Tag: Douglas MacArthur

Hypocracy under the Moon administration. The anti-US arsonists who set fire 2 times to the MacArthur statue found not guilty. The 1st time, there was not even an investigation. But Taegukki (SK flag) rally person knocking down an illegal, politically-used Sewol tower gets jailed. https://t.co/Mg2TWer0D2

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) October 29, 2018

With the is rise of the anti-American left in South Korea once again, the Sept. 11th anniversary is good time to remind readers of how blatant anti-Americanism once was in South Korea:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2005/09/911-hate-fest-in-south-korea-2/

For anyone that likes to read about the Korean War, the Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article that includes redacted testimony given by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Congress in regards to General Douglas MacArthur’s request to expand the war into mainland China.  In the redacted testimony the Joint Chiefs made a very good argument on why the limited war against China actually favored the United States military instead of hindering it during the Korean War:

Other remarks contradicted MacArthur’s recurrent complaint about the advantage the Chinese derived from the administration’s refusal to grant him permission to bomb targets beyond the Yalu River in China. Democrat Walter George of Georgia, echoing MacArthur’s assertion that “China is using the maximum of her force against us,” said it was unfair that MacArthur had to fight a limited war while the Chinese fought all out.

Omar Bradley responded that George was quite mistaken—and, by implication, that MacArthur was quite misleading. The Chinese were not fighting all out, not by a great deal. “They have not used air against our front line troops, against our lines of communication in Korea, our ports; they have not used air against our bases in Japan or against our naval air forces.” China’s restraint in these areas had been crucial to the survival of American and U.N. forces in Korea. On balance, Bradley said, the limited nature of the war benefited the United States at least as much as it did the Chinese. “We are fighting under rather favorable rules for ourselves.”

Vandenberg amplified this point. “You made the statement, as I recall it, that we were operating against the Chinese in a limited fashion, and that the Chinese were operating against us in an unlimited fashion,” the air chief said to Republican Harry Cain of Washington.

“Yes, sir,” Cain replied.

“I would like to point out that that operates just as much a limitation, so far, for the Chinese as it has for the United Nations troops in that our main base of supply is the Japanese islands. The port of Pusan is very important to us.”

“It is indeed.”

“Our naval forces are operating on the flanks allowing us naval gunfire support, carrier aircraft strikes, and the landing of such formations as the Inchon landing, all without the Chinese air force projecting itself into the area,” Vandenberg said. “Therefore, the sanctuary business, as it is called, is operating on both sides, and is not completely a limited war on our part.”

George Marshall, the secretary of defense and a five-star general himself, made the same argument. Marshall, insisting on “the greatest concern for confidentiality,” said he had asked the joint chiefs just hours before: “What happens to the Army if we do bomb, and what happens to our Army if we don’t bomb in that way.” The chiefs’ conclusion: “Their general view was that the loss of advantage with our troops on the ground was actually more than equaled by the advantages which we were deriving from not exposing our vulnerability to air attacks.”

In other words—and this was Marshall’s crucial point, as it had been Vandenberg’s—the limitations on the fighting in Korea, so loudly assailed by MacArthur and his supporters, in fact favored the American side.  [Smithsonian Magazine]

You can read much more at the link, but another fact of interest in the article was the assessment of Chiang Kai-shek’s military in Taiwan.  MacArthur had wanted to use Chiang’s army to open another front against the Communists.  His Army was however, assessed by the Joint Chiefs to be of little value due to poor training, equipment, and it was riddled with Communist infiltrators.  Additionally Chiang was assessed to have little to no legitimacy on mainland China.

All of this showed why President Truman fired MacArthur and also why the Republicans in Congress quietly withdrew support for him for President.  The Republicans instead threw their support behind another general, Dwight Eisenhower which history has shown was a far wiser choice for President than MacArthur.

