HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

 

An outstanding Korean leader

By New Worker correspondent

Millions of communists in Korea and all over the world recalled the outstanding achievements of dear leader Kim Jong Il at events to mark the 5th anniversary of his passing on 17th December 2011 last weekend.

London Korean solidarity activists, including NCP leader Andy Brooks, presented floral tributes during a ceremony at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) embassy in London on Saturday 17^th December hosted by the new ambassador Comrade Choe Il. Other bouquets were laid by Michael Chant and Chris Coleman from the RCPB(ML) and Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association (KFA).

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 dear leader Kim Jong Il 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 the Second World War. The Declaration opened up a new era for independence, peace, reconciliation and reunification on the Korean peninsula until the US-sponsored anti-national and anti-communist Lee Myung Bak clique in the south began to sabotage its spirit and principles.

US imperialism can never forgive the DPRK for being the first country since the second world war to defeat it on the battlefield, setting an example for all people fighting for independence and self-determination. Its revenge continues unabated to this day.

The Americans and their south Korean lackeys are working constantly to try to isolate the DPRK and the movement for national reunification. Peace campaigners and trade unionists have been jailed under south Korea’s fascist National Security Law whilst the joint US–south Korean military exercises aimed at invading the DPRK take 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.

The eternal memory of Kim Jong Il

Alex Kempshall speaks in solidarity

by New Worker correspondent

Friends and comrades returned to the Marchmont Centre in London last Saturday to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the passing away of dear leader Kim Jong Il who devoted his life to serving the Korean people. Organised by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) speakers included Dermot Hudson of the KFA, Shaun Pickford and Alex Meads. Kim Song Gi, Minister Counsellor from the DPR Korea embassy also spoke while New Communist Party national chair Alex Kempshall delivered a solidarity message during the meeting.

Dear leader Kim Jong Il died at his post, whilst on a train giving on-the-spot guidance, on 17th December 2011. His entire life had been dedicated 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.

Now led by Kim Jong Un, the Korean people are following in the footsteps of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il to 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.

Liverpool solidarity for Korea

By New Worker correspondent

 

Dermot speaking

Korean solidarity activists met in Liverpool last week to hear a report on the current situation in the US-occupied south of the country and discuss future solidarity work in Merseyside and the North West.

 The meeting, called by the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) in Liverpool was opened by Dermot Hudson, the KFA’s national chair, who said the south Korean puppet regime was the most corrupt state in the entire world.  He pointed out that "the south Korean fascist regime throws people of various circles in south Korea aspiring after social progress, reform and reunification behind bars on charges of violation of the "Security Law" labelling them "the forces following the north" and "the forces against social system" and cracked down on the peaceful rallies and demonstrations of the people demanding vital rights by terming them "illegal." The privileged and the rich who account for just one per cent of the population in south Korea treat the toiling masses holding 99 per cent of it as dogs and pigs, he said.

The meeting, on Tuesday 22^nd  November, also heard a report from a British delegate who went to the recent KFA International Meeting in Dublin that was attended by KFA delegations from many other countries.

Park Geun Hye must go!

A SINGLE protester outside the Russian embassy or a handful of Arab stooges at a peace rally makes headlines in our national press. A north Korean diplomat defects to the south Korean regime in London and its national news for weeks on end. A few thousand anti-Trump protesters on the streets in the United States hits the headlines all over the western world.

But when over a million south Koreans take to the streets to denounce their corrupt, puppet president and call for her resignation it barely gets a mention in the august pages of the bourgeois media.

Last weekend over a million demonstrators took to the streets of Seoul, the capital of south Korea, to demand that puppet president Park Guen Hye stands down.

Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), student groups and religious bodies gathered at Seoul Square to hold the 2016 people’s all-out rally. Some 150,000 KCTU members along with students from one hundred universities and people from all walks of life turned out for the protest, the biggest since 1987, and marched to the presidential palace to demand Park Guen Hye’s resignation.

Workers are downing tools throughout the country, which has been occupied by US imperialism since 1945, whilst the KCTU prepares for a general strike to demand Park’s resignation and the release of their leader, jailed for five years on trumped-up charges last year.

Park Guen Hye, the daughter of the former dictator who was shot by a member of his own faction in 1979, heads the reactionary and rabidly anti-communist Saenuri Party that does the bidding of US imperialism. The down-trodden south Korean masses, doubly oppressed by their local exploiters as well as those from the US, are sick to death of this corrupt regime led by Park, a venal politician involved with a shadowy religious cult leader who used her influence over the president to embezzle public funds.

Whilst all of this is going on the masses in the democratic north of the divided Korean peninsula are rallying to the latest call of the Workers Party of Korea to sharpen their defences against imperialism and continue to build socialism in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The DPRK was branded by the American imperialists as part of the “axis of evil”, and one of the “outposts of tyranny” that include Cuba, Syria and Iran, and was topped by Iraq until that country was invaded by US-led imperialism in 2003. The US army and its south Korean puppets rehearse the invasion of the north in annual war-games and the south Koreans have developed a cruise missile of their own targeted on the DPRK.

In the face of these renewed threats 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.

Whilst corrupt south Korean politicians grovel to the Americans for their share of the loot the masses in Democratic Korea, with Kim Jong Un at the helm, are relentlessly advancing into the future to build socialism and fulfil the dream of all Koreans, the peaceful re-unification of the country.

New Worker

RAF out of Korea!

by New Worker correspondent

NEW COMMUNIST Party leader Andy Brooks and other comrades joined demonstrators outside the Ministry of Defence in London last week to protest at the deployment of the RAF in south Korea. The picket, opposite Downing Street, was called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) to protest against the participation of British armed forces in war exercises currently taking place in south Korea.

KFA Chair Dermot Hudson said: “We are shocked and outraged by the decision of the British government to send four Eurofighter Typhoon combat jets, Voyager tanker aircraft and C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft to take part in the so-called ‘Invincible  Shield’ military exercises  of the US imperialists and south Korean puppets against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

“This is just disgraceful. The DPRK poses no military threat to Britain. There is absolutely no need for Britain to become involved in the Korean peninsula. According to official British military statistics 1,000 British soldiers died in Korea during the 1950-53 Fatherland Liberation War. Of course the real numbers are probably much higher than that. But there was no reason for even one British soldier to die in Korea, or indeed, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yugoslavia or northern Ireland.

 “It was a war that Britain should have kept out. Now the Government plans to send fighter planes and other aircraft to join anti-DPRK war exercises. There is every danger of a second Korean War that British forces will be dragged into, only this time the casualty rate would be much higher. Britain should stay out of Korea and not repeat the shameful history of the Korean War!”

Korean solidarity in Dublin

Dermot Hudson speaking

By New Worker correspondent

FOUR MEMBERS of the British Korean Friendship Association (KFA) went to Ireland to attend the 16^th KFA International Meeting in Dublin last weekend. The meeting, at the Teachers Club in Parnell Square, was attended by KFA officials and delegates from Europe and the United States.

     Andreas Engstrom, the head of KFA Ireland, opened the conference and pointed out that as both Ireland and  Korea had been victims of imperialism it was highly significant that that  this KFA International Meeting was being held here in Ireland.

   The President of the Korean Friendship Association Alejandro Cao De Benos was unable to attend due to the fascistic action of the reactionary Spanish authorities who, at the last minute, refused to let him leave the country. But Alejandro sent a message saying how much the KFA had grown over the past 16 years since the first KFA International meeting in London.

  Dermot Hudson, the chair of the UK KFA spoke of the deeds of great leader Kim Il Sung and his successors, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un – the “great generals of Mount Paektu”  who led the Workers Party of Korea in building socialism in the northern part of the divided Korean peninsula.

“During my three recent visits in October 2015, April 2016 and September 2016 I saw the reality of Korean-style socialism for myself and the great advances that are being made in all fields, such as the impressive construction of Ryomyong Street. I was proud to be in the DPRK in September when the nuclear warhead was successfully tested on the 9th September DPRK National Day and there was the successful test of the road-launched ICBM.

“The UK KFA will conduct vigorous activities in 2017 to honour the great generals of Mount Paektu. We believe that this a vital task when the pressure and sanctions of the US imperialists and their lackey states becomes more intense, solidarity with People's Korea becomes the order of the day and celebrating the keynote anniversaries of the DPRK assumes a greater significance. We believe it is conducive to defending the DPRK against imperialist attacks."