; pp. 300–301.
. . . . The Ku brothers had evil reputations. In 1940, General Ku became one of China’s most hated men. When the Chinese communist New Fourth Army passed through his territory on their way to attack the Japanese held railway between Nanking and Shanghai, Ku ambushed them and massacred all but the headquarters contingent, including many women cadres. All these women were subjected to mass rape and kept in KMT army brothels for the next 18 months, where a number of them committed suicide. As his reward, General Ku was promoted to commander in chief of the KMT armies. . . .
6. Next, we supplement discussion of the collaboration of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime with the Japanese. Once again, Kodama Yoshio is front and center. Acquiring key strategic raw materials for the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force, Kodama bought many of these directly from the chief of Kuomintang secret service, General Tai Li, who was paid directly in heroin.
Note that the Strike South referenced in the quote below was the campaign of which the attack on Pearl Harbor was a key part. The attack on Pearl Harbor was designed to neutralize the U.S. Seventh Fleet, in order to facilitate the Japanese campaign in the South Pacific, chiefly the capture of the Indonesian oil fields.
The capture of Indonesia and the Strike South was necessitated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s cut-off of the sale of oil to Japan. Reflective of the U.S/Japanese cartel association highlighted in FTR #905, the U.S. had fueled the balance of the Japanese war effort up to that point.
Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave; Verso [SC]; Copyright 2003, 2005 by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 42.
. . . . Officially, Kodama was in Shanghai as a buyer for the Imperial Navy Air Force, under the rubric of the Kodama Kikan, or Kodama Agency. (Special Service Units were named after the officer in charge and then called an agency.) On paper, his mission was to locate and acquire supplies of copper, cobalt, nickel and mica. In most cases he bought these directly from KMT secret police chief General Tai Li, who was paid in heroin. According to U.S. intelligence, the Kodama Agency took over the salt monopoly, molybdenum mines, farms, fisheries and munitions plants. . . .
. . . . Just before Pearl Harbor and the Strike South, Kodama accompanied Prince Takeda to Japan’s southern military headquarters in Saigon to confer with Field Marshal Terauchi, son of the general who had looted and brutalized Korea. Because the Strike South would involve Japan’s navy, and the navy would administer the Malay Archipelago through which treasure ships must pass, Kodama was transferred overnight from the army to the navy, and given the rank of rear admiral. This was like making Al Capone a U.S. Navy admiral. Kodama’s rank enabled him to commandeer ships, and gave him leverage with Chinese smugglers who roved the archipelago. As Jonathan Marshall explains, “because the Japanese lacked a coastal navy, they granted Chinese ‘pirates’ a monopoly on smuggling in return for information . . . . The Japanese sold them narcotics for $1,600 an ounce, which the pirates in turn could sell along the coast for $6,000.”
Kodama returned to Shanghai just in time for Pearl Harbor . . . .
7. While in Okinawa during Japan’s surrender in World War II, Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was witness to the early commitment of decisive military resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States. His response was direct and surprising: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t never goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943–45? . . . .”
One of the best-kept and least-discussed secrets of early Cold War planning took place sometime before the surrender of Japan. It had a great impact upon the selection of Korea and Indochina as the locations of the early “Cold War” hostilities between the Communists and the anti-Communists.
Despite the terrific damage done to mainland Japan by aerial bombardment, even before the use of atomic bombs, the invasion of Japan had been considered to be an essential prelude to victory and to “unconditional” surrender. Planning for this invasion had been under way for years. As soon as the island of Okinawa became available as the launching site for this operation, supplies and equipment for an invasion force of at least half a million men began to be stacked up, fifteen to twenty feet high, all over the island.
Then, with the early surrender of Japan, this massive invasion did not occur, and the use of this enormous stockpile of military equipment was not necessary. Almost immediately, U.S. Navy transport vessels began to show up in Naha Harbor, Okinawa. This vast load of war material was reloaded onto those ships. I was on Okinawa at that time, and during some business in the harbor area I asked the harbormaster if all that new material was being returned to the States.
His response was direct and surprising: “Hell, no! They ain’t never goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and supply at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, is going to Korea, and the other half is going to Indochina.”
In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first battles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. military units in those two regions beginning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is precisely what had been planned, and it is precisely what happened. Who made that decision back in 1943–45? . . . .
8. Next, we set forth the assassination of Korean patriot Kim Koo. Advocating the reunification of Korea, he stood in the way of Cold War planning. His assassination was, in all probability, engineered by the CIA. ” . . . . In June 1949, General Kim Chang-Yong, Rhee’s close advisor and Chief of Korea’s Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC)—founded by and patterned after the CIA—conspired with American intelligence officers and a young lieutenant to assassinate Kim Koo. On June 26, 1949, while the seventy-three-year-old Kim was resting in his second-floor bedroom, Lieutenant Ahn Do hi walked past three policemen standing guard outside, entered the house, proceeded to Kim’s bedroom, and shot him to death. . . .”
. . . . After World War II ended and Japan was ejected from Korea, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union reached an agreement at the Yalta conference in February of 1945, under which Korea would be governed by a joint trusteeship. The United States would govern the southern half of the nation, while North Korea would be under the Soviet Union’s control.
Enter Kim Koo. Kim, who had lived in Shanghai during the war, returned to Korea after the Japanese occupation ended. He opposed the joint trusteeship fearing it would lead to a permanent division of his homeland. Kim became a folk hero to Koreans, but a fly in the ointment to the United States . . . . Kim’s fears became reality when General John R. Hodge, Commander of the U.S. Occupation Forces, held a rigged election in which Kim and [U.S. protégé] Syngman Rhee became leaders of South Korea. In the interim, the Soviet Union installed Kim Il Sung in newly independent North Korea. Rhee opposed the power-sharing plan in the South, particularly since Kim Koo was pressing forward with plans to reunite Korea.
In June 1949, General Kim Chang-Yong, Rhee’s close advisor and Chief of Korea’s Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC)—founded by and patterned after the CIA—conspired with American intelligence officers and a young lieutenant to assassinate Kim Koo. On June 26, 1949, while the seventy-three-year-old Kim was resting in his second-floor bedroom, Lieutenant Ahn Do hi walked past three policemen standing guard outside, entered the house, proceeded to Kim’s bedroom, and shot him to death.
Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai, who had harbored Kim for more than twenty years, were certain that the assassination had been ordered by Rhee’s American adviser, who also served as Rhee’s anti-espionage chief. Although there was evidence that the American was a CIA officer . . . no one was able to prove it, and Ahn wasn’t talking. Shortly after the assassination, Ahn’s family was spirited out of Korea and brought to America. The Ahn family’s departure only served to heighten speculation that Kim’s assassination was engineered by the CIA. Ahn tried to join his family in America, but was [prevented by forces loyal to Kim. Today, June 26 is a national day of mourning in Korea. . . .
9. In discussion below, we highlight the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agreement which falsely maintained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occupied during World War II and that the (already) booming nation was bankrupt and would not be able to pay reparations to the slave laborers and “comfort women” it had pressed into service during the conflict.
In the context of the fantastic sums looted by Japan under the auspices of Golden Lily and the incorporation of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Korean War raise some interesting, unresolved questions.
One of the principal figures in the looting of occupied Asia during World War II was the remarkable Kodama Yoshio. Networked with the powerful Yakuza Japanese organized crime milieu, the Black Dragon society (the most powerful of the patriotic and ultra-nationalist societies), the Imperial Japanese military and the Royal family of Emperor Hirohito, Kodama looted the Chinese underworld and trafficked in narcotics with Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist narco-dictatorship.
We can but wonder about Kodama Yoshio’s presence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Foster Dulles at negotiations in Seoul on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War.
As discussed in numerous programs in an interview with Daniel Junas, the Korean War was a huge economic boom for Japan, and generated considerable profit for German firms as well. Thyssen, for example, won lucrative contracts for making steel for the war effort. Is there some connection between the Kodama/Dulles presence in Seoul on the eve of the outbreak of war linked to the Golden Lily/Black Eagle/1951 “Peace” Treaty nexus?
. . . . In October of 1949, the People’s Republic of China came into being. Eight months later, in June of 1950, the Korean War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accompanied John Foster Dulles to negotiations in Seoul. The Dulles party also included Kodama’s protege Machii Hisayuki, boss of the Korean yakuza in Japan. Efforts to discover under Freedom of Information what Kodama and Machii did during the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memorial archive we discovered a personal letter from Kodama to General MacArthur offering to provide thousands of yakuza and former Japanese Army soldiers to fight alongside American soldiers in Korea. According to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accepted and these men joined the Allied force on the Peninsula, posing as Korean soldiers. . . .
10. Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, John Foster Dulles made a startlingly prescient speech in South Korea, auguring North Korea’s invasion shortly thereafter.
It would be interesting to know if Dulles and Kodama had been involved in deliberately luring the North Koreans to invade, in a manner not unlike that in which U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie appears to have baited Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait.
Note, also, Dulles’s characterization of Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek as Christian gentlemen. Chiang Kai-shek’s redemptionist credentials are highlighted in some of the passages above.
. . . . It was this same John Foster Dulles in Korea, serving as no more than a “bipartisan consultant” to the Department of State in June 1950, who had said, “No matter what you say about the president of Korea [Syngman Rhee] and the president of Nationalist China [Chiang Kai-shek], these two gentlemen are the equivalent of the founder of the church . . . . they are Christian gentlemen.”
Then, while still in Korea, on June 19, 1950, John Foster Dulles made a most unusual speech before the Korean parliament: “The American people welcome you as an equal partner in the great company of those who make up the free world. . . . I say to you: You are not alone. You will never be alone so long as you continue to play worthily your part in the great design of human freedom.”
The Koreans, taken completely by surprise, wondered what he meant by those words. Less than one week later, when the North Koreans invaded South Korea, they found out. On the very next Sunday, while Dulles was still in Japan, the Korean War broke out with an attack on the south by the North Koreans. For someone of his stature—a senior partner of the largest law firm in New York City, Sullivan & Cromwell, and a man who had found a worldwide platform in the World Council of Churches—these had been most unusual statements on many counts. They were surpassed only by his “prediction” of the outbreak of the Korean War at that time. As for his other statement about “Christian gentlemen,” few there are who have held the same opinion of President Rhee and Generalissimo Chiang, particularly the latter. . . .
11. The heroism of Allied and U.S. combatants was deeply impressed on my personality and perceptions, in significant measure by watching “Victory at Sea” . Footage of U.S. airmen in combat with German and Japanese planes resonates differently now, underscoring the tragedy of the events and the cynicism that appears to have dictated strategy devised by key officers and politicians.
In FTR #905, among other broadcasts, we have detailed the profound corporate links between American oligarchs and their counterparts in Japan. As the Seagraves noted in an excerpt of The Yamato Dynasty summarizing the aftermath of World War II in Asia: “. . . . America’s oligarchs had rescued Japan’s oligarchs. . . .”
The American air war against Japan may well have been selectively conducted, with devastating firebombing raids decimating the residential neighborhoods of much of Japan, while sparing the infrastructure vital to the zaibatsus (giant conglomerates that dominated–and continue to dominate–the Japanese economy) and the country’s war-making capacity.
The possibly that this apparently deliberate strategy was designed to decimate that element of the Japanese population that might have sought a more egalitarian political and social structure, while sparing the elite is one to be seriously contemplated.
One should entertain the possibility that the conduct of the U.S. air war may have been strategically designed to position Japan for the 1951 peace treaty that institutionalized the Golden Lily incorporation into the global economy and postwar intelligence establishment.
. . . . Despite propaganda to the contrary, American and Europeans who toured Japan immediately after the surrender were surprised that infrastructure, factories, utilities, and railways were largely intact, thanks to selective American bombing. Firebombing had destroyed tens of thousands of the tinderbox homes of ordinary Japanese, giving Tokyo the look of a devastated city, but great estates, factories and vital infrastructure seemed magically to have been spared. John Dower notes: “Vast areas of poor people’s residences, small shops and factories in the capital were gutted . . . but a good number of the homes of the wealthy in fashionable neighborhoods survived. . . Tokyo’s financial district [was] largely undamaged. Undamaged, also, was the building that housed much of the imperial military bureaucracy at war’s end. . . . Railways still functioned more or less effectively throughout the country . . . U.S bombing policy . . . had tended to reaffirm existing hierarchies of fortune.” . . .