A Navy honor guard marches down a road in Incheon, west of Seoul, on Dec. 2, 2015, part of a parade celebrating the naming of the 1.75 km road as “The MacArthur Road.” The local office of the conservative Korea Freedom Federation both petitioned to name the road beginning from a statue of late U.S. General Douglas MacArthur at the city’s Freedom Park and organized the parade. Around 500 people participated in the parade in honor of the general, who turned the tide of the 1950-53 Korean War by successfully leading the Incheon Landing Operation on Sept. 15, 1950 against invading North Korean forces. (Yonhap)

The Visionary: MacArthur at #Incheon [PDF] http://t.co/nci2voVqpz via @RANDCorporation #KoreanWar

— Sino-NK (@Sino_NK) January 23, 2015

Here is an interesting article about an ex-State Senator trying to get memorials that represent Korea’s modern history built in Oregon:

As a young boy during the Korean War, John Lim witnessed his father being forcibly conscripted by the North Korean People’s Army.

The incident was only the beginning of a series of greater tragedies. Branded as a communist, his father, who was a fire captain in his hometown of Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, was shot dead by South Korean authorities after the three-year conflict. The entire family was destroyed, and Lim himself nearly died from tuberculosis.

His brushes with death, however, did not kill his dreams. In 1966, a penniless Lim took a flight to the U.S. and pursued religious studies while working as a janitor, painter and gardener. He then ventured into business, boasting acumen in retail, health food and real estate, among other areas.

In 1992, Lim set a milestone in Korean-American history, becoming a state senator in Oregon. After serving five straight terms, he is now seeking to “set up memorials dedicated to U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur and former South Korean presidents who contributed to the country’s economic and political development, such as Park Chung-hee and Kim Dae-jung.   [Korea Herald]

Here is something else I found of interest in the article, Lim’s group tried to take over the MacArthur statue in Incheon after hate groups wanted to tear it down:

The five-year project was initiated after some liberal civic groups called for the demolition of a MacArthur sculpture at a public park in Incheon last year.

The Lim-led Korean War Memorial Foundation of Oregon initially sought to take over the statue, but then decided to have a new one made. In 2000, it established a 5-acre memorial park within a city park of Wilsonville near Portland to commemorate the war and U.S. veterans, with the support of the Seoul government, the city and South Korean businesses there.

Long time ROK Heads may remember how in 2005 huge riots broke out in Incheon as ROK veterans groups defended the MacArthur statue from the anti-US leftist hate groups that had vowed to tear it down.

Fortunately the anti-US hate groups failed to tear down the castle after the Braveheart style battle to defend the hill.  For those that haven’t been there before Jayu Park in Incheon where the MacArthur statue stands is well worth checking out as well as taking a walk through Chinatown below the hill.

Is there anyone out there suprised by the arrest of one of the leaders of the MacArthur protests as a North Korean spy? From the Chosun:

An activist who is on parole after serving time for spying for North Korea has been arrested for espionage again. Kang Soon-jeong, the former vice chairman of the South Korean chapter of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification, an outlawed pro-Pyongyang group, was arrested on Tuesday for providing “national secrets” to Pyongyang, police said. Kang was also co-chairman of a civic group that led efforts to topple the statue of U.S. general Dougas MacArthur in Incheon last year.

Let’s remember the MacArthur protests of 2005 for a minute. The biggest protest happened on September 11, 2005 and was deliberately planned to occur on the same date of the worst terrorist attack in American history in order to rub it into Americans’ faces.

How can we ever forget images like this:

Or my personal favorite:

Something else to remember was that it wasn’t just the North Korean stooges calling for the removal of the MacArthur statue, but also the Korea Times newspaper:

As President Roh made it clear that it is the government’s position to keep the statue, U.S. lawmakers had better wait and see. Nor is this an issue for partisan wrangling domestically. Related officials can consider relocating it to a war memorial from the present public park someday. We have never heard of a statue of Dwight Eisenhower in Normandy to commemorate D-Day.

