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FTR#1371 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1372 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­i­al not con­tained in the orig­i­nal pro­grams.

Intro­duc­tion: Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of the fright­en­ing events occur­ring in Korea, these pro­grams detail the attempts by South Kore­an pres­i­dent Yoon to estab­lish mar­tial law, includ­ing appar­ent false flag attacks on South Kore­an politi­cians, as well as Amer­i­can instal­la­tions and per­son­nel.

Impor­tant dis­cus­sion con­cerns the appar­ent launch­ing of hos­til­i­ties in the Kore­an War by South Korea, there­by lur­ing the North into a well-laid trap. Of para­mount impor­tance in this con­text is the fact that Gen­er­al Kim Suk-won (who fought for Japan dur­ing World War II) was in charge off the bor­der forces for Syn­g­man Rhee’s forces:

• . . . . He [John Gun­ther] says that “two impor­tant mem­bers of the occu­pa­tion” went along on the excur­sion to Nikko and that “just before lunch” one of them “was called unex­pect­ed­ly to the tele­phone.” He came back and whis­pered, ‘A big sto­ry has just bro­ken. South Korea has attacked North Korea.’” . . . .
• . . . . 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.
• On June 25, 1950, South Kore­an troops had pro­voked the Kore­an War by cross­ing into the DPRK at sev­er­al points along the 38th par­al­lel and intrud­ing 1 to 2 kilo­me­ters into the DPRK.

Of para­mount impor­tance is John Fos­ter Dulles’ use of the Kore­an War to resus­ci­tate the Axis pow­ers of WWII in order to use them in the Cold War”: . . . . Dulles feared that peace would fatal­ly inter­fere with the plan to rebuild the old Axis pow­ers for a new anti-Sovi­et cru­sade. . . .”

Key Ele­ments of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Dis­cus­sion of Yoon’s pres­i­den­tial body­guard (formed by Japan­ese col­lab­o­ra­tor Park Chung-Hee) helped block his arrest; The “Stop the Steal/MAGA” res­o­nance between the Trump forces in the U.S. and Yoon’s back­ers in Korea; The South Kore­an intel­li­gence service’s back­ing of the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agency’s alle­ga­tion that North Kore­an sol­diers were fight­ing in Kursk; Detailed analy­sis from the Moon of Alaba­ma blog cast­ing seri­ous doubt on the verac­i­ty of the Ukrainian/South Korean/U.S. alle­ga­tion about North Kore­an sol­diers fight­ing in Rus­sia; Indi­ca­tions that it was South Korea that attacked the North first, there­by lur­ing the North into a strate­gic trap; Review of Gen­er­al Kim Suk-Won’s role as com­man­der of bor­der forces for Syn­g­man Rhee; Dis­cus­sion of the crit­i­cal strate­gic gains the Kore­an War pro­vid­ed to the West; Dis­cus­sion of the cor­ner­ing of the soy­bean mar­ket by polit­i­cal allies of Chi­ang Kai-shek on the eve of out­break of the war; The revival of the UN Com­mand struc­ture and its augur­ing of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the resump­tion of hos­til­i­ties; Review of mate­r­i­al from FTR#1142; Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty’s recount­ing of a deci­sion to launch hos­til­i­ties against Com­mu­nist nations arrived at pur­suant to the Cairo Con­fer­ence of 1943; Prouty’s recount­ing of the Oki­nawa har­bor master’s state­ment that the mil­i­tary equip­ment stock­piled on that island in prepa­ra­tion for the inva­sion of Japan would be divid­ed between Korea and Indochi­na (direct­ly fore­shad­ow­ing the wars that would be fought there in 1950 and 1965; The U.S.-backed assas­si­na­tion of Kore­an patri­ot Kim Koo, who advo­cat­ed for a reuni­fi­ca­tion of Korea; The meet­ing of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Kore­an Yakuza leader Machii Hisayu­ki in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of the war; The use of yakuza and Japan­ese vet­er­ans of WWII as sol­diers fight­ing in South Kore­an uni­forms dur­ing the war; The Japan­ese polit­i­cal view that the Kore­an War was “a gift from the gods.”

1a.“How Yoon Planned to Set South Korea on The Path to Mil­i­tary Dic­ta­tor­ship” by Gre­go­ry Elich; Counterpunch.org; 1/03/2025.

Since South Kore­an Pres­i­dent Yoon Suk Yeol’s failed attempt to impose mar­tial law on Decem­ber 3, a steady stream of rev­e­la­tions has emerged from reporters and inves­ti­ga­tors, paint­ing an increas­ing­ly dis­turb­ing pic­ture of events. Plans drawn up by Yoon’s co-con­spir­a­tors includ­ed a shock­ing lev­el of bru­tal­i­ty and the promise of repres­sion on a mass scale. His admin­is­tra­tion even made efforts to pro­voke a con­flict with North Korea to bol­ster the case for mar­tial rule. Although many West­ern reports framed the end of mar­tial law as a tri­umph of democ­ra­cy, South Korea is not out of dan­ger yet. The extreme right active­ly oppos­es Yoon’s impeach­ment, and it remains to be seen if the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court will con­firm Yoon’s impeach­ment.

Back­ground to Mar­tial Law

Although the mar­tial law dec­la­ra­tion shocked many, signs of Yoon’s author­i­tar­i­an nature were appar­ent long before. There was his propen­si­ty for mak­ing blan­ket con­dem­na­tions of crit­ics as “anti-state forces,” in essence con­flat­ing oppo­si­tion to his right-wing poli­cies with trea­son. That atti­tude was often open­ly expressed, as in a speech Yoon deliv­ered on Nation­al Lib­er­a­tion Day in 2023, brand­ing the lib­er­al and pro­gres­sive oppo­si­tion as “anti-state forces that blind­ly fol­low com­mu­nist total­i­tar­i­an­ism, dis­tort pub­lic opin­ion, and dis­rupt the soci­ety through manip­u­la­tive pro­pa­gan­da.” In Yoon’s Manichean view­point, pit­ted against his far-right poli­cies was a size­able seg­ment of Kore­an soci­ety that lacked legit­i­ma­cy. “The forces of com­mu­nist total­i­tar­i­an­ism,” he con­tin­ued in delu­sion­al mode, “have always dis­guised them­selves as democ­ra­cy activists, human rights advo­cates, or pro­gres­sive activists while engag­ing in despi­ca­ble and uneth­i­cal tac­tics and false pro­pa­gan­da. We must nev­er suc­cumb to the forces of com­mu­nist total­i­tar­i­an­ism.”

Yoon’s repres­sive ten­den­cies often came to the fore more direct­ly. Such was the case on May 31, 2023, when police attacked a union ral­ly and then searched a con­struc­tion union head­quar­ters sev­er­al days lat­er, seiz­ing elec­tron­ic equip­ment and doc­u­ments. In anoth­er exam­ple, a year ago, Nation­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice (NIS) agents, backed by more than a thou­sand riot police, raid­ed the head­quar­ters of the Kore­an Con­fed­er­a­tion of Trade Unions (KCTU) and four­teen oth­er union offices and res­i­dences. Based on the trumped-up charge that union offi­cials were tak­ing orders from North Korea, the raid net­ted three union­ists who were arrest­ed and lat­er con­vict­ed to mul­ti-year prison sen­tences. It is worth recall­ing that the NIS has a his­to­ry of fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence against activists, most famous­ly in its man­u­fac­tured ‘evi­dence’ that led to the forcible dis­so­lu­tion of the Uni­fied Pro­gres­sive Par­ty ten years ago.

Polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions also expe­ri­enced repres­sion, and last August, police raid­ed the office of the People’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and its mem­bers’ res­i­dences, and two lead­ers of Korea Sol­i­dar­i­ty were sen­tenced to prison terms for vio­lat­ing the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Act, which has often been used as a weapon over the years to smoth­er dis­sent.

Yoon has faced ris­ing labor unrest in response to his anti-labor poli­cies. His response has been to imple­ment a repres­sive pol­i­cy against the union move­ment, char­ac­ter­ized by a pat­tern of harass­ment. One of Yoon’s pri­ma­ry moti­va­tions for a mil­i­tary takeover was to deal a fatal blow to the union move­ment. He often rant­ed about the Kore­an Con­fed­er­a­tion of Trade Unions, a par­tic­u­lar­ly pas­sion­ate object of his hatred. At Yoon’s res­i­dence in August, he dis­cussed adopt­ing emer­gency mea­sures and spec­i­fied what that meant for the KCTU: “We have to take action against these peo­ple.”

Yoon obsessed over the April 10 leg­isla­tive elec­tion in South Korea, which hand­ed a land­slide vic­to­ry to the oppo­si­tion, wide­ly seen as a rebuke to him per­son­al­ly and his poli­cies. Social media was flood­ed with inac­cu­rateclaims of elec­toral fraud by his sup­port­ers. No doubt, Yoon found such claims a more accept­able expla­na­tion of elec­toral dis­as­ter than to look with­in him­self as the cause. Yoon began to cul­ti­vate rela­tion­ships with far-right YouTu­bers who fed his delu­sion, fir­ing his resent­ment and anger, and the sub­ject formed anoth­er main fac­tor moti­vat­ing his plan for a mil­i­tary takeover.

Plan­ning for Mil­i­tary Dic­ta­tor­ship

Mar­tial law had a long ges­ta­tion, the ori­gin of which pre­dat­ed the April 10 elec­tion. Yoon drove the process at every step, with the ear­li­est doc­u­ment­ed case of its expres­sion in Decem­ber 2023, when he remarked to mil­i­tary offi­cials, “The only way to solve dif­fi­cult social prob­lems is through emer­gency mea­sures.”

Seri­ous plan­ning got under­way in five-par­ty meet­ings led by Yoon that took place between June and Novem­ber and which were attend­ed by his key co-con­spir­a­tors. Rep­re­sent­ing the mil­i­tary were Gen­er­al Lee Jin-woo, com­man­der of the Cap­i­tal Defense Com­mand, and Spe­cial War­fare Com­man­der Kwak Jong-geun. Oth­ers includ­ed Kim Yong-hyun, who held the posi­tion of chief of the Pres­i­den­tial Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice at the time of the ini­tial meet­ing and lat­er on became defense min­is­ter. The final mem­ber of the team was Yeo In-hyung, chief of the Defense Intel­li­gence Com­mand. Yoon met with Yeo and Kim at least ten times to plan the oper­a­tion, end­ing in Novem­ber when they con­duct­ed a mar­tial law sim­u­la­tion.

At first, things did not go as smooth­ly as Yoon would have liked. Accord­ing to an inside mil­i­tary source, “The president’s com­mit­ment to mar­tial law has always been firm,” but Kim Yong-hyun was ini­tial­ly not very active­ly involved. By March 2024, though, Kim “had become a staunch believ­er in mar­tial law, while on the oth­er hand, Nation­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice Direc­tor Cho Tae-yong and [then Defense Min­is­ter] Shin Won-sik con­sis­tent­ly opposed it.” At din­ner one evening that month, Yoon, livid over his polit­i­cal frus­tra­tions, blurt­ed out, “We will have to impose mar­tial law soon.” Tak­en aback, Shin and Cho tried to dis­suade Yoon, with­out suc­cess. Emo­tions ran high, and after din­ner, Kim and Yeo joined Shin at his home, where they clashed over Yoon’s com­ment. Shin adamant­ly opposed mar­tial law, and he and Kim soon became embroiled in a heat­ed argu­ment, shout­ing at each oth­er until late into the night.

Some­thing had to be done about Shin, who, although a hawk, did not sup­port Yoon’s over­turn­ing of the con­sti­tu­tion­al order. A man with his atti­tude toward mar­tial law would not do. On August 12, Yoon nom­i­nat­ed the more sup­port­ive Kim Yong-hyun as his new min­is­ter of nation­al defense, which took effect in Sep­tem­ber. A firm believ­er in mar­tial law was need­ed in this posi­tion of author­i­ty over the mil­i­tary, and Kim was that man. In appoint­ing Kim, Yoon shunt­ed Shin to anoth­er posi­tion where he would not get in the way.

Plans had pro­gressed in Sep­tem­ber to the stage where elite agents from the Head­quar­ters Intel­li­gence Detach­ment (HID) began train­ing to car­ry out oper­a­tions under mar­tial law. The HID is a spe­cial war­fare unit that, in the event of war, has as its mis­sion infil­tra­tion into North Korea to assas­si­nate offi­cials and com­mit acts of sab­o­tage. Why this par­tic­u­lar skill set was con­sid­ered suit­able against a domes­tic civil­ian pop­u­la­tion is indica­tive of Yoon’s atti­tude toward demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion. HID agents assigned to mar­tial law oper­a­tions were cho­sen for their pro­fi­cien­cy in hand-to-hand com­bat. On the day Yoon declared mar­tial law, five of the HID agents deployed to Pangyo, on the out­skirts of Seoul, and the remain­ing 35 were assigned to var­i­ous loca­tions inside the cap­i­tal city.

By Novem­ber, the Defense Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Com­mand draft­ed high-lev­el plans for mar­tial law. Roh Sang-won, a for­mer intel­li­gence com­man­der wide­ly regard­ed as the archi­tect of Yoon’s mar­tial law insur­rec­tion, devised implemen­ta­tion plans. Roh brought an unsa­vory back­ground to the project beyond his intel­li­gence expe­ri­ence. Six years ago, he was dis­hon­or­ably dis­charged from the ser­vice after being sen­tenced to 18 months in prison for sex­u­al assault. Despite his civil­ian sta­tus, Roh was a key col­lab­o­ra­tor, appar­ent­ly due to his intel­li­gence expe­ri­ence and long­stand­ing friend­ship with Defense Min­is­ter Kim Yong-hyun.

In mid-Novem­ber, Roh instruct­ed Maj. Gen­er­al Moon Sang-ho, head of the Defense Intel­li­gence Com­mand, to pro­vide a list of 15 peo­ple skilled in covert oper­a­tions who would assist in a planned raid on the Nation­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. Moon select­ed agents for the mis­sion “who were real­ly good at North Kore­an oper­a­tions.” As the day of mar­tial law approached, plans became more detailed. On Decem­ber 1, Roh met with Moon and two mil­i­tary intel­li­gence colonels at a Lot­te­ria fast-food restau­rant, where they dis­cussed oper­a­tional plans sup­port­ing mar­tial law. Despite Roh’s civil­ian sta­tus, he gave the orders. Roh instruct­ed the oth­ers to seize con­trol of the elec­tion com­mis­sion “to secure evi­dence of elec­tion fraud.” It was uncon­ven­tion­al, to say the least, for a civil­ian to be in a mil­i­tary chain of com­mand, deliv­er­ing orders. How­ev­er, Roh’s tight rela­tion­ship with Defense Min­is­ter Kim Yong-hyun was well under­stood. Roh played upon that fac­tor in promis­ing future assis­tance in direct­ing pro­mo­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties to the two colonels if they coop­er­at­ed. How­ev­er, the instruc­tions that Defense Min­is­ter Kim had issued to Moon before­hand car­ried more weight: “Make it known that Roh Sang-won’s orders are my orders.”

Sev­er­al hours before Yoon declared mar­tial law on Decem­ber 3, a sec­ond meet­ing occurred at Lot­te­ria. This time, Koo Sam-hoe, com­man­der of the Sec­ond Armored Brigade, joined oth­ers in atten­dance. Under orders from Roh, Koo head­ed after­ward to an intel­li­gence com­mand cen­ter in Gyeong­gi Province to join HID agents on stand­by mode. Koo’s appar­ent role was con­nect­ed to his brigade being the clos­est armored unit to Seoul. Although no infor­ma­tion on the nature of his orders has been revealed yet, it should be not­ed that on the same day, Defense Min­is­ter Kim remarked, “The Nation­al Assem­bly is mess­ing around with the defense bud­get, so let’s smash it with tanks.” There are well-found­ed sus­pi­cions that the con­spir­a­tors antic­i­pat­ed that there would be large-scale demon­stra­tions against mar­tial law and that tanks were need­ed to put them down.

