A Test for Peace

Last weekend Democratic Korea announced it had successfully tested cruise missiles capable of hitting targets located about 1,500 kilometres away. These “strategic weapons of great significance” are part of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK’s) modern arsenal developed to counter any threat from US imperialism in the future.The world will only enjoy true peace and security when the big powers, the USA in particular, are disarmed. World-wide nuclear disarmament is therefore the solution for the establishment of global peace and security, and this must first start with those world powers who own such weapons,
    Eight countries openly possess nuclear weapons. These include the Big Five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The USA has an immense arsenal, as does Britain. France also possesses substantial stocks of nuclear weapons. So do China and Russia, along with India, Pakistan and the DPRK.
    The USA is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons on a civilian population. Since the Second World War they have threatened to use nuclear weapons against other countries – including those that don't possess nuclear weapons – whereas People’s China and Democratic Korea are the only nuclear powers to pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstance.
Although this test is clearly a response to the joint US/south Korean war-games last month, there’s been the usual bleating from the Americans and their Japanese and south Korean lackeys. They conveniently forget to mention the fact that the USA has lifted a 42-year-old restriction on the south Korean missile development programme, allowing the puppet regime to develop ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets far beyond the Korean Peninsula, or that the south Koreans test-fired one of their own submarine-launched ballistic missile last weekend.
    The Americans think they can ignore and isolate the people’s government in north Korea. They want to perpetuate the division of Korea to strengthen US hegemony over East Asia and turn the Pacific into an American lake. But they can’t ignore the DPRK.

Kim Jong Il, who led the DPRK through thick and thin to overcome natural disasters, imperialist blockade and diplomatic isolation until his death in 2011, famously said that “there can be no world without Korea”. He was right. The world, the imperialist world, must not, and indeed cannot, forget the criminal partition of the Korean peninsula through the US occupation of the south after the Second World War. This unjust and unlawful division remains a constant source of tension today. We stand by the DPRK and condemn the imperialist aims and threats.