[Full Text] Sep. 19th Pyongyang Declaration l KBS WORLD Radio

[Full Text] Sep. 19th Pyongyang Declaration l

 KBS WORLD Radio



South Korea's President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held summits in Pyongyang from September 18th to the 20th.

The two leaders assessed that remarkable achievements had been made since the historic Panmunjeom Declaration was signed, including the two Koreas engaging in close government-level dialogue and communication as well as in nongovernmental exchanges and cooperation in various areas, and taking significant steps toward easing military tensions.

The two leaders reaffirmed the principles of self-reliance and self-determination of the Korean people and agreed to consistently and continuously advance inter-Korean ties for reconciliation, cooperation, peace and joint prosperity. They also agreed to exert joint efforts to realize, through policies, the people's aim and hope for improved inter-Korean ties to lead to unification.

The two leaders sincerely and extensively discussed issues on further boosting inter-Korean ties to a higher level through the thorough implementation of the Panmunjeom Declaration. They also shared the view that the Pyongyang summits will become a major turning point in history.

1. The two Koreas agreed to end hostility at fortified regions, including the Demilitarized Zone, and continue such momentum by seeking to remove all real risks of war on the Korean Peninsula and resolve hostile relations.

① The two Koreas agreed to adopt a military accord on implementing the Panmunjeom Declaration as a side agreement of the Pyongyang Declaration, and to thoroughly observe and execute the accord. They also agreed to take substantial steps to make the Korean Peninsula a permanent peace zone.

② The two Koreas agreed to swiftly operate a joint military committee to inspect the status of the implementation of the military accord. They also agreed to engage in close communication and consultation at all times to prevent armed clashes of accidental nature.

2. The two Koreas agreed to further boost exchanges and cooperation based on mutual reciprocity and co-prosperity as well as devise substantial ways to advance national economy in a balanced manner.

① The two Koreas agreed to hold within this year ground-breaking ceremonies for connecting the Gyeongui and Yellow Sea railways and roads.

② The two Koreas agreed to normalize operations of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and tours to Mount Geumgang once necessary conditions are met as well as to discuss the issue of creating a joint special economic zone along the Yellow Sea and a special tourism zone along the East Sea.

③ In a bid to conserve and restore the natural ecosystem, the two Koreas agreed to actively pursue cooperation on environmental issues, starting with producing results in cooperation on forestry currently under way.

④ The two Koreas agreed to boost cooperation in health and medicine, including emergency steps on preventing infectious diseases from entering or spreading on the peninsula.

3. The two Koreas agreed to further strengthen humanitarian cooperation to fundamentally resolve the issue of separated families.

① The two Koreas agreed to open a permanent reception venue for separated families in the Mount Geumgang region at the earliest date possible and to that end, agreed to swiftly repair the reception house at the mountain resort.

② The two Koreas agreed to first work out through Red Cross talks the issue of holding video reunions and of allowing families to exchange video messages.

4. The two Koreas agreed to actively pursue cooperation and exchanges in a wide array of areas to promote the mood of reconciliation and unity as well as to boast the unyielding spirit of the Korean people both inside and outside of their countries.

① The two Koreas agreed to further boost exchanges in culture and arts, starting with a performance in Seoul in October by a Pyongyang art troupe.

② The two Koreas agreed to jointly take part in international competitions, including the 2020 Summer Olympics, and to seek to jointly host the 2032 Summer Olympics.

③ The two Koreas agreed to hold ceremonies to mark the eleventh anniversary of the October 4th joint declaration and to jointly commemorate the 100th anniversary of the March 1st independence movement. To this end, they agreed to hold working-level consultations.

5. The two Koreas agreed that the Korean Peninsula must become a place of peace that is free of nuclear weapons and nuclear threats and for that aim, the two Koreas shared the view that they must swiftly make necessary headway.
① North Korea agreed to permanently dismantle its missile engine test facility and missile launch tower in Dongchang-ri in the presence of experts from related countries.

② North Korea expressed intent to take further steps, including permanently dismantling the Yongbyon nuclear facility, if the United States takes corresponding steps in line with the spirit of the June 12th joint statement.