. . . . During the occupation, many ordinary Japanese worked two jobs to earn enough to buy one potato each day. During the same period, Hirohito was earning $50-million a year in interest merely on his Swiss bank accounts. . . .
12. As stated above, in FTR #905, among other broadcasts, we have detailed the profound corporate links between American oligarchs and their counterparts in Japan. As the Seagraves noted in an excerpt of The Yamato Dynasty summarizing the aftermath of World War II in Asia: “. . . . America’s oligarchs had rescued Japan’s oligarchs. . . .”
Previously, we noted that “. . . . U.S.bombing policy [in Japan]. . . had tended to reaffirm existing hierarchies of fortune. . .”
The corporate/cartel links between American and Japanese oligarchs, the Cold War strategy of using Japan as an anti-Communist bulwark, and the fundamental position of the Golden Lily loot at the foundation of the Black Eagle Trust loom large in the scandalous terms of the 1951 peace treaty with Japan.
The treaty was negotiated by Sullivan & Cromwell’s John Foster Dulles, who was serving as an appointed U.S. Senator at the time. (Foster became Secretary of State under Eisenhower, assuming office in January of 1953, while his brother and fellow Sullivan & Cromwell partner Allen Dulles headed the CIA.)
The treaty was founded on the myth of Japan being bankrupt and not having plundered the territories it plundered in World War II. This myth was the justification for exempting Japan from having to compensate those who had been enslaved as laborers and comfort women.
“. . . . Washington insisted, beginning in 1945, that Japan never stole anything, and was flat broke and bankrupt when the war ended. Here was the beginning of many great distortions which would become terrible secrets. . . . Because the treasure amassed by Golden Lily and recovered by Washington had to be kept secret, citizens of Japan and America were grossly deceived. The 1951 peace treaty with Japan and was skewed by these deceits, so thousands of POWs and civilians (who were forced to perform slave labor for Japanese corporations) received no compensation for their suffering. To shield Japan from demands for war reparations, John Foster Dulles met privately with three Japanese to work out the treaty terms in secret. . . . According to article 14 of the treaty, ‘It is recognized that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognized that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient.’ To reinforce the claim that Japan was broke, Article 14 stated, ‘the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan’. By signing the treaty, Allied countries concurred that Japan’s plunder had vanished down a rabbit hole, and all Japan’s victims were out of luck. . . .”
. . . . Washington insisted, beginning in 1945, that Japan never stole anything, and was flat broke and bankrupt when the war ended. Here was the beginning of many great distortions which would become terrible secrets.
Because the treasure amassed by Golden Lily and recovered by Washington had to be kept secret, citizens of Japan and America were grossly deceived. The 1951 peace treaty with Japan and was skewed by these deceits, so thousands of POWs and civilians (who were forced to perform slave labor for Japanese corporations) received no compensation for their suffering. To shield Japan from demands for war reparations, John Foster Dulles met privately with three Japanese to work out the treaty terms in secret. One of the three Miyazawa Kiichi, later served as Japan’s prime minister and repeatedly as its minister of finance. According to article 14 of the treaty, “It is recognized that Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war. Nevertheless it is also recognized that the resources of Japan are not presently sufficient.”
To reinforce the claim that Japan was broke, Article 14 stated, “the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan”. By signing the treaty, Allied countries concurred that Japan’s plunder had vanished down a rabbit hole, and all Japan’s victims were out of luck.
In return for going along with the treaty, we document that Washington sent secret shipments of black gold recovered by Santa Romana, to beef up the Allies’ exhausted central banks. . . .
13. At the time of the treaty’s negotiation–1951–Japan’s economy was at its zenith, to date. This highlights the apparently strategically selective nature of American bombing during the war, as well as the fact that Japan was allowed to keep the Golden Lily plunder that had been brought back to the home islands.”. . . . As we now know, Japan was not bankrupted by the war. By 1951, six years after the war, Japan’s economy was stronger than it had been during the best business years before the war. . . . Japan’s industrial activity was 32 percent above pre-war levels, its fiscal position showed a surplus, and its balance of trade had moved into the black. In discussions between U.S. monetary experts and Japan’s Finance Minister Ideda Hayato just before the peace conference, he admitted to a budget surplus of over 100-billion yen . . . .”
. . . . As we now know, Japan was not bankrupted by the war. By 1951, six years after the war, Japan’s economy was stronger than it had been during the best business years before the war. [Italics mine–D.E.] Carlos Romulo, head of the Philippine delegation to the peace conference, “demolished the U.S. argument that Japan lacked the ability to pay for economic reasons”. Japan’s industrial activity was 32 percent above pre-war levels, its fiscal position showed a surplus, and its balance of trade had moved into the black. In discussions between U.S. monetary experts and Japan’s Finance Minister Ideda Hayato just before the peace conference, he admitted to a budget surplus of over 100-billion yen and planned to use 40-billion of it as a tax rebate to Japanese citizens. The governor of the Bank of Japan pleaded with U.S. authorities to take custody of $200-million worth of gold holdings because he feared “the Filipinos might try to attach the gold as reparations”. . . .
14. The primary consideration in assessing the career of John Foster Dulles and the context for his actions in Asia following World War II concerns cartels. Dulles and his Sullivan & Cromwell associate, brother and CIA director Allen Dulles were midwives of the cartel system which, during the period between the World Wars, saw the nation state, per se, superseded by international corporate arrangements.
Foster was the architect of the I.G. Farben cartel and the overlapping international nickel cartel.
Foster’s role as a midwife of the domination of the global economy by the cartel system is reviewed below. His political orientation is embodied in this passage: ” . . . . He churned out magazine and newspaper articles asserting that the ‘dynamic’ countries of the world–Germany, Italy, and Japan–‘feel within themselves potentialities which are suppressed’ . . .”
His actions with regard to the partition of Korea, the genesis of the Korean War and the negotiation of the 1951 peace treaty with Japan institutionalizing Japan’s economic plunder of Asia embody the philosophy set forth above.
