Monday 20 April 2015

The Day of the Sun in London

 By New Worker correspondent
Millions of Koreans recalled the life and times of great leader Kim Il Sung this week. Kim Il Sung was born on 15th April 1912 and his birthday has long been celebrated as the Day of the Sun in the DPR Korea and by everyone who stands by the DPRK .
The Day of the Sun is the biggest public holiday of the year in the DPRK, the culmination of a series of sporting events and arts festivals that are held annually to celebrate the outstanding achievements of the founder of the Korean communist movement.  Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un headed the tributes at the great leader’s mausoleum in Pyongyang and across the country millions of workers took part in cultural and sports events held to mark the 103rd anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung.
Across the world communists and friends of the Korean revolution  took part in similar events or held their own commemorations  of the Day of the Sun and London was no exception.
The first was at the Democratic Korean embassy where comrades, including Daphne Liddle from the New Communist Party, brought floral tributes at the opening of a reception to honour the  country’s eternal president and heard Hyon Hak Bong, the ambassador, made a brief but passionate speech about the life and achievements of Kim Il Sung.
Hyong Hak Bong at the embassy tributes
Kim Il Sung was born when the Koreans were under the heel of the brutal Japanese colonialists.  His father, a patriot, had already been arrested by the Japanese. When Kim Il Sung formed the Down with Imperialism Union at the age of 14 no one, least of all the Japanese imperialists, could have dreamt that within 20 years Korea would be free.
 Kim Il Sung saw the hopelessness of the sectarians, flunkeyists, dogmatists and factionalists who called themselves communists in the 1920s. So he decided to form a communist movement from the youth and the grass-roots of the villages and factories, and surprised everyone with the emergence of the mighty Korean communist movement that led the people to victory in 1945.
When Kim Il Sung gathered a small band of heroes to form the first guerrilla units to take on the Japanese Army no one could have imagined that this would become the People’s Army that brought the American imperialists to their knees begging for an armistice in 1953.
Kim Il Sung developed and advanced Marxist-Leninist theory and led the struggle against Japanese colonialism and US aggression. He was a fighter, a thinker and a leader, Kim Il Sung was an outstanding communist of the 20th century whose name will forever be remembered as the founder of the modern Korean communist movement that began amongst the patriotic youth of Korea when he was a student in the 1920s.
 Kim Il Sung founded the communist movement that liberated the country from Japanese colonialism, defeated the might of US-led imperialism in the Korean War and led the drive to build the modern, socialist republic that exists today in the north of the divided peninsula.
Kim Il Sung was a great commander in war and a great leader in peace. In the north of Korea, so brutally partitioned by imperialism, he built a modern communist movement dedicated to serving the working people of Korea and he led the people in the mass struggle to build a new life after they had won their freedom in 1945.
The Workers’ Party of Korea, with Kim Il Sung at the helm, led the battle for land reform, education and socialist construction in the 1950s and 60s and then pushed forward on the engineering, technical and scientific fronts to raise living standards and the quality of life for the millions of workers and peasants who had fought for a better tomorrow.
Over the weekend friends and comrades took part in a lively and upbeat meeting in central London called by Korean Friendship Association and the Juche Idea Study Group to hear openings by Dermot Hudson and Shaun Pickford on socialist construction in the DPRK and the essence of the  Juché Idea that is the ultimate expression of Kim Il Sung’s thinking.
       
