Korea

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 11, 2024 2:57 pm

Stephen Cho: DPRK’s ‘subjugation’ stance and revolution in south Korea

South Korean revolutionary outlines the change in posture by north Korea towards the occupied southern state and its client regime.


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Stephen Cho of the South Korea International Forum and the World Anti-imperialist Platform believes that while the imperialists are driving humanity into the flames of global conflagration, they are opening up new revolutionary possibilities as they do so, from which the south Korean masses may be among the first to benefit.
Stephen Cho

Wednesday 10 April 2024

Reproduced from Platform magazine, with thanks.

*****

On 15 January 2024, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) made a historic declaration. At the Supreme People’s Assembly on this day, the chairman of the State Affairs Commission, Kim Jong Un, declared that his country would subjugate “the Republic of Korea” (ROK) in case of emergency. Here are the important points of Chairman Kim Jong Un’s speech regarding the situation in Korea.

First, Chairman Kim Jong Un stated: “The frequent remarks made by the US authorities about the ‘end of our regime’, the vast nuclear strategic assets permanently stationed in the peripheral area of the DPRK, the ceaseless war exercises staged on the largest scale with its followers, the military nexus between Japan and the Republic of Korea boosted at the instigation of the USA, etc are seriously threatening the security of our state moment by moment.”

And he stressed: “It is our party’s strategic plan to defend the country and greet a great revolutionary event through all-people resistance.”

The provocateurs of war in today’s world are always imperialism and its puppets. Comrade Kim Jong Un’s speech points to the fact that all armies and people will unite to defend the fatherland and bring about a great revolutionary event if war breaks out as a result of provocative manoeuvres aimed at invading north Korea. This great revolutionary event will necessarily involve subjugating the whole territory of the south.

Redefining south Korea and the DPRK’s posture towards it
Chairman Kim Jong Un went on to call “the ROK” “a group of outsiders’ top-class stooges”, defining it as an “enemy state”, a “belligerent state” and a “foreign country”. He expressed the DPRK’s readiness to “completely occupy, subjugate and reclaim the ROK and annex it as a part of the territory of our republic” in case of the outbreak of war on the peninsula.

Here, ‘the ROK’ becomes both an ‘enemy state’ and a ‘a group of outsiders’ top-class stooges’. This is not a logical contradiction, but a dialectical one: it is both ‘the ROK’ and an enemy state, but it is also ‘the ROK clan’ and puppets. Thus we can see that the DPRK still essentially maintains a one-state policy. In other words, it internally upholds its existing policy that the DPRK is the only legitimate state on the Korean peninsula and is prepared to subjugate the proxy ROK as an enemy state in the event of war.

Chairman Kim Jong Un also pointed out: “It is necessary to delete such expressions in the DPRK’s constitution as ‘northern half’ and ‘independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity’.” “We have dismantled all the organisations we established as solidarity bodies for peaceful reunification.” And further: “We should also completely remove the eyesore ‘Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification’ standing at the southern gateway to the capital city of Pyongyang.”

These are tactical measures valid only until such a time as subjugation has been achieved. In fact, they outline a peaceful process: subjugation will inevitably lead to the establishment of a military government in the south, ruled by the Korean People’s Army. When revolutionary forces in the south have matured enough and a civil government is established through democratic elections, this people’s democratic government and the socialist government of the north will be able to build a unified federal state.

In other words, these measures, which seem to deny ‘peaceful reunification’, are temporary tactical measures to remove the obstacles to reunification, in force only until ‘an enemy country’ and ‘a group of stooges’ called ‘the ROK’ has ceased to exist. Once a people’s democratic government has come into power, then, and only then, can meaningful reunification in an atmosphere of peace and security – ie, federal reunification – be achieved.

The policy of peacefully building a unified federal state is still the strategic goal of the DPRK.

To this end, Chairman Kim Jong Un has made it clear that the military force of the north is “not a means of pre-emptive attack for realising unilateral ‘reunification by force of arms’”. In other words, the DPRK has no intention of reunifying the country by force – ie, of actively pursuing forceful reunification. If reunification doesn’t take place by force, then it will be a peaceful reunification by means of a federal system.

Chairman Kim Jong Un went on to stress: “The war will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence. And it will inflict an unimaginably crushing defeat upon the USA.”

Thus he showed that the DPRK has different approaches to ‘the ROK’ and to the USA. Comrade Kim Jong Un has made it clear that if war breaks out as a result of provocations against the DPRK, ‘the ROK’ itself will be ‘destroyed’ while the USA will suffer a significant blow, a ‘crushing defeat’. This suggests that the DPRK sees the possibility that the USA might not intervene in the war in what the southern puppets refer to as “HanGuk” (abbreviated from ‘Daehanminguk’, the name given to Korea by the republican movement of 1919, and somewhat ironically adopted by the puppets of the ROK regime).

US imperialism’s current military doctrine: proxy warfare
The USA today is following a military doctrine of proxy warfare against its peer competitors – as has been made clear by the way it is prosecuting its wars in Ukraine and Palestine. The same is likely to be true of a possible “war in HanGuk”. If the USA were to engage in a direct war with the DPRK, rather than in a proxy war via the stooge ‘HanGuk’ forces, it would risk a north Korean nuclear attack on the US mainland, which could escalate into mutually assured destruction (MAD) and the annihilation of humanity.

With this ‘declaration of subjugation’ by the DPRK, a possible war in south Korea during this decade, a ‘war in HanGuk’, would take on the character of an antifascist and anti-imperialist war, a war of subjugating one part of the country by another – an internal war. This compares with the Korean war of the 1950s, which was likewise an anti-imperialist and antifascist war, a national-liberation war, and a war for the reunification of the Fatherland. The essence of anti-imperialism, antifascism, and liberation will remain unchanged during a future war on the peninsula, notwithstanding the temporary acceptance of a two-state policy by the DPRK.

Once the lower of the two stages of the democratisation of south Korea – namely, antifascist democratisation – has been achieved via non-peaceful means of subjugation, then the higher stage, people’s democratisation, can be achieved peacefully. The process of making south Korea independent of the USA that must happen in between these two stages could be achieved via peaceful or non-peaceful means, depending on the USA’s reaction.

Under conditions where antifascist democratisation and anti-US independence have already been achieved, the process of establishing a unified federal government between the people’s democratic regime in the south and the socialist regime in the north can only be pursued by peaceful means.

The main points of Comrade Kim Jong Un’s speech in January had already been put forward in the report of the ninth enlarged plenum of the eighth WPK central committee in December. In both those documents, general secretary of the WPK and chairman of the State Affairs Commission Kim Jong Un has inherited the ideas and strategies of the revolution and of Korean reunification of his predecessors, President Kim Il Sung and chairman of the National Defence Commission Kim Jong Il, innovating upon them in order to adapt them to today’s situation and resolve the long-standing problems of the Korean peninsula.

These problems have existed for 78 years since the division of the country by the US imperialists in 1945, and the DPRK has made it clear that it is now prepared to use bold methods of subjugation – to fight a ‘war in HanGuk’ – in case of emergency.

Imperialists driving us into WW3, and opening up new revolutionary possibilities as they do so
This concept of a war of subjugation to oust the imperialist proxy regime in the south has opened a decisive period for the south Korean revolution

With the DPRK’s willingness to subjugate the occupied south by military means, the likelihood of a ‘war in HanGuk’ has increased. Moreover, the likelihood of war in Taiwan, which is bound to break out at the same time, has also increased. And as the likelihood of war breaking out in east Asia increases, the possibility of war spreading further across eastern Europe is increasing likewise.

Currently, the flames of World War 3 are spreading from eastern Europe to the middle east and look likely to ignite in east Asia too. But once the flames of have ignited east Asia, World War 3 will be in full swing and the ‘new cold war’ antagonism facing the anti-imperialist and imperialist camps alike will become clear. Human history will arrive at a new great turning point.

We can expect this new great transition in human history to prove a great transition for world revolution.

https://thecommunists.org/2024/04/10/ne ... uth-korea/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 23, 2024 2:15 pm

The Juche idea and the meaning of independence for the Korean revolution

Eduardo Vasco

April 21, 2024

Eduardo Vasco continues to explain how Kim Il Sung managed to create a Communist regime largely independent of the Soviet Union.

Eduardo Vasco continues to explain how Kim Il Sung managed to create a Communist regime largely independent of the Soviet Union. The first article in this cycle can be found here.

With the responsibility of organizing the vanguard of the Korean revolution, the young Kim Il Sung emerged, who would lead the process of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat in Korea over the next seven decades. Instead of adhering to the policy of the Communist Party of Korea – an instrument of the Stalinist bureaucracy – Kim Il Sung founded the Union to Defeat Imperialism (UDI) in 1926, carrying out a policy independent of the Communist Party of the Third International.

At the UDI founding ceremony, Kim Il Sung gave a speech in which he stated that:

Because the UDI assumes, in name and in fact, the mission of overthrowing imperialism, its program must establish the immediate task of destroying Japanese imperialism, the sworn enemy of the Korean people, achieving the liberation and independence of Korea, and maintaining as future task the building of socialism and communism in Korea, overthrowing all forms of imperialism and building communism throughout the world. (Let us overthrow Imperialism, October 17, 1926)

The idea of independence of the popular masses to carry out the revolution arises from Korea’s own colonial situation and from the struggles against other sectors of the revolutionary movement (such as the nationalists and the Communist Party). The masses need to have class independence in relation to bourgeois nationalism, Stalinism and, obviously, imperialism. This idea will be further developed and will result in the official ideology of the North Korean Workers’ State, led by Kim Il Sung: the Juche philosophy. It is a concept that means that it is necessary to rely on one’s own strengths, thus being a demarcation of ground between the movement that would lead the revolution and take power in North Korea and other sectors such as Korean nationalists and Stalinists, as well as, at the international level, an ideological support point for the political independence of the North Korean regime in relation to the Soviet bureaucracy.

In 1930, the Kalun Conference of the Communist Youth League and the Anti-imperialist Youth League took place. On this occasion, Kim Il Sung makes new statements about the permanent nature of the Korean revolution:

(…) The main task of the Korean Revolution, therefore, is to overthrow the Japanese imperialists and win Korean independence and, at the same time, liquidate feudal relations and introduce democracy. (…) We will not stop halfway in completing the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution, but we will transform it into a revolution to also build the socialist and communist society and thus carry out the world revolution. Completing the Korean Revolution is a great service to accelerating the world revolution. (The way forward for the Korean Revolution, June/July 1930)

Such a policy went against the dictates of Stalin’s Third International, which preached the “revolution in stages”, in which the democratic revolution should be supported by the proletariat but led by the bourgeoisie, to form a bourgeois regime that would carry out democratic reforms and, only then the proletariat could finally take power.

