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.

Playing with fire on the Korean peninsula

Democratic Korea dramatically countered recent south Korean provocations by blowing up the empty north–south liaison office in the border town of Kaesong this week. This dramatic piece of street art was clearly intended to send a message to the Seoul regime that has resorted to old Cold War tricks along the de-militarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula.

Helium balloons carrying anti-communist propaganda leaflets have regularly been launched into the DPR Korea by what the puppet regime calls “defectors”. But everyone knows that these people, more accurately called “riff-raff” and “human scum” by the north, are agents of south Korean intelligence, which itself is but an arm of the CIA.

During the height of the Cold War the Americans and their local lackeys used balloons to drop dollars and propaganda across the armistice line drawn up at the end of the Korean war in 1953. Donald Trump’s summits with Kim Jong Un raised hopes of a new page in inter-Korean relations. But despite the fine words, the Americans have done nothing apart from stepping up their blockade of the DPRK.

 The south Korean leaders are now regretting their rash actions. They’re calling for fresh talks to end the tension. But without a genuine desire for normalisation it is difficult to see how such talks can begin.

The liaison office established in 2018 had operated as a de facto south Korean embassy when the new Seoul regime posed as a supporter of peace and re-unification. It was closed in January. Now it’s just smoke and rubble.

No Big Deal

 None of us should be surprised at the collapse of the summit talks between Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump in Hanoi last week. Over the past few months the Trump camp had given the impression that they were going to seriously respond to the Democratic Korean call for an end to sanctions and the state of war that still exists between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). But at the end of the day the chief American war-lord was unwilling, or possibly unable, to put anything on the table to match the Korean side’s reasonable and balanced stance towards peace and security on the Korean peninsula.

            In Vietnam Trump told the media that the DPRK was asking for too much. “It was about the sanctions,” he said. “They were willing to denuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that. Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times”. Now he’s blaming his Democrat foes in Congress for undermining his position during the talks with the DPRK leader.

 Others, however, will maintain that Trump has become a prisoner of the most reactionary and aggressive elements of the US ruling class. He has surrounded himself with aides who represent the “war party” that some Americans call the “deep state” that cuts across all party, regional or religious divides to serve the interests of the big corporations and finance houses of American imperialism.

            The Americans had missed “an opportunity that comes once in a thousand years” said Choe Son Hui, the deputy foreign minister of the DPRK. What happens next depends entirely on the Americans.

Trump, a property speculator who claims to be a brilliant negotiator, has hinted that he still wants to talk to Kim Jong Un. Whether he will depends on what the Americans are willing to put on the table next time round.

            Trump bitterly resents the fact that Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people” and even more absurdly for “reaching out to the Muslim world”.

This rubbishy prize has been the preserve, with a few honourable exceptions, of retired Western politicians and prominent agents of imperialism. The anti-communist Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov won it in 1975.  The reactionary Polish union leader Lech Walesa was rewarded for his counter-revolutionary campaign in 1983.  Gorbachov was similarly rewarded for his treachery in 1990.

 Needless to say the Dalai Lama is on the list of winners together with Henry Kissinger, who was jointly given the prize with the chief north Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho in 1973 for negotiating the Vietnamese peace accord. Comrade Le, the only communist ever to get this accolade, took the principled stand and declined the prize on the grounds that the war in Vietnam was still raging.

            Shinzo Abe, the Japanese premier, has nominated Trump for the gong on the basis of his master’s supposed efforts for peace on the Korean peninsula. Well Trump will have to try harder if he still wants the glory he believes the medal will bring him.

Another step for peace

The leaders of the two Koreas took a further step towards ending tension on the Korean peninsula at the summit in Pyongyang this week. The talks between Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un and south Korean leader Moon Jae In have paved the way forwards towards a new era of peace between the two governments based on the {Panmunjom Declaration} that was signed during their historic meeting in April at the truce village on the armistice line that divides the Korean peninsula.

Kim Jong Un is following in the footsteps of great leader Kim Il Sung, who first proposed the establishment of a united confederal republic based on the principle of ‘one country, two systems’ back in 1980. That’s the principle that led to the peaceful return of the former British and Portuguese colonies of Hong Kong and Macau to People’s China in 1997, and it’s one that clearly would end the imperialist imposed partition of the Korean peninsula.

Moon Jae In represents the views of realistic circles within the south Korean ruling class that want an end to American-inspired confrontation and a return to economic co-operation with the people’s government in the north.

Both sides have agreed to a tranche of economic and political proposals that will further develop inter-Korean relations, end military tension and transform the cease-fire line into a “peace zone”.

US President Donald Trump has welcomed the outcome of the talks in one of his proverbial Tweets amidst rumours that the American leader, who held ground-breaking talks with the Korean communist leader in Singapore in June, is ready for a follow-up meeting in the not too distant future.

 Whether that happens depends largely on the outcome of America’s mid-term elections. If Trump’s Republicans fare badly in the November polls this will strengthen the hand of the ‘deep state’ – the hidden hand that operates across party lines to do the bidding of the most aggressive sections of the American ruling class.

They are the war party that destroyed the Yugoslav federation as well as the progressive governments in Libya and Iraq. They propelled the fascists into power in Ukraine. They want ‘regime change’ in Syria and they back Zionist aggression to the hilt. These are the people who have consistently worked to sabotage all efforts to normalise relations between US imperialism and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The DPRK has been under US sanctions of one form or another since the end of the Korean War in 1953. But despite unrelenting hostility from US imperialism and its lackeys, Democratic Korea has continued to advance along the road of socialist construction and the people’s government will never submit to economic pressure, military threat or nuclear blackmail.

The restoration of inter-Korean economic co-operation can only be achieved with the end of sanctions. Peace can only be secured with the withdrawal of all US troops from the south, and normalisation can only progress with the demolition of the ‘concrete wall’ that divides the country and an end to the anti-communist laws that are a breach of the universal human rights the imperialists loudly claim to uphold when it suits their interests.

This week’s Pyongyang summit shows that the Korean people as a whole can resolve their problems without outside interference. Let us hope they are allowed to continue.