③ The two Koreas agreed to engage in close cooperation in the process of pursuing the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

6. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un plans to visit Seoul at an early date at the invitation of President Moon Jae-in.
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A Nation article by an ex-marine Lyle Jeremy Rubin

The Forever War’s Cheerleaders
Democrats, liberals, and progressives have become some of the biggest hawks in Washington. That needs to change.

By Lyle Jeremy Rubin
Sept 20, AM, Nation



US soldiers from Grim Company of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment walk down the street near an Afghan police checkpoint, 2014. (Reuters / Lucas Jackson)
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Coming home from the Forever War can be difficult. Not long after returning from Afghanistan as a Marine officer in early 2011, I found myself feeling betrayed by compatriots who worshiped the idea of my service while refusing to confront what that service entailed. There is a chasm of awareness that often exists between veterans and civilians, especially during an age in which an all-volunteer military prosecutes never-ending wars, and in which those Americans who end up experiencing combat prove statistically negligible.

It isn’t so much a chasm of awareness as a chasm of memory. The problem with veterans is we keep remembering our wars when we are supposed to join everyone else in forgetting them. Today I experience that gap most viscerally in politics, and liberal or progressive politics in particular, where celebrated commentators like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell fail to cover America’s ongoing wars and the role some of their favorite guests have played in launching and expanding them.

I remember what it felt like to believe every word of the Bush-era officials and journalists after the September 11 attacks, and I remember what it felt like when I donned the US Marine uniform in response to those words. I remember what it felt like to step foot in Afghanistan, and I remember what it felt like when I started having doubts about why I was there. I remember what it felt like to realize how wrong I was about the strategic efficacy and moral necessity of the war, how wrong everyone I trusted was, and how wrong the war had always been. The war in Afghanistan, like most of America’s wars, had come to strike me as not only a profitable lie, but a ruinous one. I remember what it first felt like to be an immediate witness to needless destruction and death, and what it felt like to recognize I would live with that feeling for the rest of my life.

The fact that those same Bush-era officials and pundits have now become heroes among partisan Democrats—the fact that the late John McCain, arguably America’s most enthusiastic warmonger, has now become something of a liberal patron saint—drives me toward despair. It is not as if my sense of hopelessness emerged from a vacuum. By the time I was discharged from the Marines in the late spring of 2011, President Obama had already caved to the militarists on Libya and the drone war, was beginning to double down on an unaccountable surveillance state and was waffling on the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. He would soon back Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression in Yemen, a war many now consider genocidal. On the other hand, Obama executed significant troop withdrawals in Iraq and (eventually) Afghanistan, and he served as a comparatively dovish voice on Iran, Syria, and Russia. He was no ally to the Palestinians, yet his relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu was icy. He also tended to keep his distance from the neoconservatives responsible for so much of the chaos in the Greater Middle East. At the very least, he didn’t go out of his way to revive their influence.

YEMEN

THE WAR FROM HELL—SUPPORTED BY THE UNITED STATES
Rajan Menon
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All this began to change during the 2016 Democratic primary, when the Clinton campaign made a conscious decision to align with the neocons in the lead-up to its bout with Trump. Clinton herself had always been a hawk, and she had frequently seen eye-to-eye with Bush’s war cabinet, but the threat of a Trump presidency during the general election, and the Russiagate mania that followed Trump’s victory, propelled Clinton and the Democrats to make the alliance official. During the race, the Clinton team courted Robert Kagan and others from the Weekly Standard crowd, who were likely drawn to Clinton’s willingness to ratchet up the air war against the Putin-backed Assad government in Syria, arm anti-Russia elements in Ukraine, tighten relations with Israel and the Gulf states, and maintain a belligerent posture toward Iran. After the race, high-level associates of both Clinton and Obama joined forces with the neocons to form an advocacy group, Alliance for Securing Democracy, whose tag line now reads, “Putin Knocked. We Answered.” The bond has only grown more pronounced as the months have progressed, leading one of the only prominent Iraq War supporters to have learned his lesson, Peter Beinart, to conclude that “on foreign and defense policy, the [Democratic Party] barely exists.”

