A Great Korean revolutionary recalled

by New Worker correspondent

Hyon Hak Bong and Michael Chant

COMRADES and friends met at the John Buckle Centre in south London on Saturday to mark the 22nd anniversary of the passing of the Great Leader President Kim Il Sung on 8^th July 1994.  The guest of honour at the seminar, called by the Friends of Korea committee, was Hyon Hak Bong the  ambassador at the embassy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in London and other speakers included Michael Chant from the RCPB (ML), Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association and New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks.

             After questions and discussion the meeting ended with a film on Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s four years of victory informal discussion continued over drinks and Korean food. The Co-ordinating Committee of the Friends of Korea brings together all the major movements active in Korean friendship and solidarity work in Britain today. It is chaired by Andy Brooks and the secretary is Michael Chant. The committee organises meetings throughout the year, which are publicised by the supporting movements and on the Friends of Korea website.

Korea is One!

by New Worker correspondent

Andy Brooks on the picket

Korean solidarity activists picketed the London embassy of US imperialism last weekend to mark the 66^th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. On 25^th June 1950 the US imperialists and their south Korean puppets launched an attack on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that devastated the entire peninsula. The Americans and their lackeys, flying the false flag of the United Nations(UN), were beaten to a standstill and were forced to sign an armistice in 1953 and to promise to hold free elections in south Korea to lead to the reunification of the country. Sixty six years later the Americans still occupy south Korea, propping up a puppet regime that rejects all DPRK proposals to ease tension on the divided peninsula.

            Called by the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) the picket on Saturday 25^th June was supported by NCP leader Andy Brooks and  central committee members Daphne Liddle and Theo Russell, along with other KFA members in London and the south-east. KFA Chair Dermot Hudson  addressed the picket, saying that they were here to mark the start of the Month of anti-imperialist solidarity with the DPRK and the 66th anniversary of the start of the provocation of the Korean War by the US imperialists, and that they were there to demand the withdrawal of US troops and bases from south Korea . He also said: “It is 66 years since the US imperialists started the Korean War, or Fatherland Liberation War, but the crimes committed by the US imperialists are still fresh in the minds of the Korean people and world’s progressive people.”

“The US imperialists tried to exterminate the Korean people by carrying out the war that they long planned,” Hudson said. “History will curse forever the US imperialists as the sub-human savages and criminals, as well as an enemy of humanity and progress. Indeed US imperialism is the ringleader of aggression and war, as well as the biggest violator of human rights in the world, which has exported military coups and fascism to many lands”.

  Messages from KFA Denmark, KFA Singapore and KFA Spain expressed support for the picket, and denounced the US imperialists for provoking the Korean War and occupying south Korea.

The picketers chanted slogans throughout the afternoon in Grosvenor Square calling for the end of sanctions against the DPRK, the end of the American occupation of south Korea and the end of the partition of the Korean peninsula.

 Hudson said: “On the occasion of the Month of Solidarity with the Korean people we extend our fervent support to the Korean people, led by dear respected Marshal Kim Jong Un, in the struggle to secure the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the US imperialist aggression forces from the south of Korea. The US imperialists must renounce their hostile policy towards the DPRK."