On Dec. 22, US President Trump tweeted “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability,“ adding “Let it be an arms race” in an interview. He alerted rivals the US “will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all,” effectively sealing as a fait accompli to Kim Jong-un’s inexorable drive towards comprehensive-capability nuclear weapons systems.

His stance violates the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty — the framework oft-invoked to pressurize the North to disarm — which stipulates that the US, Russia, China, Britain and France “pursue nuclear disarmament aimed at the ultimate elimination of their nuclear arsenals” in return for the concurrence of non-nuclear weapon states to bypass them.

Chosun Ilbo observed on Dec. 26, “A new arms race would also sap the credibility of Washington’s efforts to prevent the spread of these weapons,” signaling that initiatives aimed at North Korea’s “complete, verifiable, and irreversible” denuclearization were becoming precariously foundationless.

The New York Times editorial board — sounding not a little apprehensive — commented on Feb. 5, “Scientists ... recently moved the hands of the symbolic Doomsday Clock to 2 1/2 minutes before midnight ... they believe that the world is closer to nuclear catastrophe than it has been since 1953 ... The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ... says that President Trump is the main reason.”

Further convoluting Korea’s predicament, “Trump knows nothing about Korea, and neither do his aides,” as Chosun Ilbo asserted on Jan. 23.

If aggrandizing their respective nuclear weapons supplies, both Russia and America will be doing so in contravention of additional arms control accords. Inasmuch as consequential contracts are facilely flouted by two presumed standard-bearers — with probably China and conceivably Japan following suit — it’s nonsensical to purport that Kim Jong-un could mull whatsoever prospects for denuclearization in good faith.

Neither would it be consistent, then, to deny South Korea — who may feel justified in taking that route in view of its history and owing to existential threats faced on seemingly diverse fronts — the right to nuclear armament as a correlative self-defense measure.

Korea’s case for going nuclear is the actual inverse of Japan’s; throughout her history demonstrably absent were extraterritorial ambitions of any kind. After half a millennium as “one of the most pacifist of states in the world,” the Korean Peninsula’s reshaping into the most militarized region on earth was the “special domain of foreign influence,” as the late professor Gregory Henderson wrote in a 1976 essay.

Whereas Korea — through illegal colonization supplanted by forced bisection, culminating in war and genocide — endured maximal exploitation and victimization, Japan has struggled to repent for World War II aggression and for outrages perpetrated in her former colonies.

Henderson exhorted, “The ultimate objective of our Korean policies should be a four-power guarantee of the neutrality, unity, and independence of the Korean peninsula.” Regrettably, as illustrated by past and current events, none of the “four powers” particularly care to see this outcome due to their own interests.

The ideal appears to be even less securable than formerly given, for one, the pervasive anti-Korean, ultra-nationalistic sentiment brewing in Japan. Incidentally, the US president and Shinzo Abe met yet again on Feb. 10; they and their wives subsequently flew to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a “weekend stay,” where “a fair bit of golf involved as well as more time together, meeting and just relaxing” was on the agenda.

Korea may discover itself in the complex position of going nuclear — even if reunified — to safeguard its sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence from encroachment amid competing rapaciousness.

Trump’s selection of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State should concern Korea. The former Exxon Mobil chief executive was conferred an Order of Friendship by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013, and has partnered with Russian oil companies on multi-billion dollar projects.

To the alarm of many, Trump has suggested he might accept the Russian annexation of Ukraine‘s Crimea region, in addition to nullifying sanctions imposed on Moscow over the 2014 takeover — which would authorize a reportedly $500 billion Exxon Mobil deal with Russian state oil to be consummated. When queried in 2016 if Trump as president would recognize Crimea as Russian territory, he replied: “Yes. We would be looking at that.”

In an interview released Feb. 5, the US president, when asked how he could respect Putin when the Russian president was “a killer,” replied, ”There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country's so innocent?“

The implications of Trump’s profit-centered, Trump-and-his-friends-only vision could not be more premonitory for Korea.

Kim’s nuclear pursuits and the heedless notion of a US preemptive strike on the North are like “two trains heading toward each other on the same track,” wrote JoongAng Ilbo on Feb. 7, further commenting “South Korea and the United States also need to review a plan to downscale the joint military drill in March.” Said to be the “largest-ever,” it would also appear rather counterintuitive and inconsistent.

Taking into account the overall trajectory of North Korea’s brinkmanship, Kim’s acute paranoia, propensity for ostentation and frightful immaturity, such an outward spectacle of killing proficiency aired by world media will merely result in its logical conclusion: the dreaded, much-hyped intercontinental ballistic missile test.

The ceaseless reshuffling and purging of Kim’s closest agents of terror and atrocity represents a clarion call to the South Korean leadership to commence a far more innovatory and relevant strategy. Provisory amnesty specially targeting North Korean officials and soldiers — predicated upon the cessation of all human rights violations (explicitly those within the prison camps and the “absolute control zone”) and opposition to the person of Kim Jong-un — remains the most potent and timely weapon to end Kim’s nuclear subterfuge and mass atrocities while averting a war. Korea must act expeditiously.

At a Feb. 9 forum held in Seoul, former senior North Korean diplomat Thae Yong-ho said: “A preemptive strike against North Korea will bring about a huge catastrophe. Before it happens, we should remove Kim Jong-un.”

Arbitrating Korea’s complete self-determination would also be a wise decision, markedly in the Trump era. Korea can’t afford to squander four years; if a preemptive strike is permitted to proceed it would constitute a grave crime against the Korean people and play into Kim Jong-un’s hands.

As Gregory Henderson noted in the earlier cited essay, titled “Korea: Militarist or Unification Policies?”: “Americans and Russians both must remember that the Koreans did not ask us to divide their country, did not request that we occupy and rule them, did not solicit the governments we unleashed over their heads. Nor, unlike the Germans, had they given us the reasons for doing what we did.”

Doubtless, Kim Koo was onto something when he wrote in 1947 that, had God offered him three wishes, they would all be for the "complete independence of my country Korea."

By Robert Park

Robert Park is a founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, minister, musician and former prisoner of conscience. -- Ed.