Celebrating the victories of the Korean communists

By New Worker correspondent

THE people of Democratic Korea celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea in style with a massive military parade through Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang on 10^th October. And throughout the world communists joined them at events to mark the foundation of the party that has led the Korean revolution to victory after victory in the decades that followed.

            London was no exception, with a number of meetings and events that concluded with a reception at the DPR Korea embassy last week. Tributes to sacrifice and steadfastness of the Korean communists who transformed the liberated north of the Korean peninsula into a workers’ paradise were made by Daphne Liddle from the New Communist Party and Michael Chant from the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (ML) along with others from the Korean Friendship Association, Socialist Labour Party and the CPGB (ML).

The Workers’ Party of Korea was founded on 10th October 1945 by great leader Kim Il Sung. Since its birth the WPK has led the Korean revolution and socialist construction, performing tremendous feats of socialist construction in defiance of US aggression and imperialist blockade. Dear leader Kim Jong Il carried on the work to overcome imperialist blockade and natural disasters, to make the DPRK a nuclear power and raise living standards to even new heights. Now under the guidance of the respected leader Kim Jong Un, the WPK is leading the drive to build a thriving and prosperous socialist republic.

Salute the Workers' Party of Korea!

Shaun Pickford, Dermot Hudson and Alex Meads speaking

By New Worker Correspondent

Korean solidarity activists celebrated the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the Workers Party of Korea on Saturday 3rd October  at a meeting organised by Juche Idea Study Group and the Korean Friendship Association (KFA). New Communist Party comrades, including general secretary Andy Brooks and Central Committee member Daphne Liddle, joined supporters of the Korean revolution in marking this important date in the Korean calendar at a hall in central London last weekend.

 Keynote speakers Dermot Hudson, Shaun Pickford and Thae Yong Ho from the London embassy of the DPR Korea, outlined the fighting history of the Korean communist movement supported by others including NCP leader Andy Brooks, Alex Meads and David Munoz on different aspects of the Korean revolution.

The WPK was founded on 10th October 1945 by great leader Kim Il Sung. Since its birth the WPK has led the Korean revolution and socialist construction, performing tremendous feats. Under the guidance of the respected leader Kim Jong Un, the WPK is now leading the drive to build a thriving and impregnable socialist country.

Dermot Hudson said: "The Workers' Party of Korea which was, 70 years ago, founded on October 10th originally as the Communist Party of North Korea by the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung and is led today by the great leader comrade Kim Jong Un is a Juche type party totally different to both bourgeois parties such as Tory and New Labour and also to the former ruling parties of the socialist countries.

“It is different because it is rooted the popular masses. It was not formed as a result of a sudden decision but its formation was a process that actually spanned several decades starting with the formation of the Down with Imperialism Union on October 17th 1926 by the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung. Indeed the process did not come to an end on October 10th 1945 but a further merger of parties took place in 1946 between the Communist Party of North Korea and the New Democratic Party to form the Workers' Party of North Korea. This prevented the forces of the working masses being split.

 “In 1949 the Workers' Party of North Korea merged with the Workers' Party of South Korea to form a unified party for the whole of Korea the Workers Party of Korea. Indeed the road travelled by the Workers' Party of Korea since October 10th 1945 has been one of continuous struggle, development and consolidation....

“The WPK is proudly known throughout the world, from Sao Paulo to Vladivostok, for its struggle for socialism and its anti-US, anti-imperialist struggle. It is known as an invincible iron-willed party of Juche! Under the leadership of dear respected Marshal Kim Jong Un the WPK is continuing the anti-imperialist and anti-revisionist traditions of the Workers’ Party of Korea”.

NCP leader Andy Brooks said: "The Workers' Party of Korea has led the Korean revolution performing tremendous feats in socialist construction, defeating US imperialism, beating the US-led economic blockade and overcoming natural disasters to become a nuclear power and a modern socialist society that serves the people throughout their lives. The revolutionary struggle was led by  the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung and dear leader comrade Kim Jong Il . Today leader Kim Jong Un follows their footsteps at the helm of the party ".

