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| Kim Song Gi, Andy Brooks and Michael Chant |
London
communists met last week to celebrate the life of Kim Il Sung, who led the
mighty movement that freed Korea from Japanese colonialism and established the
people’s government in the north that was to become the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK). Comrades gathered at the John Buckle Centre in south
London for the commemoration called to honour the 107th anniversary of the
birthday of President Kim Il Sung, the father of modern Korea, and to hear a
report on the current situation by a diplomat from the DPRK embassy in London.
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 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 often
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, whilst 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.
New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks
opened the formal part of the meeting, which began with a tribute to the life
of Kim Il Sung by Michael Chant from the RCPB (ML). That was followed by a talk
by Kim Song Gi from the Democratic Korean embassy on Kim Il Sung’s immense
contribution to the world communist movement. The Korean comrade also spoke
about the current status of negotiations with US imperialism following the
collapse of talks between Donald Trump and Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi
in February.
The Q&A session soon led into a lively
discussion with the Korean comrade on the efforts of the people’s government to
ease tension on the Korean peninsula, and the need to put Korea back on the
peace and anti-war movement agenda in Britain and build solidarity with the
Korean people on both sides of the divided peninsula.
Finally the comrades sent a solidarity
message to Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and called on everyone to support the
right of the Korean people to self-determination and independence in the context
of taking up the cause of global peace.
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.