Mar­tial Law Goes into Effect

At about 10:25 PM on Decem­ber 3, Yoon began his speech pro­claim­ing mar­tial law. Sup­ple­ment­ing the speech, the mar­tial law decree pro­hib­it­ed all polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, strikes, and demon­stra­tions. It also stip­u­lat­ed that all acts that deny or attempt to over­throw mil­i­tary rule, which the doc­u­ment per­verse­ly termed “the free demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem,” would not be allowed. All media were to be placed under the con­trol of the Mar­tial Law Com­mand, with the warn­ing that vio­la­tors may be arrest­ed, detained, searched with­out a war­rant, and pun­ished. The decree was chill­ing­ly redo­lent of South Korea’s pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences under mar­tial law when peo­ple faced repres­sion on a mass scale, impris­on­ment, tor­ture, and exe­cu­tions.

The South Kore­an con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides for mar­tial law based on two exi­gen­cies – mil­i­tary neces­si­ty or nation­al emer­gency. Nei­ther applied in this case. But Yoon cal­cu­lat­ed that vio­lence could sub­sti­tute for legal­i­ty. Accord­ing to one esti­mate, Yoon unleashed at least 4,200 riot police and more than 1,700 mil­i­tary per­son­nel at a vari­ety of loca­tions as his insur­rec­tion unfold­ed. Anoth­er esti­mate puts the com­bined total at 4,749. Because the con­sti­tu­tion grants author­i­ty to the Nation­al Assem­bly to over­turn mar­tial law, it was Yoon’s pri­ma­ry tar­get. If Yoon could stop the Nation­al Assem­bly from reach­ing a quo­rum and tak­ing a vote, then he could make mar­tial law stick.

As soon as the news was broad­cast, out­raged cit­i­zens by the thou­sands raced to the Nation­al Assem­bly to con­front the army and police, buy­ing enough time for arriv­ing law­mak­ers to fight their way through the mil­i­tary block­ade and gain entry to the build­ing. Those inside the build­ing erect­ed bar­ri­cades at the doors and used fire extin­guish­ers to fend off sol­diers who had entered through win­dows.

Many of the sol­diers deployed to the Nation­al Assem­bly were informed before­hand that they were being sent to the bor­der area and instruct­ed to write a will and have blood drawn. Heli­copters trans­port­ing them to the scene delib­er­ate­ly adopt­ed com­plex flight pat­terns to dis­ori­ent the pas­sen­gers as to their des­ti­na­tion. How­ev­er, as soon as they arrived, it was imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent to the sol­diers that they had been mis­led. Sev­er­al sol­diers resist­ed orders to drag leg­is­la­tors out of the build­ing. One sol­dier point­ed out that his unit com­prised only 230 peo­ple and asked, “So how could we pos­si­bly drag them out?” The offi­cer in charge respond­ed by explain­ing, “Drag­ging out means sub­du­ing them with guns or spe­cial forces tech­niques to immo­bi­lize them and then drag­ging them out.”

Yoon’s motives were both strate­gic and per­son­al, and his ani­mus drove him to instruct the deputy direc­tor of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice to tar­get sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als that he par­tic­u­lar­ly loathed, includ­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty leader Lee Jae-myung, Nation­al Assem­bly Speak­er Woo Won-shik, and Han Dong-hoon, the leader of his rul­ing par­ty. “Take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to arrest them all, sort them all out, and give the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice the author­i­ty to con­duct counter-intel­li­gence inves­ti­ga­tions,” he urged. Addi­tion­al orders went out to the coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence arrest team to pri­or­i­tize appre­hend­ing those three indi­vid­u­als and trans­fer­ring them to a deten­tion facil­i­ty in Suwon, using hand­cuffs and shack­les. The per­son­al­iza­tion of Yoon’s mar­tial law took on such promi­nence that the office of the Defense Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Command’s arrest team had a white­board list­ing the names of four­teen peo­ple to be round­ed up.

As Yoon began to fear that his plan to block­ade the Nation­al Assem­bly was start­ing to unrav­el, his com­pound became a bee­hive of activ­i­ty. A flur­ry of calls went out, demand­ing that mar­tial law troops crush resis­tance. In one encrypt­ed call to Spe­cial War­fare Com­man­der Kwak, Yoon said he did not think the Assem­bly had a quo­rum yet and ordered him to break down the doors, go in, and drag out the peo­ple inside. Colonel Kim Hyun-tae of the Spe­cial War­fare Com­mand received a sim­i­lar call from Yoon, who told him that “there shouldn’t be more than 150 law­mak­ers in the cham­ber.” Defense Min­is­ter Kim Yong-hyun made fran­tic calls along the same lines, instruct­ing Colonel Kim to go in and drag out Assem­bly mem­bers before a quo­rum formed. He also urged Kwak to order his sol­diers to force their way in, fir­ing blanks and tasers. Under pres­sure from Kwak, com­man­ders at the scene dis­cussed those orders and the option of shut­ting off pow­er to the Nation­al Assem­bly, but many of them expressed doubts about the legal­i­ty of those orders.

Des­per­ate for more force­ful action, Yoon reached out to Lee Jin-woo, com­man­der of the Cap­i­tal Defense Com­mand, plead­ing, “Can’t four peo­ple go in and take them out, one by one?” Yoon soon called again. “Haven’t you gone in yet? What are you doing? Break down the door with a gun and drag them out.” Yoon bad­gered Nation­al Police Com­mis­sion­er Cho Ji-ho six times that night, demand­ing, “Chief Cho, arrest all the law­mak­ers try­ing to enter the Nation­al Assem­bly. It’s ille­gal. All the law­mak­ers are vio­lat­ing the procla­ma­tion. Arrest them.”

Mean­while, as soon as Yoon pro­claimed mar­tial law, ten Defense Intel­li­gence Com­mand sol­diers entered the Nation­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (NEC) head­quar­ters in Gwacheon. Around two hours lat­er, 110 mil­i­tary per­son­nel deployed around the build­ing, only depart­ing about fifty min­utes after the Nation­al Assem­bly vote. An addi­tion­al 130 troops head­ed to a posi­tion near the commission’s Elec­tion Train­ing Cen­ter in Suwon. Mar­tial law troops pho­tographed wire con­nec­tions to the servers and oth­er details in prepa­ra­tion for recon­nec­tion in a planned removal of servers to a mar­tial law-con­trolled instal­la­tion. How­ev­er, time ran out when the Nation­al Assem­bly vote cut short that assign­ment.

Jeong Seong-woo, chief of the Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence First Divi­sion, met with the Mil­i­tary Secu­ri­ty Office direc­tor, Cyber ​​Secu­ri­ty Office direc­tor, and Sci­en­tif­ic Inves­ti­ga­tion Office direc­tor to con­vey instruc­tions from the head of Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence, Yeo In-hyung. “The pros­e­cu­tion and the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice will come to the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion,” he informed them. “The impor­tant tasks will be entrust­ed to the pros­e­cu­tion, and we will pro­vide sup­port after­ward.” These instruc­tions strong­ly indi­cate that the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office, or well-placed offi­cials with­in, were com­plic­it in the mar­tial law con­spir­a­cy.

After Mar­tial Law Fails, Yoon Strives for a Sec­ond Mar­tial Law

At 1:01 AM on Decem­ber 4, hav­ing col­lect­ed a quo­rum, the 190 assem­bly mem­bers who had suc­cess­ful­ly made their way inside vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to reject Yoon’s mar­tial law. As spec­i­fied by South Korea’s mar­tial law act, once the Nation­al Assem­bly votes to lift a mar­tial law decree, the pres­i­dent must announce its ter­mi­na­tion “with­out delay.” Rather than fol­low that con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion, Yoon main­tained three and a half hours of pub­lic silence.

