But by far the most casualties were suffered by Koreans. US carpet bombing, largely unopposed, was the furnace that forged North Korea as a merciless and paranoid regime. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 per cent of the population." Korean peace treaty would have to overcome decades of distrust
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51