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"Everybody wants to defend speech they agree with., only the truly principled will defend the of someone to say something they disagree with, and hate to listen or read." - Cal Weyers
"The primary challenge in unconventional conflicts is political-psychological, multi-dimensional, and rarely susceptible to single-component strategies or orthodox political-military operations. While all wars are political and psychological, in unconventional conflicts military operations quickly and pervasively take on political and psychological dimensions, often placing military operations in second place."
- Sam Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts, 1993 (page 22)
"The cold war...can be as destructive to the values we live by as a shooting war... It is clearer and clearer that the [Russians] consider propaganda as one of their most lethal weapons in the cold war."
- 1961, US Advisory Commission on Information.
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What a loss. A truly great man, a hero of Korea, and no greater supporter of the ROK/US alliance.
I was fortunate to attend many professional development events in the military and security conferences where he would tell us the stories of fighting in the Korean War. I sat in his office a number of times in the War Memorial in the photo below escorting US dignitaries. The last time was in 2006 when I introduced him to Robert Kaplan and I listened to him interview General Paik for almost three hours.
Here are Robert Kaplan's words from that 2006 interview:
Before I left Seoul, I met with a local military legend. Retired General Paik Sun Yup, now eighty-six years old, was the 1st Infantry Division commander during the Korean War and worked hand in hand with General MacArthur.
When we spoke, Paik insisted that crisis-driven political-military decisions here will ultimately determine the balance of power throughout Asia, the most important region for the world's economy. "This peninsula is the pivot," he said.
When I reflected on Paik's words later, it occurred to me that while the United States is in its fourth year of a war in Iraq, it has been on a war footing in Korea for fifty-six years now. More than ten times as many Americans have been killed on the Korean peninsula as in Mesopotamia. Most Americans hope and expect that we will withdraw from Iraq within a few years-yet we still have 32,000 troops in South Korea, more than half a century after the armistice. Korea provides a sense of America's daunting, imperial-like burdens.
But South Korea also provides a lesson in what can be accomplished with patience and dogged persistence. The drive from the airport at Inchon to downtown Seoul goes through the heart of a former urban war zone. South Korea's capital was taken and retaken four times in some of the most intense fighting of the Korean War. Korean men and women who lived through that time will always be grateful for what retired U.S. Army Colonel Robert Killebrew has called American "stick-to-itiveness," without which we would have little hope of remaining a great power.
In the heart of Seoul lies Yongsan Garrison, a leafy, fortified Little America, guarded and surrounded by high walls. Inside these 630 acres, which closely resemble the Panama Canal Zone before the Americans gave it up, are 8,000 American military and diplomatic personnel in manicured suburban homes surrounded by neatly clipped hedges and backyard barbecue grills. I drove by a high school, baseball and football fields, a driving range, a hospital, a massive commissary, a bowling alley, and restaurants. U.S. Forces Korea and its attendant bureaucracies are located in redbrick buildings that the Americans inherited in 1945 from the Japanese occupiers. Korea is so substantial a military commitment for us that it merits its own, semiautonomous subcommand of PACOM-just as Iraq, unofficially anyway, merits its own four-star subcommand of CENTCOM.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/10/when-north-korea-falls/305228/
Second there is the issue burial in the National Memorial Cemetery. Last month he was told there was no room for him there. If he is not given appropriate honors perhaps we would petition to have him buried at Arlington. He has done more for the ROK/US alliance than any other Korean military officer and perhaps than any government official. I say that only half tongue in cheek because it is not really feasible. But pressure needs to be brought to bear by Korean patriots to properly honor one their greatest heroes.
Korean War hero Paik Sun-yup dies at 99 | Yonhap News Agency
en.yna.co.kr · by 이해아 · July 11, 2020
SEOUL, July 11 (Yonhap) -- Paik Sun-yup, a famous Korean War hero and South Korea's first four-star general, died Friday at age 99, military officials said.
Born in 1920, Paik graduated from a military academy in Manchuria in 1941 and became an officer of the Manchukuo Imperial Army.
Upon the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Paik was assigned to lead the 1st Infantry Division. Under his leadership, the division played a critical role in deterring North Korean troops from taking over the entire South in what is known as the Battle of Tabu-dong, one of the fiercest battles of the war.
The following year, he became a two-star general to lead the Army corps. In 1952, he was named the top officer in the Army and became a four-star general the following year, the first in Korean history.
In 1959, he served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then retired from the military in 1960.
After his retirement, the general was appointed ambassador to China in 1960; to France, the Netherlands and Belgium in 1961; and to Canada in 1965. He also served as transportation minister from 1969 to 1971.
In honor of his service, South Korea created the General Paik Sun-yup Award in 2013, which has been awarded to U.S. service members considered to have contributed to the nation's security and the bilateral alliance.
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De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:
"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
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