Yoon’s imme­di­ate reac­tion was to ignore the Nation­al Assembly’s deci­sion and forge ahead with plans to impose mar­tial law. After the vote, Yoon called Com­man­der Lee Jim-woo, telling him, “I can’t even con­firm that 190 peo­ple have come in… Even if it’s lift­ed, I can declare mar­tial law two or three times, so keep going.” For the first two hours, the Mar­tial Law Com­mand repeat­ed­ly con­tact­ed the admin­is­tra­tive office of the Supreme Court, demand­ing that it send a court clerk to the com­mand, pre­sum­ably to act as a liai­son offi­cer. Through this arrange­ment, the mil­i­tary hoped to exert con­trol over the judi­cia­ry. Doubt­ing the legit­i­ma­cy of mar­tial law, the Supreme Court dis­re­gard­ed the demand.

Half an hour after the Nation­al Assem­bly vote, Yoon sum­moned gen­er­als to meet with him in the mar­tial law sit­u­a­tion room at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A bus trans­port­ed 34 gen­er­als and high-rank­ing offi­cers to Yoon’s com­pound. Details of the meet­ing have not been made pub­lic. What is known is that not long after mar­tial law was vot­ed down, the mar­tial law com­mand ordered the 7th Air­borne Brigade in North Jeol­la Province and the 13th Air­borne Brigade in North Chungcheong Province to go into stand­by mode and pre­pare to advance on Seoul and rein­force troops sta­tioned there. The 11^th Air­borne Divi­sion in Jeol­lanam-do Province was also set to go, issu­ing bul­let­proof vests, hel­mets, and firearms to the unit and keep­ing vehi­cle engines run­ning, ready for imme­di­ate depar­ture.

Yoon also con­vened a coun­cil of min­is­ters meet­ing in a KakaoTalk group chat room, which may not have gone as he had hoped, as Yoon sub­se­quent­ly went on the air at around 4:30 AM to announce the lift­ing of mar­tial law. It was only then that air­borne troops were told to stand down. It is not pub­licly known what oth­er fac­tors may have con­tributed to Yoon’s tardy deci­sion to lift mar­tial law.

Yoon’s Plans for the First Days of Mar­tial Law

The Mar­tial Law Com­mand had pre­pared mul­ti­ple facil­i­ties to house pris­on­ers. One site, the B1 Bunker at the Cap­i­tal Defense Com­mand, locat­ed on the bor­der between Seoul and Gwacheon, can hold up to five hun­dred peo­ple. A sec­ond site, the psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare build­ing in Seoul, is not far from the Nation­al Assem­bly, and it is here where pris­on­ers were to be processed through the not-so-gen­tle hands of HID inter­roga­tors. These sites were intend­ed to han­dle high-pro­file pris­on­ers. It appears that ordi­nary civil­ians who were arrest­ed would be direct­ed into stan­dard pris­ons. At 1:01 AM on Decem­ber 4, as the Nation­al Assem­bly vot­ed down mar­tial law, a nation­wide request went out to pris­ons, ask­ing them to report on their capac­i­ty. Such a request would ordi­nar­i­ly only occur dur­ing reg­u­lar work­ing hours for prison staff, and the unusu­al tim­ing is high­ly sug­ges­tive that the mar­tial law oper­a­tion includ­ed plans for imme­di­ate mass incar­cer­a­tion.

Had Yoon pre­vailed, his troops stood poised to seize con­trol of the elec­tion com­mis­sion and its com­put­er servers, which were to be exam­ined for imag­ined evi­dence of elec­toral fraud. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty assem­bly­man Kim Byung-joo received infor­ma­tion from an inside source that intel­li­gence agents, sup­ple­ment­ed by HID sol­diers, planned to go to the Nation­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion head­quar­ters, “over­pow­er the depart­ment heads and thir­ty key staff mem­bers, bind their wrists and ankles with cable ties, cov­er their faces with masks, and bring them to the B1 bunker.” Elec­tion com­put­er servers were to be trans­ferred to the coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence agency.

A harsh­er fate than impris­on­ment await­ed elec­tion offi­cials after being abduct­ed by the mar­tial law arrest team. Spe­cif­ic equip­ment was need­ed to encour­age the desired answers from the pris­on­ers dur­ing inter­ro­ga­tion, includ­ing awls, nip­pers, ham­mers, and met­al base­ball bats. It is all too easy to imag­ine the kind of dam­age such imple­ments could inflict upon human beings. How­ev­er, there were those who liked the idea, in par­tic­u­lar Roh. At the Decem­ber 1 Lot­te­ria meet­ing, he said he would per­son­al­ly inter­ro­gate the chair­man of the NEC. “Bring the base­ball bat to my office,” he ordered, adding that he can break any­one who “doesn’t talk prop­er­ly.” Roh also intend­ed to com­pel the elec­tion com­mis­sion web­site man­ag­er to post a “con­fes­sion of elec­toral fraud” on the NEC’s web­site. At lit­tle more than two weeks before mar­tial law, Roh was even more explic­it about the inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods that were to be employed against cap­tured elec­tion offi­cials. “If we catch and pul­ver­ize all the peo­ple involved in the fraud­u­lent elec­tion, every­thing that was fraud­u­lent dur­ing the elec­tion will come out.”

Mar­tial law plan­ners intend­ed to arrest and imprison a great many peo­ple. Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of Yoon’s insur­rec­tion, police raid­ed the home of con­spir­a­tor Roh, the cen­tral fig­ure in draw­ing up imple­men­ta­tion plans for mar­tial law. They uncov­ered Roh’s note­book, where he had jot­ted down meet­ing notes. He iden­ti­fied as “tar­gets for col­lec­tion” and “deten­tion and han­dling” the names of politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, labor union­ists, reli­gious fig­ures, judges, and gov­ern­ment work­ers. Shock­ing­ly, the note­book men­tioned exe­cu­tions by gun­shot. How many peo­ple were des­tined to be killed under mar­tial law has not yet been revealed. We only know the inten­tion.

Yoon per­son­al­ly super­vised oper­a­tions to arrest those whom he espe­cial­ly detest­ed. High on his list was Speak­er of the Nation­al Assem­bly Woo Won-shik. Forty min­utes after mar­tial law was vot­ed down, sev­er­al sol­diers and two plain­clothes­men arrived at Woo’s home, evi­dent­ly wait­ing for his arrival so that they could seize him. How­ev­er, like most law­mak­ers, Woo stayed overnight at the Nation­al Assem­bly to defend against any fur­ther attack by Yoon’s forces. Woo there­by evad­ed cap­ture, and the sol­diers wait­ing to pounce on Woo only depart­ed three hours lat­er, once Yoon announced the end of mar­tial law.

Cov­er Up

Efforts at coverup began imme­di­ate­ly after the can­cel­la­tion of mar­tial law. When sol­diers returned to camp after the con­fronta­tion at the Nation­al Assem­bly, their mobile phones were con­fis­cat­ed, and they were for­bid­den to leave the base, an order that was not rescind­ed until Decem­ber 17, three days after Yoon was impeached. The intent was to cut off com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the out­side world and pre­vent sol­diers from appear­ing as wit­ness­es before inves­ti­ga­tors. Only the com­man­ders were exempt­ed from this order. It is also report­ed that low­er-lev­el per­son­nel in the Cap­i­tal Defense Com­mand and Spe­cial Forces faced sim­i­lar restric­tions. Lim Tae-hoon, direc­tor of the Mil­i­tary Human Rights Cen­ter, not­ed, “Attempts to destroy evi­dence and con­ceal the truth are being open­ly car­ried out every­where. As long as Yoon Suk Yeol, the mas­ter­mind behind the insur­rec­tion, is not arrest­ed and detained, attempts to destroy evi­dence by those involved in the insur­rec­tion will not cease.”