Dermot Hudson and Yu Kwang Song
    
Daphne Liddle said that the NCP remembered and respected great leader  Kim Il Sung and recalled the meetings between the great Korean leader and Andy Brooks and the late Eric Trevett while Yu Kwang Song from the DPRK embassy reported on the latest developments on the peninsula and thanked  all the activists who had taken part in the recent picket of the south Korean puppet embassy in March.
In western Europe communists understood the economic case for scientific socialism but ignored the philosophical aspects of the teachings of Marx and Engels. Though the role of mass action was clearly understood, the role of the individual was often ignored. Though the achievements of the Soviet Union led by Lenin and Stalin were studied, they were often not properly understood.
Kim Il Sung not only grasped Marxism-Leninism but he applied it to the concrete conditions of the Korean people. He knew that once the masses realised their own strength they would become unstoppable. He knew that serving the people was the be-all and end-all for the Korean communists and for the Workers’ Party of Korea that he launched in 1945. He developed Korean style socialism and the Juché idea – which elevates the philosophical principles of Marxism-Leninism as well as its economic theories – and focuses on the development of each individual worker, who can only be truly free as part of the collective will of the masses.
In the western world Juché is simply described as “self-reliance” but it is much more than that. Kim Il Sung said that working people could only become genuinely emancipated if they stood on their own feet. But the Juché idea doesn’t negate proletarian internationalism. The Soviet Union, People’s China and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe all closed ranks behind Democratic Korea during the Korean war.
The Korean people responded with their trade and assistance whenever they could, while Korean experts and advisers helped the Vietnamese, the Arabs and the Africans struggling to break the chains of colonialism and they continue to do so today. And Kim Il Sung’s successors, dear leader Kim Jong Il and leader Kim Jong Un have followed his footsteps to build a modern socialist republic, where every individual worker is master of his or her own life.
the platform at the Friends of Korea meeting
Finally on Monday the leaders of all the major Korean solidarity movements in Britain met for a celebration called by the Friends of Korea committee at the John Buckle Centre in south London. NCP leader Andy Brooks opened the formal part of the meeting which heard brief tributes from Dermot Hudson and Michael Chant of the RCPB (ML) and guest of honour Ambassador. Hyon Hak Bong before adjourning for a film on the Spring Festival in Korea and refreshments  to drink to the health  of the DPRK’s leaders and the country’s heroic people.

Saturday 18 April 2015

The 103rd Anniversary of the Birth of Kim Il Sung


Platform of the meeting in London to celebrate the
Day of the Sun, organised by the Co-ordinating
Committee of Friends of Korea, April 13, 2015
The Co-ordinating Committee of Friends of Korea held a series of events marking the 103rd anniversary of the birth of the legendary leader of the Korean revolution, Comrade Kim Il Sung (1912-1994). Friends of Korea upholds the importance of developing the friendship and unity between the peoples of Britain and the DPRK to counter the hostile stand of Anglo-US imperialism towards the DPRK, and to expose the disinformation through information and activities that promote our friendship and unity. To this end it organised a friendship meeting on April 13 in London to foster that friendship with our Korean friends and to provide information about the DPRK and President Kim Il Sung.

The history of modern Korea is inexorably linked to the contributions of legendary leader Kim Il Sung. At every decisive moment in its history, Kim Il Sung provided leadership and ensured that the necessary organisation was put in place to carry out the tasks required.

Kim Il Sung was born into a revolutionary peasant family in 1912, in the midst of the military occupation of Korea by the Japanese imperialists (1905-1945). In his early years his family moved between Korea and China. In June 1926, he was admitted to Hwasong Uisuk School, in Huadian, China, where he organised the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU) and was acclaimed its leader on October 17 the same year. Later, while studying at the Jilin Yuwen Middle School, he reorganised the DIU into a more mass-based organisation the Anti-Imperialist Youth League on August 27, 1927, and founded the Young Communist League of Korea on August 28. By the time he was 18 years of age, he had already formed various mass organisations of the Korean people and was leading the anti-Japanese struggle.

At a historic meeting in Kalun, China June 30 to July 2, 1930, Kim Il Sung summed up the revolutionary movement’s experience, specifically the necessity for the revolution to be carried out on the basis of the Korean people’s social responsibility to one another, in accordance with their own needs, experience and thought material. He pointed out that all the problems arising in the revolution should be solved independently and creatively by the Korean people themselves. Thus, the Juche idea of self-reliance was first crystallised. The summation given by Kim Il Sung at this meeting is also where the Songun or military-first idea of national self-defence originated – that the revolution is pioneered, advances and wins victory by strength of arms.