 Alex Meads  spoke on the foreign policy of the Workers' Party of Korea . He explained that the WPK  and DPRK's foreign policy is based on independence, peace and friendship . He praised the DPRK 's noble proletarian internationalist assistance to Cuba and Vietnam in their struggle against US imperialism . He said that the foreign relations of the WPK are rapidly expanding.

 This was taken up by David Munoz who thanked the Workers' Party of Korea for its contribution to the world communist movement and said that the WPK is the vanguard of the world communist movement.

After the speeches everyone joined the Korean comrades for a party to celebrate the foundation of the WPK and everyone thought it was an afternoon well-spent at the Chadswell Centre in central London.

The UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular events in the capital.

70 years of Victory

Leader Kim Jong Un

By Andy Brooks

THE KOREAN people will soon be celebrating the 70^th anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea and throughout the world communists will join them at events to mark the foundation of the party that has led the Korean revolution to victory after victory in the decades that followed.

The Workers Party of Korea has led the Korean revolution, performing tremendous feats in socialist construction, defeating US imperialism, beating the US-led economic blockade and overcoming natural disasters to become a nuclear power and a modern socialist society that serves the people throughout their lives. The revolutionary struggle was led by great leader Kim Il Sung and dear leader Kim Jong Il. Today leader Kim Jong Un follows their footsteps at the helm of the Party that is leading the drive to build a thriving socialist republic.

The Workers’ Party of Korea was founded on 10th October 1945 but the struggle began in the dark days of 1910 when the Japanese army marched into Korea, deposed the feudal ruler and the peninsula became a colony of Japan.

There was always resistance but it was drowned in blood. But the 1917 Great October Russian Revolution had an enormous impact on the Korean people, inspiring a new uprising in 1919. The Japanese occupation forces responded with predictable fury, driving the patriotic forces underground. And while the workers and peasants looked to the Soviet Union for help and inspiration, the bourgeois nationalists hoped that the other Pacific power, the United States, would come to their aid.

At that time the communist movement in Korea was small and bitterly divided into warring sects. Groups sent emissaries abroad to try to get recognition from the Communist International. All claimed to be the authentic voice of Korean communism while furiously denouncing their rivals. All attempts to set up a united communist party quickly collapsed.

But a new generation of communists was emerging from the patriotic youth and students of the country who wanted to drive the Japanese out and build a new tomorrow for the Korean people. Kim Il Sung was one of them.

Kim Il Sung was an outstanding communist leader and thinker who will always be remembered by working people all over the world. His name will forever be remembered as the founder of the modern Korean communist movement that began amongst the patriotic youth of Korea when he was a student in the 1920s.

Kim Il Sung saw the hopelessness of the sectarians, flunkeyists, dogmatists and factionalists who called themselves communists in the 1920s. So he decided to form a communist movement from the youth and the grass-roots of the villages and factories.

When Kim Il Sung formed the Down with Imperialism Union at the age of 14 in 1926 no one, least of all the Japanese imperialists, could have dreamt that within 20 years Korea would be free. This was a movement that captured the imagination of all Korea’s progressive youth, which soon grew into the bigger Anti-Imperialist Youth League. From this organisation came many of the pioneers of the underground Young Communist League of Korea, directing student strikes and joining in the campaign to boycott Japanese goods.

The divisions amongst the existing Korean communists had left them isolated from the masses. Kim Il Sung strongly denounced their acts, of trying to rely on outside forces and striving for the recognition of others, as a disgrace to the Korean nation.

He stressed that a revolutionary movement was not something to carry on with the approval of others but a work to be done out of one’s own conviction. Problems should be solved by oneself, he said, and only when the struggle was waged well would others recognise it.

From student leader Kim Il Sung became the guerrilla leader; the “Young General” who took up the gun to drive the Japanese colonialists out of the country. When Kim Il Sung gathered a small band of heroes to form the first guerrilla units to take on the might of the Japanese Army no one could have imagined that this would become the People’s Army that brought the American imperialists to their knees begging for an armistice in 1953.

Comrade Kim Il Sung led the Korean masses to victory against the brutal Japanese colonialists in 1945. He took up the gun again to defend their freedom when US imperialism and its lackeys invaded the north in 1950. The Americans were fought to a standstill and forced to sign a humiliating armistice in 1953. Though the American terror bombers had left north Korea in ruins, the masses rallied round the call of the Workers’ Party of Korea to rebuild their shattered country and lead the drive for a modern, independent socialist republic in the free part of the Korean peninsula.