After mar­tial law came to an end, sev­er­al con­spir­a­tors gath­ered at Yoon’s res­i­dence to coor­di­nate their sto­ries to the pub­lic. After­ward, all the par­tic­i­pants changed their mobile phones in an appar­ent attempt to cov­er their tracks. For his part, Yoon repeat­ed­ly employed delay­ing tac­tics, such as instruct­ing his secu­ri­ty ser­vice to block police from search­ing his home and repeat­ed­ly ignor­ing sum­mons to appear before inves­ti­ga­tors.

There is rea­son to sus­pect that the insur­rec­tion had more wide­spread roots than ini­tial­ly thought. Back on Sep­tem­ber 4, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty assem­bly­man Yang Moon-seok raised con­cerns that 130 gen­er­als had made or start­ed to make dele­tions to Namuwi­ki, a Kore­an infor­ma­tion web­site, over a short span of time. At his Sep­tem­ber press con­fer­ence, Yang expressed fears about what he thought this may have por­tend­ed. “I have strong sus­pi­cions that the Yoon Suk Yeol gov­ern­ment and the mil­i­tary are prepar­ing for a state of emer­gency, such as mar­tial law, aimed at war or large-scale mil­i­tary deploy­ment.” That fear, it turned out, was well-placed, and if there is indeed a con­nec­tion with the mass dele­tions, then inves­ti­ga­tors have yet to uncov­er the full extent of the rot at the heart of the mil­i­tary. The first per­son to delete infor­ma­tion was Com­man­der of the Defense Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Com­mand Yeo In-hyung, who played a piv­otal role in the mar­tial law plot. Oth­ers known to have been involved in the insur­rec­tion also made dele­tions, but a con­nec­tion has not yet been estab­lished for the oth­ers. It may be that the gen­er­als’ moti­va­tion was to remove pub­lic infor­ma­tion that could tie them to oth­er con­spir­a­tors. At a meet­ing of the Nation­al Assem­bly Steer­ing Com­mit­tee on Decem­ber 19, Yang once again raised sus­pi­cions about the inci­dent, call­ing for an inves­ti­ga­tion and sug­gest­ing that the fact that gen­er­als “delet­ed their infor­ma­tion on Namuwi­ki is high­ly like­ly to indi­cate that they are hid­den col­lab­o­ra­tors in the insur­rec­tion.”

Mil­i­tary Emer­gency as Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Mil­i­tary Rule

As Decem­ber 3, the day of mar­tial law approached, the Yoon admin­is­tra­tion sought to estab­lish a legal frame­work for mil­i­tary rule that the Nation­al Assem­bly could not reverse. Mil­i­tary neces­si­ty was one option. All one had to do was cre­ate a con­flict with North Korea, and then no one could stop mar­tial law. Aston­ish­ing­ly, the con­spir­a­tors imag­ined that they could fine-tune the lev­el of North Korea’s response just enough to man­u­fac­ture a con­flict while sac­ri­fic­ing some South Kore­an lives along the way, but with­out plung­ing the penin­su­la into a far more seri­ous war. How­ev­er, always in a con­flict, the oth­er side makes its cal­cu­la­tions, and it is a delu­sion to believe that those can be exter­nal­ly guid­ed. Those South Kore­an cit­i­zens who may have lost their lives in the process were not a fac­tor for con­sid­er­a­tion.

In one of the efforts to stir up trou­ble, South Korea sent drones over Pyongyang in Octo­ber, releas­ing pro­pa­gan­da leaflets. Based on reports pro­vid­ed to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty inves­ti­ga­tors, it was the Office of Nation­al Secu­ri­ty that ordered Drone Com­mand to launch the cross-bor­der drones, bypass­ing the Min­istry of Nation­al Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff. How­ev­er, the mil­i­tary pro­duced and sup­plied the pro­pa­gan­da leaflets to be dropped. Hop­ing for a response from the North Kore­ans, the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced, “In the event of a drone infil­tra­tion, we will respond accord­ing­ly and take due mea­sures.” How­ev­er, the South Kore­an mil­i­tary reaped only dis­ap­point­ment as North Korea failed to take the bait, deny­ing the South of an oppor­tu­ni­ty for dis­pro­por­tion­ate retal­i­a­tion.

A more sure­fire approach was need­ed. Roh Sang-won’s note­book doc­u­ment­ed a more reck­less con­cept. The North­ern Lim­it Line is a high­ly dis­put­ed mar­itime bound­ary off the west­ern coast that had been drawn, with­out North Kore­an par­tic­i­pa­tion, angling sharply north­wards to hand over to South Korea a few islands that, in nor­mal prac­tice, would have belonged to the North. If one want­ed to pro­voke a con­flict, this would be a promis­ing loca­tion to do so. In his note­book, Roh had writ­ten down the phrase, “induc­ing a North Kore­an attack around the North­ern Lim­it Line (NLL).”

First, the scene had to be set, and on June 3, 2024, the South Kore­an mil­i­tary nul­li­fied its Sep­tem­ber 19, 2018 agree­ment with North Korea that had, among oth­er things, bound both sides to “cease all live-fire and mar­itime maneu­vers” off the west coast. Lat­er that month, the South Kore­an Marine Corps on the west­ern islands of Yeon­pyeong and Baengnyeong­do fired near­ly 300 rock­et, mis­sile, and how­itzer rounds. When that failed to elic­it the desired reac­tion from the North, addi­tion­al large-scale fir­ing drills were con­duct­ed in Sep­tem­ber and Novem­ber. One South Kore­an mil­i­tary offi­cial com­ment­ed, “We thought this should have been enough to trig­ger a response from the NK mil­i­tary, but there was no reac­tion, and there was no sign of any provo­ca­tion.” There is a dis­cernible tone of dis­ap­point­ment in that state­ment.

Anoth­er con­tentious issue in inter-Kore­an rela­tions that held poten­tial was relat­ed to the decades-long prac­tice of right-wing groups in South Korea send­ing bal­loons across the bor­der to dump pro­pa­gan­da mate­ri­als. Tons upon tons of mate­r­i­al repeat­ed­ly strewn across the land­scape forced North Korea to expend enor­mous time and mon­ey in clean-up efforts. For years, the North Kore­ans lim­it­ed them­selves to com­plaints about the prac­tice, gen­er­al­ly to no avail. Final­ly, in May 2024,  the exas­per­at­ed North Kore­ans decid­ed to give their neigh­bors in the South a taste of their own med­i­cine. Over a peri­od of sev­er­al months, a series of trash-dump­ing bal­loons were sent across the bor­der, impos­ing on the South Kore­ans their own need for expen­sive clean-up oper­a­tions.

Here, sure­ly, was an oppor­tu­ni­ty, mar­tial law plan­ners con­clud­ed. Since the North Kore­ans failed to respond as desired to indi­rect attempts to trig­ger con­flict, then more direct action could do the trick. At more than one point, Roh and Defense Min­is­ter Kim dis­cussed the poten­tial ram­i­fi­ca­tions of attack­ing bal­loon launch sites. They expect­ed that North Korea would respond with coun­ter­mea­sures. In turn, South Korea could next strike Pyongyang, lead­ing to an all-out war. This was too much even for such an extrem­ist as Roh, who expressed reser­va­tions that Kim did not share.

Unde­terred, Defense Min­is­ter Kim Yong-hyun estab­lished a chain of com­mand ded­i­cat­ed to Oper­a­tion North Wind to pre­pare for an artillery attack on North Korea. Accord­ing to an inside mil­i­tary source, five days before mar­tial law, Defense Min­is­ter Kim ordered Kim Myung-soo, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to car­ry out mil­i­tary strikes on North Kore­an bal­loon launch sites, an act of war that could have led to dis­as­trous and uncon­trol­lable con­se­quences. For­tu­nate­ly for Kore­ans on both sides of the bor­der, Chair­man Kim Myung-soo refused to fol­low such an irre­spon­si­ble order. For his under­stand­able cau­tion, he was reward­ed by hav­ing Defense Min­is­ter Kim Yong-hyun show­er him with ver­bal abuse. In the end, none of these poten­tial path­ways to pro­duc­ing a mil­i­tary con­flict bore fruit, and impa­tience may have dri­ven Yoon to act when he did. Yoon’s plung­ing approval rat­ing had dropped to 17% the month before mar­tial law, accen­tu­at­ing his polit­i­cal fail­ure and almost cer­tain­ly has­ten­ing his urge to act.