So keep that in mind the next time you read the Korea Times, that they advocated removing the MacArthur statue because a bunch of North Korean sponsored stooges demanded it. Plus their claims that Eisenhower’s statue is not on display at Normandy were proven to be utterly false as well. Ike’s statue stands proudly at Normandy just like MacArthur’s statue should continue to stand proudly at Inchon.

However, not everyone has forgotten about what MacArthur means to South Korea:

These ROK veterans at the time called the anti-MacArthur protesters North Korean spies and they were right.

The US Congress even got involved in the MacArthur controversy by sending this letter to the Blue House condemning the protests:

Members of the U.S. House Committee on International Relations on Thursday protested at calls in Korea to topple a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur in Incheon. Their protest came in a letter to President Roh Moo-hyun signed by committee chairman Henry Hyde and others.

The letter said but for the 1950 Incheon landing led by MacArthur, the Korea of today would not exist. If attempts to damage the statue continued, it would be better to hand it over to the Americans, the signatories said.

(…)

Needless to say Mr. President the Congress of the United States and the American people would never subscribe to such a description of a hero who led the allied forces which liberated the Republic of Korea twice, first from the yoke of Japanese colonialism 60 years ago this summer and secondly through the brilliant execution of the Inchon landing 55 years ago this month. Our critical bilateral alliance was forged in the crucible of Inchon. The common sacrifices, goals, and achievements which sprang out of Inchon form, in our opinion, the continuing basis for our alliance. We presume that the government of the Republic of Korea shares this view of the critical importance fo the Inchon Landing and the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur.

(…)

In the chamber of the US House of Representatives, directly behind the speaker’s podium hang two portraits. On one side is that of a foreign friend, a soldier who came from a far to assist in the common cause of American independence. That portrait is of the Marquis de Lafayette. For more than 200 years his memory has been implanted deep in the hearts of the American people. We would hope that General MacArthur is so remembered in the hearts of the South Korean people.

Not to be out done the British ambassador to Korea had plenty to say as well:

“I have been saddened to read that a group of protestors attacked and called for the removal of the statue of the U.S. general MacArthur in Incheon. The statue was erected to commemorate the Incheon Landing, which he led, and which was one of the most decisive interventions of the Korean War. British naval vessels were among those involved. By attacking his statue and his memory, these protestors are also denigrating ALL those foreign soldiers under the UN command, who came to fight alongside South Korea in that war. There were men and women from more than 20 nations involved, including my own. Tens of thousands of them gave their lives so that South Korea should remain free and independent. Without the fierce allied fighting that followed there was a real chance that South Korea, by then pinned down to Busan, would have been overrun.

“None of us can change our country’s history. What happened, happened, and we should respect the right for people to demonstrate peacefully, but these protestors risk alienating more than just American friends. I am glad there have been some firmly-worded editorials, and that a number of leading figures, including Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, have spoken up. They need to, and strongly, if good friends of Korea and war veterans from many countries are not to feel insulted.”

With North Korean agents leading protests to tear down the MacArthur statue and create a wedge in the US-ROK alliance what does the ruling Uri Party chairman do? Blame the conservative groups protecting the statue of course:

Ruling Uri Party chairman Moon Hee-sang said Sunday the dispute over a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur in Incheon was “a clash between civic organizations,” but some media outlets and conservative forces blew it out of proportion for reasons of their own. They “sow distrust and friction between Korea and the United States on the pretext of being concerned about the Korea-U.S. alliance,” he said.

With this arrest of a North Korean spy it is also important to remember those in the Korean government and media that were complicit in this obvious North Korean sponsored attempt to create a wedge in the US-ROK alliance. The only thing I find surprising about the spy arrest is why it took so long to uncover it?

HT: One Free Korea

 This is how 9/11 is remembered in South Korea:

Useful Idiots out in force in Inchon protesting the MacArthur Statue.

Riot police playing king of the hill by holding the high ground against the hate group protesters wielding bamboo poles trying to tear down the MacArthur Statue.

