92 SOCIAL SCIENTIST (USAMGIK) in the area south of the 38th parallel. The USAMGIK formally ceased to function only after it managed to create the Republic of Korea on 15 August 1948 under its auspices in the area south of the 38th parallel. The proclamation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on 9 September 1948 along with the victory of the Communist forces about a year later in neighbouring China and the proclamation of the People's Republic of China altered the correlation of political forces in the whole of North East Asia. These two significant events were viewed as important setbacks for the United States in Asia. It did not want to reconcile itself to th< reality. Instead of quitting the region of Northeast Asia, it began to cling more determinedly to whatever area it could control, manipulate and influence. South Korea, Taiwan and Japan assumed paramount impor-tanance as bulwark against communist and national liberation movements. Their place and role in the US global strategy of containment of communism and hegemony in the Asia Pacific region assumed crucial importance. The US policy makers viewed South Korea and Japan in an ideological-strategic tendem. South Korea was seen as a "buffer zone for the defense of U.S. core/ security interest in Japan and the Western Pacific region, primarily because of Korea's geosrrategic position vis-a-vis Japan and U.S. bases in the Western Pacific."2 Less than two years after the creation of the Republic of Korea, war broke out in the Peninsula which lasted for three years (1950-53). In the United Slates' ruling circles, the survival of a propped up political entity called South Korea located thousands of miles across the ocean, became synonymous with the survival of the United States, indeed survival of the whole world as the statements of President Truman in June 1950 would indicate. The United States apart from involving itself militarily was instrumental in mobilizing the military forces of 15 other imperialist and pro-imperialist powers including South Africa and in creating the fictitious UN Military Command with a view to prosecuting the war to serve its ideological and military interests. It was desperate to win the war and was therefore prepared to destroy the DPRK. It was the only power in the conflict which resorted to bombing of the DPRK's towns and villages, industrial establishments, schools, hospitals and vital irrigation dams etc/ The US under Elsenhower's Administration was all set to use atomic bombs against the DPRK during the war and even after the conclusion of the Armistice Agreement on 27 July 1953 as the recently revealed 2000 pages of declassified American official documents of that period confirm.4 In more than a technical sense, the War in Korea has not come to an end. The Armistice Agreement has not been replaced by a Peace Agreement between the original signatories and the important parties in the conflict, viz. The DPRK and the United States. South Korea was not a signatory to the Armistice Agreement.5 From the day of the signing of the Armistice Agreement to this day i.e. 30 years later, it is the American Commander who bears the responsibility for honouring the provisions of the Armistice Agreement as far as South Korea and the so-called UN side are concerned. The overall