In the wake of this conference, an armed national liberation movement was formed, the Korean Revolutionary Army, which would later be called the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army and, later on, the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army. While Stalinism, at a global level, forced the communist movement that was under its influence to remain in the wake of the imperialist bourgeoisie in the infamous Popular Fronts, thus removing the class independence of the proletariat and adapting to bourgeois democracy, in Korea the revolutionaries took in arms to defeat imperialism and carry out the revolution. What Kim Il Sung did, as did Fidel Castro later, was to lead the proletariat to lead the revolutionary process, relying first on the peasants and then on other sectors oppressed by Japanese imperialism, including layers of the petit bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie whose interests contradicted those of the occupants. But he never put the workers movement behind these sectors. On the contrary: founded in 1936, the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland was a united front whose main objective and result was the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of Koreans into the ranks of the revolution, being an impetus for the armed struggle, which was never abandoned by Kim Il Sung, thus opposing the general policy of Stalinism.

Regarding this process, Kim Jong Il (son of Kim Il Sung and his successor as leader of North Korea) reflected as follows:

Due to the fact that in the past our country was a backward, semi-feudal and colonial society, the working class was not numerous, but being the contingent with the strongest aspiration for independence and revolutionary spirit, it constituted the core of the forces of the revolution. Since the democratic, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal stage, the great Leader [referring to his father] considered the workers as members of the ruling class of the revolution and took their demands and those of the nation as the starting point of all his policies and guidelines. In our country, all processes of the revolution, from the anti-imperialist of national liberation and the democratic anti-feudal, to the socialist and its construction, were carried out successfully under the leadership of the working class. (Our socialism centered on the popular masses is invincible, May 5, 1991)

Thus, through this revolutionary process, which combined armed struggle in the mountains with the organization of the working class in the cities through Popular Committees, the communists led by Kim Il Sung took power in Korea in the wake of Japan’s defeat in World War II., in 1945.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... evolution/
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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 15, 2024 2:42 pm

U.S. and South Korea Are Scheduled to Conduct 130 Military Exercises this Year
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - June 15, 2024 0

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South Korean President Yoon Seok Yeol, center, looks around military vehicles following South Korea-U.S. joint military drill at Seungjin Fire Training Field in Pocheon, South Korea, on June 15, 2023. [Source: wsws.org]

Exemplifies serious war crisis whose roots are being twisted in the U.S. media[/b]

In early April, the United States and South Korea conducted joint naval exercises in the Sea of Japan near the coast of Pohang, 262 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

The exercise—in which the U.S. dispatched an expeditionary sea base along with two other naval ships and MH-52 helicopters—was designed to counter maritime security threats and involved practicing mine counter-measures against North Korea.

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U.S.-South Korea maritime drills in the Sea of Japan in April 2024. [Source: msn.com]

The Sea of Japan exercise was followed up by a joint U.S.-South Korea naval exercise off the coast of Jeju Island, site of a major massacre during the Korean War, in which the U.S. deployed the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, three Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, and two Aegis destroyers, as part of an attempt to “improve joint operability against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.”

Around the same time, the U.S. and South Korean Air Forces were carrying out drills out of the U.S.’s Kunsan Air Base outside of Seoul, 198 kilometers from the North Korean border (and 950 kilometers from Beijing) involving 25 different war planes and 100 aircraft in total.[1]

A month earlier, the U.S. and South Korea conducted one of their largest overall drills, the Freedom Shield exercises, involving tens of thousands of troops that involved the participation of 11 other countries, including the United Kingdom and the Philippines.

A collage of military equipment

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[Source: youtube.com]

According to Hyunhwee Yi, Ph.D. in International Politics and Research Fellow at Korea National University of Education, the U.S. and South Korea are scheduled to carry out a whopping 130 joint military exercises this year.

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Hyunhwee Yi [Source: Photo Courtesy of Hyunhwee Yi]

These exercises send a powerful signal to North Korea and to China that the U.S. and South Korea are planning for war, though the U.S. and Western media spin it that North Korea is a primary threat and that its missile tests are triggering the heightening of tensions.[2]

The Associated Press reported in early April that “tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dialing up his weapons demonstrations, which have included more powerful missiles aimed at the U.S. mainland and U.S. targets in the Pacific. The United States, South Korea and Japan have responded by expanding their combined military training and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around strategic U.S. assets.”

The bias in this account is that it makes it seem like Kim Jong Un was the one to provoke the escalation of tension through his missile tests and that the U.S., South Korea and Japan were forced to respond.

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North Korean cruise missile test. This test was depicted in U.S. and Western media as provocative and a manifestation of the North Korean threat—not responsive to U.S.-South Korean actions. [Source: nbcnews.com]

The latter view is reinforced by omitting any discussion of the U.S.’s destruction of North Korean cities during the Korean War (1950-1953) in a massive bombing campaign, and South Korea’s abandonment of the “sunshine policy” promoting peaceful rapprochement under South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

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B-26 bombing attack over North Korea during the Korean War. [Source: uso.org]

In an exclusive interview with CovertAction Magazine, Hyunhwee Yi expressed his belief that the U.S. may have interfered in South Korea’s 2022 election to ensure the election of Yoon Seok-Youl, a neo-conservative hardliner branded by the RAND Corporation as the “perfect partner of Joe Biden.”[3]

Hyunhwee said that “when Yoon Suk Yeol was Prosecutor General in South Korea, American FBI and CIA officials came to Korea and met with Yoon Suk Yeol. Then, strangely enough, even though he had no political experience, he ran for president and was elected.”

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Yoon Suk Yeol playing “American Pie” with Joe Biden at a White House State Dinner in April 2023. [Source: au.sports.yahoo.com]

Hyunhwee continued: “As soon as Yoon Suk Yeol became president, he strictly followed the will of the United States. Yoon declared North Korea, China, and Russia to be evil forces and abandoned diplomacy completely. Then, military tensions on the Korean Peninsula began exploding. Yoon also completely abandoned economic exchanges with China and Russia.

Many South Korean companies that were doing well in China and Russia have pulled out in droves. This was also a faithful fulfillment of the U.S. policy of containing China and Russia.

Consequently, the Korean economy is sinking without end.”

As a further example of close South Korean-U.S. cooperation under Yoon’s regime, Hyunhwee said that Han Dong-hoon, Yoon’s closest associate, visited the FBI when he was Minister of Justice. Han was the chairman of the ruling party in the recent National Assembly election.

At the end of the interview, Hyunhwee raised concern that, “if war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, China will have no choice but to participate. As you know well, China also participated in the Korean War that broke out in 1950. Just like Russia’s participation in the Ukraine War, China’s participation is what the United States wants. If war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, the possibility of nuclear war is very high. In that case, humanity will fall into a catastrophe.”[4]

New Cold War Sending Tremors in Northeast Asia
A new report released by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, a left-wing think tank offering a perspective on world events from the Global South, shows that the perilous situation in the Koreas is part of a continent wide phenomenon triggered by the U.S. military buildup in Southeast Asia and bellicose policies towards China.

Released on May 21, the Tricontinental report is titled “The New Cold War is Sending Tremors Throughout Northeast Asia.”

Along with the derailing of the peace process in Korea, the report warned about Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s pledge to double military spending by 2027, about the looming threat of conflict between China and Taiwan as a result of the U.S. of transforming Taiwan into a heavily armed “porcupine,” and of a region-wide arms race now developing.

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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a U.S. fighter-jet. [Source: independent.co.uk]

The authors wrote that the U.S. trilateral military partnership with Japan and South Korea was “approaching a level of commitment akin to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)” and could result in Japan and South Korea being dragged into a U.S.-China conflict.

The disastrous policy course was initiated by the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” policy, which aimed to place 60% of U..S warships in the Asia-Pacific by 2020 and revitalize U.S. military bases.

The pivot was enacted despite the fact that at its 18th National Congress in 2012, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) laid out a foreign policy that sought to create “‘a new type of great power relations’ in which China’s ‘peaceful rise’ would not confront the United States frontally.”

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[Source: seekingalpha.com]

Besides the huge military buildup, Obama pushed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement favoring U.S. corporate investors that excluded China.

Obama’s policies have been expanded upon by the Trump and Biden administrations, which have substituted the TPP for a trade war directed against China that aims to ensure that China never becomes an economic peer of the U.S., to quote Pentagon official Jon Bateman.

To accomplish these latter ends, Biden has sought to restrict China’s access to cutting-edge semiconductors (a linchpin of the Fourth Industrial Revolution) and related technologies while pressuring leaders in the semiconductor industry such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands to enact similar restrictions.

According to the authors’ of the Tricontinental report, U.S. policy in Northeast Asia follows a pattern of continuity from the original Cold War where the U.S. fueled regional divisions as it tried to contain Communist China and secure a chain of military bases that had been acquired in the Pacific War.

The main hope for today lies in grassroots social movements in Northeast Asia that are working to undo the U.S.-driven system of military alliances and the broader trend of militarisation

Peace activists in Okinawa, which houses 74% of Japan’s military bases (on just 1% of Japan’s land), are leading the way in their opposition to the U.S. military which has devastated the local environment. These activists may yet help inspire a broader movement against the U.S. empire in Southeast Asia, which, contrary to popular illusions, has been as violent and exploitative as past colonial empires.

____________

1.At present, there are approximately 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, which also fields its own huge, heavily armed military of around 500,000 active troops. ↑

2.The Associated Press reported on April 11 that North Korea had announced testing of a “super-large” cruise missile warhead and a new anti-aircraft missile in a western coastal area as it expands military capabilities in the face of deepening tensions with the United States and South Korea. ↑

3.One manifestation of the perfect partnership was South Korea’s agreement under Yoon to provide $2.1 billion in low interest loans to the Ukrainian government. ↑

4.In April, officials from the U.S. Defense Department and the South Korean Defense Ministry held their 24th Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue in Washington in which they agreed to hold a tabletop exercise on nuclear weapon planning concurrently for the first time with the upcoming Ulchi Freedom Shield war games in August. The decision is part of the growing nuclear weapon cooperation between the U.S. and South Korea. At their summit last year, Presidents Joe Biden and Yoon Suk Yeol agreed to establish the Nuclear Consultative Group to give Seoul a larger role in how U.S. nuclear weapons are used. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko has expressed grave concern over the escalation of tensions in Korea. He emphasized that the main cause of this was the irresponsible and provocative policy of Washington, which, in pursuit of its own geopolitical interests, is pressing its regional allies to carry out its aggressive plans that could have unpredictable consequences, including in the military area. ↑

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... this-year/

The Empire’s Fake News Machine: The Strange Case of Korean Peninsula’s Very Own “Bellingcat”
By Dermot Hudson - June 13, 2024 2

[Source: akpure.com]
Years ago I read a book, edited by CovertAction Magazine founders Philip Agee and Louis Wolf, entitled Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe, about the CIA in Western Europe.

All the articles and essays were very interesting but one had a distinctive title “The CIA Makes the News,” by Steve Weissman. This is still going on today in many forms and in many regions and countries of the world.

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[Source: sfparis.com]

One such region is the Korean Peninsula where the socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) stands in sharp confrontation with United States imperialism and the so-called Republic of Korea (ROK).

One entity specializes in creating misinformation about the situation on the Korean Peninsula, posing as an “independent” and “authoritative” source for news about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Korean Peninsula.

This entity usually tries to put a “neutral” spin on propaganda against the DPRK emanating from Seoul. It smooths the rough edges of Seoul’s propaganda against the DPRK and recycles it in a way to make it look more plausible.

The entity is none other than “NKNews,” which is owned by an American company that is registered in the tax haven of Delaware and operates out of South Korea.

One of the functions of NKNews is to provide a veneer of credibility and respectability to the mainstream media’s coverage of the DPRK and related matters.

Frequently, Western media outlets cite NKNews as a supposed “independent source.”

However, if NKNews is an independent source, then the question should be: independent from what exactly?

In fact, despite proclamations of “independence” and “neutrality” by NKNews, it has been shown to receive funding from the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. Army Pacific Command.

Curiously, NKNews uses the jargon of “spooks” when it talks about “open sources.” What source other than an open one does a journalist have? Is it not an admission by NKNews that its so-called “information” is coming from sources which are not open?

NKNews likes to project itself as objective and independent, playing the “good cop” to the “bad cop” “Daily NK,” a far-right website in South Korea which is funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, a conduit for the CIA.

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[Source: dreamstime.com]

The “Daily NK” has been responsible for some of the more blatantly ludicrous and demonstrably false stories about the DPRK.

One example is its false reporting that DPRK supreme leader Marshal Kim Jong Un had died in 2020.

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[Source: youtube.com]

A close look reveals that some NKNews staff and writers also write for the Daily NK, notably Alek Sigley and Gabriela Bernal, showing that there is a nexus between NKNews and the Daily NK.

Back in 2021 NKNews carried an article by Alek Sigley titled “Ask a North Korean: What Do North Koreans Think of Regime Sympathisers.”

The article was full of McCarthyite smears, not only targeting the militantly pro-DPRK Korean Friendship Association but also Korean-Americans and organizations like “Women Cross the DMZ.” Without any evidence, they were accused of being “pawns” of the United Front Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Interestingly, the author of the article, Alek Sigley, had been detained and then expelled by the DPRK in July 2019. Sigley himself confessed to DPRK internal security to have carried out espionage and anti-DPRK activities. It was after the intervention of the Swedish embassy that Sigley was expelled from the DPRK instead of facing a prison sentence for espionage. Sigley had entered the DPRK on a student visa to study as a foreign student at Kim Il Sung University.

However, Sigley abused this and violated the terms of his visa by acting as a reporter for NKNews while in Pyongyang.

Sigley talked of “consumerism” and a “middle class ” in the DPRK, basically seeking to undermine the image of the DPRK as a socialist country.

This is actually an old trick of the CIA as, back in the days of the Cold War, the CIA created the “convergence theory” and employed former Trotskyite James Burnham to paint the USSR and other socialist countries as “capitalist” or “state capitalist.”

Sigley also wrote approvingly of how anti-U.S. posters were removed from public display and that this was a good thing.

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Alek Sigley [Source: ntnews.com.au]

The true face of Sigley is as a so-called engager, a believer in “changing the regime.” Sigley and others wanted to see the DPRK drop its militant anti-imperialism and eventually dismantle the socialist system.

The Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK, referring to Sigley, reported that “Investigation revealed that at the instigation of the NK News and other anti-DPRK media he handed over several times the data and photos he collected and analysed while combing Pyongyang by making use of the identity card of a foreign student.”

NKNews was founded by a German Marshall Fund employee named Chad O’Carroll in 2010. The German Marshall Fund was, according to German whistleblower Udo Ulfkotte a “CIA front group.”

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[Source: ourenergypolicy.org]

In those days O’Carroll used the alias Tad Farrell, probably to conceal the fact that he was actually an employee of the German Marshall Fund so as to hide the involvement of the German Marshall Fund in the setting up of NKNews.

O’Carroll’s LinkedIn profile shows that he set up the “Korea Risk Group,” the parent company of NKNews, in April 2010, but also began working for the German Marshall Fund as a “digital project manager” from August 2010 to July 2012. This shows a clear overlap between his time at NKNews and the German Marshall Fund.

O’Carroll also held a third job as Director of Communications of the “Korea Economic Institute” of the U.S. until 2023.

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[Source: youtube.com]

The Korea Economic Institute describes itself on its website as “a non-for-profit, educational organization partnered with the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), a public policy research institute funded by the Government of the Republic of Korea.”

O’Carroll is also linked to another shadowy outfit, the “House of the Rising Stars.” Little is known about the “House of the Rising Stars” but it appears to have some connection with Western intelligence services and was formed by the initiative of then-U.S. President Barack Obama.

Mr. O’Carroll is quite the dashing cosmopolitan. It is hard to identify his real nationality, but it appears that he was from a wealthy Irish-American family or an Irish family with U.S. connections living in London.

O’Carroll grew up in a big house in Camberwell, South London. O’Carroll studied at King’s College London which is well known for its links to the military and security services. O’Carroll studied journalism in the U.S. after he had become editor of NKNews.

Other key figures in NKNews in the past were Hamish Macdonald and former New York Times journalist Oliver Hotham.

Macdonald, who is described as a journalist and researcher, was the Chief Operating Officer for the parent company of NKNews, the Korea Risk Group. He is also an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a body which is linked to the British military and intelligence services.

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Hamish Macdonald [Source: nknews.org]

One of the vice presidents of RUSI is retired U.S. General (and former CIA Director) David Petraeus.

The director-general of RUSI, Karin von Hippel, is a former U.S. State Department employee.

Oliver Hotham, editor of NKNews from 2013 to 2020, was a former journalist for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times (London) and also the U.S.-based Vice magazine.

Hotham was once responsible for staking out a picket of the South Korean embassy in London organized by the Korean Friendship Association UK in November 2013.

Hotham and the other NKNews reporter tried to finger and harass the picketers. Out of nowhere, a North Korean “defector” appeared and proceeded to harass the picket.

This was clearly a stage-managed provocation by Hotham and the NKNews team.

Later Hotham was seen talking to a smartly dressed, middle-aged man who appeared to be some kind of British diplomatic or security official. Hotham left NKNews in 2020 to work for the French news agency AFP.

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Oliver Hotham [Source: internazionale.it]

Chad O’Carroll registered NKNews as a UK company at Companies House in November 2014. The address given for NKNews in the Companies House registration was 1st Floor, 2 Woodberry Grove, Finchley, London, England N12 0DR, which is actually a private house at which more than 1,000 companies have been registered, many of them scam companies.

Curiously, although NKNews claimed to have staff in London, Seoul and the U.S., it was registered as having a share capital of £1.

Clearly, this was a front company or a shell designed to conceal the true ownership of NKNews.

Subsequently, NKNews was dissolved as a UK company in June 2015, less than one year after it was registered.

One can speculate that NKNews realized that being registered as a UK company meant it would be subject to greater scrutiny and would have to be more transparent, something that it would not want.

The Korea Risk Group was established as the parent company of NKNews in 2013 and registered in the U.S. tax haven of Delaware.

Curiously, the notorious CIA media front “Forum World Features,” run by the late British right-wing journalist Brian Crozier, was also affiliated with the Korea Risk Group.

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[Source: Screenshot courtesy of Dermot Hudson]

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Brian Crozier [Source: powerbase.info]

Despite protestations that it is “independent,” in fact, the parent company of NKNews received a total of $421,292 from the Pentagon as well as from the U.S. Army Pacific Command. This is probably the tip of the iceberg.

Funding from the CIA and other Western intelligence services is likely hidden through subscriptions to NK News.

NKNews subscriptions are $3.84 per week and a subscription to the “specialist NK pro” service is much higher, said to be $2,000 per year. Who would pay that amount of money? Only intelligence agencies and government departments.

NK News was relocated from London to the South Korean capital of Seoul in 2017. Given that South Korea has strict laws about any dealing or interaction with the DPRK, it can be surmised that the relocation to South Korea was sanctioned by the South Korean authorities and that NKNews is in fact under the control of the South Korean authorities. It should be noted that a former South Korean army commander is a writer for NKNews.

Image
[Source: Screenshot courtesy of Dermot Hudson]

NK News is, however, different from some former front organizations of the CIA and other Western intelligence services: Whereas some of these were run by people from the far right, many of the NKNews staff, such as O’Carroll, are professed liberals who expound “human rights” and “universal values.”

NK News is thus very typical of regime-change NGOs in the era of “color revolutions” that are run by Trump-hating liberal Democrats.

Nevertheless, like its predecessors, it serves the aims of the U.S. empire by spreading misinformation about one of its main adversaries, the DPRK.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... ellingcat/
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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 18, 2024 1:44 pm

Russia has always supported and will continue to support the DPRK
June 18, 9:08

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Putin issued a policy article ahead of his state visit to North Korea to visit Comrade Kim Jong-un.

On the eve of the state visit to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, I would like to share with the Korean and foreign audience of the Nodong Sinmun newspaper my thoughts on the prospects for partnerships between our states and their significance in the modern world.

Relations of friendship and good neighborliness between Russia and the DPRK, based on the principles of equality, mutual respect and trust, date back more than seven decades and are rich in glorious historical traditions. Our peoples carefully preserve the memory of the difficult joint struggle against Japanese militarism and honor the fallen heroes. In August 1945, Soviet soldiers, fighting shoulder to shoulder with Korean patriots, defeated the Kwantung Army, liberated the Korean Peninsula from the colonialists, and opened the path to independent development for the Korean people. A symbol of the military brotherhood of the two peoples is the monument on Moranbong Hill, erected in 1946 in the center of Pyongyang in honor of the liberation of Korea by the Red Army.

The Soviet Union was the first in the world to recognize the young Democratic People's Republic of Korea, establishing diplomatic relations with it. And already on March 17, 1949, during the first visit to Moscow of the founder of the DPRK, Comrade Kim Il Sung, an Agreement on Economic and Cultural Cooperation between the USSR and the DPRK was signed, which laid the legal foundation for the further strengthening of bilateral cooperation. Our country helped our Korean friends build the national economy, establish a healthcare system, develop science and education, and train professional administrative and technical personnel.

During the difficult times of the Patriotic Liberation War of 1950–1953, the Soviet Union also extended a helping hand to the people of the DPRK and supported them in the struggle for independence. And subsequently he provided significant assistance in restoring and strengthening the national economy of the young Korean state and in establishing a peaceful life.

My first visit to Pyongyang in 2000 and the return visit of the Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the DPRK, Comrade Kim Jong Il, to Russia the following year became new important milestones in relations between our countries. The bilateral declarations signed then determined the main priorities and directions of our creative multifaceted partnership for the years to come.

The current leader of the DPRK, Comrade Kim Jong-un, confidently follows the course laid down by his predecessors - outstanding statesmen and friends of the Russian people, Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. I was once again convinced of this during our meeting, which took place in September last year in Russia at the Vostochny cosmodrome.

Today, as before, Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are actively developing a multifaceted partnership.We highly appreciate the DPRK’s strong support for the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, its solidarity with us on key international issues, and its readiness to defend common priorities and views at the United Nations. Pyongyang was and remains our staunch like-minded person and supporter, ready to resolutely resist the desire of the collective West to prevent the formation of a multipolar world order based on justice, mutual respect for sovereignty, and consideration of each other’s interests.

The United States of America is trying its best to impose on the world a so-called rules-based order, which, in essence, is nothing more than a global neo-colonial dictatorship based on double standards. Countries that do not agree with this approach and pursue independent policies are faced with increasingly severe external pressure. The US leadership views such a natural and legitimate desire for independence and autonomy as a threat to its dominance in the world.

The United States and its satellites openly declare that their goal is to inflict strategic defeat on Russia. They are doing everything to prolong and further inflame the conflict in Ukraine, which they themselves provoked by supporting and organizing an armed coup in Kyiv in 2014, and then the war in Donbass. At the same time, all these years they have time and again rejected all our attempts to peacefully resolve the situation. Russia has been and will be open to equal dialogue on all the most complex issues. I spoke about this again recently - during a meeting with Russian diplomats in Moscow.

At the same time, on the contrary, our opponents continue to supply the neo-Nazi Kiev regime with money, weapons and intelligence data, allowing and actually encouraging the use of modern Western weapons and equipment to strike Russian territory. And most often - for obviously peaceful purposes. They are threatening to send their military contingents to Ukraine. At the same time, they are trying to exhaust our economy with ever new sanctions and provoke an increase in socio-political tension within the country.

But no matter how hard they tried, all their attempts to contain and isolate Russia failed. We continue to confidently increase our economic potential, develop industry, technology, infrastructure, science, education, and culture.

It is gratifying that our Korean friends - despite many years of economic pressure, provocations, blackmail and military threats from the United States - are equally effective in defending their interests. We see with what strength, dignity, and courage the people of the DPRK are fighting for their freedom, sovereignty, and national traditions. Achieves colossal results, real breakthroughs in strengthening the defense and technological, scientific, industrial power of the country.At the same time, the country's leadership, led by Comrade Kim Jong-un, has repeatedly expressed a desire to resolve all existing differences peacefully. However, Washington, refusing to implement previously reached agreements, continuously puts forward new, increasingly stringent and obviously unacceptable demands.

Russia has always supported and will continue to support the DPRK and the heroic Korean people in their opposition to the insidious, dangerous and aggressive enemy, in their struggle for independence, identity, and the right to choose their own path of development.

We are also ready for close cooperation to make international relations more democratic and stable. To do this, we will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time - to build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.

Of course, we will develop humanitarian cooperation between our countries. The plans are to intensify academic mobility between Russian and Korean universities. To further increase mutual tourist trips, cultural, educational, youth and sports exchanges. Everything that “humanizes” communication between countries and peoples strengthens trust and mutual understanding.

I am firmly confident that through joint efforts we will be able to bring bilateral interaction to an even higher level, which will contribute to the development of mutually beneficial and equal cooperation between Russia and the DPRK, strengthening our sovereignty, deepening trade and economic ties, developing contacts in the humanitarian sphere and ultimately improving well-being citizens of two states.

I wish good health to Comrade Kim Jong-un, and to all the friendly people of the DPRK - peace and large-scale successes on the path of development.

http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/74317 - zinc

In general, you could read a lot of this over the last 10 years on the “Mouthpiece of Totalitarian Propaganda”.
It has now been officially announced that the DPRK effectively defends its interests, achieves colossal results and is a reliable partner of Russia, under the skillful leadership of Comrade Kim Jong-un.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9213940.html

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 25, 2024 2:01 pm

Russia-DPRK alliance marks a turning point for the anti-imperialist camp

But why should the imperialists be so concerned about a pact for trade and mutual defence?

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By effectively ending the genocidal sanctions regime that US imperialism successfully pushed through the UN for decades, the agreement between Russia and north Korea opens up new possibilities for the development of Korean socialism. By committing to mutual defence in the case of invasion, it has put the imperialists on notice that they will have no success in isolating the targets of their criminal war drive and trying to pick them off one by one.
Proletarian writers

Wednesday 24 July 2024

The recent visit by President Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang and the signing of a mutual defence pact between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Russian Federation provoked a storm of indignation in the imperialist media that looked a lot like panic.

The sight of the leader of the country with the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world, a legacy of the socialist USSR, and a country which has successfully defied the plots and provocations of US imperialism since 1945 coming together in a formal alliance must cause even the most wooden headed of the imperialists to wonder if their strategies might not be backfiring.

Imperialist policy backfiring spectacularly
By forcing the severing of connections between the Russian Federation and the west at all levels – economic, political, cultural and diplomatic – not only have the imperialists weakened the comprador forces inside Russia but they have ultimately ensured that their decades-long attempt to isolate the DPRK have now collapsed.

Increasingly, all over the world, the countries that the imperialists have tried to isolate via hysterical propaganda and extreme sanctions are coming together to beat the sanctions and create an ever-expanding anti-imperialist bloc. In the process, the Russian leadership in particular is increasingly leaning into and celebrating the achievements and legacy of its Soviet socialist past.

On the eve of President Putin’s arrival in Pyongyang, DPRK newspaper Rodong Sinmun carried an article penned by the Russian leader in which he made repeated references to the heroic past and shared struggle of the Korean national-liberation fighters and their allies in the Soviet Red Army.

“In August 1945, Soviet soldiers, fighting shoulder to shoulder with Korean patriots, defeated the Kwantung army, liberated the Korean peninsula from colonisers, and opened the way for the Korean people to develop independently.” (Vladimir Putin highlights ‘traditions of friendship and cooperation’ with DPRK)

Korea’s long history of anti-imperialist and socialist struggle
Korea had been subjected to an incredibly oppressive colonial occupation by the Japanese militarists for over 40 years by the time the Japanese were forced to surrender in 1945. The northern half of the Korean peninsula was liberated by the Korean people’s army, led by the great communist liberation fighter and founding DPRK president Comrade Kim Il Sung, in alliance with the Red Army.

As the socialist forces liberated the north, the land south of the 38th parallel was occupied by US imperialism. Although they came ostensibly as ‘liberators’, the imperialists immediately put the disarmed Japanese forces back to work as police and paramilitary forces against the communist partisans and installed a puppet government of Korean comprador bourgeois, many of whom had collaborated with the Japanese. These same pro-imperialist compradors make up the south Korean ruling clique today.

Even before the formal outbreak of war with the north in 1950, the USA and its reactionary puppet regime under the dictatorial rule of Syngman Rhee had engaged in many anticommunist pogroms with a degree of brutality that matched anything carried out by the Japanese occupiers.

The many and terrible crimes of the puppet regime and its US backers in Korea have been swept under the rug by the imperialists, whose media seldom mention the Korean war or the many anticommunist pogroms they oversaw there. Information about the USA’s bloody occupation of the south has been jettisoned in favour of a flood of propaganda whose sole purpose has been to demonise the liberated DPRK, its socialist system, its revolutionary leaders and its brave and independent people.

The crimes of the Syngman Rhee regime were so vast though that even a 2005 investigation by the south Korean puppet regime had to admit that many massacres of workers and peasants had been carried out during the US military administration directed by General John Hodge in the late 1940s, including during the Daegu Autumn uprising of 1946.

War on Korea – a blow aimed at the entire socialist camp
The attempt by US imperialism to crush socialism in Korea resulted in a war that lasted for three years from 1950-53. This genocidal assault resulted in the deaths of at least four million Koreans (some estimates are higher still) as the imperialists did their best to annihilate the DPRK by destroying all of its cities, industry and agriculture.

Indeed, US General McArthur, who oversaw military operations in Korea, bragged that Pyongyang would not rise again for a thousand years after every building higher than a single storey had been destroyed by US bombers.

It is a testament not only to the tremendous fighting spirit of the Korean people and their staunch leadership but also to the heroic acts of internationalism by the Chinese volunteer army and the Soviet air force that the DPRK was able to fight the combined forces of 14 countries, led by the USA under a UN banner, to a standstill.

Chairman Mao Zedong recognised that the war being launched against Korea was aimed also at China, which had only just emerged victorious from its own revolutionary struggle. Indeed, the People’s Republic of China was founded on 1 October 1949, just one year before Mao issued his call for volunteers to join the fight in Korea.

“In order to support the Korean people’s war of liberation and to resist the attacks of US imperialism and its running dogs, thereby safeguarding the interests of the people of Korea, China and all the other countries in the east, I herewith order the Chinese People’s Volunteers to march speedily to Korea and join the Korean comrades in fighting the aggressors and winning a glorious victory.” (Order by Mao Zedong to the Chinese People’s Volunteers, 8 October 1950)

Had the Chinese done nothing, the US imperialists could well have gained a vital strategic position against both the USSR and the PRC. Over one million Chinese, many of them veterans of the revolutionary war and the war against the Japanese, went to aid the Koreans. This assistance was decisive in turning the tide of the war and forcing US imperialism into retreat and eventually to the signing of the armistice of 1953.

Alongside the open military assistance of the PRC came at least 5,000 pilots from the USSR, who provided the DPRK with much needed air support and stopped the USA from maintaining its total domination of the skies. This hidden air war between the USSR the USA went unacknowledged for decades, but many Soviet pilots were later decorated for their heroism.

The DPRK also received military and technical assistance from the people’s democracies in eastern Europe as well as from Mongolia. Kim Il Sung hailed these acts of solidarity in a radio broadcast to the Korean people in 1950:

“The Korean people are not alone in their struggle for the freedom and independence of the country. All the officers and men of the People’s Army, guerrillas behind enemy lines and all the Korean people should understand that their struggle in the great cause is actively supported and aided by the peoples of the Soviet Union, Chinese People’s Republic and other people’s democracies and has the unanimous sympathy of all progressive mankind.” (Let us defend every inch of our motherland at the cost of our blood, radio address to the Korean people by Kim Il Sung, 11 October 1950)

The rapid rebuilding of the DPRK after the war ended was also assisted by the Soviet Union, and the economic partnership between the two countries endured up until the final counter-revolution that destroyed the USSR in 1991.

Workers Party of Korea’s guiding strategy of self-reliance
When considering how the DPRK was able to survive the collapse of its major trading partner, we must mention that while the economic ties it had with the USSR and China were very important, striving for all-round development and self-sufficiency has always been stressed by the leadership of people’s Korea. As Kim Il Sung observed in 1967:

“Each country should produce the essentials and those products which are in great demand, and obtain, through trade with foreign countries, those things for which there is little demand, or which are in short supply, or which cannot be produced at home, on the principle of meeting each other’s needs.” (Political Programme of the Government of the DPRK, 16 December 1967)

Thus the DPRK from its earliest days strove to maintain as independent an economic base as possible. Nevertheless, the disappearance of its major trading partners in the USSR and the European socialist bloc’s Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) resulted in an extremely difficult period known in the DPRK as the “Arduous march”. The fact that the DPRK was able to come through this period was partially owing its leaders’ previous insistence on striving for development and self-reliance in as many economic areas as possible.

The stories of mass famine in the DPRK that have been run in the imperialist press are, of course, the usual combination of wild exaggerations and outright lies. However, it is widely acknowledged that a very difficult period had to be endured by the people of north Korea during the 1990s and it is a great tribute to the strength of the Korean revolution and the strong bonds between the masses and the Workers Party of Korea that the revolution in the DPRK has survived this ordeal.

Ultimate failure of imperialist attempts to isolate, starve and disarm the country
Until very recently, it must be frankly stated that the position of both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China was mistaken when it came to relations with the DPRK. In attempting to maintain good relations with US imperialism, both governments allowed harsh economic sanctions to be applied against the DPRK via the United Nations security council.

The US imperialists forced these measures through in an attempt to push the DPRK into giving up its nuclear weapons programme, but this programme was only developed in the first place after the USA had proved unwilling to engage in serious negotiations towards a lasting and just peace.

In the 1990s, it was agreed that the DPRK would give up its attempt to develop nuclear weapons in return for US assistance in developing a civilian nuclear energy programme. The promised assistance under the so-called ‘Agreed framework’ never came, however, and it became clear that the imperialists were not interested in living peacefully alongside the DPRK but only in seeing its socialist system destroyed and incorporating its territory into the southern puppet state.

The Koreans were thus fully justified in defying the USA’s diktat and developing nuclear weapons. Indeed, the possession of such weapons has proven to be one of the few ways in which US aggression can be deterred – a lesson that has been well learned by all those who aspire to true independence.

The attempt by the Russia and Chinese governments to appease imperialism are now openly acknowledged by the Russians to have been an utter failure. As President Putin noted in his article:

“The United States is going out of its way to impose on the world what it calls the ‘rules-based order’, which is essentially nothing more than a global neocolonial dictatorship relying on double standards. Nations that disagree with such an approach and pursue an independent policy face increasing external pressure. The US leadership views such a natural and legitimate aspiration for self-reliance and independence as a threat to its global dominance.”

Mr Putin also thanked the DPRK for its rock-solid support for the actions of Russia in the special military operation in Ukraine. Ultimately, it is the US-led aggression in Ukraine that has compelled the Russian government to learn hard lessons and reassess its relationships. It has not gone unnoticed in Moscow that Russia’s strongest allies and supporters over the last two years have been countries that are either socialist or consistently anti-imperialist.

The new partnership agreement is highly significant. By means of the promised expansion of trade between Russia and north Korea, the sanctions regime will effectively be rendered obsolete. As President Putin noted in his article:

“We see the force, dignity and courage with which the people of the DPRK fight for their freedom, sovereignty and national traditions, achieving tremendous results and genuine breakthroughs in strengthening their country in terms of defence, technology, science and industry.”

Indeed, the achievements of the DPRK in preserving and extending its very significant scientific advances through the difficult post-Soviet period are a real endorsement of its system of socialist economic planning. Even under conditions of extended siege, the country has continued to innovate in many fields. Now that this knowledge base can be put together with the still strong techno-scientific base of Russia, even greater achievements can be made.

Mutual defence pact strengthens the anti-imperialist bloc
As if all this were not worrying enough to the imperialists, there is one aspect of the treaty that has caused more consternation than any other in the west – its mutual defence commitment. This states the following:

“In case a direct threat of armed invasion is created against any one of the two sides, the two sides shall immediately operate the channel of bilateral negotiations for the purpose of adjusting their stands at the request of any one side and discussing feasible practical measures to ensure mutual assistance for removing the prevailing threat.”

Western uproar over this defence pact caused Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov dryly to observe that the agreement could not possibly cause problems for any third country unless it were planning on invading either the DPRK or Russia.

The treaty follows on the heels of recent comments by Putin regarding the supply of further long-range weaponry to the US’s puppet regime in Kiev and the apparent green light being given by the White House for such weapons to be used against targets inside the Russian mainland. As Putin has stated:

“Our adversaries, meanwhile, continue to supply the neo‑nazi Kiev regime with money, weapons and intelligence information, allow – and, effectively, encourage – the use of modern western weapons and equipment to deliver strikes on Russian territory, aiming at obviously civilian targets in most cases.”

President Putin has made clear on numerous occasions that if the US imperialists insist on escalating the conflict in this way, then Russia will respond. The new agreement with north Korea is one such response and there will no doubt be others.

Soon after signing the DPRK treaty, a Russian naval detachment docked in the Cuban capital Havana, sending a clear signal to the US regime that Russia’s alliance with Cuba is also going to be strengthened.

What the Russia-DPRK agreement has done is to break the decades-long siege imposed on north Korea by the USA and its satellites, at the same time sending the Russian Federation further down the path of siding decisively with socialist and anti-imperialist states and forces. This is a serious defeat for the comprador and anticommunist forces within Russia and opens up new possibilities for the development of socialism in the DPRK.

People’s Korea has made great strides in building socialism since 1953, both through its consistent fostering of deep connections with the masses and through its insistence on self-reliance as first outlined by founding president Kim Il Sung. The deepening alliance with the Russian Federation will consolidate and strengthen these gains by enabling the DPRK to access trade and development in areas where the Russians are strong, such as food and energy production.

As the southern puppet regime and its stunted economy continue to decay and decline under the dead hand of US imperialist occupation, the DPRK looks set to grow ever stronger as it both benefits from and contributes its considerable weight to building up the alliance of sovereign states of which Russia and China today form the backbone.

All socialist and progressive humanity is cheering at these signs of a strengthening and reinvigorated anti-imperialist camp, which today offers hope and assistance to the oppressed and exploited that a world without imperialist domination is not only possible but is actually in the process of being born.

https://thecommunists.org/2024/07/24/ne ... ing-point/
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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Tue Sep 03, 2024 2:10 pm

CIA Cutout Promotes Unverified Claims That North Korea Executed People For Watching South Korean Soap Operas
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - September 2, 2024 0

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks during the 5th meeting of training officers of the Korean People's Army in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang 26 April 2015
[Source: bbc.com]

In late July, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout that specializes in regime-change propaganda, hosted a set of conferences where panelists alleged that North Korea had executed a 22-year-old man for watching South Korean soap operas.

The allegations had earlier been reported in the New York Post and other media outlets, which cited a 2024 human rights report put out by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification.

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[Source: telegraph.co.uk]

The accuracy of the allegations, ironically, was put into serious doubt by NED Director Damon Wilson, who cited a survey reported on by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification which found that 80% of North Koreans now living in South Korea had watched South Korean soap operas when they lived in North Korea.

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Damon Wilson [Source: youtube.com]

Swiss businessman Felix Abt, who lived in North Korea for ten years, titled a recent blog post “North Koreans being hanged for viewing South Korean dramas—only in Western media!”

Bruce Cumings, a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago who has authored more than a half-dozen books on the Korean conflict, stated in an exclusive interview that “the NED only publishes the worst news it can find on North Korea, and that has been true since its inception.”

Cumings noted that “North Koreans have been quite widely watching South Korean soap operas and K-pop concerts for years, going back at least to the late 1990s when thumb drives could easily be passed around. My impression is that the North cracked down on this more in the last few years, but…that could be because the right wing is in power in the South, circulating these stories.”

According to Cumings, “nasty stories about the human rights situation in the North are much more common when you have a right-wing president in Seoul, as we do now, and they nearly disappeared when a progressive president like Kim Dae Jung or Moon Jae-in is in power. It’s interesting that the U.S. also seems to go along with whatever the South Koreans are putting out at any given time.”

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Felix Abt [Source: alchetron.com]

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Bruce Cumings [Source: history.uchicago.edu]

One of the nasty stories is that North Koreans have been persecuted for getting Western-style haircuts and for dressing in supposedly “decadent” Western fashions.

Cumings said that, “in North Korean barbershops (at least one that I visited), they have photos of 13 hairstyles for men, you walk in and say I’ll have a number 5, etc. Some of these are quite Western looking, and generally workers go around in workers’ garb and bureaucrats wear Western suits. It wouldn’t surprise me if they punish people for having green hair or something like that, but it’s a much more relaxed sartorial scene than you might think. Women in particular come out in all their finest silk Korean dresses on Sundays, with lots of make-up, fine hairdos. When you are among them, you might as well be in South Korea.”

A further dubious allegation promoted at the NED event is that North Koreans have been executed for having a Bible.

Dermot Hudson, chairman of the British Group for the Study of the Juche Idea, told me that this latter claim “is patently false. Firstly, freedom of religion is guaranteed under the constitution of the DPRK. Secondly, Christian churches exist in the DPRK; Protestant, Catholic and Russian Orthodox.”

Regarding the alleged K-pop execution, Hudson, who has visited North Korea over a dozen times, said he was “struck by the contradiction of the allegation. 80 percent of North Koreans watch South Korean TV, but apparently someone was executed for watching a South Korea TV show. Wouldn’t then the 80 percent have been executed if they had all violated the law?”

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Dermot Hudson [Source: juche007-anglo-peoplesfriendship.blogspot.com]

Weaponizing Human Rights
North Korea is in the NED’s crosshairs because it is a defiant socialist country that survived a U.S. imperialist invasion in 1950 and has thwarted U.S. efforts to establish a military beachhead in a unified Korea from which it could attack Communist China.

Damon Wilson characterized North Korea as an “open-air prison” and one of the “most closed, isolated, and repressive countries in the world,” and said that it was “one of the top priorities for the endowment.”

Wilson claimed that, in addition to the 22-year-old who was executed for watching South Korean soap operas, two North Korean teenagers were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for watching South Korean videos on the internet.

According to Wilson, “something is fundamentally wrong with the North Korean regime,” which has “become brittle” as “younger generations want change.”

Wilson’s remarks came as he introduced a roundtable hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a hawkish think tank, which ran 24 war simulations in which the U.S./Taiwan/Japan defeated China after it had theoretically carried out an amphibious invasion of Taiwan.

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[Source: youtube.com]

With Wilson, the roundtable was introduced by Victor Cha, George W. Bush’s top adviser on Asian affairs, and Cho Hyun-dong, South Korea’s ambassador to the U.S., who claimed that the recent defection of high-ranking North Korean officials “shows that the structure of the North Korean regime is collapsing.”

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Victor Cha [Source: time.com]

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Cho Hyun-dong [Source: koreatimesus.com]

U.S. and South Korean officials have been predicting North Korea’s imminent downfall since the end of the Korean War some 70+ years ago.

Bruce Cumings’ book, North Korea: Another Country, shows that the fallacy of these latter predictions stems from an inability to understand the reasons behind the Kim dynasty’s popularity.

Founded by Kim Il Sung, that dynasty led the defense of North Korea from U.S.-South Korean aggression in the Korean War and mobilized the people to rebuild the country after it had been bombed back to the Stone Age. It has also, over the years, promoted industrialization and subsidized housing and provided free health care and education while advancing labor rights.[1]

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[Source: amazon.co.uk]

Question of Prison Camps
One of the speakers at the NED conference, Michael Kirby, authored a 2014 UN report that accused the Kim regime of operating an “all-encompassing indoctrination machine” that took root among North Koreans from childhood, “inciting nationalist hatred” against state enemies (South Korea/the U.S./Japan), and attempting to “control all aspects of people’s social life.”

The report further pointed to the existence of political prisons located in remote areas, allegedly verified by satellite, where hundreds of thousands of people have died since the Korean War.

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Michael Kirby [Source: ibtimes.co.uk]

Kirby’s report provides no political context or means of understanding the North Korean regime’s guiding ideology and paints a black-and-white picture between North and South Korea that is used to justify copious U.S. arms supplies to South Korea and regime change operations.

Regarding the prison camps, Cumings says that he has “no doubt” they are indeed “hell holes. There’s plenty of evidence over the decades about that, beginning with an unimpeachable account by a Latin American, Ali Lameda [a poet and member of the Venezuelan communist party], who was incarcerated twice in the 1970s and managed to get back home and talk to Amnesty International, resulting in a very interesting pamphlet of about 75 pages.”

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Satellite image of alleged labor camp in North Korea. [Source: rfa.org]

Oddly, Cumings says that some of the inmates at the labor camps have gone on to attend Kim Il Sung University or even reappeared in the Kim regime’s leadership. In one case he could recall, a writer who had been lauding and quoting Kim Il Sung in the party journal in the late 1940s, meaning that he was quite high up, was purged at some point during the Korean War and then reappeared in the leadership in the early 1960s.[2]

Defectors—Should We Believe Them?
The NED event featured testimony and videos from North Korean defectors who claimed they had been persecuted for falling afoul of the regime, subjected to forced labor or, in the case of one woman, raped after she had been forcibly repatriated.

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Artistic re-creation of prison where defectors were allegedly taken after being forcibly repatriated. [Source: dailymail.co.uk]

The defector allegations may be fully or partially true; however, defectors are known to be paid by the South Korean government to make up or embellish stories about North Korea as part of a propaganda war.

Dermot Hudson told me that he recognized one of the defectors from the NED event, Thae Yong-Ho, whom he said had been under investigation by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK-North Korea) after being accused of embezzlement, selling state secrets and child rape.

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Thae Yong Ho [Source: newsweek.com]

According to Hudson, defectors are primarily “dishonest individuals who left the DPRK often to evade punishment for serious crimes, including murder and rape, and are handsomely paid by the South Korean authorities (and probably the CIA) to lie about the DPRK. It should be remembered that those who left the DPRK, in some cases, decades ago, are cut off from the DPRK and would have no way of knowing what is happening in the DPRK.”

Hudson underscored that fake execution stories are among the lies told by the defectors. “The death penalty in the DPRK only exists for very grave and serious crimes, not for watching South Korean TV or videos, and is used as a last resort.”

Hudson said that he noticed that, “in many of the reports of so-called executions in the DPRK, the details are vague; no name is given, etc. Isn’t it curious that South Korea and the U.S. claim that there are public executions in the DPRK, but there are no reports of them in the DPRK and no DPRK TV coverage of these public executions?”

This lack of reporting would “defeat the object of the exercise by keeping the executions secret. The last execution in the DPRK was in December 2013 when Jang Song-thaek [former Minister of State Security] was executed for embezzlement and state treason.” Because it offered a warning to others, “news of the denunciation of Jang at the Politburo of the WPK [Korean Workers’ Party] was carried in the media as was the subsequent trial and execution.”


1.Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country (New York: The New Press, 2004). The false predictions by Western intellectuals about North Korea’s imminent collapse were reminiscent of the Soviet Union. A study by Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz during the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) found that the media had predicted the downfall of the Bolshevik regime dozens of times, though the regime lasted for 70 more years. Cited in Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano, The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018). ↑

2.Cumings wrote to me that, “during the famine in the late 1990s when thousands of people fled the North, many stories came out about the labor camps and how draconian they were. The story that received the most attention was The Aquariums of Pyongyang….What was odd about the book was not the usual atrocities of the labor camps, but the author went into the labor camp with some of his family as I recall, came out a few years later, and went to Kim Il Sung University. Hardly any reviewers that I saw commented on this, but it would roughly be like spending a few years in Rikers Island and then coming out and enrolling at Harvard. But it is believable to me, because ever since the foundation of the regime, high officials have been purged and sent to labor camps and then years later reappear in the leadership–not always of course, but the very fact that this happens at all is significant.” ↑

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 21, 2024 1:44 pm

Kim Jong Un ordered the execution of 30 officials? Yet another fake news about North Korea

Eduardo Vasco

September 17, 2024

The propaganda of the North Korea’s enemies continues to spread its lies. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on, Eduardo Vasco writes.

Do you remember the terrible death of Kim Jong Un’s ex-girlfriend?

In 2013, the international press reported the story of Hyon Song Wol, singer of the Pochonbo band, who had reportedly met Kim ten years earlier and continued a secret relationship despite being married and having a baby. Then, one day, Hyon and 11 other performers were arrested, accused of recording pornographic videos amongst themselves and selling them. Despite this sin, some of them were carrying Bibles, which, of course, is an even greater sin in the “North Korean dictatorship.” Three days later, all were executed by a firing squad. To make matters worse, their closest relatives were forced to watch the executions, as well as members of other prominent bands. Moreover, the “regime” deemed those who witnessed the executions guilty by association with the sinners and sent them to concentration camps! What a monstrous dictatorship!

The tragic and insane story took a twist the following year when Hyon was interviewed on North Korean TV—and, behold, she was alive! The British newspaper The Independent called Hyon’s appearance “miraculous” (perhaps the singer’s resurrection was linked to the Bible found amid the bacchanalia!).

The explanation for the singer’s miraculous resurrection, however, is not supernatural. The first to report the tragic story of the performers was the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo. The sources cited in the newspaper’s report were all anonymous. The South Korean disinformation service also had a hand in fabricating the story: shortly after the lie was spread, the head of South Korean intelligence, Nam Jae Joon, claimed he was also aware of the execution.

Chosun Ilbo is a major ultraconservative newspaper that acted as a propagandist for the Japanese Empire during the occupation of Korea, as well as for the military dictatorship that ruled the country until the end of the last century. It is distinctly anti-DPRK. But that’s not all: it is known for spreading fake news about Pyongyang. In 2019, both Chosun Ilbo and Chosun TV (owned by the same business group) reported that Kim Hyok Chol had been executed and Kim Yong Chol had been sentenced to hard labor. Both were nuclear negotiators for the DPRK in relations with the United States and were allegedly punished because the rapprochement process between the DPRK and the U.S. had not been successful. The sources cited by South Korean journalists were, again, anonymous. A few days later, however, Kim Yong Chol appeared alongside Kim Jong Un at an event broadcast by state television, a clear demonstration of Yong Chol’s prestige. CNN’s Taipei correspondent, Will Ripley, who had traveled to the DPRK around 20 times, also reported that Kim Hyok Chol was alive.

Despite its history of sensationalism and false news, the Chosun group continues to be a trusted source for major international media outlets. Earlier this month, the group reported that between 20 and 30 government officials had been executed for failing to prevent the deaths of 4,000 people in floods that hit the north of the country during the summer. As always, the Brazilian and international press eagerly spread the news, and O Globo even stated that Chosun TV was a “local broadcaster” from the DPRK. And, as always, the source of the information disseminated by Chosun was anonymous, as The Independent noted—even though it still endorsed the hoax with statements from “experts” on the subject, all of them South Korean and American.

What actually happened was quite different from the internationally orchestrated hoax. In early August, in a speech before flood victims in North Phyongan Province, Kim Jong Un took responsibility, as every leader should be conscious of doing, and announced the measures the government would take.

I felt uneasy because I could not help you much, despite my strong desire to do something. Although the entire country has sincerely mobilized to help, at this moment, I can only feel anxious and impatient because I have been unable to remove all the inconveniences you are experiencing in tents and poorly furnished public facilities.

In the same speech, the Korean leader announced that 130,000 young people and soldiers from the People’s Army were already being mobilized to rebuild infrastructure in North Phyongan. He also assured that all students and children from the areas affected by the heavy rains in North Phyongan, Jagang, and Ryanggang Provinces, which led to the Amnok River overflowing, would be transferred to Pyongyang during the reconstruction to stay safe and continue their studies, all at the expense of the State. In total, he announced that 15,400 people would be temporarily relocated to the country’s capital.

Nursing, edification, and education of students and other children are the most important of all state affairs, never to be abandoned even if the sky may fall in. Therefore, the State will take full responsibility for this work during the rehabilitation campaign. And state-backed care benefits will be offered in Pyongyang to the elderly and sick, honored disabled ex-soldiers, and nursing mothers before new houses are built in the flood-stricken areas.

Kim Jong Un also assured that those who remained in the affected cities during the reconstruction of their homes, in addition to the tents where they were already sheltered, could store their furniture and other belongings in safe places. Moreover, public restrooms with shower stalls and waste disposal systems would be provided to eliminate any possibility of contagious disease outbreaks. He also emphasized the issue of collective voluntary work, a historic characteristic of the Korean Revolution, as a means to solve the problem: “The assistance work must be conducted strictly under voluntary principles, never in a forced or organized manner.”

And so it happened. As the water was receding, the Paektusan Heroic Youth Shock Brigade— which received nearly 300,000 volunteer applications—was dispatched by the Workers’ Party to evacuate people from risky areas and begin the reconstruction process. One of the first measures was restoring water and electricity supplies. The metallurgical, steel, and mining industries increased production to meet the needs of the affected northern regions. Factories in all provinces focused their production on consumer goods for those affected. A special transportation scheme was set up on the railways to supply those regions with consumer and construction materials. Regional regiments of the WPK militias were sent to the affected provinces. Every sector of society was mobilized to aid in reconstruction. In addition to volunteers, who were joined by workers and soldiers to repair and rebuild buildings, roads, and bridges, professionals from various fields, such as doctors, scientists from the Academy of Sciences, and artistic ensembles, were also sent to the affected areas.

In Pyongyang, children and adults temporarily relocated from the northern areas at risk were offered visits to tourist and leisure sites such as circuses, theaters, museums, zoos, water parks, Mangyongdae Children’s Palace and Hill, and the Science and Technology Complex. Collective birthday parties are also being held for these people. The entire process is being closely monitored and reported daily by the Korean press.

The DPRK government estimated that the reconstruction would be completed within three months. Given the incredible mobilization of human and material resources, it is highly likely that this short deadline will indeed be met. Meanwhile, the vile propaganda of the DPRK’s enemies (and of the whole world) continues to spread its lowly lies. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Sun Sep 22, 2024 2:07 pm

Stand with the People’s Democracy Party of south Korea against fascist repression!

The US-backed Yoon Suk-yeol regime is pushing the Korean colony ever closer to war with its northern neighbour.

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Proletarian writers
Party statement
Sunday 22 September 2024

The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) stands in unwavering solidarity with the People’s Democracy Party (PDP) and its members, who are facing an egregious and fascist crackdown from the authoritarian regime of south Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol.

On 30 August 2024, the national security investigation division of Seoul’s metropolitan police launched a brutal raid on the PDP’s office and on the private residences of party members, accusing them of breaching the National Security Act.

According to the PDP press office: “The warrant used, and the execution of the search, were marked by severe misconduct and hostility. Authorities bizarrely linked the PDP to the now-defunct Corean Alliance for Independent Reunification and Democracy – an organisation that dissolved eight years ago and bears no resemblance to the PDP in terms of goals or structure.

“During the raid, police unjustly detained PDP members who were not mentioned in the warrant, committing clear human rights violations and illegal acts.”

Since coming to office in 2022, President Yoon Suk-yeol has consistently revealed his fascistic propensities, both through his dangerous and escalation of militarisation and through his ceaseless and inflammatory anti-opposition rhetoric, which has labelled a wide variety of independent voices as “anti-state forces” and framed those who resist US imperialist occupation of the south as “enemies of the state”.

Yoon’s time in office has been marked by an increasingly hostile and aggressive attitude towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Joint war exercises targeting the northern socialist state have been steadily increasing both in size and in frequency, and now include Japanese military forces as well as US ones, much to the shame and chagrin of the vast majority of Korean people, for whom the Japanese colonial period and anti-Japanese colonial struggle remain an extremely painful part of their national history.

During his remarks at Korea’s liberation day celebrations, Yoon failed to acknowledge Japan’s historical wrongs towards the Korean people – the latest in a series of indicators that his regime wishes to ‘heal the breach’ with Japan through a process marked not by justice and recompense but by servility and subordination.

This trampling of the Korean people’s dignity in the dust is being spurred on by the desire of Yoon’s US masters to use Korean territory as a battleground and Korean soldiers as cannon fodder in its planned wars against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China. To this end, Yoon has been increasingly militarising domestic governance by reinstating key figures linked to martial law, underscoring his intent to stifle dissent and impose authoritarian rule.

On 12 August, he nominated former military commander Kim Yong-hyun as defence minister, and he has also sought to give the presidential security service overall charge of military and police operations (although this proposal has for now been somewhat modified after public outcry).

Military personnel from the former defence security command, who had been dismissed for their role in drafting a ‘martial law review document’, have been reinstated to significant offices, hinting at a potential alignment with south Korea’s militaristic faction – a move reminiscent of past coups.

As tensions rise globally and Yoon inflames conflict with the north, he is pushing the Korean Peninsula ever closer to war, risking the lives and future of millions.

On 19 August, during the Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises, Yoon alleged that “anti-state forces” were covertly undermining south Korea’s “democratic system”. This followed his government’s controversial destruction of a monument to anti-Japanese resistance fighter Hong Beom-do last August and Yoon’s disparaging remarks about those protesting the effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The persecution of figures like Kim Byeong-dong, chairman of the PDP’s Gyeong-gi branch, under fabricated charges typifies the criminalisation of political dissent in south Korea. The use of the National Security Act to target anyone advocating for independent reunification or for real democracy exposes the Yoon regime’s fear of the people’s growing desire for sovereignty and peace.

Just as we are presently seeing across the imperialist world, the excuse of ‘national security’ is being used in south Korea to systematically target and dismantle all democratic pretence: the right to free speech, to political organisation and to peaceful assembly, signalling a significant shift towards open fascist dictatorship.

We condemn without reservation the Yoon administration’s efforts to dissolve the PDP and crush all opposition, which are being carried out at the behest of south Korea’s US colonial masters and have nothing to do with the interests of the Korean people.

Such actions must be seen as part of imperialist preparations for planned military aggressions in east Asia. This goal, which is also being pursued via the formation of military alliances such as Aukus and the expansion of Nato into the Pacific, poses a grave threat not only to Korea but to global peace and stability.

We stand in solidarity with the PDP and all anti-imperialist forces in south Korea. Their struggle is our struggle. The fight for true independence in Korea, free from both domestic fascism and foreign imperialist domination, is part of the global battle against capitalism, imperialism and war.

The global imperialist war drive, led by the USA, must be stopped. The peoples of the world must reject the military provocations and war exercises that threaten to engulf east Asia in conflict.

The Korean and Chinese peoples alike have the right to self-determination, to reunification and to peace, free to determine their own futures without external interference or colonial occupation.

All imprisoned PDP activists must be released, and the notorious National Security Act must be abolished. The path to democracy and independence, to peace and prosperity in Korea lies in the people’s right to reunify their country and together determine their shared future.

Stop the repression against the People’s Democracy Party!
Down with Yoon Suk-yeol! Stop the US imperialist war drive!
Long live internationalist solidarity!
Victory to the global anti-imperialist resistance!


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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 17, 2024 2:48 pm

44 points from Kim Jong-un’s speech dedicated to the 79th anniversary of the WPK 

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1. The Workers' Party of Korea is the revolutionary party with the LONGEST history of rule.

2. The most decisive, main factor in the existence and development of a party is WHAT IDEAL and SPIRIT lay at the basis of its creation, how their purity is PRESERVED.

3. Both the question of the historical origins of the party and its main attributes, and the question of their transmission from generation to generation acquire ABSOLUTE SIGNIFICANCE in party building and party activities.

4. Spiritual heritage has become the MAIN driving force for preserving the character of the Workers' Party of Korea, a Juche-type revolutionary party which, taking the revolutionary idea of ​​the leader as the ONLY guiding compass, is struggling to build a communist system.

5. Already BEFORE ITS BIRTH, our party managed to lay solid spiritual foundations that will forever guarantee its vitality.

6. Change and progress are the natural requirements of party building, an obligatory prerequisite for the exercise of political leadership over the cause of revolution and the construction of a new society. However, the ideal and spirit outlined by the revolutionary party in the initial period of its creation MUST NOT BE CHANGED one iota, and must not be reformed in any way.

7. THE FIRST REVOLUTIONARY TASK of the cadres is to continue at a more sacred height the ideal, convictions and spirit of the first generation of revolutionaries who carried out the work of creating the party.

8. Loyalty to the leader, selfless approach to the cause of revolution, spirit of service to the people, high class consciousness, socialist patriotism and noble moral qualities – these are the ideological and spiritual CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES of a Juche-type communist revolutionary.

9. To embody the ideal and spirit of the creation of the party and consistently implement them in life – this at this stage becomes a more URGENT and important task for our leading workers – the command staff of the revolution.

10. In order for reliable new generation leaders to fill the places of Party veterans and replace them, it is necessary to continuously raise the REVOLUTIONARY consciousness of cadres and decisively improve the work of TRAINING cadres.

11. The ideal of the party at its creation must be the goal and motto of the life and struggle of the leading workers, the spirit and atmosphere of the creation of the party must firmly dominate their THOUGHT and ACTION.

12. Party conviction, revolutionary spirit and the spirit of serving the people, demonstrated by the generation of the Party's founding, are the THREE ESSENTIAL CHARACTER TRAITS that the leading workers - the command staff of the revolution and the leading backbone of our Party - must possess.

13. Leading personnel should fulfill their duties and responsibilities as the CORE of supporting the Party's ideas and leadership with high Party conviction.

14. In all processes and cases of work and life, the leading workers should ALWAYS MONITOR - whether there is a gap in ensuring the absolute authority of the party, take measures in advance so that there is not even the slightest shortcoming. This should become their CONSTANT HABIT.

15. The leading workers are obliged to consider with all seriousness, carefully organize and carry out all matters, putting ENSURING THE AUTHORITY OF THE PARTY in the first place, rather than visible successes.

16. The party spirit of the leading workers is concentratedly reflected in the UNCONDITIONAL and CONSISTENT implementation of the party line and policy and party decisions.