In the north the WPK led the drive to build a new life for all the working people of the DPRK. In American-occupied south Korea the WPK led the popular forces in their struggle against US imperialism and their local lackeys and pawns.

In the decades that followed Kim Il Sung worked tirelessly for the peaceful reunification of Korea while creatively applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete problems of Korean society emerging from feudalism and colonial slavery in the 20th century. Kim Il Sung’s philosophical works, based on the revolutionary experience of the Korean communist movement and generations of struggle, steered the WPK as it marched forward to build a new way of life for the Korean people.

When the Korean War ended the WPK led the campaign for reconstruction. Industry was restored and expanded. Illiteracy was conquered, unemployment abolished and a comprehensive educational system established. The people began to enjoy free housing and medical treatment. By 1970 north Korea had become a socialist industrialised republic, an achievement that has made it a powerful beacon for socialism in Asia.

Unlike British communist leaders in the past, and indeed many others in Europe and beyond, Kim Il Sung stressed that Marxism-Leninism goes far beyond simple economic formulas and the Soviet “model”.

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 the Korean communists and for the Workers’ Party of Korea that he launched in 1945. He developed Korean-style socialism into 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.

Kim Il Sung, the great leader of the Korean revolution, died in 1994 but his work lives on in the Workers’ Party of Korea. His successor, Kim Jong Il, told the Korean people and the world that they could “expect no change from him” and with Kim Jong Il at the helm, natural disasters were overcome, diplomatic isolation was broken and the intrigues of US imperialism have been exposed.

The Korean revolution is an inspiration to all communists and freedom-fighters throughout the world. The Korean people, determined to preserve their independence and socialist system, have closed ranks around the Workers’ Party of Korea and the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the face of new threats from American imperialism.

The achievements of Democratic Korea today are based on the sacrifices of generations of Koreans in the past and the tireless work of the leadership of the Workers Party of Korea that follows in the footsteps of the great revolutionary leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

Now First Secretary Kim Jong Un is following the footsteps of those who came before him in striving to peacefully re-unify the Korean peninsula so brutally partitioned by US imperialism, strengthen the armed forces that are the ultimate guarantee of the independence and freedom of the people of Democratic Korea and ensure the health, education and well-being of every citizen in the DPRK. Still under constant threat from US imperialism and its lackeys it is even more important than ever to support the DPR Korea.

An old tune from the BBC

THIS WEEK the BBC unveiled plans to start beaming daily propaganda broadcasts to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and expand its “World Service” to Russia, India and the Middle East to provide better coverage to countries where there is a “democratic deficit in impartial news”.

The BBC faces further cuts and scrabbles around to defend itself from calls from within the Cameron government and the corporate media to privatise or break the Corporation. The people are told to accept cuts, make sacrifices and accept unemployment and poverty under the austerity regime. But the BBC will have no problem in getting the millions needed to join the Americans’ new psychological warfare offensive against any country that stands in the way of imperialism.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is one of our supposed “national treasures” whose aims are to educate, inform and entertain the public that funds it through the licence fee. Under the motto “Nation shall speak peace unto Nation” the Corporation claims to be a pillar of impartiality and a reliable source of independent news at home and abroad. That was never the case back in the 1920s when the BBC was founded and it is certainly not the case now.

The Jimmy Savile affair has shown how easy it was for a dishonest and manipulative man to use the BBC as a cover for his sinister activities. Unfortunately for the last 68 years, the corporation has been happy to allow its name to be used as cover by the British and US intelligence services which operate with the same characteristics as Savile but to far more deadly effect.

From the beginning the Corporation has served the interests of the British ruling class at home and abroad. The BBC poses as impartial but when the chips are down it simply becomes the mouthpiece of the ruling class as it did during the General Strike in 1926 or the miners’ strikes in 1972 and the 1980s. When the Cold War began the BBC, whose “World Service” was directly funded by the Foreign Office until April 2014, worked in tandem with the CIA to spread lies and disinformation to the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies that emerged following the defeat of the Axis in 1945.

