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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 18, 2017)
U.S.A. December 18, 2017 THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7 Nobel laureates express concern about politics, tensions, science By David Keyton and Jim Heintz The Associated Press S DECADES-OLD DOCUMENTS. North Korean soldiers look at the south side of the Demilitarized Zone while a South Korean stands guard near the spot where a North Korean soldier crossed the border on November 13 at Panmunjom, South Korea, in this November 27, 2017 photo. Newly declassified documents from two de- cades ago show that U.S. officials believed the U.S. and South Korea would “undoubtedly win” a conflict on the divided Korean Peninsula, but with the understanding it would cost many casualties. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) U.S. foresaw a costly victory in war with North Korea — in 1994 By Matthew Pennington The Associated Press W ASHINGTON — In a nuclear standoff with North Korea more than two decades ago — long before the reclusive government had atomic weapons that could threaten America — U.S. officials planned for war. Declassified documents were recently published that show the United States believed its military and South Korea’s forces would “undoubtedly win” a conflict on the divided Korean Peninsula, with the understanding it would cost many casualties. The Pentagon estimated at the time that if war broke with Korea, some 52,000 American service members would be killed or wounded in the first three months. South Korean military casualties would total 490,000 in that time. And the number of North Korean and civilian lives claimed would be enormous, according to “The Two Koreas” by Don Oberdorfer, a definitive modern history of Korean Peninsula. Today, with North Korea almost able to directly threaten the U.S. mainland with nuclear strikes, the possibility of conflict looms as it had in 1994. U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to stop the North Koreans from reaching such capability. Twenty-three years ago, the stakes were different. At that time, then-President Bill Clinton’s administration considered a cruise missile strike on a North Korean nuclear complex after it began defuelling a reactor that could provide fissile material for bombs for the first time. Former President Jimmy Carter headed off a conflict, meeting with founding North Korean leader Kim Il Sung and helping seal an aid-for-disarmament agreement. The pact endured for nearly a decade, despite frequent disputes and periodic flare-ups on the peninsula. “We had taken a very strong position that we would not permit North Korea to make a nuclear bomb,” William Perry, who was defense secretary during the crisis, said. “We have said that many times since then, but then we really meant it.” A declassified transcript published by the National Security Archive at George Washington University records Perry’s discussion on the standoff with South Korea’s president in 1998. Perry was by then Clinton’s special envoy for North Korea. Perry told President Kim Dae-jung that the U.S. had planned for a military confrontation and that “with the combined forces of the ROK and U.S., we can undoubtedly win the war.” ROK refers to the abbreviation of the South’s official name, the Republic of Korea. Speaking to South Korea’s Kim, who pursued a “sunshine” policy of diplomatic outreach to North Korea, Perry said the “war involves many casualties in the process. As a former defense secretary, I am well aware of the negative aspects of war, and will do my best to avoid war.” North Korea has since made leaps and bounds in its nuclear and missile development, particularly under its current young leader, Kim Jong Un. It tested an intercontinental ballistic missile with a likely range of more than 8,000 miles, moving it closer to perfecting a nuclear-tipped projectile that can strike all corners of the U.S. mainland. Trump has not ruled out using force to stop the North from achieving that capability if diplomacy fails. Backing up the threat, the U.S. has stepped up its military drills with allies, which Pyongyang condemns as preparations for invasion. The U.S. and South Korea recently held air force drills involving more than 200 aircraft, including six U.S. F-22 and 18 F-35 stealth fighters. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry has warned, “The remaining question now is: when will the war break out.” Speaking at an Arms Control Association briefing in Washington, Perry urged a renewed effort at diplomacy, which he said wouldn’t get North Korea to give up its nukes in short order, but could lower the likelihood of war. He said a nuclear-armed North Korea wouldn’t attack America but may be emboldened in military provocations against South Korea that could spiral into a wider conflict. The U.S. could itself blunder into a nuclear war if it undertook a conventional military strike on North Continued on page 15 TOCKHOLM — An American researcher who shared this year’s Nobel Prize for medicine bluntly criticized political developments at home in his address at the awards’ gala banquet. Michael Rosbash, who was honored for his work on circadian rhythms — commonly called the body clock — expressed concern that U.S. government support such as that received by him and colleagues Jeffrey Hall and Michael Young is endangered. “We benefitted from an enlightened period in the postwar United States. Our National Institutes of Health have enthusiastically and generously supported basic research ... (but) the current climate in the U.S. is a warning that continued support cannot be taken for granted,” he said in a short speech at the ornate city hall in Stockholm. The 2018 federal budget proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump calls for cutting science funding by billions of dollars. “Also in danger is the pluralistic America into which all three of us were born and raised after