This is the scene from yesterday’s anti-American hate fest in Inchon. Notice that the hate groups are using the same tactics they used in Pyongtaek, a frontal assault with bamboo poles and metal pipes. This is what the Chosun Ilbo had to say about the protest:

Dozens were injured when groups calling for the removal of a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur clashed with police in Incheon’s Freedom Park on Sunday. The clashes came four days ahead of the 55th anniversary of the Incheon Landing of UN forces led by MacArthur that marked a turning point in the Korean War.

Some 4,000 members of progressive groups who had gathered in Sungeui Stadium in Incheon’s Nam-gu started marching on the park at 1 p.m. to demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Korea and the removal of the monument to the U.S. general from Freedom Park.

Here is my first point of contention with the Chosun article; they try to make it out that this protest was held on Sunday because the 15th is the 55th anniversary of the Inchon Landing. This is incorrect. The hate groups specifically held it on the anniversary of 9/11 to rub it in the USA’s face the terrorist attack that killed 3,000 Americans. My second point of contention is that the newspaper dignifies these people by calling them a “progressive group”. They are a hate group. If you exchanged the words they say about Americans to Koreans the media would have no qualms calling them a racist hate group. If tomorrow I had a protest demanding that every statue in tribute to Koreans in America should be torn down, my group would be labeled a hate group. These people are no different. Call them what they are, they hate Americans.

Here is another example of how out of hand this is getting. Some of you may remember this picture from July’s hate fest at Camp Humphreys:

At the Inchon protest, children were once again subject to violence:

Here is a quote I had to chuckle at when I read it:

The park resembled a battlefield littered with branches, dirt, eggs, torn-up paper and the blood of the wounded. Police had deployed no fewer than 38 companies of riot police — about 3,800 men — and 78 transport vehicles, but they were unable to stop the violence and earned complaints from protesters for hurling stones.

The protesters are complaining that the riot police threw stones at them when they are attacking the police with bamboo poles, metal pipes, and rocks? I guess they are just supposed to stand there and take a beating from these idiots.

Is this Inchon or New Orleans?

Overall though, this protest was unsuccessful in creating the huge anti-American movement they hoped to create. In fact now more pro-American Koreans are mobilizing against the hate groups:

From the Chosun:

Earlier, some 1,000 members of conservative groups rallied at Inseong Girls High School near the Park to defend the statue of a man they see as a hero of the Korean War. At 4 p.m., they too entered Freedom Park with the intent of burning North Korean flags, throwing stones and eggs, and stopping the progressive groups from entering the park, but were stopped by police.

From the Joong Ang Ilbo:

On Thursday, more than 10,000 conservative activists including former marines will gather for a rally to protect the statue. “After the rally, we will take a turn to guard the statue on our own,” a representative of the Marine Corps Veterans Association said.

In the coming days we will see what the pro-American groups do in response to the hate groups. However, the true show down will be in Pyongtaek when the land is forcibly removed from the last few farmers still holding out and preventing the USFK from relocating soldiers there from Yongsan and the DMZ areas. This was just another warm up for the upcoming hate fest Super Bowl coming up this winter. And finally I will pose the question of why these people of continually beat, assault, and injure Korean policemen are not in jail?
______________________________________

Here is the first South Korean press report on today’s anti-American hate fest at Freedom Park in Inchon were hate groups vowed to tear down a symbol of Inchon the General MacArthur statue:

(ATTN: UPDATES with reports of injuries in clashes)
INCHEON, Sept. 11 (Yonhap) — Hundreds of anti-U.S. protesters clashed with riot police Sunday as they marched tried to march onto a public park in South Korea’s western port city of Incheon where a statue of U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur stands.

The protesters were part of 4,000 leftist activists who staged street demonstrations earlier in the day, demanding the removal of the statue which they argued hinders inter-Korean reconciliation and unification.

They think MacArthur’s statue hinders reunification? There idiot policy of providing nearly unmonitored food aid to North Korea that goes directly to the North Korean military has done more to hinder reunification than MacArthur’s statue. I guess they think if a Kim Il Sung statue sat there instead reunification will come quicker.