. . . . Foster had helped design the Dawes Plan of 1924, which restructured Germany’s reparation payments in ways that opened up huge new markets for American banks, and later that year he arranged for five of them to lend $100 million to German borrowers. In the seven years that followed, he and his partners brokered another $900 million in loans to Germany–the equivalent of more than $15 billion in early-twenty-first century dollars. This made him the preeminent salesman of German bonds in the United States, probably the world. He sharply rejected critics who argued that American banks should invest more inside the United States and protested when the State Department sought to restrict loans to Germany that were unrelated to reparation payments or that supported cartels or monopolies.
Foster made much money building and advising cartels, which are based on agreements among competing firms to control supplies, fix prices, and close their supply and distribution networks to outsiders. Reformers in many countries railed against these cartels, but Foster defended them as guarantors of stability that ensured profits while protecting economies from unpredictable swings. Two that he shaped became global forces.
Among Foster’s premier clients was the New Jersey-based International Nickel Company, for which he was not only counsel but also a director and member of the executive board. In the early 1930s, he steered it, along with its Canadian affiliate, into a cartel with France’s two major nickel producers. In 1934, he brought the biggest German nickel producer, I.G. Farben, into the cartel. This gave Nazi Germany access to the cartel’s resources. “Without Dulles,” according to a study of Sullivan & Cromwell, “Germany would have lacked any negotiating strength with [International Nickel], which controlled the world’s supply of nickel, a crucial ingredient in stainless steel and armor plate.”
I.G. Farben was also one of the world’s largest chemical companies–it would produce the Zyklon B gas used at Nazi death camps–and as Foster was bringing it into the nickel cartel, he also helped it establish a global chemical cartel. He was a board member and legal counsel for another chemical producer, the Solvay conglomerate, based in Belgium. During the 1930s, he guided Solvay, I. G. Farben, the American firm Allied Chemical & Dye, and several other companies into a chemical cartel just as potent as the one he had organized for nickel producers.
In mid-1931, a consortium of American banks, eager to safeguard their investments in Germany, persuaded the German government to accept a loan of nearly $500 million to prevent default. Foster was their agent. His ties to the German government tightened after Hitler took power at the beginning of 1933 and appointed Foster’s old friend Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economics.
Allen [Dulles] had introduced the two men a decade earlier, when he was a diplomat in Berlin and Foster passed through regularly on Sullivan & Cromwell business. They were immediately drawn to each other, Schacht spoke fluent English and understood the United States well. Like Dulles, he projected an air of brisk authority. He was tall, gaunt, and always erect, with close-cropped hair and high, tight collars. Both men had considered entering the clergy before turning their powerful minds toward more remunerative pursuits. Each admired the culture that had produced the other. Both believed that a resurgent Germany would stand against Bolshevism. Mobilizing American capital to finance its rise was their common interest.
Working with Schacht, Foster helped the National Socialist state find rich sources of financing in the United States for its public agencies, banks, and industries. The two men shaped complex restructurings of German loan obligations at several “debt conferences” in Berlin–conferences that were officially among bankers, but were in fact closely guided by the German and American governments–and came up with new formulas that made it easier for the Germans to borrow money from American banks. Sullivan & Cromwell floated the first American bonds issued by the giant German steelmaker and arms manufacturer Krupp A.G., extended I.G. Farben’s global reach, and fought successfully to block Canada’s effort to restrict the export of steel to German arms makers. According to one history, the firm “represented several provincial governments, some large industrial combines, a number of big American companies with interests in the Reich, and some rich individuals.” By another account it “thrived on its cartels and collusion with the new Nazi regime.” The columnist Drew Pearson gleefully listed the German clients of Sullivan & Cromwell who had contributed money to the Nazis, and described Foster as chief agent for “the banking circles that rescued Adolf Hitler from the financial depths and set up his Nazi party as a going concern.”
Although the relationship between Foster and Schacht began well and thrived for years, it ended badly. Schacht contributed decisively to German rearmament and publicly urged Jews to “realize that their influence in Germany has disappeared for all time.” Although he later broke with Hitler and left the government, he would be tried at Nuremberg for “crimes against peace.” He was acquitted, but the chief American prosecutor, Robert Jackson, called him “the facade of starched responsibility, who in the early days provided the window dressing, the bait for the hesitant.” He baited no one more successfully than Foster.
During the mid-1930s, through a series of currency maneuvers, discounted buybacks, and other forms of financial warfare, Germany effectively defaulted on its debts to American investors. Foster represented the investors in unsuccessful appeals to Germany, many of them addressed to his old friend Schacht. Clients who had followed Sullivan & Cromwell’s advice to buy German bonds lost fortunes. That advice, according to one study, “cost Americans a billion dollars because Schacht seduced Dulles into supporting Germany for far too long.’ . . . .
. . . . Foster had clear financial reasons to collaborate with the Nazi regime, and his ideological reason–Hitler was fiercely anti-Bolshevik–was equally compelling. In later years, scholars would ask about his actions in the world. Did he do it out of a desire to protect economic privilege, or out of anti-Communist fervor? The best answer may be that to him there was no difference. In his mind defending multinational business and fighting Bolshevism were the same thing.
Since 1933, all letters written from the German offices of Sullivan & Cromwell had ended, as required by German regulations, with the salutation Heil Hitler! That did not disturb Foster. He churned out magazine and newspaper articles asserting that the “dynamic” countries of the world–Germany, Italy, and Japan–“feel within themselves potentialities which are suppressed,” and that Hitler’s semi-secret rearmament project simply showed that “Germany, by unilateral action, has now taken back her freedom of action.” . . . .
15. Foster Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curious presence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the outbreak of the Korean War, his prescient foreshadowing of the conflict just before the North Korean invasion and the role of these events in shaping the post World War II global economic and political landscapes may well have been designed to help jumpstart the Japanese and German economies.
Those economies, the cartels that dominated them and the Dulles brothers Cold War strategic outlook are dominant factors in the deep politics underlying the life, and death, of Park Won-soon.
. . . . A substantial infusion of money into this new Federal Republic economy resulted from the Korean War in 1950. The United States was not geared to supplying all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pentagon placed huge orders in West Germany and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of booming good times. . . .
16. The Japanese Prime Minister saw the Korean War as “a gift from the gods.”
. . . . As a precaution, the great zaibatsu did change their names for a while. Mitsubishi Bank temporarily became Chiyoda Bank, Yasuda Bank became Fuji Bank, and so on. (The boom brought about by the Korean War, 1950–1953, quickly returned them to profitability, and made it possible to resurface their carefully hidden assets without attracting attention. Prime Minister Yoshida called the Korean War “a gift from the gods.”) . . . .
17. Karumakar Gupta of the University of London has produced research indicating that the Korean War was actually precipitated by a South Korean attack on the North.
. . . . In the early morning hours of June 25, 1950, South Korea’s Office of Public Information reported a South Korean military attack on the border city of Haeju, which North Korea confirmed but South Korea later retracted.
A detailed study by historian Karunakar Gupta of the University of London found that South Korean government claims that their attack on Haeju had occurred much later were effectively impossible and that a South Korean attack likely did occur to precipitate the war. . .
https://thethaiger.com/coronavirus/south-korean-cult-leader-arrested-for-hiding-covid-19-data-embezzlement
South Korean cult leader arrested for hiding Covid-19 data, embezzlement | The Thaiger
Authorities in South Korea this morning arrested the founder of a secretive Christian sect at the centre of the country’s largest outbreak of Covid-19 infections for allegedly concealing crucial data from contact-tracers, and other offences. Police nabbed Lee Man-hee, the powerful head of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which is linked to more than 5,200 coronavirus infections, or about 36% of South Korea’s total cases.
Prosecutors say the 89 year old conspired with sect leaders in February to withhold information from authorities during the peak of the outbreak, among his more than 200,000 followers. Lee, who describes the virus as the “devil’s deed” to stop the sect’s growth, allegedly hid details on members and their meeting places as authorities tried to trace infection routes, Yonhap news agency reports. He’s also suspected of embezzling about 5.6 billion won (US$4.7 million) in church funds, which he allegedly used to build a retreat.
The sect released a statement saying Lee was concerned about government demands for members’ personal information but never tried to hide anything.
Lee was arrested immediately after a court in Suwon District, south of Seoul, approved the warrant.
Check out how Donald Trump spent the 9/11 20th Anniversary: giving a speech at a Unification Church event. The nearly 10-minute long virtual address for the event — a virtual event for everyone — is available on YouTube. And while there’s plenty of disturbing content in the speech filled with praise for the cult, perhaps the most disturbing part of this speech is how much is sounds like a campaign speech touting Trump’s accomplishments on the Korean Peninsula as president. In other words, this was the latest hint of Trump 2024 run.
But Trump wasn’t the only 2024 GOP hopeful to speak at the event. Newt Gingrich also spoke at the event. And as we’ll see, this was merely the latest of a number of Unification Church “Rally of Hope” events being held this year. It’s all part of a new Think Tank 2022 project launched by the Unification Church earlier this year. The 9/11 event was technically the inauguration of the “THINK TANK 2022 Asia-Pacific Secretariat”. As we’re going to see in the second article excerpt below, Think Tank 2022 was formally launched at a May “Rally of Hope” event attended by Gingrich, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and even a son of Jerry Falwell. Pence also attended an earlier Rally of Hope event in March. He clearly wants the Unification Church’s support for 2024.
As we’re going to also see, part of what makes the appearances by figures like Pompeo and Pence at events like these is how the Unification Church is being increasingly cultish in recent years, as amazing as that is. And cultish in exactly the kinds of ways one would expect to enrage the Evangelical Christian base that Pompeo and Pence rely. For example, in 2017, Michael Jenkins quoted Ms Moon as saying that Christianity failed and, “The Christian era has ended.” Jenkins is the president of the Universal Peace Federation, which hosted the Rally for Hope and created Think Tank 2022. Yes, the president of the group behind this entire Think Tank 2022 scheme let the world know that Ms Moon declared Christianity failed and dead just four short years ago.
So the Unification Church is already carrying out what could be interpreted as the informal opening of the GOP 2024 presidential primary. An informal primary defined by acts of fealty delivered to a powerful secretive cult with ambitions of global domination. Acts of fealty done to curry that cult’s favor for the purpose of obtaining more power. An anti-Christian cult that seems to stand in opposition to everything these politicians profess to stand for and yet also seems to more or less resonate with their power-at-all-costs true moral character. So in that sense this is actually a very thematically fitting informal opening to the GOP presidential primary:
“Steve Hassan, a former member of the movement and author of The Cult of Trump, said the former president’s appearance is “pretty outrageous, even for Trump”.”
Attending an event like this is pretty outrageous, even for Trump. That’s how awful and dangerous this cult is. And Trump didn’t just attend the event. He was gushing with praise for the Unification Church and praise for its goals. It was essentially a ringing endorsing of the Unification Church agenda merged with a Trump foreign policy stump speech:
But this event wasn’t a celebration of Trump. It was a celebration of the Moons (now just Ms Moon) — the “True Parents” of humanity and — and their agenda to unify the world under the Unification Church. But more specifically, it was the latest “Think Tank 2022” event, following the announcement of the formation of Think Tank 2022 at a “Rally of Hope” event back in April and the formal launch of the think tank at another Rally of Hope event in May. As the church described in their PR releases about the 9/11 event, this was the inauguration of the “THINK TANK 2022 Asia-Pacific Secretariat”, so this event was basically the formal beginning of the work of this mysterious new Unification Church project:
And Trump is far from the only prominent Republican speaking at these events. The Unification Church has been getting a Who’s Who of GOP luminaries this year alone:
Finally, recall how Steve Bannon spoke at the October 2020 event by Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon’s Unification Church offshoot group, where Moon pledged a ‘1776 Take Two’ if Joe Biden won and implemented gun control laws. It’s a reminder that one of the reasons these figures have an interest in courting the support of these groups is for their eventual support during any upcoming violent insurrections and/or civil wars:
And now here’s a Mother Jones about the May “Rally of Hope” event where the Think Tank 2022 project was launch. Donald Trump wasn’t at this particular event, but Newt Gingrich was there, along with Mike Pomeo, Mike Pence, Mark Esper, and Jonathan Falwell. An event hosted by the Universal Peace Federation, led by Michael Jenkins, a key figure in the Unification movement. And it was just four short years ago when Jenkins quoted “Mother” Hak Ja Han Moon as saying Christianity failed and the movement was in the process of replacing Christianity. So while the state goal of Think Thank 2022 is the unification of the Korean Peninsula, the unstated goals of this movement include replacing Christianity. That figures like Pence and Pompeo feel compelled to publicly show their fealty to a group like this is a demonstration of just how powerful this movement really is in DC. This is a cult that will not be ignored:
“The event—called the “Rally of Hope”—was hosted by Hak Ja Han Moon, the head of the Unification Church (whose members consider her and her late husband, Sun Myung Moon, the messiahs), and sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation, a group co-founded by the Moons in 2005 and affiliated with the Unification Church (which now refers to itself as the Unification movement). According to the UPF, the gathering, put on before a socially distanced audience and supposedly streamed to 1 million people in 194 nations, was held to launch a project called Think Tank 2022, which aims to reunify the Korean Peninsula.”
