Peace in Korea now!

by New Worker correspondent

outside the new American embassy in London

The new American embassy in Nine Elms is a giant glass cube with disguised fortifications in a quiet part of town. But last weekend NCP leader Andy Brooks and other comrades stood outside the moated compound to loudly call on Donald Trump to honour the pledges made in Singapore and work for peace and tranquillity on the Korean peninsula.

 The picket was called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) to mark the 68th anniversary of the Korean War that began when US imperialism and its south Korean lackeys attempted to invade Democratic Korea on 25th June 1950.

            Millions died in the war that ended with an armistice in 1953. But Korea remains partitioned with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) ringed by the nuclear arsenals of US imperialism and facing tens of thousands of American troops based in the south of the divided peninsula.

Every year the anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War is marked by the start of the month of solidarity with the Korean people. In Britain, and throughout the rest of the world, Korean solidarity campaigners meet to demand an end to the American occupation of south Korea and the peaceful reunification of the country that has been divided since the end of the Korean War.

This year the protesters focused on the recent summit between Chairman Kim Jong Un of the DPRK and US President Donald Trump and called on the American leader to honour his fine words in Singapore and continue along the road to peace in Korea.

KFA Chair Dermot Hudson took the mike to say that the Korean War was provoked by south Korea under the instigation of the Americans. Millions of people died in the war and the US used germ and chemical warfare as well as committing many massacres of innocent civilians.

Dermot said that despite the positive outcome of the DPRK-US summit, no permanent peace treaty has been concluded and US troops remain in south Korea. There is a need for US troops to be withdrawn from south Korea and a permanent peace treaty which would finally end the Korean War should be signed.

Historic DPRK-US Summit

By our Asian Affairs correspondent

Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un held talks with US president Donald Trump in Singapore this week that many hope will pave the way to lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. Chairman Kim met President Trump in a historic summit in Singapore on Tuesday. The meeting, at the Capella Hotel on Singapore’s Sentosa Island on 12th June,

ended with the signing of a joint statement and an agreement for further face-to-face meetings in Washington and Pyongyang in the future.

On his return to Washington Donald Trump tweeted that the ‘nuclear threat’ had gone. “Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office.” Trump said. “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong-un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future”.

The joint document called the summit “an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future”. It added that "President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un commit to implement the stipulations in this joint statement fully and expeditiously."

Chairman Kim pledged his “firm and unwavering commitment to the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” while the Americans “committed to provide security guarantees” to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), according to the agreement signed by both leaders in Singapore following decades of hostilities between the two nations.

            Though the lifting of the harsh sanctions regime against the DPRK has been left for future negotiations the Americans have agreed to halt the provocative US-south Korean war-games while Trump spoke about the eventual withdrawal of all American troops on the Korean peninsula at the press conference that followed the end of the talks.

            Kim Jong Un confirmed his commitment to the “complete denuclearisation of Korean Peninsula”, a phrase that covers the American nuclear arsenal that threatens north Korea as well as the DPRK’s nuclear deterrent. Washington and Pyongyang have also committed to recovering the remains of American POWs and the remains of those missing in action during the Korean War “including the immediate repatriation of those already identified”.

Both countries have agreed to hold follow-up negotiations led by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a relevant high-level DPRK official, “at the earliest possible date” in order to implement the outcomes of the historic summit.

Trump said north Korea's denuclearisation process would be starting “very quickly” while the DPRK leader stated that the world was about to see “a major change”. Both sides expressed a unified position on the importance of respecting the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous actions to achieve peace, stability, and denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

The Democratic Korean leader said that if Washington continues to take “sincere steps to build trust” the DPRK will also take “measures of goodwill”. During the summit, the two leaders agreed to continue the dialogue and accepted each other's invitations to visit north Korea and the United States.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, in Moscow this week Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. Kim Yong Nam is coming to Moscow to attend the FIFA World Cup opening ceremony, Peskov told a daily news briefing, without giving more details. Peskov reiterated Russia's position that there is no alternative to political and diplomatic methods of settling the Korean problem.

A giant step for peace

 Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un took a giant step towards ending the tension on the Korean peninsula when he met Donald Trump, the leader of US imperialism this week. By all accounts Chairman Kim and President Trump made considerable progress at their ground-breaking talks in Singapore this week.

Both sides agreed to work towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the American leader later told the media that he has halted the US-south Korean war-games that have plagued the peninsula for decades and talked about the eventual withdrawal of all American troops from south Korea.

The Trump administration should fully support the realistic circles now in power in south Korea who are working towards rapprochement with the north. Economic sanctions against the DPRK must be dropped and the Americans must normalise relations with the country that is still, technically, at war with the United States.

Sixteen years ago the DPRK was branded by US imperialism as part of the “axis of evil”. Countries that had dared to stand up to American imperialism, in one form or another, were marked down for “regime change” –which soon happened in Iraq and Libya.

The Americans, with the shameful support of British imperialism, brought death and destruction to Iraq and Libya. The Iraqi leader was hanged and Muammar Gaddafi was beaten to death by a sectarian mob armed and funded by the United States and its NATO allies. Neither country possessed the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that the Americans claimed they held.

Trump began threatening north Korea as soon as he stepped into the White House demanding that the DPRK abandon its nuclear deterrent while offering nothing in return. Last August the Americans forced the UN Security Council to rubber-stamp more sanctions while Trump raged that Democratic Korea would face “fire and fury ... the likes of which the world has never seen” if it did not do the bidding of US imperialism.

But in the DPRK everyone knows the fate of countries like Libya and Iraq, which disarmed under the mistaken belief that this would spare them from the horrors of imperialist invasion and regime change. No one in the DPRK took any notice of threats coming from the imperialists who devastated the country in an attempt to overthrow the people’s government during the Korean War. Korean leader Kim Jong Un, following in the footsteps of his revolutionary predecessors, maintained the country’s nuclear research programme to develop the ballistic missile defence system and an independent nuclear deterrent that successfully staved off American aggression.

The struggling peoples of the world have learnt the lessons of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, who were powerless to resist the might of US-led imperialism, whilst genuine communists have been heartened by the determined steps taken by the people’s government in north Korea to defend the sovereignty of the DPRK that finally forced the Americans to the negotiating table.

Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump took a giant step for peace when they met in the Republic of Singapore this week. Both leaders have agreed to meet again face-to-face in Washington and Pyongyang to improve relations between the USA and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, whose leaders’ have worked tirelessly for the peaceful reunification of Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. But much more work needs to be done, largely by the American side, to maintain the momentum for peace.