A sin­gle source, an HID agent whose name has not been revealed for obvi­ous rea­sons, con­tact­ed Assem­bly­man Lee Kwang-hee and pro­vid­ed details on one of the wilder schemes meant to but­tress the case for mar­tial law. Giv­en the source and the ample evi­dence that the insur­rec­tion­ists were capa­ble of any­thing, his sto­ry can­not be too read­i­ly dis­missed. Accord­ing to the infor­mant, the 35 HID agents deployed in Seoul had each been armed with five pis­tol mag­a­zines and a C4 plas­tic explo­sive. Their assign­ment was to cre­ate vio­lent inci­dents if the mar­tial law plan fell apart, which would pro­vide Yoon with the pre­text he need­ed for a sec­ond mar­tial law adven­ture. The HID agents were not told when they would go into action; they only had to wait for the order to pro­ceed. Their assigned tar­gets were the Cheongju Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, the THAAD anti-mis­sile base at Seongju, and the mil­i­tary air­base at Daegu. To max­i­mize effect, Amer­i­can mil­i­tary assets were among the tar­gets. The HID infor­mant felt con­flict­ed about his mis­sion when he real­ized that he had been tasked to car­ry out an act of ter­ror­ism, and that led him to reveal what he knew in the hope that pub­lic­i­ty would “stop the mis­sion as soon as pos­si­ble.” The informant’s rev­e­la­tion appeared to have his desired impact, as once the sto­ry made the news, the order came down to the HID agents to can­cel their mis­sions.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Assem­bly­man Park Sun-won, a for­mer Nation­al Intel­li­gence Ser­vice deputy direc­tor, point­ed out that hit­ting those tar­gets would inevitably involve the U.S. mil­i­tary. Pre­sum­ably, that inter­ven­tion would have sup­port­ed Yoon against his con­trived ene­mies. Park also believes that if Yoon had man­aged to trig­ger a con­flict with North Korea, that would have enabled mar­tial law forces to more freely kill polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

There have also been uncor­rob­o­rat­ed reports that the Mar­tial Law Com­mand had planned assas­si­na­tions and oth­er acts of vio­lence to pro­vide a fal­si­fied pre­text for mar­tial law, in which South Kore­an sol­diers would be suit­ed in uni­forms of the North Kore­an People’s Army to mis­di­rect respon­si­bil­i­ty. At this time, evi­dence for this alle­ga­tion is thin. How­ev­er, it does appear that an oper­a­tion of some sort may have been in the works. In August, the Defense Intel­li­gence Com­mand con­tract­ed with a pri­vate com­pa­ny to man­u­fac­ture 170 North Kore­an mil­i­tary uni­forms to be deliv­ered in the first week of Decem­ber. The com­pa­ny, which had expe­ri­ence in man­u­fac­tur­ing uni­forms, was sup­plied with an actu­al North Kore­an uni­form to use as a mod­el. The osten­si­ble pur­pose for the request was that the uni­forms were need­ed to pro­duce a movie, an unlike­ly sce­nario for the Defense Intel­li­gence Com­mand. Despite the company’s skep­ti­cism about the stat­ed need, it made the uni­forms and deliv­ered them on Decem­ber 6, by which time mar­tial law had col­lapsed.

Rela­tions with the Unit­ed States

For the Unit­ed States, Yoon had been a dream come true, a pres­i­dent who whole­heart­ed­ly embraced his assigned role as a junior part­ner in the anti-Chi­na tri­par­tite mil­i­tary alliance with the U.S. and Japan. If Wash­ing­ton had any deep con­cern about mar­tial law, it would only be that fail­ure might risk open­ing the door to a less enthused, albeit still obe­di­ent, part­ner for U.S. mil­i­tarism. Cer­tain­ly, U.S. rela­tions with South Korea would not have been adverse­ly impact­ed by mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship, as attest­ed to by U.S. rela­tions dur­ing South Korea’s pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences under mar­tial law and oth­er cas­es such as Pinochet’s Chile or Suharto’s Indone­sia. What the Unit­ed States did care about – and deeply so – was that regard­less of events, South Korea would main­tain its sup­port for U.S. mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion with Chi­na. That is all that mat­tered, even if the free­dom of South Kore­an peo­ple had to be sac­ri­ficed along the way. All the U.S. had to offer regard­ing Korea’s inter­nal sit­u­a­tion were ano­dyne com­ments, phrased so as not to antag­o­nize any par­ty. The Biden admin­is­tra­tion was far more active in lay­ing stress on the expec­ta­tion that South Korea should con­tin­ue sup­port­ing U.S. mil­i­tarism in the Asia-Pacif­ic. Numer­ous state­ments and direct con­tacts were made to Seoul to remind them of that fact, includ­ing a per­son­al vis­it from U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Kurt Camp­bell.

Mil­i­tary Dic­ta­tor­ship Over the Long Term

So far, inves­ti­ga­tors have main­ly cen­tered their atten­tion on the events lead­ing up to and dur­ing the peri­od of mar­tial law. It is hoped that they will also address an addi­tion­al ques­tion: what were the insur­rec­tion­ists’ long-term plans? How did they envi­sion mil­i­tary rule in the months and years to come? We do not have much direct infor­ma­tion yet. Still, we can dis­cern Yoon’s objec­tives in gen­er­al terms based on the speech he deliv­ered on Decem­ber 3, in which he exco­ri­at­ed the Nation­al Assem­bly as a “den of crim­i­nals.” He went on to threat­en to “imme­di­ate­ly erad­i­cate the unscrupu­lous pro-Pyongyang anti-state forces,” using his cus­tom­ary twist­ed char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of pro­gres­sives, trade union­ists, activists, and the major­i­ty of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty mem­bers and sup­port­ers. One can con­clude that a vast swathe of Kore­an soci­ety would have been imper­iled.

Let us also dwell upon Yoon’s choice of the word ‘erad­i­cate’ in that speech. It is a strong word, and Yoon deemed it impor­tant enough that he spoke it three times. What kind of vio­lence was Yoon sug­gest­ing with such lan­guage? We know the Mar­tial Law Com­mand was prepar­ing for a sig­nif­i­cant influx of pris­on­ers. How­ev­er, mass incar­cer­a­tion is not nec­es­sar­i­ly syn­ony­mous with erad­i­ca­tion. Yoon may have had some­thing more per­ma­nent in mind. Addi­tion­al­ly, Yoon had already demon­strat­ed that he had no com­punc­tion in employ­ing vio­lence and that, at a min­i­mum, plans includ­ed exe­cut­ing at least some high-pro­file pris­on­ers and vio­lent­ly tor­tur­ing elec­tion offi­cials. Might many ordi­nary cit­i­zens also have been sim­i­lar­ly ‘erad­i­cat­ed’? Even if this would not have been the case, under mar­tial law, Kore­an soci­ety as a whole was fat­ed to be sub­ject­ed to repres­sion on a mass scale. Fur­ther­more, Yoon envi­sioned mil­i­tary rule as a long-term process. Just hours before announc­ing mar­tial law, he issued a direc­tive to “pre­pare a reserve fund for the emer­gency mar­tial law leg­isla­tive body” to replace the Nation­al Assem­bly. One does not estab­lish a mil­i­tary-appoint­ed leg­is­la­ture with­out antic­i­pat­ing it will be in place for years.

