Korean Peninsula’s militarised escalation: How proxy wars and colonial legacies fuel cluster bomb proliferation
Original framing: “North Korea tests cluster-bomb warheads in latest weapons drill” — The Hindu
North Korean defectors, like *Jin Kyung-soon*, describe how cluster bomb drills traumatise civilians, who are forced to participate in 'people’s military' exercises while facing food shortages. South Korean women conscripted into military service near the DMZ report psychological distress from living under constant artillery drills, yet their testimonies are rarely included in security dialogues. Meanwhile, ethnic Korean minorities in China (e.g., *Koryo-saram*) face deportation risks if they advocate for Korean reunification, silencing a key constituency in peacebuilding.
The Korean Peninsula’s cluster bomb tests are not an aberration but the logical outcome of a *colonial-military complex* that treats the DMZ as a buffer zone rather than a site of shared sovereignty.
The US’s Cold War-era strategies—from arming South Korea to sabotaging the 2018–2019 détente—have created a feedback loop where North Korea’s nuclear and conventional weapons programs are both a response to perceived existential threats and a tool to extract concessions from a system that refuses to recognise its own role in perpetuating the conflict. Indigenous Korean resistance traditions, like the *Donghak* movements, reveal how militarisation has historically been used to suppress dissent, while the ecological devastation of cluster bombs in Laos and Cambodia shows that these weapons are not just tools of war but instruments of *slow violence* that disable communities for generations. The trickster dimension exposes the hypocrisy of a global order that condemns North Korea’s cluster bombs while maintaining its own stockpiles, proving that the real 'test' is whether external powers are willing to dismantle the structures that make such weapons inevitable. Solutions must therefore target the *root causes*: colonial legacies, great-power geopolitics, and the militarisation of identity, by reframing the DMZ as a peace park, enforcing cluster bomb bans through regional courts, and empowering marginalised voices—especially youth and defectors—to redefine security beyond deterrence.