Kim Il Sung formed the first Party organisation – the Society for Rallying Comrades – on July 3, 1930 in Kalun and organised the Korean Revolutionary Army, a political and paramilitary organisation to make preparations for an anti-Japanese armed struggle in Guyushu, Yitong County, China on July 6 the same year.

He formed the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army (later reorganised into the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army), a standing revolutionary army on April 25, 1932 and led the anti-Japanese armed struggle, employing guerrilla tactics that put the Japanese on the run and ultimately defeated them, thus making a great contribution to the defeat of the Axis powers in World War Two. The country was liberated on August 15, 1945.

Shortly thereafter, Kim Il Sung and his fellow revolutionaries formed the Central Organising Committee of the Communist Party of North Korea and proclaimed the founding of the Party on October 10, 1945. The Workers’ Party of North Korea would later emerge from the union of the Communist Party and the New Democratic Party in August 1946.

After he returned to Korea, Kim Il Sung was elected Chairman of the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea on February 8, 1946. At that time People’s Committees were present all over Korea with the aim of reuniting the country, which had been divided at the 38th parallel as a decision of the Moscow Conference of 1945 when the Soviet Union and the US agreed to receive the Japanese surrender and hold Korea in “trusteeship” for five years and pave the way for Korea to be handed back to the Koreans. This was resented by the majority of Koreans who felt that they were quite capable of running their own affairs. From 1945 to 1948, Kim Il Sung was active in leading the fight for Korean independence in the face of the brutal campaign of terror the US was waging to suppress the Korean independence movement and establish a permanent military presence in south Korea to launch its wars of aggression. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans perished or were imprisoned during this period. Fraudulent “elections” were organised to install the Syngman Rhee puppet regime in the south – all against the wishes of the Korean people.

The period following the US partition of Korea at the 38th parallel was a time of grave danger for the Korean people. The US was using the UN to organise a bogus election in south Korea to entrench the division of Korea. To oppose these aims, Kim Il Sung called a historic conference in Pyongyang April 19-23, 1948, which was attended by political parties and organisations from the north and south including many prominent political personalities from the south. At that Joint Conference of Representatives of Political Parties and Public Organisations in North and South Korea, he called on the entire Korean people in the south to rise up as one to thwart the US imperialists’ plans to use the UN to orchestrate a fraudulent election to establish a pro-US government in the south and divide Korea into “two Koreas” permanently.

At this conference Kim Il Sung reminded the delegates that the Korean people have a proud 5,000-year history, that they liberated their country from Japanese imperialism through their own efforts and that it is their sovereign right to establish a unified, democratic Korea, by their own efforts, uniting under the banner of the nation, setting aside political differences in order to secure the reunification and independence of their divided country.

He organised another conference of the Korean people in June that year to denounce the UN elections that were carried out illegally against the will of the Korean people on May 10, 1948, in the south and which installed the reactionary anti-communist Syngman Rhee as President of the Republic of Korea (ROK), which was declared in August 15, 1948. At this second conference, plans were made to carry out elections to the Supreme People’s Assembly of a united democratic Korea in September 1948 in which close to 80 per cent of the electors from the south and 99 per cent from the north voted.


On September 9, 1948, the DPRK with its unified central government of the Korean people was founded. This was done to guarantee the base for Korean independence, reunification and self-determination. Kim Il Sung was elected Premier. He organised the first democratic election and established the People’s Assembly of North Korea where he was elected Chairman of the People’s Committee of North Korea, the new central organ of state power, and set out the tasks for the period of transition to socialism. Under his leadership, the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army was transformed into the Korean People’s Army (KPA), a regular revolutionary armed force, in February 1948. He called the Joint Plenary Meeting of the Central Committees of the Workers’ Parties of North and South Korea on June 30, 1949, where he was elected Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The US refused to recognise the sovereignty of the Korean people and undertook a campaign of mass terror and violence against the patriotic forces in the south who had taken up arms to liberate south Korea from US domination. It was Kim Il Sung who worked tirelessly to inspire and lead the Korean reunification movement at this critical juncture.

On June 25 1950, President Kim Il Sung and the Korean people were forced by the US imperialists into the Korean War. The US was overconfident about a quick victory over the nascent DPRK. Despite the US military attack across the 38th parallel at dawn June 25, 1950 which began the war, Kim Il Sung and the KPA were prepared and able to go on the counter-offensive moving steadily south. In a little over a month, the KPA liberated 90 per cent of the territory of south Korea and 92 per cent of its population.

The United States, attempting to “encircle and annihilate” the KPA units, called the troops of 15 other countries including Britain to the Korean front, as part of an infamous and illegitimate UN “police action”. In response, President Kim Il Sung ordered the KPA to make a strategic and temporary retreat, thus keeping the initiative.

The KPA, taking advantage of the mountainous terrain of the country, developed tunnel warfare and employed a wide range of tactics to frustrate and weaken the enemy forces. As Supreme Commander, Kim Il Sung adapted to the ever-changing situation, ultimately leading to the defeat of the US aggressors in July 1953, after three years of bloody warfare in which an estimated four million Koreans were killed – the vast majority civilians – by military massacres, napalm attacks, carpet bombing, germ-warfare and other crimes. General Mark Clark, commander of the US/UN forces, admitted in a surrender document that the KPA had emerged victorious thanks to General Kim Il Sung’s command.

The US imperialists’ spirit of revanchism and striving for global domination has meant that ever since the end of the Korean War, the US has refused to sign a peace treaty while it has continuously violated the Armistice Agreement. This means that technically there is still a state of war on the Korean Peninsula which requires the DPRK to expend great efforts to maintain the peace and make sure that never again will the US be able to rain death and destruction by occupying all of Korea as it attempted to do in the 1950s’ war. Meanwhile, the US has maintained a brutal economic blockade, continued to garrison troops in south Korea as well as various weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons. It has committed innumerable acts of espionage, military provocations and war games which continue to the present.

In the early 1960s, when the situation worsened owing to US schemes to ignite a new war, President Kim Il Sung made sure that the US did not achieve its aim of keeping Korea vulnerable. He led the people to simultaneously push ahead with economic construction and ensure that defence building projects were put in place while looking after the people’s well-being. The military was further strengthened and modernised and defence training provided to all citizens, thus turning the whole country into a veritable fortress against foreign aggression.

From the time that Korea was divided against the will and aspirations of the Korean people following their defeat of the Japanese military occupiers of their country, Kim Il Sung provided consistent, timely and decisive leadership, including advancing the three principles of national reunification (May 1972), the Five Point Policy for National Reunification (June 1973), the plan for founding a Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo (October 1980) and the 10-Point Programme of the Great Unity of the Whole Nation for the Reunification of the Country (April 1993).

The 10-Point Programme for National Reunification was elaborated by President Kim Il Sung at the Supreme People’s Assembly on April 6, 1993:

“1. A unified state, independent, peaceful and neutral, should be founded through the great unity of the whole nation.

“2. Unity should be based on patriotism and the spirit of national independence.

“3. Unity should be achieved on the principle of promoting co-existence, co-prosperity and common interests and subordinating everything to the cause of national reunification. 

“4. All political disputes that foment division and confrontation between fellow countrymen should be ended and unity should be achieved.

“5. The fear of invasion from both south and north, and the ideas of prevailing over communism and communisation should be dispelled, and north and south should believe in each other and unite.

“6. The north and south should value democracy and join hands on the road to national reunification, without rejecting each other because of differences in ideals and principles. 

“7. The north and south should protect the material and spiritual wealth of individuals and organisations and encourage their use for the promotion of great national unity.

“8. Understanding, trust and unity should be built up across the nation through contact, exchange visits and dialogue.

“9. The whole nation, north, south and overseas, should strengthen its solidarity for the sake of national reunification.

“10. Those who have contributed to the great unity of the nation and to the cause of national reunification should be honoured.”

The Three Charters for national reunification consist of the three principles of national reunification, the ten-point Programme of the great unity of the whole nation and the proposal of establishing the Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo.

The Three Charters have reflected the actual conditions of the country and the nation’s unanimous aspiration and demand for reunification and comprehensively covered and systematised in an integral manner all the issues in realising national reunification, i.e. the charters have defined the fundamental principles and the driving forces for national reunification, clarified the mode and method of the reunification and even gave a complete picture of the reunified state including the ways of running the federal state and its administrative policy. It makes the Three Charters a perfect charter for reunification in the true sense of the word. 

These principles and proposals created the conditions for the signing in Pyongyang of the historic June 15, 2000, North-South Joint Declaration between Kim Jong Il, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, and President Kim Dae Jung of the ROK. 

The north-south joint declaration opened a new era of national reunification movement by affirming the core of the three principles for national reunification-the spirit of national independence, the idea of by our nation itself and by achieving national consensus, for the first time in history, at the summit-level on the federal system as the way to achieve national reunification.

In the June 15 joint declaration, the north and south recognised that the proposal by the north for a low-stage federal formula and the one by the south for a confederal formula had points in common and agreed to navigate the moves for reunification in this direction.

This is the first method for reunification common to the nation that was agreed between the north and south in the history of national division marked with the traces of the vicious cycle of mistrust and confrontation.

This historical agreement on building a reunified state in the confederal formula is a great and historic national asset that opened a prospect for achieving the grand national unity, overcoming differences in the ideology, doctrine and systems and is the practical proof of the righteousness and vitality of the Three Charters.

The joint declaration on the development of the north-south relations, peace and prosperity issued at the north-south summit on October 4, 2007 is a practical programme for national unity since it is a comprehensive agreement reached at the summit level on the development of the north-south relations, peace and common prosperity of the nation embodying the idea of grand national unity of the Three Charters for national reunification.

This practical programme gives answers to all practical and immediate issues arising in achieving the great national unity including the facilitation of the legal and institutional mechanism to develop the north-south relations towards the reunification, ending the military hostility, easing tension and maintaining peace on the Korean peninsula, terminating the cease-fire state and establishing a durable peace regime, developing the national economy in a balanced way, economic cooperation for the common prosperity, consolidating national culture, broadening humanitarian cooperation, securing the rights of the overseas compatriots and so on.

In his 2015 New Year address, Comrade Kim Jong Un stated that the north and the south should refrain from seeking system confrontation while absolutising their ideology and system and satisfactorily resolve the reunification issue in the common interests of the nation transcending the differences in ideology as they had already agreed. He has upheld that in order to achieve national reunification in line with the desires and intentions of the nation, the Korean people have to reject foreign interference and firmly maintain the stand of “By Our Nation Itself”. 

For these contributions to building a modern Korea and leading and inspiring the Korean reunification movement, and thus contributing to the independence of all nations, self-determination of all peoples and peace, Kim Il Sung is owed a debt by the Korean people and all humanity, a debt that will be paid when Korea is reunited as a modern democratic state.

On the front of international relations, far from permitting the DPRK to be isolated by the US imperialists, President Kim Il Sung did his utmost to build links with the peoples of the world on behalf of the Korean people. He met more than 70,000 foreign guests including heads of state and government and party leaders, and paid official or unofficial visits to 87 countries. In June 1994, he met former US President Jimmy Carter in Pyongyang and created favourable conditions for the opening of DPRK-US negotiations about the nuclear issue and for a north-south summit. His life-long efforts lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations with most countries of the world with the exception of the countries which committed aggression against the DPRK during the Korean War. To date, the aggressor states refuse to right historical wrongs or normalise relations on the basis of upholding the principle of the right to self-determination.