Look­ing to the Future

Yoon’s defi­ant atti­tude toward inves­ti­ga­tors has hin­dered progress in the impeach­ment process, allow­ing him time to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly destroy evi­dence. In addi­tion to obstruct­ing legal pro­ce­dures, his sedi­tious mes­sages are rous­ing extrem­ist ele­ments with­in the rul­ing People’s Pow­er Par­ty and among his sup­port­ers to back his refusal to relin­quish pow­er. Some fanat­ics have even begun to advo­cate vio­lent mea­sures. In his New Year mes­sage, Yoon warned that South Korea was in dan­ger from “anti-state groups,” refer­ring to advo­cates for the restora­tion of democ­ra­cy and legal­i­ty. Yoon added, “With you, I will fight to the end to pro­tect this coun­try,” sig­nal­ing extrem­ists to mobi­lize a tena­cious and poten­tial­ly vio­lent resis­tance to keep him in pow­er.

Although stripped of active duties, Yoon remains as pres­i­dent of South Korea. It may take months for the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court to reach a rul­ing on impeach­ment, and if the court fails to uphold Yoon’s impeach­ment, he will return to active duty as pres­i­dent. In that sce­nario, the only les­son he is like­ly to have learned is that a sec­ond attempt at mar­tial law must employ more vio­lence to suc­ceed. South Korea’s future is rid­ing on the devel­op­ment and out­come of the effort to bring Yoon to jus­tice.

3a. In his 1952 book, I.F. Stone relays a report on South Korea attack­ing first. Bear in mind that Gen­er­al Kim Suk-Won was in charge of the bor­der forces for Syn­g­man Rhee.

The Hid­den His­to­ry of The Kore­an War by I.F. Stone; Month­ly Review Press [Paper]; Copy­right 1952 by I.F. Stone; ISBN 978–68590-008–3; p. 75.

. . . . He [John Gun­ther] says that “two impor­tant mem­bers of the occu­pa­tion” went along on the excur­sion to Nikko and that “just before lunch” one of them “was called unex­pect­ed­ly to the tele­phone.” He came back and whis­pered, ‘A big sto­ry has just bro­ken. South Korea has attacked North Korea.’” . . . .

3b. Kore­an War solved a num­ber of strate­gic goals for the U.S. and its Japanese/Korean pup­pet regime in South Korea.

The Hid­den His­to­ry of The Kore­an War by I.F. Stone; Month­ly Review Press [Paper]; Copy­right 1952 by I.F. Stone; ISBN 978–68590-008–3; pp. 73–74.

. . . . With­in two days, it gave Chi­ang Kai-shek pro­tec­tion Amer­i­can pro­tec­tion against an inva­sion from the main­land. It shelved the ques­tion of a gen­er­al peace treaty for Japan and put off the with­draw­al of occu­pa­tion troops and the aban­don­ment of Amer­i­can bases there. It gave Syn­g­man Rhee, long sourly regard­ed by the State Depart­ment, a sud­den respectabil­i­ty and the sup­port of the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed Nations at the very moment when his hold on South Korea seemed to have been end­ed by the con­vo­ca­tion of the new leg­is­la­ture on June 19.

Con­verse­ly, the attack cre­at­ed new prob­lems on the Com­mu­nist side. The Chi­nese Reds could not pro­ceed with the occu­pa­tion of For­mosa, to which they were com­mit­ted, with­out com­ing into frontal con­tact with the Unit­ed States. Those Japan­ese bomber bases so near Vladi­vos­tok were to be retained by the Unit­ed States indef­i­nite­ly. The hope that the South Kore­an regime would col­lapse under the impact of the first free elec­tions, the North­ern demands for uni­fi­ca­tion, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an easy “lib­er­a­tion” march South­ward from the 38^th Parallel—all these van­ished.

The reper­cus­sions were equal­ly dis­ad­van­ta­geous to Moscow on the broad­er panora­ma of world affairs. [Sovi­et UN Rep­re­sen­ta­tive] Tryvge Lie’s lone­ly pil­grim­age for peace . . . . was brought to a sud­den end. . . . .  What Moscow most feared, the cam­paign to rearm the Ger­mans as well as the Japan­ese, was giv­en a sud­den impe­tus in Wash­ing­ton. Final­ly, the mobi­liza­tion of America’s vast indus­tri­al pow­er was set in motion for war, and “con­tain­ment” in a more severe form than before was extend­ed from the Atlantic to the Pacific—as had long been demand­ed by Chi­ang and MacArthur. . . .

3c. As dis­cussed in FTR#1207, allies of Chi­ang Kai-shek moved to cor­ner the soy­bean mar­ket in the run-up to the war, indi­cat­ing prob­a­ble fore­knowl­edge of the impend­ing out­break of con­flict.

The Hid­den His­to­ry of The Kore­an War by I.F. Stone; Month­ly Review Press [Paper]; Copy­right 1952 by I.F. Stone; ISBN 978–68590-008–3; pp. 28-29.

. . . . The Her­ald Tri­bune print­ed a short item reveal­ing  . . . that the oper­a­tion [of cor­ner­ing the soy­bean mar­ket] was begun just before the out­break of the Kore­an War. In view of the great impor­tance of North­east Chi­na (Manchuria) as a pro­duc­er of soy­beans, of the cer­tain­ty that war in Korea would dis­rupt the world sup­ply of this prod­uct, and of the known close con­nec­tions between South Kore­an pres­i­dent Syn­g­man Rhee and the Chi­ang Kai-shek gov­ern­ment on For­mosa, these facts could not but cre­ate a strong pre­sump­tion that Nation­al­ist Chi­nese in the Unit­ed States had got advance notice of a Rhee plan to start war in Korea and were turn­ing their knowl­edge to finan­cial advan­tage. . . .

3d. John Fos­ter Dulles saw the Kore­an War as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-arm the Axis pow­ers in order to use in the Cold War.

The Hid­den His­to­ry of The Kore­an War by I.F. Stone; Month­ly Review Press [Paper]; Copy­right 1952 by I.F. Stone; ISBN 978–68590-008–3; p.361.

. . . . Dulles feared that peace would fatal­ly inter­fere with the plan to rebuild the old Axis pow­ers for a new anti-Sovi­et cru­sade. . . .

4a. “Revival of the UN Command–A Pacif­ic Nato–Brings the Pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Revi­tal­ized Kore­an War Clos­er” by Der­mot Hud­son; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 1/11/2025.

What Is the UN Com­mand in South Korea

Before look­ing at the cur­rent moves to use the UN Com­mand to cre­ate a mul­ti-nation­al mil­i­tary struc­ture in East Asia, a vari­ant of NATO, it is use­ful to give the read­er some back­ground about the UN Com­mand in South Korea.

The so-called UN Com­mand was cre­at­ed in June 1950 dur­ing the Kore­an War, known in the DPRK as the Father­land Lib­er­a­tion War.

On June 25, 1950, South Kore­an troops had pro­voked the Kore­an War by cross­ing into the DPRK at sev­er­al points along the 38th par­al­lel and intrud­ing 1 to 2 kilo­me­ters into the DPRK.

The U.S. pro­pa­gan­da machine swung into action blam­ing the DPRK for the con­flict and used the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to frame the DPRK for caus­ing the Kore­an War.

How­ev­er, in fact, U.S. envoy John Fos­ter Dulles (broth­er of CIA Direc­tor Allen Dulles) had vis­it­ed South Korea a week before the war start­ed and even inspect­ed front-line areas along the 38th par­al­lel. Dulles gave the South Kore­ans the green light to attack the DPRK.

Curi­ous­ly, the UN bureau­cra­cy moved fast; a UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UNSC) meet­ing was called on short notice at the request of the U.S. and a meet­ing was held on June 25. At the time, the USSR boy­cotted meet­ings of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil due to the refusal to allow the People’s Repub­lic of Chi­na to take its legit­i­mate place on the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

There­fore, nei­ther the USSR nor PRC were at the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing and the DPRK was not invit­ed to the meet­ing to argue its case. As was lat­er revealed, the U.S. had actu­al­ly draft­ed a res­o­lu­tion in advance, show­ing that it had planned the provo­ca­tion of the Kore­an War as it would have tak­en some time to draft a UN res­o­lu­tion.