It is one thing to welcome investigations into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, and to push for electoral and anti-corruption reforms that might help prevent such interference in the future. It is quite another to allow some of the world’s most fervent jingoists to assume the vanguard of the anti-Trump opposition, and to allow their politics to influence and define the language of the liberal and progressive left. We are living in an ominous moment when it is Democrats who are the most inclined to charge those who disagree with them on the Russia media narrative of treason, and when it is Democrats who are the most inclined to accept declarations or demands made by a defense establishment that apparently can do no wrong.

I would like to think this ideological shift would have stunned me regardless, but my personal journey has made it all the more shocking. There is something surreal about watching so many Democrats and liberal or progressive pundits adopt the ugliest rhetorical tics of the very post-9/11 chauvinism I once found myself immersed in, from seeing anyone or anything inconvenient to the presiding account as fifth-columnist to treating the utterances of spies and other military-industrial propagandists as gospel. Most of all, there is the ostensible disregard for the consequences of their ne

When Obama left office, the defense budget was already higher, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than any other time since World War II. As Beinart notes, it was higher than at the peak of the Vietnam War or the Reagan expansion. In the past two years, however, both parties have managed to swell its size even further, with the Russian and Chinese threats serving as convenient pretexts. These budget increases represent hundreds of billions that could have been devoted to more effective and humane efforts. But whether it is through taxpayer-funded military assistance or taxpayer-funded subsidies to arms dealers, these increases, combined with an ever-increasing slew of US-approved arms deals, will almost certainly lead to more suffering and risk around the world.

This includes escalating tensions around Russia’s periphery, in large part by arming and funding governments and groups in Ukraine, Poland, and elsewhere that have extensive ties with white nationalists and fascists. It includes continuing to arm and fund Saudi Arabia’s massacre in Yemenor Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It includes more torment in Syria’s civil war, a war that experts thought was drawing to a tragic but necessary close in 2016, just before anti-Russian sentiment was kicked into high gear. It includes the additional feeding of an unparalleled US-led global arms trade that will likely instigate violent outbursts in unexpected corners of the world. It includes a related arms race in surveillance and cyber-technology that will probably put added strain on an already fraying liberal-democratic fabric. Most frightening of all, it includes an anteing up of the nuclear arsenal.

What is needed now is a clear alternative to the present course. Liberals and progressives should be insisting on diplomacy and partnerships with Russia, akin to the Iran deal or Nixon’s trip to China. They should be educating the public on how the United States and its allies violated a 1990 promise to Russia not to expand NATO eastward. They should be speaking about how the US government, following the end of the Cold War, trumpeted triumphalism, helped impose shock therapy, cheered the privatization and selling off of key industries to disastrous effect, eviscerated the economy, threw their weight behind their favored candidate in Russia’s 1996 presidential election, and laid the groundwork for the rise of Putin and the oligarchs. They should be quoting the economist John Maynard Keyneson the hazards of punitive politics or the diplomat George Kennan on the dangers of NATO-related hubris. They should be fleshing out a grand bargain that involves a mutual exit from Syria, cessation of hostilities in the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen, mutual noninterference on Russia’s periphery, the halting of NATO expansion (if not its rollback), and investment in a green Marshall Plan linked to the rebuilding of regional economies—all conditioned on staged movement toward nuclear disarmament, the dialing down of the arms race, substantive democratic reform, and the reining in of the global plutocracy. This approach toward Russia, finally, should be embedded within a wider left-internationalist agenda of shared peace, prosperity, and environmental stewardship.

This would all make for an ambitious (some might say quixotic) reversal, and there is no denying the inevitable obstacles, from institutional inertia to the shortsightedness of great-power politics. But to conclude the status quo offers the safest bet is to surrender to what the sociologist C. Wright Mills once dubbed “crackpot realism.” It is to forget the endless waralready consuming us, and it is that very forgetfulness that constitutes our gravest threat. The left must counter such amnesia with thoughtful and bold geopolitical imagination.

Lyle Jeremy Rubin

Lyle Jeremy Rubin is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Rochester. He served in the United States Marine Corps for five years, and nearly a year of that service in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He is a proud member of About Face: Veterans Against the War (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War), as well as the Rochester, New York, branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.

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