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Comment: The Korea conference: What were we thinking?

In the recent history of bad ideas, hosting a conference of nations allied on one side of a 68-year-old mistake is a contender for first place.

In the recent history of bad ideas, hosting a conference of nations allied on one side of a 68-year-old mistake is a contender for first place.

This week’s international conference in Vancouver on North Korea does nothing to advance a diplomatic solution to the current standoff. It reinforces Canada’s continued fealty to a regime headed by an unstable leader — President Donald Trump’s U.S. To make matters worse, the agenda was said to include discussing how to tighten sanctions on North Korea, but not on how to moderate U.S. belligerency.

Some of the story of the war being celebrated in Vancouver illustrates the folly of reassembling the old gang to address the current problem. At the close of the Second World War, the U.S. created South Korea, drawing an arbitrary line at the 38th parallel, and then rejecting the only democratic option for unification — to leave the fate of Korea to Koreans in a nationwide election.

The result left the Korean people with two dictators, Kim Il-sung in the North and Syngman Rhee in the South. Rhee’s goon squads ensured the result of a farcical election in the South. There was likewise nothing fair about the selection process in the North. As they are today, the Korean people were the losers.

The Americans went about setting up a client government “in harmony with U.S. policies.” Rhee played them beautifully. An egotistical Harvard-educated dilettante, Rhee had not fought against the Japanese. He had not even been in Korea for decades. But he talked a great anticommunist game. At the end of the war, he billed the UN $90 million for rental of the land used by the allies to save his beleaguered regime.

Full disclosure of my bias against this senseless war: When a series of miscalculations brought the invasion from the North, I was a Grade 6 student in Yokohama, Japan. One day, my father, a Second World War veteran of the Ardennes forest, was with us. The next, he was gone, thrown into the desperate defence of a shrinking perimeter around the port of Pusan (now Busan). His life should not again have been put at risk.

The story of Canada’s involvement is an even more stark illustration of the need to stop blindly following the U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, de facto ruler of Japan and Korea, was sometimes a genius, sometimes a fool. After pulling off a daring invasion at Inchon harbour, he drove the North Koreans back to the 38th parallel. The Korean War was over. The UN mandate, procured by the U.S. as a fig leaf, had been fulfilled.

Canada to this point was not present. But the Americans had invited Canada to send a unit to share in the glory, to “show the flag.” Canada agreed and chose the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.

But MacArthur was an unstable genius, with a vision of leading the ultimate victory over communism — with nuclear weapons. There are many similarities between MacArthur and Trump. Rampant egotism is one of them. MacArthur invaded the North, was routed by the Chinese, and was ready to use atomic weapons when his ego, not U.S. government or public sentiment, got him fired.

The war devolved into the stalemate that continues today. Mercifully, the PPCLI did not arrive in time to experience the rout of the U.S. 8th Army. Canadian troops and other soldiers did, however, get to die in senseless forays while armistice talks dragged on. More than a million Korean civilians died, and the allies gathered in Vancouver this week killed their share. Ignorance and racism played a significant part.

The current conflict requires a negotiated settlement, and the lead must be given to Koreans, all Koreans. They have earned it. South Korea has recently reaffirmed that it does not require U.S. permission to speak with the North.

There are other parties with legitimate interests, but if sufficient concessions from the North are given to prompt South Korea to end joint military exercises with the U.S. and set a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops, is it not their decision to take? If not, why not?

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s comment: “We stand with the U.S.” should be changed to “We stand with the Koreans.” A Vancouver conference about implementing that would be worthwhile.

Retired law professor William Geimer is a U.S. army veteran and the author of Canada: The Case for Staying Out of Other People’s Wars.