The out­break of war was blamed on the DPRK but the only evi­dence sub­mit­ted by the U.S. to the UNSC meet­ing was a telegram from U.S. Ambas­sador to South Korea John J. Muc­cio.

Muc­cio was not on the spot at the 38th par­al­lel and sim­ply quot­ed from reports by the South Kore­an army and his telegram was con­tra­dic­to­ry.

Nev­er­the­less, the DPRK was framed as the aggres­sor.

The fol­low­ing coun­tries dis­patched troops to fight for the U.S. in Korea under the cam­ou­flage of the UN: Britain, Cana­da, Italy, Lux­em­bourg, Bel­gium, France, Greece, Turkey, Nether­lands, South Africa, Ethiopia, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Thai­land and Colom­bia.

For all intents and pur­pos­es, the so-called UN forces in the Kore­an War were under the con­trol of the U.S., not the UN.

Gen­er­al Dou­glas MacArthur, the famous U.S. com­man­der in the Kore­an War, was placed at the head of the so-called “UN Forces,” but lat­er said that he nev­er actu­al­ly received any instruc­tions from the UN.

Years lat­er, on June 24, 1994, then-UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Boutros Boutros-Ghali said that Com­bined Forces Com­mand was not estab­lished as an appendage under the UNSC con­trol and it is under the con­trol of the U.S.

On Decem­ber 21, 1998, UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Kofi Annan fol­lowed Boutros-Ghali in stat­ing that none of his pre­de­ces­sors had allowed any coun­try to con­nect the name of the UN with the armed forces dis­patched to the Kore­an War by the U.S. or its com­mand.

After that, sev­er­al UN offi­cials repeat­ed­ly stressed that the UN Com­mand is not an orga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Nations and it is not under the direc­tion or con­trol of the UN.

On July 27, 1953, the Kore­an Armistice Agree­ment was signed between the DPRK, Chi­na and the U.S. (South Korea was not a sig­na­to­ry), which effec­tive­ly halt­ed armed hos­til­i­ties though, of course, nev­er ful­ly end­ed the Kore­an War.

The U.S. kept the UN Com­mand in South Korea in exis­tence as essen­tial­ly a neo-colo­nial­ist instru­ment that could be mobi­lized for war against the DPRK.

In light of this con­text, some mem­ber coun­tries of the UN Com­mand such as Ethiopia with­drew from the UN Com­mand and oth­ers only kept a token or cer­e­mo­ni­al pres­ence.

The exis­tence of the UN Com­mand in South Korea became even more mean­ing­less in 1991 when the DPRK itself became a mem­ber state of the Unit­ed Nations.

Revival of the UN Com­mand

For many years, the only reminder of the exis­tence of the UN Com­mand in South Korea, apart from a few cer­e­monies, were the flags of its mem­bers, such as the U.S., UK and Aus­tralia dis­played on the U.S. side of the Kore­an Armistice Com­mis­sion build­ing at Pan­munjom, the place where the DPRK and Repub­lic of Korea (South Korea) bor­der con­front each oth­er.

After ignor­ing UN res­o­lu­tions, passed in 1975, call­ing for the dis­so­lu­tion of the UN Com­mand in Korea, the U.S. start­ed at the end of 2000s to take mea­sures to breathe new life into the ghost-like and mori­bund mil­i­tary force.

Some coun­tries such as the UK and Cana­da, sent per­son­nel to the UN Com­mand. In 2019 a Cana­di­an Army offi­cer, Lieu­tenant-Gen­er­al Wayne Eyre, became the deputy com­man­der of the UN Com­mand.

Eyre was quot­ed by the U.S. web­site Nation­al Inter­est as say­ing “U.S. com­man­ders of the UNC began tak­ing mea­sure to revi­tal­ize the UN Com­mand sev­er­al years ago.” Eyre point­ed out that one of these mea­sures was “to increase the per­ma­nent staff of the com­mand. It has also tried to increase the num­ber of states con­tribut­ing to the UN.”

Indeed, some coun­tries increased their deploy­ment to the UN Com­mand. For exam­ple, New Zealand orig­i­nal­ly had three New Zealand Defence Force per­son­nel at the UN Com­mand in 1998, then this dou­bled to six, dou­bling again to twelve in 2022, and final­ly has reached 53 in 2024. Aus­tralia and Britain also had mil­i­tary per­son­nel deployed to the UN Com­mand.

On Novem­ber 15, 2023, the South Kore­an Defense Min­is­ter host­ed a meet­ing in Seoul with defense min­is­ters from 17 mem­ber states of the UN Com­mand in South Korea.

The state­ment fur­ther referred to “pow­er­ful pun­ish­ment from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, spear­head­ed by the UN Com­mand,” for the DPRK if it went to war with South Korea.

On August 2, 2024, in a very sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment, it was announced that Ger­many would join the UN Com­mand.

Ger­many was not an orig­i­nal mem­ber or par­tic­i­pant in the Kore­an War; thus, it is new blood so to speak. Ger­many is also a key NATO mem­ber.

The For­eign Min­istry of the DPRK react­ed to the news with a strong state­ment denounc­ing Ger­many: “The U.S. is attempt­ing to revive the func­tion of the UN Com­mand which should have been extinct in the last cen­tu­ry. This is aimed at turn­ing the UN Com­mand into the sec­ond NATO of Asian ver­sion by drag­ging its allies and thus mil­i­tar­i­ly deter the DPRK and its neigh­bor­ing coun­tries.”

NATO has been effec­tive­ly plugged into any future provo­ca­tions against the DPRK and a poten­tial con­flict on the Kore­an penin­su­la by the pres­ence of the U.S.’s NATO allies such as Britain, Cana­da, Ger­many, Spain and oth­er NATO mem­bers in the UN Com­mand in South Korea.

What are the aims of the U.S. in reviv­ing such an anachro­nism as the UN Com­mand in South Korea?

It is very clear that the aim is to “inter­na­tion­al­ize” any con­flict between the DPRK and the U.S.

It is to cre­ate anoth­er so-called “coali­tion of the will­ing,” sim­i­lar to the one that facil­i­tat­ed the U.S. inva­sion of Iraq in 2003 and top­pled the Sad­dam Hus­sein regime. There is, how­ev­er, one very clear dif­fer­ence with the 2003 Iraq war: At the time, the Iraq War was wide­ly opposed and crit­i­cized on the grounds of U.S. uni­lat­er­al­ism, that the action was tak­en out­side of the UN.

The revival of the UN Com­mand in South Korea is also aimed at repeat­ing his­to­ry by try­ing to legit­i­ma­tise a war against the DPRK in the name of the UN.

Of course, the first time around—in 1950—the use of the UN title was the result of fraud, intrigue and skull­dug­gery by the U.S. This time around, the U.S. has breathed life into a ghost and is cre­at­ing an aggres­sive struc­ture con­sist­ing of its NATO allies, syco­phants and lack­eys.

The revival of the UN Com­mand in South Korea and the back-door involve­ment of NATO on the Kore­an penin­su­la will bring the dan­ger of war with a nuclear-armed pow­er, the DPRK, even clos­er. But where are the protests in the U.S. over this?

5. JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; p. 13.

. . . . 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. . . .

. . . . 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.”. . .

6. 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? . . . .”

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

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? . . . .

7. 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. . . .”

The Judas Fac­tor: The Plot to Kill Mal­colm X by Karl Evanzz; Thun­der’s Mouth Press [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Karl Evanzz; ISBN 1–56025-049–6; pp. 55–56.

. . . . 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. . . .

8. In past dis­cus­sions, we high­light­ed 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?

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . 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. . . . 

9. The Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter saw the Kore­an War as “a gift from the gods.”

The Yam­a­to Dynasty by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave; Broad­way Books [HC]; Copy­right 1999 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 0–7679-0496–6; p. 233.

. . . . 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.”) . . . .