Ruling Uri Party Rep. Kim Won-wung said the MacArthur statue should be seen in a long historical perspective going back beyond the Korean War and the division of the country to Japanese colonial rule. “The source of Korea’s modern misfortunes is the U.S-Japan treaty sealed on July 29, 1905, [the secret Taft Katsura Agreement] which acknowledged Japan’s control of the Korean Peninsula,” he said. Late though it is, he said Korea should protest against the agreement and initiate as formal repeal of the treaty. “Seoul and Washington need to correct the errors of the past,” he said.

In response, main opposition Grand National Party lawmaker Park Gye-dong said there was no such thing as a Taft-Katsura Agreement; all that happened was an exchange of opinions between the U.S and Japan. It is wrong to blame the U.S for Japan’s colonization of Korea, the outbreak of the Korean War and the division of Korea, all based on a non-existent secret treaty, Park said. He said Korean textbooks contained a “historical error” in describing the agreement as such.

Meanwhile, the Korean Embassy in Washington said a new U.S. doctrine that would update rules governing use of nuclear weapons to reflect a pre-emptive strategy first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002 was merely a final draft devised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The so-called Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations “is not yet the Bush government’s official doctrine,” said Kwon Hang-geun, a military attaché to the embassy. “But once approved after circulation, it will be used as guidelines for field commanders dealing with nuclear weapons. The doctrine permits pre-emptive attacks against countries deemed likely to use weapons of mass destruction or possess threatening conventional weapons, even if they are not members of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )