Sunday 28 August 2022

Korea’s Road to Freedom (2)

Korean solidarity campaigners held a seminar at the NCP Party Centre on 13th August to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Korea and the outstanding achievements of the Korean communists who freed the country from Japanese colonialism and then beat back the American invaders and their lackeys during the Korean war. This is the contribution from Dermot Hudson, the Chair of the Korean Friendship Association (UK).

by Dermot Hudson


Before I refer to the anniversary of Korea’s liberation, I would like to mention two very significant things.
    Firstly, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK} has achieved victory over COVID‑19, which was eliminated in the DPRK 100 days after it broke out and 91 days after the DPRK switched over to a top-level emergency anti-epidemic system. The fatality rate was very low, probably the lowest in the world.
    This was a great victory that only People's Korea, guided by the great Juche Idea and led by the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) and respected Marshal Kim Jong Un, could achieve. To put things into context, so-called advanced countries such as Britain, the USA and Japan after over two years are still reporting cases of Covid. South Korea recorded 128,000 new cases and 58 deaths in the last day (at the time of writing), with over 21 million people in total infected.
    The DPRK's victory was achieved through self-reliance and without outside help. The DPRK correctly rejected the fake 'humanitarian aid' of imperialism and vaccines of the big capitalist pharmaceutical monopolies of the imperialist world who seek only profit. It was also because the WPK and the people's government took measures so quickly and resolutely. In the Western world some governments failed to act quickly against COVID‑19.
    As Kim Jong Un wisely pointed out: "In other words, the invaluable victory we have achieved is the victory of our Party's anti-epidemic policy, the victory of our state's crisis management strategy, the victory of our people's fortitude and single-hearted unity unique to them, the great victory brought about by the superiority of our style of socialist system." This is indeed true. The victory against Covid in People's Korea is due to the single-hearted unity of the people around the Party and the leader, and the superiority of the socialist system.
    We salute the victory of People's Korea in the anti-pandemic war and believe it to be a great example for the world.
    Secondly, a leading member of the WPK, Kim Yo Jong, made a significant speech in which she denounced the south Korean puppets for deliberately spreading COVID‑19 into the DPRK using balloons. This is a crime against humanity committed by the so-called defectors and south Korean puppets, for which they must pay. I think we have a duty in this country to expose this crime as widely as we can.
    In just under two days, the Korean people will mark the 77th anniversary of Korea’s liberation.
On 15th August 1945 Korea was liberated from the grim and oppressive fascist rule of Japanese imperialism thanks to the 20-year-long armed struggle conducted under the leadership of the great leader Kim Il Sung.
    The anti-Japanese People's Guerrilla Army led by Kim Il Sung had neither a state base nor rear to rely on. The armed struggle of the anti-Japanese guerrillas was a self-reliant one that embodied the Juche Idea and the Songun ‘Army First’ Idea. Kim Il Sung cast aside the idea of relying on big powers for salvation and instead conducted an independent struggle, based on Juche, against Japanese imperialism, fully relying on the masses of the people.
    The anti-Japanese armed struggle fully proved in practice the truth of Songun – that independence is achieved by the force of arms. During the anti-Japanese armed struggle the great leader generalissimo Kim Il Sung, adhering firmly to the line of Songun, rejected illusions of the national reformists and opportunists that independence could be achieved by peaceful means or by begging for it.
    Some people like to say that the liberation of Korea was due to the Soviet Union or the Soviet Union and China. They like to portray People’s Korea as a creation of another country. To this, two things can be said.
    Firstly, that the USSR only entered the war on the 9th August 1945, whereas the anti-Japanese armed struggle had been waged since 1930 when Kim Il Sung formed the Korean Revolutionary Army and later the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army.
    Secondly, as a friend of mine from KFA Greece said, how did the USSR and China succeed in their revolutions? It was because of the efforts of the people in those countries, so it is the same for Korea.
    The Juche-oriented guerrilla tactics of Kim Il Sung and the indomitable struggle of the Anti-Japanese People's Guerrilla Army (later the Korean People's Revolutionary Army) tore the guts out of Japanese imperialism, defeating the million-strong Kwantung army of Japanese imperialism, which was finally expelled from the land of Korea.
    The defeat of Japanese imperialism, one of the main forces and shock brigades of international fascism, made a great contribution to the victory of the worldwide anti-fascist forces. The victorious liberation struggle of the Korean people was an inspiration for the peoples of the colonial countries fighting for their independence and liberation. The 1968 World Cultural Congress in Havana adopted a document praising the anti-Japanese armed struggle waged under the leadership of Kim Il Sung.
    With the victory of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, the Korean people finally gained their emancipation from the cruel shackles of Japanese colonialism and greeted a new life of independence, a life of hope for the future.
    After liberation the agrarian reform that eliminated feudalism and landlordism and gave land to the peasants was carried out. Subsequently the laws on sexual equality that liberated women and the nationalisation of basic industries were also enacted.
    After liberation, under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, the people of Korea built a new, thriving country of independence under the banner of self-reliance, a country which even in the words of enemies has "undiluted sovereignty”.
    Today, People's Korea, the land of Juche, pulsates with independence and creativity under the leadership of respected comrade Kim Jong Un, who carries forward the great line of independence developed by Kim Il Sung.
    Can I also take this opportunity to denounce the hostile policy of the British government towards the DPRK.
    On 30th June 2022 the British government, including the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and the office of the Prime Minister, issued a lengthy document entitled UK-Republic of Korea bilateral framework for closer co-operation that is aimed at giving more British support to the south Korean puppet fascist regime and provoking the DPRK. A hidden agenda behind the document is regime change in People’s Korea.
    Britain has always played a reactionary and imperialistic role in Korea. In the 1900s Britain connived at Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea. Later, Britain sent troops to fight against the Korean people during the Korean War. Shamefully, British troops acted as cannon fodder and mercenaries for US imperialism and its destructive and barbaric war against the Korean people. After the Korean war Britain gave huge amounts of aid (from the taxes paid by British working people) to the south Korean puppets; and British Leyland, the then state-owned motor company, assisted the motor industry in south Korea.
    The bilateral framework document refers to south Korea as being a “free and open society”. Nothing could be further from the truth!
    South Korea is a despotic fascist regime that operates the “National Security Law”, which is based on old Japanese colonial laws and prohibits sympathy for the DPRK or communist or leftist activities. In the past, south Korea murdered the leaders of the Revolutionary Party for Reunification, the Strategic Liberation Party and the People’s Revolutionary Party. South Korea still has political prisoners, including several “long-term unconverted prisoners”. South Korea is dominated by the Jaebols (big capitalist corporations) and a society in which there is a big gap between the rich and poor, as typified by the film Parasite.
    The document refers to the “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation” of the DPRK, basically repeating a tired old mantra. Of course, lurking behind this is the hidden aim of overthrowing the socialist system in the DPRK and colonising the northern half of Korea. Moreover, it is taking issue with the DPRK’s legitimate right to self-defence and is a denial of the DPRK’s sovereignty.
    The document also refers to “human rights” and the DPRK “opening up” to the so-called “humanitarian aid” of imperialism. This is yet another ploy to create ‘regime change’ in the DPRK and overthrow the socialist system. The DPRK does not need any ‘humanitarian aid’ from south Korea or Britain or imperialism.
    There is also talk of upgrading the existing ‘Free Trade Agreement’ between Britain and south Korea. This will only result in more cheap, substandard south Korean goods being dumped in Britain. It will also mean some British monopoly capitalist firms exploiting cheap labour in south Korea.
    KFA UK rejects the UK-Republic of Korea bilateral framework for closer co-operation. It is both a mechanism for denying the sovereignty of the DPRK and overthrowing the socialist system of the DPRK, and at the same time propping up the totally reactionary, fascistic and decadent colonial regime in south Korea.
    KFA UK believes that Britain should break with old and discredited policies towards the Korean peninsula, and instead promote co-operation based on genuine friendship, mutual benefit and independence with the DPRK, the truly authentic state on the Korean peninsula.

Down with the south Korean puppet fascist regime!

Hands off People’s Korea!




Saturday 20 August 2022

Korea’s road to freedom (1)


by New Worker correspondent

Korean solidarity campaigners returned to the Sid French library at the NCP Party Centre last weekend for a seminar that focused on the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Korea and the outstanding achievements of the Korean communists who freed the country from Japanese colonialism and then went on to lead the people’s government that beat back the American invaders and their lackeys during the Korean war.
    NCP leader Andy Brooks, who chaired the Friends of Korea event, welcomed everyone to the meeting and then introduced the two main speakers – Michael Chant, the secretary of the Committee and Dermot Hudson, the Chair of the Korean Friendship Association.
    They both highlighted the immense achievements of the Workers Party of Korea over the past 70-odd years. Michael Chant stressed that the liberation of Korea on 15th August 1945 was not the gift of the Americans who claim that it was all down to their atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but an act of the Korean people themselves who took up arms under the leadership of Kim Il Sung in the 1930s in the long march to end the brutal Japanese occupation.
    And as Dermot Hudson said “the defeat of Japanese imperialism, one of the main forces and shock brigade of international fascism , by the partisans of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army led by the great leader Kim Il Sung made a great contribution to the victory of the worldwide anti-fascist forces”. This sparked off a deeper look at Korean-style socialism.
    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 DPR Korea during the Korean war and likewise Democratic Korea has given concrete support to Egypt, Syria, Zimbabwe and many other Third World countries struggling against neo-colonialism.
    The seminar reviewed the achievements of the DPRK in building Korean-style socialism, demonstrating the incomparable advances since the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 and the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on 9th September 1948. Following the foot-steps of Kim Il Sung and his successor Kim Jong Il the Workers Party of Korea with Kim Jong Un at the helm continues to defend the Korean people’s own path of development, striving for peace and for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

Sunday 14 August 2022

Stand by Democratic Korea!

by New Worker correspondent


NCP leader Andy Brooks joined Korean solidarity activists outside the new American embassy in Nine Elms on Saturday to demand an end to US imperialism’s occupation of south Korea. Called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) the protest called for an end to the imperialist sanctions regime against the DPR Korea and called for a halt to the annual US war-games in south Korea. KFA Chair Dermot Hudson denounced the Pacific Dragon and Ulji Freedom Shield exercises saying that the "Ulji Freedom Shield has nothing to do with freedom but everything to do with regime change; thereby extending the corrupt fascist rule of the south Korean puppets to the northern half of Korea and with establishing US imperialist colonial rule over the whole of the Korean peninsula and achieving the US domination of Asia and the Pacific".