In those days the BBC ran a sophisticated operation. Third World diplomats would joke that while Radio Moscow and the Voice of America broadcast were “95 per cent truth and five per cent lies” the BBC was “97 per cent truth and only three per cent lies”. These days, with constrained budgets and the general “dumbing down” that the bourgeoisie encourages to stifle dissent, the BBC has abandoned any attempt at caution or subtlety. Imperialist and Zionist propaganda is relayed at face value and any old rubbish from anti-communist defectors is paraded as unvarnished truth.

Last month Korea was on the brink of war following provocations from the south Korean regime. It was averted following high-level negotiations between the north and southern sides. It ended with the puppet regime agreeing to halt its provocations in the Demilitarised Zone, giving the go-ahead for a reunion of separated families and relatives and offering to resume talks to lift economic sanctions on Democratic Korea.

The agreement was a set-back for reactionary south Korean leader Park Geun Hye and her venal clique that serves the interests of US imperialism. Now some of them want to turn the clock back.

US imperialism is planning to raise the issue of “human rights” in Democratic Korea at the United Nations this autumn and a new hate campaign is being prepared to back it up. The BBC plan is clearly part of this US-led propaganda offensive against the DPRK.

But no one in Democratic Korea wants to hear the recycled lies of the south Korean puppet regime on their radios and none of us should be forced to pay for this nonsense.


New Worker editorial
11th September 2015

Defending Democratic Korea!

By New Worker correspondent

 WHILE LONDONERS braved the rain to attend the Notting Hill Carnival or the many other fairs and festivals held across the capital on Bank Holiday Monday, supporters of the Korean revolution picketed the south Korean and US embassies to demand the withdrawal of all imperialist forces from south Korea.

taking the message to the puppet regime

The protest began outside the south Korean puppet embassy at 2.00 pm to condemn the joint American-puppet regime war-games that have heightened tension on the Korean peninsula and denounced the recent arrest of a number of pro-reunification patriots in south Korea.

KFA Chair Dermot Hudson said that a war was narrowly averted in Korea last week thanks to the patient and peace loving efforts of the DPR Korea. In order to avert war permanently US troops must be withdrawn from south Korea and there must be an end to exercises such as Ulji Freedom Guardian.

The picketers then moved on to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square at 4.00 pm to continue the protest and denounce the human rights violations by the US and its crimes against the Korean people.

...and Grosvenor Square

Comrades, including NCP leader Andy Brooks and Daphne Liddle and Theo Russell from the Central Committee, took part in the KFA demonstrations together with other supporters of Democratic Korea.

The UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular events in the capital.

Liberation Day in London

Hyong Hak Bong, Dermot Hudson and Andy Brooks

By New Worker correspondent

KOREA’S liberation day was marked in style last week by comrades and friends at a seminar in central London on Thursday 13th August. NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other Korean solidarity workers in stressing the importance of the Workers Party of Korea and great leader Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla army in ending 35 years of Japanese enslavement in August 1945.

Other speakers included Dermot Hudson, Theo Russell and David Munoz from the Korean Friendship Association that organised the evening meeting at the Cock Tavern in Euston to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Korea.

 The meeting was honoured by the presence of Hyong Hak Bong, the DPRK’s London Ambassador, who said that the liberation of Korea was the greatest gain of the Korean people and the greatest exploit achieved by the great leader President Kim Il Sung. And many in the audience took the golden opportunity to ask the Democratic Korean ambassador about the current situation and the DPRK’s nuclear deterrent during the discussion that followed.

After a round-table discussion the seminar formally concluded with the unanimous agreement to send a congratulatory message to Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But it continued informally during the party that followed to celebrate the anniversary of Korea's liberation.

The UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular events in the capital.

Echoes Down The Centuries

REVIEW

ECHOES DOWN THE CENTURIES by Kim Il Sung

By Dermot Hudson

PRESIDENT Kim Il Sung’s life spanned most of the 20^th century and he led the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for nearly 50 years. He was giant of the international communist movement and also an international statesman of great renown. During his life he met Stalin. Mao Zedong, Ché Guevara, Tito, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Sukarno as well as western politicians including former US president Jimmy Carter.