World War II,” Rosbash said. “Immigrants and foreigners have always been an indispensable part of our country, including its great record in scientific research.” Literature laureate Kazuo Ishiguro of Britain expressed concern about in- creasing tensions between social factions. “We live today in a time of growing tribal enmities of communities fracturing into bitterly opposed groups,” said Ishiguro, who was born in Japan. He said Nobel prizes can counterbalance such animosity. “The pride we feel when someone from our nation wins a Nobel prize is different from the one we feel witnessing one of our athletes winning an Olympic medal. We don’t feel the pride of our tribe demonstrating superiority over other tribes. Rather it’s the pride that from knowing that one of us has made a significant contribution to our common human endeavor,” he said. In the Norwegian capital of Oslo, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima compared her struggle to survive in 1945 to the objectives of the group awarded this year’s Nobel’s Peace Prize. Setsuko Thurlow, who was 13 when the U.S. bomb devastated her Japanese city during the final weeks of World War II, SPEAKING OUT. Literature laureate Kazuo Ishiguro of Britain has expressed concern about increasing tensions between social factions. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant) spoke as a leading activist with the Nobel-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Thurlow said the Hiroshima blast left her buried under the rubble, but she was able to see light and crawl to safety. In the same way, the campaign to which she belongs is a driving force behind an international treaty to ban nuclear weapons, she said after ICAN received the Nobel prize it won in October. “Our light now is the ban treaty,” Thurlow said. “I repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima: ‘Don’t give up. Keep pushing. See the light? Crawl toward it.’” The treaty has been signed by 56 countries — none of them nuclear powers — and ratified by only three. To become binding it requires ratification by 50 countries. ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn, who accepted the prize along with Thurlow, said that while the treaty is far from ratification “now, at long last, we have an unequivocal norm against nuclear weapons.” “This is the way forward. There is only one way to prevent the use of nuclear weapons — prohibit and eliminate them,” Fihn said. The prize winners were announced in October. All except the peace prize were awarded in Sweden this month. The other laureates were American Richard Thaler for his work in behavioral economics; American physicists Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and Barry Barish for confirming the existence of gravity waves; and Jacques Dubochet of Switzerland, American Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson of the United Kingdom for advances in electron microscopy. Associated Press writer David Keyton reported this story in Oslo and AP writer Jim Heintz reported from Moscow. Salvage team sinks fishing boat off Hawai‘i reef By Caleb Jones The Associated Press ONOLULU — A commercial fishing vessel carrying foreign workers that ran aground and later burned and leaked fuel just off the beaches of Waikiki has been towed out to sea and sunk by a team of salvage workers. After being patched up and filled with foam to regain buoyancy, the 79-foot Pacific Paradise was hooked to a tug boat and hauled into deeper water as a crowd of people on the beach cheered. An attempt to tow the boat to sea earlier failed after it was removed from the reef, but then became stuck again in a shallow, sandy area about 600 feet away, forcing salvagers to wait until high tide. The plan was to move it about 13 miles offshore to an EPA-approved disposal site, according to Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Sara Muir. Officials say there could still be up to 1,500 gallons of fuel remaining on the boat. The crash raised new questions about H the safety and working conditions of foreign laborers in the Hawai‘i fleet. No one aboard called for help when it crashed, and rescue teams responded to eyewitness reports. They rescued 19 foreign workers and an American captain, who were then taken by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to a pier to be interviewed and placed on other boats. “There’s a little bit of concern as to why there [were] so many crew members onboard,” said Honolulu resident Jeff Olin, who was at the beach to watch the removal. “That’s definitely another part of the equation that needs some answers.” The vessel usually has a crew of six, and while it was unclear exactly how many bunks were on the Pacific Paradise, similar boats typically have no more than 10 beds for crew to sleep. It would have taken at least 12 days for the boat to make it from American Samoa, where it picked up the Southeast Asian crew members, to Hawai‘i. The Pacific Paradise — based in Honolulu and used to catch tuna in the Pacific — smashed into the shallow reef just before midnight on October 10 in about six feet of water just a few hundred yards offshore. Days later it caught fire as a salvage team prepared it to be towed, causing extensive damage that slowed its removal and sent fishing hooks, fuel, and oil into the ocean. A 2016 Associated Press investigation revealed the fishing fleet exploits a loophole in federal law to employ men from impoverished Southeast Asian and Pacific nations for a fraction of the pay an American worker would get, with some making as little as 70 cents per hour. The men do not have authorization to enter the United States, so they are confined to boats while docked in Honolulu and not eligible for most basic labor protections. The AP report revealed instances of abuse and claims of human trafficking among the fleet. Under the law, U.S. citizens must make up 75 percent of the crew on most American commercial fishing boats. But in Continued on page 15