The May 8 “Rally of Hope” event was held with a specific goal: launching the Think Tank 2022 project, which claims to have the goal of reunifying the Korean Peninsula. How that’s going to happen remains a mystery:
But while it was unclear how Think Tank 2022 would go about unifying the Korean Peninsula, it was abundantly clear the group had plenty of will and eager right-wing supporters. Mike Pence was at his second Rally of Hope event this year, having spoken at another one in March. Pompeo and Gingrich were also there. And then there was former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and even the son of Jerry Falwell. Along with former dictator of Cambodia Hun Sen and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. It was quite the virtual mixer:
How much are these figures being paid to speak at such an event? Are they being paid at all, or is this an audience they want to court free of charge? The answer isn’t obvious when you’re talking about a group this politically toxic but also this politically powerful. Having good relations with the Unification Church is a prerequisite if you’re going to get the GOP nomination in 2024. The fact that Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and all these other self-professed super-Christians are speaking at events held by a group has declared Christianity dead and openly plans are effectively replacing Christianity is a testament to the group’s genuine influence. These virtual events, and the gross sycophantic appearances of all these political figures, are demonstrations of very real power:
Which Republican hopefuls will end up demonstrating their fealty at the next “Rally of Hope”? Well Trump make a second appearance? Will Gingrich and Pence a third appearance? How about more evangelical leaders like Jonathan Falwell? Folks like Falwell are probably going to want to have a voice wit the group that’s going to replace Christianity, after all.
But given that we have this convergence of the Trumpified-GOP and Evangelical Christian leaders with an anti-Christian cult that’s intent on replacing Christianity, it’s also keeping in mind that this suggests there’s an opening for new divine figures in the yet-to-be-made Christianity replacement. Recall how one of the more disturbing patterns of cultish behavior we’ve seen during the Trump era of the GOP is how Evangelical leaders have routinely been implying that Trump himself is a divinely inspired figure, like King Cyrus in the Bible. So we have to ask: are figures like Trump, Pompeo, and Pence jockeying for a position in the ‘New Unified Christianity’ neo-Bible? It’s one of the truly unsettling questions we’re forced to ask with these stories...along with questions about what particular type of ‘End Times’ scenario they’re planning on carrying out for the big show before the new religion’s final roll out.
It could have gone worse, as far as abortive coups go. At least no one died. It’s one of the few positive things one can say about now-failed coup attempt by South Korean President Yoon. Pretty much everyone agrees by now that this was the act of a desperate wannabe-petty tyrant.
Or almost everyone. As we’re going to see, there’s one very notable group of observers who have been very hesitant to spin this as anything other than a victory for South Korean democracy thanks to Yoon’s decision to ‘to the right thing’ and call off the coup.: the Korea-focused DC think tank establishment, where one think tank after another either provided some sort of positive spin or had no comment at all on the matter. And as the following article describes, it’s a hesitancy to criticize Yoon rooted in the fact that, while Yoon has been remarkably unpopular with the South Korean public, he’s acquired a number of huge fans in DC. Why the DC fan club? Because it was Yoon has has managed to smooth over relations with Japan, opening the way for a historic anti-China trilateral security agreement between the US, South Korea, and Japan.
As we’re also going to see, part of the reason Yoon was so unpopular in the first place before initiating the coup — with polls putting his approval ratings in the 20s — was precisely because of the concessions Yoon made to Japan in order to make this trilateral security arrangement a possibility. Nationally humiliating concessions on the decades-long dispute dispute between South Korea and Japan over the forced labor abuses during Japan’s period as a colonial power. Yes, according to the agreement Yoon’s government reached worth Japan back in March of 2023, the forced labor victims would indeed get compensation, but not from Japan. Instead, a fund would be established from donations made by South Korean civilian donations. There was also hope that South Korean and Japanese firms that benefited from the forced labor would also voluntarily donate to the fund. But it would be completely up to them. Yoon’s popularity plummeted following the public backlash over the deal. But he was very popular in DC.
So did any Japanese companies end up donating to the fund? It doesn’t sound like. At least that’s what we can infer from a report from May of this year when the head of the fund warned that it was “at a crossroads” due to a lack of funding, while expressing hope that Japanese firms would end up contributing. As they put it, “The solution (of compensating through the foundation) would gain the support from the South Korean public only if Japanese businesses participate in.”
That’s all part of the context of Yoon’s disastrous coup attempt. He had spent much of his term acting like a pawn of the US and Japan and we deeply unpopular as a result. It’s also part of the context of Yoon’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric. Rhetoric that the US was more than happy to ignore as long as Yoon was able to deliver on these security arrangements. In fact, in an August 2023 speech given days before a trip to Camp David, Yoon warned how the “forces of communist totalitarianism have always disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates, or progressive activists while engaging in despicable and unethical tactics and false propaganda.” Very similar rhetoric was used by Yoon during his declaration of martial law. So for all the loud sighs of relief heard from diplomats and capitols around the world over how things could have gone so much worse for South Korea’s still-young democracy, keep in mind that Yoon had been building towards this moment for over a year, in part as a price to be paid for the creation of this new anti-China trilateral agreement the US foreign policy establishment desperately wants:
“But the response from key figures and institutions in Washington’s Korea policy elite has been strikingly muted. Prominent D.C. think tanks with close ties to the South Korean government offered measured critiques couched in praise for the ROK’s democratic resilience, revealing a troubling reluctance to condemn authoritarian actions by a key U.S. ally.”
