Thread by @BonicMichael

South Korea never signed the Armistice Agreement, due to President Syngman Rhee's refusal to accept having failed to unify Korea by force. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Ar…

2/Wait, so this is huge. South Korea never signed the Armistice b/c it didn't want to admit failure to reunify the Korean Peninsula by force. Yet to this day the ROK makes the accusation that the DPRK is intent on doing the very same thing. South Korea is guilty of projection:

3/"6b: the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people or to objects
especially : the externalization of blame, guilt, or responsibility as a defense against anxiety"
Syngman Rhee wanted the war to continue to defeat DPRK and reunify Korea by force. 68

4/years later the conservative elements of South Korea, the People Power Party, continue to project their own aspiration onto DPRK and therefore blame North Korea for being the "threat" which, they rationalize, is building up its nukes for an eventual forceful takeover of the KP.

5/DPRK meanwhile has moved on, time and again reiterating that its nuclear program is for self defense to deter, say, the US from launching a preemptive nuclear strike or any attack on it. Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae In signed the historic Panmunjom & Pyongyang Declarations, yet

6/the inter-Korean relationship has been characterized by DPRK criticizing ROK for not living up to those declarations. Moon, it seems, is always straddling the fence b/c he can't go too far to accommodate Pyongyang w/out upsetting Washington. Plus the US lifted arms build-up

7/restrictions on the peninsula and Moon jumped, significantly building up ROK's defenses, which will just force Kim Jong Un's hand to follow suit. As Choe Son Hui said they'd respond "power for power, goodwill for goodwill", which applies to South Korea as well. In other words

8/South Korea under Moon falls back on the US-ROK alliance which must be ironclad, esp. if the OPCON transfer is to be completed, despite whatever declarations Moon signed w/ Kim Jong Un. The underlying reality then appears to be that since the signing of the Armistice, or esp.

9/since the fall of the USSR, DPRK has renounced its original aspiration to forcefully reunify the peninsula by force, while South Korea hasn't yet done so. Rather, thru its projection and rationalization it is the country whose hand wields the ratchet.

https://twitter.com/bonicmichael/status/1476391842912501763?s=21

10/We're in a realm skirting an abyss that were one side to lean towards it too far could pull the whole world into after it. With both DPRK's Article 9 in its socialist constitution and Kim Il Sung's concept of a Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo restricting socialism to "the

11/"northern half of Korea" it should be readily apparent that DPRK has cast off the former ambition to reunify the peninsula by force. Yet South Korea thru its projection, rationalization & paranoia has succumbed to irrationality and therefore has detached from reality. By

12/steadfastly believing, as do many analysts & policymakers in Washington, that Kim Jong Un is intent on eventually reunifying the peninsula by force they're pushing DPRK into a corner like the Church did when prosecuting Galileo for his heliocentric theory of the solar system.

13/This has been the status quo since the signing of the Armistice. While DPRK has turned the page and is seeking peace w/ South Korea, Moon, tied to the US-ROK alliance, is locked in a 68-year old trajectory in which South Korea has never conceded that IT failed to reunify the

14/peninsula by force. Following its alliance partner, then, the actions of US & South Korea have in fact adhered to Zhou Enlai's maxim 👇. While DPRK values the Panmunjom & Pyongyang Declarations, it sees Moon as only paying lip service or worse, not abiding by them. South

15/Korean, then, under the 1948 National Security Law has never acknowledged DPRK's socialism as legitimate and sees no space for socialism in any One Korea. Unconsciously the ROK, enabled by the US, has been "waging war" against socialist DPRK thru sanctions and is still tied

16/to Syngman Rhee's decision to not sign the Armistice. Progressive Koreans have to "cut the tie that binds" and purge ROK of everything to do w/ Syngman Rhee for the truth is that DPRK is on the defensive, and ROK is locked into Rhee's momentum that

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1477757075295850497?s=20

17/unconsciously seeks to reunify the peninsula by the "continuation of war by other means". Yun So Hyun's statement:
“We have to defend our sovereignty, our identity.”
reflects the heart, mind & soul of North Koreans who feel safer having nukes. As does Ham Chol Hak's:
“So the

18/"choice depends on him [Trump]. If he hits the button, he is to blame, not us.”
Cathie Boyd: “But we’ll all be gone."
HCH: “But it’s because of him, not because of us...We’ve been living under these sanctions & everything for so many years. We have nothing more to fear.”

19/What a strange irony that has begotten this conundrum. South Korea, which accuses DPRK of being the threat whose nukes will help it "reunify the peninsula under socialism by force", is the one "waging war by other means" w/ the US forcing DPRK to go on the nuclear defensive.☮️

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