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There's another way to see this.

A question asked in chat just today by a German journalist friend who specialises in Asia and esp the Koreas:

"And im seriously wondering: if there were no americans holding back the sk tyrants of that time, would sk be any better than nk in terms of human rights?"

Well, it'd probably be a capitalist randian chaebol clusterfuck of industry and manufacturing, rather than juche.
HN chat? Sounds like an interesting person... (as a German living in Seoul)
Kakao...
The South Korean military was fully under the command of the US military until 1994.
This may not be quite the way it sounds.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/usfk-opcon...

Yes, a good reminder of why the hippie liberals refer to Imperialist America.
You don't have to be a hippie liberal to see horrible truths in the history of post-WWII American foreign policy.
I don't think you need to be a 'hippie liberal,' nor is it necessary to make value judgements of the nation's actions.

You can simply look around the world and see that the US has hundreds of military bases in other ostensibly sovereign countries.

You can just look at the basic facts and see that there is more than a touch of imperialism at play here.

Concerning military bases:

1. The US pays for those bases to be there.

2. Host countries want those bases to be there for defensive and economic purposes.

If we look at the basic facts we see this is clearly not imperialism.

> 2. Host countries want those bases to be there for defensive and economic purposes.

Really? Even the closest one to the US at Guantanamo Bay, where Cuba keeps demanding that the US gets off their soil?

The US's foreign base policies are a little more complex than you're suggesting.

The policy of forcefully extending a nation's authority by territorial gain or by the establishment of economic and political dominance over other nations. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/imperialism

The second half of that is pretty spot on, and if I'm not mistaken some of the overseas bases did originate from the use of force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism

Currently, the Pax Americana is based on the military preponderance beyond challenge by any combination of powers and projection of power throughout the world's commons—neutral sea, air and space. This projection is coordinated by the Unified Command Plan which divides the world on regional branches controlled by a single command. Integrated with it are global network of military alliances (the Rio Pact, NATO, ANZUS and bilateral alliances with Japan and several other states) coordinated by Washington in a hub-and-spokes system and world-wide network of several hundreds of military bases and installations. Former Security Advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski, drew an expressive summary of the military foundation of Pax Americana shortly after the unipolar moment:

In contrast [to the earlier empires], the scope and pervasiveness of American global power today are unique. Not only does the United States control all the world's oceans, its military legions are firmly perched on the western and eastern extremities of Eurasia... American vassals and tributaries, some yearning to be embraced by even more formal ties to Washington, dot the entire Eurasian continent... American global supremacy is...buttered by an elaborate system of alliances and coalitions that literally span the globe.

Besides the military foundation, there are significant non-military international institutions backed by American financing and diplomacy (like the United Nations and WTO). The United States invested heavily in programs such as the Marshall Plan and in the reconstruction of Japan, economically cementing defense ties that owed increasingly to the establishment of the Iron Curtain/Eastern Bloc and the widening of the Cold War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana#Contemporary_pow...

Remember though that if not for US action, there would be no South Korea; there would just be a larger and more terrible North Korea, and millions more people would live in suffering and bondage.

Personally, I don't think the US should have intervened in Korea, for all the very good reasons that your founders cautioned against foreign intervention and entanglements.

But the intervention saved millions from enslavement. It was a net benefit to everyone in South Korea, then and now.

It wasn't the US alone - it was a UN-mission under the lead of the US, more than twice the South Korean soldiers fought than US soldiers, and don't forget all the other coalition forces who also fought: the British soldiers, the Turkish, the Australians etc.
If we go back even further, Korea as a whole was under Japanese rule. If the US negotiated with Japan instead of going all out, Korea wouldn't have to be split apart to begin with.

Also, if there was no South Korea, then who knows, maybe the "larger" North Korea would just be like China today; kind of terrible but not so terrible.

Without the US-backed South Korea, China would not be so interested in backing [North] Korea, and indeed would see them as a realistic threat rather than a client/buffer state.
And also the pre-WWII American foreign policy, including but not limited to the Philippines.
Never mind that the Soviet government had entire departments dedicated to developing, spreading, and generally promoting that sort of worldview.
I'm not sure how good an argument/excuse this is, but do remember that the country was technically at war with North Korea all this time, and under very real military threat.
I think that's never a good excuse.

Arab states use Israel's existence as justification to military dictatorship. Saddam also used the threats from Iran (which were very real).

Meanwhile, Israel managed to develop into an industrial democracy despite being surrounded by enemies from all directions.

Israel treats it's Palestinian population as if it were a military dictatorship.
Yes, that is occupied enemy territory, not the nation they purportedly serve.
Treating occupied enemy territory the way that Israel has treated Palestine violates international law in so many ways it's frankly ridiculous. They really are acting like a military dictatorship.
Was South Africa really a democracy under apartheid? Or the US under Jim Crow? Or Turkey currently?

I don't think you can be considered a democracy if you are at war with half of the people within your borders.

Democracies are always local.

Was the US a liberal democracy during WWII when it cluster bombed Germany and Japan?

Think about the context here: how South Korea in the 80s was treating its own people.

Israel is a democracy within its local population despite being surrounded by enemies.

Therefore, having an enemy at the border is not a good excuse for a military dictatorship.

I haven't been to Gaza, but I grew up in South Korea in the 80s. If half of what I see in the news is true, how Israel treats people of Gaza is much worse than how South Korea treated people of Seoul in 80s.

Put another way, I'm sure even Pyongyang has some happy citizens. Even dictators usually let some local population live happily. The trick is being part of the right local population.

Gaza is practically enemy territory for Israel ..
Containment as a foreign policy led to extremely bad outcomes globally, as did colonialism. It wasn't just SK treating it's citizens poorly, it was the vast majority of second and third world countries that had a history of colonial subjugation. Looked through the lens of colonialism, it makes perfect sense.
Of course not.