It’s not a surprise. But it is notable: DC’s key think tanks focused on the Korean peninsula were palpably hesitant in delivering any sort of real criticism of Yoon’s coup attempt. Instead, it was all spun by focusing on how Yoon ‘did the right thing’ by eventually calling the coup off after it failed. And as observers note, beyond the fact that the many of these think-tanks accept money for the South Korean government, it was Yoon’s commitment to a rapprochement with Japan that appears to have solidified much of the DC establishment’s desire to not be too critical of this failed coup. Despite Yoon having approval ratings in the 20s and being widely seen by the South Korean public as a clown:
And that apparent detachment between the Korean-focused DC think tank establishment and the people of South Korea over a desire to support a South Korean president willing to ‘play nice’ with Japan, brings us to the following grim assessment about what was at stake with this coup attempt. Because for all of Yoon’s rhetoric about deepening strategic alliances with the US and Japan to oppose North Korea, there is a much larger target in mind: China. A strategic trilateral anti-China alliance that was only achieved after the Yoon government basically capitulated entirely on the long-standing dispute of reparation payments to South Korea’s forced labourers during Japan’s occupation.
And as the piece also notes, it’s not like Yoon’s coup attempt was a surprise given the fact that he’s be calling his political opponents secret agents of North Korea for over a year now. In fact, in an August 2023 speech, Yoon warned how the “forces of communist totalitarianism have always disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates, or progressive activists while engaging in despicable and unethical tactics and false propaganda.” It was a speech given just days before a trip to Camp David. And the same claims of “anti-state elements” and North Korea sympathizers were made as Yoon declared martial law:
“Yoon—a former prosecutor general—became president in 2022 after a razor-thin victory over liberal candidate Lee Jae Myung. His administration has since been plagued by numerous scandals and accusations of corruption, some involving his wife, Kim Keon Hee. Yoon already faced a hostile legislature, but after an electoral rebuke this year in which the opposition gained even more seats, Yoon especially struggled to enact policy. Indeed, the trigger for the coup was the National Assembly’s cutting his preferred budget and planning to impeach the head of the state audit agency and prosecutors who declined to indict the first lady. Yoon is extremely unpopular in South Korea, and has been for much of his presidency. For context, a recent news article reported that Yoon’s approval rating had risen for the second consecutive week—which sounds like good news, until you realize that it rose to a mere 25.7 percent. His coup attempt failed in part because he lacks popular support.”
It’s not hard to see why President Yoon was having a difficult time. He was a president who won with a razor-thin majority and went on to become deeply unpopular and faced with an opposition-controlled parliament. And then the head of his state audit agency faced an impeachment threat over their decision to not indict the first lady over a luxury handbag scandal. It’s not hard to see why Yoon was frustrated. But going on to cast his opposition as “forces of communist totalitarianism” is much harder to understand. And yet, as we can see, Yoon had spent over a year doing just that, casting his opponents as North Korean sympathizers just days before an August 2023 trip to Camp David. The coup attempt was a surprise, but it wasn’t a shocking surprise. Yoon has been hinting at his authoritarian tendencies for a while:
But then we get to the gross ‘realpolitik’ angle to this story: while Yoon has been hinting at his authoritarianism for over a year now, you wouldn’t know it by listening to the US establishment, which has been hammering out a trilateral security agreement between South Korea and Japan. A trilateral agreement that is effectively an anti-China treaty. But that wasn’t the only disturbing part of this agreement. There’s also the fact that the agreement only happened because the Yoon government was willing to resolve the long-standing dispute between South Korea and Japan over the forced labor abuses during Japan’s period as a colonial power. A resolution that entailed paying the South Korean victims from funds raised voluntarily in South Korea. It was basically capitulation by South Korea on the issue. But highly strategic capitulation when it comes to forming these trilateral alliances. The US couldn’t have plausibly realized its sought after anti-China trilateral security agreement were it not for Yoon’s shady government:
And as the following Reuters piece from March of 2023 describes, that agreement between Japan and South Korea over the reparations for the force laborers wasn’t just a complete victory for Japan — requiring no payments from Japan or any Japanese companies — but a national humiliation too. And, obviously, deeply unpopular with the South Korean public, but a decision Yoon made anyway to facilitate the creation of this strategic trilateral anti-China alliance:
“The plan reflects conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol’s push to mend frayed ties with Japan and solidify security cooperation among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington to better cope with North Korea’s nuclear threats. President Joe Biden quickly hailed it as “a groundbreaking new chapter” of cooperation between two of the United States’ closest allies.”
It was “a groundbreaking new chapter” of cooperation between two of the United States’ closest allies. That’s how President Biden framed the historic agreement back in March of 2023. An agreement that the lawyers for the plaintiffs called an “absolute win by Japan, which insists it cannot spend 1 yen” on forced laborers, and South Korea’s political opposition characterized as “a humiliating diplomacy” toward Japan. The US and Japanese governments clearly loved this agreement. The South Korean public, not so much:
And it’s not hard to see why this agreement was so condemned in South Korea: it literally demanded zero in compensation from Japan. Instead, voluntary donations were hoped for and South Korean companies were expected to donate the rest. It’s hard to argue with the plaintiff’s lawyers. Japan absolutely won in this decades-long dispute in a manner that utterly humiliated South Korea:
So did any Japanese companies make any voluntary donations to the fund? It doesn’t appear so. At least that was the status as of May of this year, when the fund had to announce it was short of funds, at a crossroads, and hopeful that some Japanese firms might decide to chip in:
“Due to the 12 billion won shortfall, compensation payment by the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan is now “at a crossroads,” Shim said.”
Well, it looks like the request for voluntary Japanese corporate contributions to the victims’ fund was more a fanciful wish:
Will we see Japanese firms finally making some voluntary contributions now that the Japan-friendly president of South Korea appears to be on the verge of getting removed from office? Time will tell. Either way, it’s going to be very interesting to see if this trilateral security arrangement can be sustained going forward. A widely unpopular compensation agreement reached by a soon-to-be-impeached wildly unpopular president isn’t exactly a stable foundation.
@Pterrafractyl–
Great work, as always!
Best,
Dave
It’s been roughly just a week after South Korea’s abortive coup, with investigations in full swing. Investigations that are already revealing just how much worse this situation could have been. In particular, plans for provocations against North Korea in recent months that appear to have been part of a larger plot to use some sort of military crisis with North Korea as the pretext for martial law. Those are the revelations recently publicly revealed by opposition Democratic Party lawmakers in recent days, with the now-former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun playing a leading role in formulating the provocations according to the allegations of these opposition lawmakers.
First, according to Democratic Party lawmaker Park Beom-kye, a military whistleblower told him about an apparent provocation back in October intended to serve as the pretext for a declaration of martial law: a series of unmanned drones sent to Pyongyang back in October on the orders of former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun. The idea appeared to be that the united defense plans executed as part of the military response could include a simultaneous declaration of martial law. Plans that appear in a reference document created back in November under orders from now-former head of Defense Counterintelligence Command, Yeo In-hyeong. Yeo is also described as a high school classmate of Kim Yong-hyun. It sounds like Kim had Yeo plan the specifics of the operation. And as we’re going to see, North Korea did indeed accuse South Korea of multiple unmanned drone flights in Pyongyang back in October that included leaflet drops. The North threatened a “merciless offensive” if the flights continued.
Beyond that, Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Ki-heon claimed to have received information about orders given by Kim Yong-hyun just a week before the declaration of martial law that seemed intended to provoke such a military crisis. Orders given to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairperson Adm. Kim Myung-soo to “fire warning shots before striking launch sites of North Korea’s trash-filled balloons” if any such balloons were seen floating in South Korean skies. This was in reference to the thousands of trash balloon North Korea has launched into South Korea this year.
Remarkably, while the Joint Chiefs of Staff has denied such an order was issued by Kim Yong-hyun, it did admit that discussions took place, with Kim Yong-hyun expressing a desire to strike the balloon launch sights but Kim Myung-soo warning that such a strike would be inconsistent with existing policy that only allows for such a strike in response to tangible harms. In other words, trash balloons weren’t actually a reason to start a war.
So we have two provocation plans already revealed, one of which — the unmanned drones — was actually put into action. But there’s an addition new twist to this investigation: Kim Yong-hyun reportedly attempted suicide while in custody. He is now described as being in stable condition.
Was this a suicide attempt rooted in shame? Or fear or something much worse coming to light? That remains to be seen, but it’s worth noting that the first impeachment vote against President Yoon has already failed after all but three members of his party boycotted the vote. Yoon party members explained how they secured Yoon’s agreement to stay out of state affairs and resign in an orderly manner in exchange for not supporting his impeachment. The opposition has likened the agreement to a “second coup”. So at the same time opposition members are publicly revealing evidence of a much larger plot to embroil South Korea in a military conflict as a pretext for martial law, Yoon’s party is circling the wagons to protect him. Which is, potentially, a very grim context for the reports of former Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun suicide attempt while in custody:
“The latest developments come as the main liberal opposition Democratic Party is preparing to make a second bid to impeach Yoon over his brief declaration of martial law, which has plunged Asia’s fourth-largest economy into its biggest political crisis in decades.”
Well, round one of impeaching President Yoon Suk-yeol was a bust after all but three of Yoon’s party boycotted the vote. Yoon is definitely leaving office soon. But will he actually be impeached? That remains to be seen:
And at the same time Yoon is surviving impeachment votes, we’re learning about how is former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun and the heads of the national and Seoul metropolitan police agencies were not only arrested, but Kim apparently attempted to commit suicide while in custody:
Again, was this suicide attempt motivated by shame? Or a desire to cover up something even worse? Either way, it’s hard not to suspect it had something to do with the schemes to provoke a military conflict with North Korea that former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun is now accused of orchestrating. Because based on this new evidence, it would appear that the Yoon government’s martial law plans included at least two plans for provocations intended to spark some sort of military crisis with North Korea, with Kim orchestrating the scheme. But North Korea didn’t take the bait in one case and cooler heads prevailed in the other:
“Democratic Party lawmaker Park Beom-kye revealed Monday that he received a tip-off from a military whistleblower that the unmanned drones North Korea claimed Seoul had sent to Pyongyang in October were indeed sent on orders of the South Korean military — more specifically, on the orders of the former defense minister.”
A drone-based provocation with North Korea conducted back in October on the order of former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun. Those were the claims of this whistleblower. Claims that, if they pan out, suggest the Yoon government’s plans for martial law included the sparking of a conflict with North Korea. Plans seemingly described in a document issue back in November on the orders of yet another high school classmate of the former head of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, Yeo In-hyeong, who is also a high school classmate of Kim. The Yoon government appears to have convinced itself that a declaration of martial law could be executive simultaneously with the military response to a new crisis with North Korea. In other words, has North Korea taken the bait with the unmanned drones, Yoon’s coup plans may have succeeded:
But then we get to this very disturbing additional revelation by a second lawmaker, who claimed to have information on orders given by Kim Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairperson Adm. Kim Myung-soo to “fire warning shots before striking launch sites of North Korea’s trash-filled balloons” if any such balloons were seen floating in South Korean skies. And while the Joint Chiefs of Staff denied such an order was given, it did admit that Kim Yong-hyun expressed a desire for those strikes but Kim Myung-soo countered that such strikes violated existing policies that such strikes can only follow tangible harm:
And to get an idea of just how provocative those unmanned drone flights were back in October, here’s a report from back in October about those drone flights. According to North Korea, the drones flew over Pyongyang at least three times that month, dropping leaflets, threatening a “merciless offensive” if such flights continued. So if drones dropping leaflets was enough to trigger the threat of a merciless offensive, imagine what strikes on trash balloon launch sites would have done:
“A North Korean spokesperson warned that the country would respond with “merciless offensive” if such a case recurs, KCNA said.”
These unmanned drones were clearly provocative. At least provocative enough to trigger threats of a “merciless offensive”. And yes, as we saw, no “merciless offensive” followed. Instead, as we saw, it was just a month later, a week before the coup attempt, when Kim Yong-hyun was apparently pushing for military strikes on trash balloon launch sites. The kind of move basically guaranteed to illicit some sort of military response.
That’s all part of the grim context of this seemingly short-lived coup plot. The coup itself may have lasted less than a day. The plot itself is much older and, the more we learn, far more scandalous.
@Pterrafractyl–
Brilliant!
Dave Emory