Why Do North Koreans Hate Us?

This is from a March 2015 article in the Washington Post.

For years, North Korea has taught schoolchildren to bayonet effigies of U.S. soldiers. Under its young dictator, Kim Jong Un, the government has suggested it was prepared to nuke Washington, Austin and Southern California. More than 40 years ago, Kim Il Sung, the “Great Leader” who founded the family dictatorship that rules North Korea, said there was “no secret” about his country’s behavior: “What is most important in our preparations [for war] is to educate all the people to hate U.S. imperialism.”

  WaPo

So, Americans are their ragheads.

Like all dictatorial regimes, the Kim family dynasty needs an endless existential struggle against a fearsome enemy.

Like all dictatorial regimes AND empires.

The hate, though, is not all manufactured. It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.

The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North.

[...]

The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. [...] After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.

Although the ferocity of the bombing was criticized as racist and unjustified elsewhere in the world, it was never a big story back home. [...] War reporters rarely mentioned civilian casualties from U.S. carpet-bombing. It is perhaps the most forgotten part of a forgotten war.

[...]

State media warn that, sooner or later, the Americans will strike again.

Not to mention the fact that rather than allow Korea to be independent and choose their own form of governance after the Japanese surrender of WWII, the US and Russia divvied it up between themselves.

And not to mention the No Gun Ri massacre.

Declassified military documents recently found in the US National Archives show clearly how US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield.

[...]

Just weeks after the conflict had begun, up to two million refugees were streaming across the battlefield; they clogged the roads and the UN lines.

Under pressure and fearing North Korean infiltration, the US leadership panicked. Soon command saw all civilians as the enemy regardless. On 26 July the US 8th Army, the highest level of command in Korea, issued orders to stop all Korean civilians. 'No, repeat, no refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time. Movement of all Koreans in group will cease immediately.'

[...]

In August 1950 there were orders detailing that refugees crossing the Naktong River be shot. Later in the same month, General Gay, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division [...] actually ordered artillery units to target civilians on the battlefield. And as late as January 1951, the US 8th Army was detailing all units in Korea that refugees be attacked with all available fire including bombing.

[...]

A total of 61 separate incidents involving the killing of civilians by US forces are now logged with the South Korean authorities.

[...]

On the very day that the US 8th Army delivered its stop refugee order in July 1950, up to 400 South Korean civilians gathered by the [No Gun Ri] bridge were killed by US forces from the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Some were shot above the bridge, on the railroad tracks. Others were strafed by US planes. More were killed under the arches in an ordeal that local survivors say lasted for three days.

[...]

'The floor under the bridge was a mixture of gravel and sand. People clawed with their bare hands to make holes to hide in,' recalls survivor Yang Hae Chan. 'Other people piled up the dead like a barricade, and hid behind the bodies as a shield against the bullets.'

Corroborating the Korean survivors' testimony are the accounts of 35 veterans of the 7th Cavalry Regiment who recall events at No Gun Ri.

[...]

'There was a lieutenant screaming like a madman, fire on everything, kill 'em all,' recalls 7th Cavalry veteran Joe Jackman. 'I didn't know if they were soldiers or what. Kids, there was kids out there, it didn't matter what it was, eight to 80, blind, crippled or crazy, they shot 'em all.'

  BBC

And it wasn't reported in the US until autumn of 1999.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.