 Frank, you are going to be taking it away. All right. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you. This is going to be an essay or an article that was written by S. Brian Wilson about our involvement in Korea. And Brian is probably one of the biggest experts in this country, his knowledge of Korea, what we've done in Korea, as strong as anyone. He's been there seven or eight times. But just for any of those who are watching who don't know who Brian is, Brian was raised in upstate New York. And when he went into the Air Force as an officer, he was at that time a conservative Republican, anti-Castoral. He was an anti-communist. He was a valedictorian of his class. And he was an all-eagg athlete. He was the all-American young man. And when he went to Vietnam, he as an officer, he was involved. He was ahead of 40 men in his group. And one of the first assignments he had, he was sent out to a village, sent out to inspect a result of a bombing that the United States had done. It was a South Vietnamese lieutenant trained in the United States. And Brian didn't even know what he was going to check on. And he got out there. And what he discovered was it was a fishing village. And the Espen napalm bombed an napalm. And he explained, is there about 100 people there? And they were all dead, are dying. And there were no soldiers. And there were no weapons, women and children, some old men. And he had his epiphany that day. And in the next week or so, he went to four other villages and saw the same thing. And then Brian started speaking out against what we were doing there. And they sent him back to the United States. And he ended up getting out of the Air Force. And he became an activist. And when I first heard about Brian, it was 1986. He was involved in a veteran's fast for life. And they were fasting, four veterans fasting in front of the Capitol building against US policy in Central America. And actually, that was learning about Nicaragua at the time. And he was very involved. And then one of them almost died 40 days. And a year later, Brian was doing another action on Concord. They were blocking naval trains. They were carrying weapons to put on ships to go to Central America to use the killings of people down there. And I'll never forget, I heard Blaze Bomb Pain and on KBFK announced one day that Brian had been run over by this train and it cut off his legs. And a year later, he came to Los Angeles. And I want to hear him speak. And it changed my life. I've never heard anybody speak like Brian, especially that first time I heard him. And then I made friends with him later on. And he's in my film. He's lasting up to my film. And we made the film about him called Pain to Price for Peace. The story of S. Brian Wilson, directed by Boba Dhar. And I was a associate producer in that film. It's a great film. It's available out there, 2016. And his book, Blood on the Tracks, the lifetime of S. Brian Wilson, another great book. And if you don't want to buy anything or all that, go to his website, www.brianwilson.com. Everything he's written on there is worth reading. So he's also, like I said before, been to Korea numerous times. And so Brian wasn't able to be with us tonight. But we're going to have what he's submitted read by Emily Dorrell, my daughter. And that's it. Emily's going to take it away. Thanks, Debbie. The US decision to artificially divide an ancient homogeneous Korea upon the surrender of the Japanese, the subsequent US directed reign of terror that led directly to the war of national independence against Western imperialist intervention, and then consequently the hot war to be followed by extensive periods of military dictatorships until 1997, supported by the US government, surely must rank as one of the cruelest tragedies of the 20th century. This is virtually unknown history in the West. And today's issues relating to Korea cannot be understood without knowing this diabolical assault on the Korean soul. Everything we learned about Vietnam has its forerunner in Korea, US support of a corrupt tyrannical ruler, regular atrocities, mass slaughter of civilians, torture, and imprisonment of dissidents not assassinated, cities and many agricultural areas bombed to total destruction, intense and calculated management of the news narratives about the war, and consistent sabotaging of peace talks throughout the war's duration. On August 8th, 1945, exactly three months after the German surrender, Russian troops entered Manchuria as they had earlier promised at the Yalta Conference overwhelming Japanese forces there. On August 12th, they entered Northern Korea, further ousting Japanese forces, thereby assuring no more US casualties. This significant Soviet involvement now made it impossible for the US to exclude the USSR in a post-war Korean settlement. On August 11th, three days after the entrance of the Soviet troops in the Japanese arena, and as it turns out, only four days before the imminent surrender of Japan, President Truman unilaterally ordered his Department of War to hurriedly identify a supposedly temporary line dividing Korea into two zones. The 38th parallel was chosen, a division that placed approximately 21 million rural people, 65% of the country's population, and historic capital city of Seoul in the US zone. 9 million people and the more industrial sectors with 55% of the land base were to be in the Soviet zone. Of course, the Koreans were not consulted. The US understood that if it was to assert Western style, capitalist control in Korea, it had to defeat then eliminate the broad-based popular Democratic KPR, Korean People's Republic, that immediately organized themselves after the Japanese surrender on the entire peninsula north and south. Instead of repatriating the defeated Japanese forces as mandated, the US military government manned by nearly 2,000 US officers, most of whom were unable to speak or understand the Korean language, quickly recruited them and their Korean collaborators to continue administrative functions. More important and egregiously, the US military government revived the feared Japanese colonial police force, the Korean national police. About 85% of the Koreans who had served in the Japanese colonial police force were quickly employed by the US to man the KNP. Other collaborators were recruited into the Korean constabulary created in December, 1945 by the commander of the US forces in Korea. Secret protocols later revealed gave the US operational control of the Southern Korean police and all of its armed forces from August 15th, 1945 to June 30th, 1949. Systemic planned repression began almost immediately despite the fact that US government knew full well of Korean desires in 1945 for independence. The US possessed a thorough study entitled Joint Army Navy Intelligence Study of Korea which described the strong desires of the Koreans for their independence and that they preferred a cumbersome autonomous transition to the danger and dread of continued control by some successor to Japan. The study described the extent of the 40-year Japanese rule and its collusion with an aristocratic Korean minority reiterating that the majority of tenant farmers were terribly oppressed. Nonetheless, the US had no intention to grant the Koreans their historical, legal and cultural rights to independence. And a subsequent US survey of Korean attitudes disclosed that nearly three quarters of the population clearly wanted a socialist rather than a capitalist system. Furthermore, early reports revealed that their socialist leanings were quite independent of any directives from the Soviet Union and were cooperative but not under the thumb of Northern Korea communists. The US hurriedly organized wealthy conservative Koreans representing the traditional land-owning elite and on September 16th, 1945 convened the Korean Democratic Party. US intelligence had quickly identified several hundred conservatives among the older and more educated Koreans who had served the Japanese who could serve as the nucleus for the rapidly convened KDP. These were the Koreans who had grown wealthy as a result of years of collaboration with their Japanese colonizers. Nonetheless, both US Secretary of State Dean Atchison and George Kennan, Asian specialist for the US State Department, made it clear by 1949 that the ability of the democratically elected Singh Menri to suppress the internal threats to his regime was very important for the success of US containment of communism policy. The guerillas had to be quickly eliminated so that the world could clearly witness Korea's successful landing of the communist threat, handling of the communist threat. The stakes were high in Korea for the US and the West in general in the new Cold War. The US wanted to make sure that their puppet, Ri, would prevail at any cost. Ri was a US educated Christian in a primarily Buddhist and Confucianist society who had been flown to Korea on General Douglas MacArthur's personal plane on October 16th, 1945. The US cared not one bit about the aspirations of the Korean people for a reunified country. Thus, the US exercised a large role in suppressing any and all resistance to the Ri regime, advisors with all Korean army and police units, use of spotter planes to ferret out guerillas, daily briefings of counterinsurgency units, interrogation and torture of prisoners, regular intelligence briefings, use of transport planes carrying armed troops and supplies and even the occasional use of US combat forces. The US Re forces carried out a ruthless campaign of cleansing the south of dissidents, identifying as a suspected communist, anyone who opposed the Ri regime, whether openly or quietly. In fact, most participants or believers in the popular movement in the south were socialists and unaffiliated with outside communist organizations. As the repression intensified, however, alliances with popular movements in the north, including communist organizations increased. The Jeju Island insurgency in the south was crushed by August 1949, but on the mainland, Korea warfare continued in most provinces until 1950 to 1951. In the eyes of the commander of the US military forces in Korea and President Seung Min-Ri, virtually any Korean, not a publicly professed rightist, was considered a communist trader. Therefore, massive numbers of farmers, villages and urban residents who were systematically rounded up in rural areas, villages and cities from throughout South Korea. Captives were regularly tortured to extract names of others. Thousands were imprisoned and even more thousands forced to dig mass graves before being ordered into them and shot by fellow Koreans, under which the watch of US officers. Estimates of civilians murdered under the pretext of killing communists during the era of legal US occupation and the succeeding extended period until June 30th, 1949 are in the 500,000 range, with the lowest figure being 100,000, the highest being 800,000. By mid-1949, there were 30,000 alleged communists in Ries Jails and it estimated 70,000 in so-called guidance camps used as overflow prisons. By December, 1949, as many as 1,000 people a day were being rounded up, tortured and imprisoned. Meanwhile, numerous others were being murdered after torture, not even having the privilege of being thrown in prison. US and Korean agents had penetrated every organization, every student group, every cafe, every workplace seeking any evidence of publicly expressed dissent and contempt for the re-regime. US officials, including at the US embassy, knew and were complicit in the reign of terror that preceded the open hot war that began on June 25th, 1950. Thank you very much, Emily, for reading and thank you, Brian, for writing that beautiful piece. Such important testimony that will be put into the record. And...