There are reports of injuries. Hopefully the injuries are not of the riot police that have to continuously put up with the violence from these hate groups. I’m sure there will be more updates on this in the morning.

The controversy over the MacArthur statue located in Jayu Park in Inchon first raised it’s ugly head last December.

This Kim Su-nam character appeared last week promoting last weekends protest at Jayu Park:

The group’s chairman Kim Su-nam said rectifying “the vestiges of colonialism and our distorted history must begin with removing the MacArthur statue, which is a symbol of imperialism.” He said the group would form a coalition with other groups from Inchon to bring down the statue.

So originally he says that removing the statue is an effort to correct distorted history. I don’t know what is so distorted about MacArthur saving the Korean nation twice, once from the Japanese and once from the North Koreans. Heck you could even say he helped save them from the Chinese too. Anyway this guy had a different story to say during last weekend’s protest:

“The statue is part of our humiliating history,” said Kim Su-Nam, a 65-year-old activist wearing a yellow jacket inscribed with anti-US slogans.

“By dismantling the statue, we want to stoke an anti-US movement aimed at expelling US troops from the peninsula,” Kim said.

Using a loudspeaker, he rebuked the pro-US demonstrators as “followers of the US colonial master”.

Well at least Kim is now showing his true motives. He could care less about whatever history MacArthur has in regards to Korea. His real motive is to create images on American TV screens of the MacArthur statue being toppled ala Saddam Hussein, to create a strong anti-Korean backlash in the United States. He is absolutely right. If that statue gets torn down and that is broadcast across America, the US-ROK alliance is over and South Korea might as well put up this statue in MacArthur’s place:

The pro-US protesters that Mr. Kim spoke of actually greatly outnumbered his small 50 person protest group:

“We will never forget what he did for us. He is a hero who stopped the communization of the Korean peninsula,” said Lee Jin-Ho, a 74-year-old veteran who fought alongside US soldiers during the war.

But forget is exactly what some South Koreans want to do.

After laying a wreath at the memorial, Lee joined hundreds of other pro-US demonstrators, including war veterans in their 60s and 70s, who gathered in the park on Sunday to block about 50 anti-US activists intent on pulling down the statue.

Here is the money quote of the protest here:

“Instead of quibbling, they should pay attention to North Korea’s human rights situation and the dictatorship of its Kim Jong-Il regime,” Lee Phil-Han, a 56-year-old businessman in Incheon, said.

“We owe a lot to the United States which played a key role in our economic development. My notion is being supported by a silent majority of South Koreans.”

I cannot imagine the people of Inchon tearing down that statue. I have spent a lot of time in Inchon which is evident by my Focus on Inchon series of articles, and feel pretty confident when I say that Inchon is not a center of anti-US sentiment in Korea. If anything the city has always felt pro-US to me maybe due to the city’s connection with the Inchon landing and it’s long history of trade with the US and this feeling is supported by the strong counter-protest against Kim Su-Nam and his other pro-North Korean lackeys at Jayu Park last weekend. I would like to thank the people who showed up at the park and supported keeping the MacArthur statue.

Now my next question is, where is the Korean media on this? I’m getting the majority of the information on this event from Yahoo. We get wall to wall coverage of an idiot jumping on a taxi cab but very little coverage of this protest. In fact the only analysis I have seen of this protest was in the Korea Times of all places, which supported keeping the statue. Maybe the media just couldn’t bring themselves to run images like these I pulled off the Katolic Shinja site:

These pictures run counter to the anti-USFK tone the media likes to trump into the collective Korean consciousness here. Feel free to comment with links to any other Korean news analyis of this event I may have missed because I would like to read it.

Anyway, I tend to agree with the Katolic Shinja on this final quote here:

The best quote from the article above comes from former South Korean U.N. Ambassador Park Keun: “Not even dogs forget their benefactors.”