Che and Kim Il Sung

This well written and lively book provides a fascinating set of memories of these meetings. They take on an additional significance in the year of the 70^th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule and the 70^th anniversary of the foundation of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

This short book is not only informative about the life of  great leader President Kim Il Sung but also is full of information about the international policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which provides some valuable insights into the WPK’s relationship with the international communist movement and the other socialist countries.

As is known to many, the Workers’ Party of Korea, led by Kim Il Sung, not only maintained a policy of independence but consistently upheld the unity of the international communist movement. Even when the differences in the socialist camp reached an extreme point near to open armed conflict Kim Il Sung made sure that the DPRK maintained relations with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, meeting various Soviet leaders including Yuri Andropov as well as Mao Zedong and Zhou En Lai of People’s China.

with Mao Zedong

In 1975 Kim Il Sung met Mao Zedong for the last time as Mao died a year later. During the meeting Mao told the Korean communist leader that he hoped that Kim Il Sung would lead the international communist movement and world revolution after he passed away.

Although the DPRK maintained good relations with the USSR it maintained a position of independence and opposed the revisionist stance of the Soviet Union after 1956. This brought the DPRK into conflict with the revisionist Khruschov leadership as the DPRK was, as the book says, a strongly anti-imperialist, counter-revisionist nation with a staunch spirit of independence. The Soviet revisionists put all kinds of pressure on the DPRK and there were one or two open attacks on Democratic Korea in the Soviet media (though these were rare compared to those on China and Albania).

 One form of pressure was trying to push the DPRK into joining the Council For Mutual Economic Assistance, CMEA or Comecon as it was known in the west. The DPRK, believing in building an independent national economy under the banner of Juché and self-reliance, resisted this. Khrushchov not only urged the DPRK to join CMEA but even mobilised the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia to make the DPRK join CMEA. When this failed the Soviet leadership sent Yuri Andropov, who later became the leader of the USSR, to meet Kim Il Sung.

Syrian leader Hafez Al Assad in the DPRK

 Andropov used clever arguments for joining CMEA. President Kim Il Sung rebuttuted them all one by one. He also pointed out that a Soviet journalist had slandered the DPRK’s slogan of building an independent national economy and that this was bad manners. Andropov was forced to concede that it was and apologised.

 President Kim Il Sung put matters in the simplest form saying self-reliance means standing on your own feet. What’s wrong with our self-reliant stand?  Of course President Kim Il Sung was proved right by history.

Under the leadership of the Soviet revisionists the CMEA countries sank into stagnation and in the end the USSR collapsed and the CMEA countries were no more. It was a very wise decision of the DPRK not to join CMEA!

President Kim Il Sung met the great Latin American and Cuban revolutionary Major Ernesto Ché Guevara on the 2^nd December 1960. He told Ché that the DPRK and Cuba were comrades in the same trench and that he could ask for anything. Ché was very impressed with the internationalism of President Kim Il Sung. He was to write later that the DPRK was the socialist country he most admired. The profound and lofty internationalism of President Kim Il Sung greatly inspired Ché who dedicated himself to liberating Latin America from imperialist oppression and died a heroic death in Bolivia. Later on President Kim Il Sung wrote a work on the occasion of the 1^st anniversary of Ché’s death and the DPRK has a kindergarten named after Ché.

...and Marshal Tito

President Kim Il Sung was also the friend of Chilean Socialist leader Salvador Allende, whom he met in 1969. The following year Allende won the Chilean presidential election.

 Kim Il Sung later met a delegation from Allende’s Popular Unity coalition on the 23 February 1972 just 18 months before the Chilean coup. The book recounts how President Kim Il Sung advised the head of the Chilean delegation that the question of taking control of the army and police needed to be dealt with. Sadly, this advice was not heeded and on the 11^th September 1973 General Pinochet mounted a fascist coup on behalf of the US and murdered Allende.

Finally one anecdote that caught my eye was the one about Madagascan President Didier Ratsirika asking about how to solve unemployment. President Kim Il Sung replied that the DPRK had wiped unemployment out by about 1946.

All in all a very good book that provides a lively account of the DPRK’s diplomatic relations and work to further the international communist and world revolutionary movement.

It is available online on the Naenara website or can be ordered through the Korean Friendship Association.