In the early spring of 1972, I had finished flight training and was posted to a remote fighter base in South Korea, Kunsan Air Base. Departing Tampa on Mar. 10, I traveled by air to Seattle, Tokyo, and finally Seoul, literally half way around the world. From there, I grabbed a commuter flight south to Kunsan. It was an exhausting trip, but at age 23, I was much more tolerant of such arrangements than I am today.
Kunsan sits hard on the Yellow Sea on Korea’s west coast, about a hundred miles south of Seoul. It is an active fighter base today, 46 years later. When I was there, the base housed two F-4D Phantom squadrons and one South Korean F-86 squadron. Today, the base hosts two F-16 squadrons and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them transition to the F-35 in the near future.
Things were pretty austere back in 1972. The weather was bitterly cold. Wind from the west coming in from the sea (the runway approach lights were mounted on pylons in the water) would bring in ice and all sorts of nasty weather conditions. I was assigned to the 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron “Panthers.” Our mission (as well as the 80th TFS) was primarily air attack, but we also had an air defense tasking.
Back then, we did have nuclear weapons at Kunsan and always kept two birds on alert (as well as two air defense). It was a really complicated war plan because there were three “enemies” our aircraft could reach: North Korea (NoKo), China, and the far east of the Soviet Union. The nukes were withdrawn from the peninsula in 1991 I believe, an early concession to the belligerent North Koreans in hopes they would stand down their development of offensive weapons which threaten the region.
Our best efforts and intentions have not worked – North Korea is as belligerent as ever and continues their efforts at breakneck pace to develop long range nuclear tipped missiles which threaten not only their brethren to the south, but also the entire Pacific region and now, the United States.
Why would they do this? The primary purpose of nuclear weapons is to act as a deterrent from attack, but the North Koreans already have a conventional deterrent. Seoul is the most populous urban area in the world, and it is located in the northwest corner of South Korea within artillery range of their enemy. The only feasible place where North Korea can be invaded and their regime threatened is from the south and North Korea holds the trump card (I’m discounting a seaborne invasion which would be enormously difficult).
North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un loves to pillory the United States as the “Great Satan,” but I cannot imagine any scenario where America would attack North Korea unilaterally. U.S. military forces in Northwest Asia are hosted by our allies: South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. We cannot and would not entertain the idea of going to war alone.
Since my assignment 46 years ago, South Korea has grown into an economic powerhouse. I drive a Korean SUV made by Hyundai, a multinational corporation that was nothing more than small taxi company in 1972. Soon, they will host the Winter Olympics and showcase for the world their phenomenal growth. Meanwhile, their cousins to the north live in abject poverty, repressed by a dictator who is cruel beyond measure. It is hard for me to imagine any nation in the world today whose people are more poorly treated by their leadership. The diseases carried by the last two defectors give us some insight into the maltreatment of the North Korean people.
For anyone who questions the cruelty of this regime, I invite you to look back to last summer and the tragic circumstances of a young Ohioan Otto Warmbier. He was so maltreated in a North Korean prison that he returned to his family in a coma and died just a week later at the age of 23. These people are cruel beyond our ability to imagine.
For years, north and south have held no communication. It is a positive sign that North Korea wants to engage some dialogue and participate in some capacity in the Olympics. But we must be cautious and not deluded as we have in the past. For all of their problems, the Kim family, now in their third generation of leadership, is very dangerous.