In recognition of his achievements, Kim Il Sung received more than 180 top decorations from more than 70 countries and international organisations, titles of honorary citizenship from more than 30 cities and honorary academic degrees from 20 foreign universities.

Kim Il Sung worked tirelessly for the Party and the revolution, for the country and the people, for global peace until the last moment of his life. Kim Il Sung died on July 8, 1994.

The great achievements of President Kim Il Sung are reflected in the revolutionary spirit of the people of the DPRK today in the work to build a bright future themselves, safeguard their independence and reunify their country. At a time when the peoples of the world are striving to defeat imperialism around the world, a great debt is owed to President Kim Il Sung and the Korean people for the incalculable sacrifices made to establish the DPRK which has been an implacable bulwark against US imperialism, and to reunify Korea so as to guarantee peace on the Korean peninsula, thereby contributing greatly to the peace and security of the region and the entire globe.
We salute the immortal memory of President Kim Il Sung!
Workers Weekly

Representatives of the DPRK Visit the North East of England



In April, the Northern Region Society for Friendship with Korea welcomed to north east England Thae Yongho, Minister at the DPRK Embassy, and Yu Kwang-Song, First Secretary, DPRK Embassy. The purpose of the visit was to strengthen the friendship between our two peoples and oppose the demonisation of the DPRK by the British government and media which is being done to try and isolate the country internationally and justify the hostile acts by the US and Britain that threaten the sovereignty of the north Korean people and their choice of social system.
The Society arranged a meeting in Newcastle at which members of the society and the Korean guests spoke. In particular the society wants to highlight the dangerous situation created on the Korean peninsula with the massive military presence of the US which includes nuclear weapons and the carrying out of aggressive military exercises on the border of the DPRK which also has British military involvement. The meeting also highlighted the 103rd anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, legendary revolutionary leader of the Korean people which is being celebrated in the DPRK.
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Meetings were arranged by the Society in the North East with trade union activists and representatives as well as visits to significant sites that show the history of the working class and people of the North East. The Society was extremely pleased to meet with Dave Hopper, General Secretary of the Durham Miners' Association (DMA), who gave the society’s guests an inspiring tour of the DMA headquarters, Redhills, and in relating the history of the miners of the Durham area. The international work of the DMA is renowned in the working class and trade union movement and the society is very pleased that this meeting will enable contact between the DMA and the miners' trade
Workers Weekly

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Down with the puppet fascist regime!


Dermot Hudson and Andy Brooks on the picket

by New Worker correspondent

 KOREAN solidarity activists returned to the south Korean embassy in London last week to protest against the US military exercises in the occupied south and the current imperialist hate campaign that the Americans are focusing against Democratic Korea.
New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks joined comrades and friends protesting outside the puppet regime embassy in Westminster against the “Foal Eagle” and “Key Resolve” drills that have heightened tension on the divided Korean peninsula.
The second picket of the embassy this year was organised by the UK Korean Friendship Association and its numbers were boosted by members of the NCP and the Korean Friendship Association as well as some young Spanish KFA members living in London.
Taking the microphone, KFA chair Dermot Hudson denounced the latest imperialist provocations against the homeland of Juché pointing out that at the beginning of the year the DPRK had made sincere, patient and painstaking efforts to reduce tension with the US, even offering to suspend holding nuclear tests if the Americans and their lackeys called off their war-games. But these efforts were casually brushed aside by the US and the imperialists have steamed ahead with holding the exercises.
These imperialist war games will last for over six weeks and are massive in scale. Over 11,000 US troops and more that 200,000 south Korean puppet soldiers are taking part in annual drills that simulate the invasion and occupation of the socialist north.
Two comrades held up a DPRK flag, another two displayed the large KFA banner that always accompanies these demonstrations while others maintained a constant commentary on the microphone or gave out leaflets on the street. Over a 100 leaflets, specially produced for the picket, were handed out calling for the immediate cancellation of Foal Eagle and Key Resolve and the unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Korea.
The UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular events in London.