The origins of N. Korean hatred of U.S.

July will bring the 65th anniversary of the signing of Korean Armistice Agreement — designed to “insure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” We are still waiting for that peaceful settlement.

We should welcome diplomatic steps to defuse the rhetoric and danger of a war on the Korean Peninsula. But in entering negotiations with North Korea, the United States should understand the history of the Korean War.

Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, started that war. We lost nearly 40,000 Americans defending the South and trying to deter the spread of communism. We answered his invasion of the south by dropping more bombs on North Korea than we did in the World War II Pacific theater. We also dropped about 35,000 tons of napalm, much of it on civilian targets. It is estimated we killed millions. Very little of developed North Korea remained when we left its shores.

Kim Il Sung was president of North Korea starting in 1948, and he convinced his demoralized citizens that America started the war and was responsible for the death and devastation in their country. Against this background, the armistice negotiations began in Panmunjom.

In 1953, while in the Army, I played a small role in those negotiations. For two years, we had struggled with issues from prisoner exchanges to the establishment of a demilitarized zone. Mao Zedong in China and Josef Stalin in Russia were pulling the North Korean strings.

Although China did not want a war on its border, it also did not want a strong U.S. presence on the peninsula. Russia was the most resistant to peace because it benefitted from destabilization in the area and a distracted U.S. military. It was not until Stalin’s death that the deal was closed. The intransigence of the North Koreans at the bargaining table convinced me that if China and Russia did not intervene, we would continue fighting in Korea.

North Korea came away with hatred for the United States and a determination to redeem its nation and its pride. It sought to do that by violating the armistice, which in part forbade building armaments, and embarked on its missile and nuclear weapons programs. For years, the international community negotiated agreements to end this proliferation that the North signed and then ignored.

For generations, the Kim leaders have insisted that the only way to deter U.S. aggression is to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. As deranged as Kim Jong Un appears, he knows that Saddam Hussein was removed by us when we believed they were developing nuclear weapons. He knows we would be reluctant to execute a regime change if that regime controlled atomic weapons. Kim also knows that we would be reluctant to attack him militarily. To do so would give him an excuse to unleash mayhem on South Korea, slaughtering millions in Seoul, only 35 miles from the demilitarized zone.

Kim has accomplished what his father and grandfather could not. He has apparently earned a place for North Korea at the negotiating table as a nuclear power with the U.S. president. That would be his first victory. President Donald Trump touts himself as the ultimate dealmaker, but there is little chance Kim Jong Un would voluntarily hand over his nuclear weapons. He might agree to stop testing and to release three American prisoners he holds. In exchange, we might agree to lift sanctions and encourage South Korea to trade with the North.

That would be Kim’s second victory.

Sol Wachtler, a former chief judge of New York State who served in a military government unit during the Korean War, is a distinguished adjunct professor at Touro Law School.