Tuesday, March 19th | 9 Adar II 5784

Subscribe
March 26, 2019 2:18 pm
0

Despite Trump’s Friendship, North Korea Is an Enemy of Free People Everywhere

× [contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]

avatar by Harold Brackman

Opinion

US President Donald Trump looks toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a one-on-one bilateral meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, Feb. 28, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Leah Millis.

Last week, the international community erupted in various degrees of outrage over President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Yet there was less reaction to Trump’s decision to override his own Treasury Department and not impose new sanctions on his “friend” Kim Jong-un’s North Korean regime for its efforts to build nuclear weapons, threaten its neighbors, and commit horrific human rights abuses.

Perhaps President Trump’s other friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ought to enlighten the president about the true nature of Kim Jong-un’s North Korea.

Every year on North Korea’s annual National Liberation Day, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas expresses appreciation for “Korea’s solidarity in support of our people’s rights and its just struggle to end the occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.”

The embassy of the State of Palestine in North Korea is located in the Munsudong District of Pyongyang. North Korea, which has no diplomatic relations with either Israel or South Korea, recognized the Palestinian struggle to destroy the Jewish “imperialist state” in 1988.

But North Korea has been arming Palestinian militants for decades longer.

Beginning in 1966, Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, and Yasser Arafat established a close personal bond. In a deviation from its isolationist policy, the North Korean regime supplied arms and military aid to the PLO starting in the 1970s. It also aided the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

North Korea also sent 20 pilots and 19 non-combat personnel to Egypt during 1973’s Yom Kippur War. The unit had four to six encounters with Israeli fighter jets.

In 1979, the new Islamic Republic of Iran established diplomatic relations with North Korea. During the 1980s, North Korea acted as a third party in arms deals between the Communist bloc and Iran. It also provided secret military expertise, some of it in nuclear technology.

After the 1980s, conventional military aid tailed off, but North Korea consistently maintained its vituperative rhetoric against Israel as an “imperial satellite state.” In addition, there was its covert nuclear cooperation with Syria, the apex of which was a reactor that the Israeli Air Force took out during “Operation Orchard” in 2007. Ten North Korean engineers were killed during the Israeli operation. Syria also originally obtained the Scud-B missile from North Korea.

In May 2010, Israel’s then-foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, labeled North Korea as part of an “axis of evil” with Syria and Iran. In 2014, North Korea was alleged to have negotiated an arms deal with Hamas.

North Korea also continues selling missile and nuclear technology to Iran, with scientists from each country visiting the other’s missile tests. Both countries provided military assistance to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and they actively sided with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Israel was skeptical but hopeful in 2017, when President Trump promised that his “bromance” at a summit with Kim would produce better results than in previous US administrations.

Unfortunately, despite Trump’s bold promises nothing has changed.

Historian Harold Brackman is co-author with Ephraim Isaac of From Abraham to Obama: A History of Jews, Africans, African Americans (Africa World Press, 2015).

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.

Share this Story: Share On Facebook Share On Twitter

Let your voice be heard!

Join the Algemeiner

Algemeiner.com

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.