Thursday 31 December 2015

Kim Jong Il remembered


  Millions of Koreans and millions of communists all over the world recalled the outstanding achievements of dear leader Kim Jong Il at commemorations to mark the 4th anniversary of his passing on 17th December 2011. The British Committee to Remember Comrade Kim Jong Il was established on 7th November by members of the New Communist Party of Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the British Association for the Study of Songun Policy and the British Friends of Korea. Andy Brooks, general secretary of the of the New Communist Party of Britain, was elected chair of the remembrance committee to co-ordinate cultural and political work in memory of Kim Jong Il from 8th December to 20th December.
     Friends of Korea held a memorial meeting on 11th December of the John Buckle Centre in London to  remember the contributions of Kim Jong Il, who devoted his life to serving the Korean people, leading the DPRK on the path where the people are the masters of their own destiny. 
     Speakers included Michael Chant from the RCPB (ML), Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association and Hyon Hak Bong, the London Ambassador of the DPR Korea.



Wednesday 23 December 2015

Kim Jong Il always with us





By Andy Brooks

Our Party joined millions of Koreans and millions of communists all over the world last week in recalling the outstanding achievements of dear leader Kim Jong Il on the occasion of the 4th anniversary of his passing.
Four years have passed since the loss of dear leader Kim Jong Il, who dedicated his life to the revolutionary movement that was founded by Kim Il Sung, and the young militants around him, to fight the Japanese colonialists and build a modern communist party that would lead the Korean workers and peasants to a new life under socialism. Building a guerrilla army that took on the might of the Japanese Empire, great leader Kim Il Sung mobilised the masses in a struggle that ended in victory in 1945 and the establishment of a people’s government in the north of the country.
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 1960s, and then pushed forward on the engineering, technical and scientific fronts to build a modern socialist republic where every individual worker is master of his or her own life. The DPRK stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the peoples of the Third World struggling to break the chains of colonialism, and gave technical and economic aid to their new republics to defend their freedom and independence.
From an early age Kim Jong Il worked side by side with Kim Il Sung, and when Kim Il Sung passed away Kim Jong Il told the Korean people and the world that they could “expect no change from him”.
 Under his leadership the Workers’ Party of Korea won even more great victories. Natural disasters were overcome. Imperialist diplomatic isolation was broken and the intrigues of US imperialism were exposed. Scientists in Democratic Korea mastered the secrets of the atom to guarantee the DPRK’s defence and energy needs, and now Korean rockets reach for the stars.
The tragedy of Korea is that it has been divided since the Second World War and that division is entirely due to the United States, which has propped up a puppet regime in south Korea to maintain American imperialism’s military, strategic and economic dominance of north-east Asia and the Pacific Rim.
A monstrous concrete wall divides Korea. Tens of thousands of American troops remain are stationed in the south, backed by a US nuclear armada that threatens the DPRK and its neighbours. The communist movement is outlawed in the south and contacts with the north are tightly controlled by the repressive regime.
The Democratic Korean government has worked tirelessly to end the partition of the country. It has called on the United States to normalise relations with the DPRK. A proposal for the re-unification of Korea based on the principle of “one country – two systems” – similar to the one that led to the peaceful return of Hong Kong and Macau to the People’s Republic of China – remains on the table.
Democratic Korea threatens no one, but the imperialist campaign to demonise and isolate the people’s government continues as a smokescreen to cover US plans to dominate the entire Pacific basin.
Following in Kim Il Sung’s footsteps, Kim Jong Il led the Workers Party of Korea into the 21st century to build a strong and prosperous democratic republic. Kim Jong Il was a leading Marxist thinker who made an important contribution to modern communist theory, as well as an astute statesman who led the Korean people through thick and thin to overcome natural disasters, imperialist blockade and diplomatic isolation.
Kim Jong Il made an immense contribution to Marxist-Leninist theory and ideology. In his 1982 work On the Juché Idea, Kim Jong Il brought together and systematised the Juché theory; his 1994 thesis Socialism is a Science affirmed that socialism would eventually become the economic system of the entire world because it is the only form of society in which people can be truly free.
            Kim Jong Il worked tirelessly to ease tension on the Korean peninsula to pave the way towards the peaceful reunification of Korea whilst at the same time ensuring the DPRK’s defence against the threats and provocations of US imperialism and its lackeys.
On 15th June 2000 Chairman Kim Jong Il of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and President Kim Dae Jung of south Korea signed the historic North–South Joint Declaration.  This was an historic landmark in the struggle of the Korean people to reunify their homeland that had forcibly been divided by the US imperialists following World War Two. The Declaration opened up a new era for independence, peace, reconciliation and reunification on the Korean peninsula until the US-sponsored anti-national, anti-communist and retrogressive Lee Myung Bak clique in the south began to sabotage its spirit and principles.
But US imperialism cannot forgive the DPRK for being the first country following the Second World War to defeat it on the battlefield, setting an example for all people fighting for independence and self-determination. Its revenge seeking against the DPRK continues unabated to this day.
The intrigues of the US and their south Korean lackeys are becoming increasingly dangerous as they work together to try to isolate the DPRK and the movement for national reunification. This includes jailing peace campaigners like Ro Su Hui under the fascist National Security Law, and carrying out endless provocations such as the joint US–south Korean military exercises aimed at invading the DPRK and bringing the Korean peninsula ever closer to a cataclysmic nuclear war.
 The DPRK has had no alternative but to develop a nuclear deterrent to defend its socialist system. At the same time it has pledged that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons, and it has also vowed never to threaten the use of nuclear weapons nor allow
the transfer of nuclear technology to other countries.
Kim Jong Il was a great leader of the Korean people who devoted his entire life to serving the Korean people in the cause of building a human-centred society, a cause that is one espoused by the democratic and anti-imperialist forces the world over.
We believe that the will of the Korean masses, expressed in concrete terms
by their vanguard party, the Workers’ Party of Korea now led by Kim Jong Un, and following in the footsteps of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, will overcome all obstacles to fulfil the revolutionary tasks that faced the Korean people when they began their long march to socialism in the struggle against Japanese imperialism.

Thursday 3 December 2015

Eyewitness Korea!

Dermot Hudson, John Cooper and Thae Yongho
By New Worker correspondent
  
Comrades and friends braved the cold weather in London on Saturday 21st November to hear an eye-witness report of life in Democratic Korea and demonstrate their solidarity with the bright red bastion of socialism in Asia. Dermot Hudson, who took part in the celebrations in October to mark the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers’ Party of Korea, talked about the massive parade and pageant that he saw in the capital, Pyongyang, as well as the immense achievements of the Korean people who are constantly threatened by US imperialism and their south Korean puppets.
            He also talked about the day-to-day life of the people in the land of Juché where everyone has a job and no-one is homeless and where there is none of the drunkenness and drug-taking that sadly so typifies life in London and the other centres of the imperialist world. “It was a great visit and I was very disappointed to leave to go back to the capitalist world where everything seems so depressing and miserable,” he said. A view echoed by the other speakers that included Thae Yongho from the London embassy of the DPRK, NCP leader Andy Brooks and Sean Pickford from the Juché Idea Study Group of England.
            This was followed by a lively discussion and a buffet but not before saying farewell to John Cooper, a long-standing supporter of the DPRK, who is moving to Scotland this week. John, who took part in the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in Pyongyang in 1989, was presented with box of shortbread by Dermot Hudson on behalf of the KFA along