Entering the Forest of the Forgotten War: The Barbarization of the Sky

This podcast begins a mini-series focused on the Korean War, known in the U.S. as "The Forgotten War." We begin the narrative (enter the forest) of this complex story through the Sky, which, as will be discussed in future episodes, played a crucial role in the Korean War. The Fifth Airforce of the then called "Far East Air Force" (currently called "Pacific Air Force") of the U.S. waged both conventional war through weapons (including chemical weapons), as well as Psychological Warfare (PsyOps) through the dropping of propaganda leaflets, actions whose consequences are well felt today. But to understand where we are today, we enter the forest in 1912, when Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) titled her final pacifist essay “The Barbarization of the Sky” warning against the numerous horrors that would result if the sky became a theater of war. * 2020 marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the war, and though the years of this war are customarily given as 1951-1953, the war has technically not ended (an armistice agreement was reached in 1953). In June 2020 hostilities between the two Koreas have intensified, just two years after the historic Panmujeom summit between President Moon Jae-In (of the Republic of Korea [South Korea])) and Kim Jung-Eun (of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [North Korea])). This show begins to weave a thread that connects the argument of Suttner's 1912 essay with the current hostilities between the 2 Koreas which have arisen out of the Korean War.