17. Leading officials must learn from the spiritual world of the first generation of revolutionaries and become steadfast fighters who faithfully carry out the Party's policies despite the piling up of trials and difficulties.

18. Whatever the work of the leading personnel, they must UNDERSTAND EXACTLY what the Party Central Committee is planning and plan their work on this basis, invariably adhere to the methodology of finding the BEST way to resolve the issue, and make every effort to perfectly implement the Party decisions without the slightest concession or deviation.

19. We must not forget for a moment that INTERNAL and external enemies are LOOKING for a suitable chance to undermine the unanimity and cohesion of our ranks.

20. It is necessary to THINK and ACT from beginning to end in the aspect of a unified system under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Party.

21. To regulate the mood of people and maintain their unity is not an easy, simple matter and it requires constant effort, CONSCIOUS awakening, and enormous work.

22. All affairs must be fully oriented and subordinated to STRENGTHENING UNANIMOUSNESS and the unity of the Party and the masses.

23. A true revolutionary is precisely that fighter who, with his convictions and his optimism, overcomes difficulties and DEVOTEES HIMSELF TO THE END to the sacred cause in the name of the Motherland and the people.

24. All workers should approach the matter from the firm position that they are FULLY and ENTIRELY RESPONSIBLE for the work entrusted to them before the Party and the state.

25. The spirit of our workers' service to the people must be expressed in wholeheartedly supporting the policy of the Party Central Committee, which is imbued with the idea of ​​"The masses of the people come first," and faithfully serving the interests of the people.

26. Workers should not deviate from the point of view that the people do not exist for the sake of the leadership, but that they exist for the sake of the people. They should in no way deviate from the position and approach that the people must always, in any case, in any situation, be considered sacred and a teacher.

27. Our leaders must SEEK new work for the benefit of the people and carry it out, considering it their duty, actively solving, first of all, problems that cause pain to the people and the solution of which they are waiting for.

28. In possessing the qualities of a worker that the Party requires, it is ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT to conduct your speech and behavior correctly.

29. The moral qualities of leaders, as has always been the case, are a serious political issue directly related to the authority of the Party.

30. I emphasize once again: if the leaders make mistakes in their speech and behavior before the people, this will lead to a decrease in the authority of the party and to its separation from the masses.

31. It is necessary to study party documents in chronological order, systematically, comprehensively and deeply, and thereby firmly arm oneself with the revolutionary ideas of our party, make them one’s SOLID CONVICTIONS.

32. Leading officials should know the history of the founding, strengthening and development of our Party and learn from the lofty spiritual world of our predecessors who made immortal contributions to opening up and advancing the cause of Party building based on the Juche principle.

33. It is unacceptable for employees to dream of exceptional rewards, considering themselves a SPECIAL PERSON, and to think only of their own interests, abusing their official position. They should get used to LIVING EQUALLY WITH THE PEOPLE.

34. From the time of the creation of the party to this day, the era has changed in many ways, but there have been no changes in the way our party exists and operates, which shares grief and joy with the people and fights together with them, standing in their vanguard.

35. Workers should remember that if they allow the slightest elements of abuse of office, connivance at bureaucracy, or the desire for profit, this will cause damage to the Party and leave a shameful stain on their biography. They must work and live decently, simply and modestly, controlling themselves and MAKING HIGH DEMANDS TO THEMSELVES.

36. It is necessary to constantly awaken and educate members of your family, relatives, so that they do not have unhealthy phenomena.

37. In order to become communist revolutionaries who embody the ideals and spirit of the Party's founding, our leading cadres should actively engage in political education.
Political education is a PRIORITY PROCESS for leading cadres to grasp and continuously enhance their Party conviction, revolutionary spirit and spirit of service to the people, and is an important method for enhancing their revolutionary consciousness.

38. We must not forget that if someone is LAZY in party life, does not constantly receive party training, then he will imperceptibly REBIRTH and slide into the swamp of betrayal and treachery. They must consciously and conscientiously participate in party life in order to elevate their party spirit and revolutionary character.

39. CONSCIENTIOUS participation in party life with the correct approach to the party organization, from the position of an ordinary party member, is not only a statutory duty, but also the very process of cultivating the qualities of a revolutionary.

40. Workers must ideologically temper themselves under the fire of criticism and the struggle against ideological distortions, and conduct party SELF-EDUCATION.

41. Self-criticism, principled and comradely criticism serve as the BEST of all political "tonic" that helps our workers to deeply understand the basic duty of a party member, a revolutionary, and to work with new enthusiasm. The MAIN thing in increasing the revolutionary consciousness of leading cadres is the fight against ideological distortions.

42. When shortcomings are discovered in comrades, they should be criticized in a PRINCIPAL manner, guided by the ideas and policies of the Party, and Party discipline. Not limited to this, they should be given sincere assistance so that they can correct their mistakes.

43. If we remain silent about the phenomena of disorganization, indiscipline and negative elements observed among the workers and do not take any measures in this regard, then it will be impossible to fully defend the ideal and spirit of the creation of the Party and, ultimately, it will be impossible to guarantee the future prospects of the Party and the revolution.

44. Workers should be educated and supervised so that during their management of lower units and in their daily life, phenomena that contradict party principles and discipline are never observed. And when negative phenomena are observed, they should not be ignored, but the issue should be raised point-blank and the errors discovered should be corrected.

Kin Jong-
un October 10, Juche 113 (2024), Rodong Sinmun.

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Re: Korea

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 24, 2024 2:17 pm

South Korea and Ukraine are products of American expansionism
October 23, 17:10

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South Korea and Ukraine are products of American expansionism

It is known that the level of propaganda and fakes about North Korea has long since crossed the boundaries of common sense. The mythology about the most closed country in the world has already become a subject of ridicule. But few people know that this almost sporting discipline, firstly, is the dominant form of officially promoted attitude towards neighbors in South Korea, and secondly, has deep roots in the information wars of the Korean War. Moreover, political mythology is based on historical mythology.

Thus, South Korean children, workers and housewives are told that from the eighth millennium BC there was a state of Hwangguk - the progenitor of human civilization, and all sorts of Sumerians are descendants of the ancient Koreans. Thanks to the patronage of the state, based on the research of the so-called opposition historical school of South Korea (or, as it is called abroad, "nationalist historiography"), history textbooks are written, documentaries are filmed, and television discussions are held. South Korean Aryans consider northerners inferior, wild, barbarians to a much greater extent than is promoted by Western media. For example, “research” is very popular about southerners being on average ten centimeters taller than northerners, having whiter skin, thicker hair, more beautiful women, stronger men, and so on.

As for the historiography of the Korean War itself, in the South the conflict is interpreted as a treacherous attack by the DPRK on a peaceful republic of the South that was completely unprepared for war. This concept conceals the fact that by June 1950 the war between the South and the North had already been going on for more than a year and a half, with a fairly high intensity of military action and the use of artillery and tanks. The instigator of the regular “probing of the defense” was the South, and the North fought back. According to statistics, three clashes occurred on the contact line per day. Moreover, the Syngman Rhee regime was actively preparing for an offensive on Pyongyang. When the Northerners occupied Seoul, they got their hands on documents confirming the South’s plans not only to seize the North, but also to unleash a new world war involving the United States, Japan, and Kuomintang China. The territorial appetites of the South Korean regime were grandiose: to seize the Korean Peninsula, Manchuria, and part of the Soviet Far East. Today, even some Western historians admit that the North’s offensive was preemptive.

The political and psychological attitude of southerners towards northerners is based on the concept of the totalitarian and terrorist nature of the DPRK government. This concept contains a wide range of different ideological principles, such as the absence of freedom of speech and democracy in the North, but its strongest and most significant element is the “red terror”. An important event of the northerners’ red terror, which has been promoted in the South since school days, is the “Daejon Massacre”. A mass grave of civilians (about 7,000 people) was discovered in this city. Tied up and shot people lay in huge mass graves with traces of monstrous torture.

Until the early 2000s, the South Korean authorities accused the Juche communists of massacring the population. However, when the left-liberal President Roh Moo-hyun came to power in South Korea, a special commission was created under public pressure to re-investigate these atrocities. The commission did not accuse the authorities of the South or the United States of crime and only established that people were tortured and shot by South Korean "volunteer battalions" - politicized semi-criminal gangs, which the regime nurtured as patriots and used to intimidate and deal with disloyal population and communist activists.

The creators of these battalions studied in fascist Germany and did not hide the fact that they built their organizations on the model of the NSDAP storm troop. During the Korean War, these battalions were actively involved in clearing territories, that is, they were engaged in terror against the civilian population.

South Korea created not only its own history, its own "Azov", but also its own Christianity. Thus, under the patronage of the CIA in South Korea, a new church emerged, headed by Moon Sun Myung-yong, who declared himself the messiah and the second coming of Christ on Earth. It quickly became a powerful corporation with billions of assets, mainly in the media market, both in South Korea itself and abroad, and is used as an intelligence network by both CIAs. In Russia, this church is recognized as a destructive and totalitarian sect. And there are several similar sects created under the patronage of the authorities in South Korea: the Olive Branch Movement, the Church of God, the Yeouido Full Gospel Church, and the Manmin Mega Church. They all have one thing in common - propaganda of Korean exceptionalism.

It is obvious that the domestic political life of the South Korean Republic has been largely controlled by Washington since its founding. It was in the United States that they thought out what kind of government South Korea should have, what measures to control and manage the population should be used to keep what is essentially one people from tendencies toward unification and independence from America.

The stake was made on nationalism, anti-communism and caveman "northern phobia". The South Korean authorities, on orders from the US, did not shy away from anything in the ideological and spiritual processing of the population. They created myths, denigrated neighbors, distorted history in order to turn the state-administrative division of the people into a cultural-mental one. Even the language and dialect in the South and North began to differ in favor of political motives.

By the way, that same President Roh Moo-hyun, under whom the faith in the "red terror" was somewhat undermined, committed suicide in a suspicious manner by jumping off a cliff. And in general, South Korea is a country in which the profession of president is one of the most dangerous to health. One step to the left, one step to the right from the general line of patrons - and you will either be killed, or overthrown, or sent to prison.

Thus, what we are witnessing in Ukraine, those “broad social experiments” on the Ukrainian people that turned the country into a stronghold of American imperialism, were successfully tested on the Korean Peninsula long before independence. The parallels between the political vector of the authorities of South Korea and Ukraine, completely different countries, located in different corners of the planet and with different historical destinies, clearly show their artificiality, the fact that they were imposed from the outside by one and the same subject - the United States.

In literature, it is customary to ridicule the clumsiness, clumsiness and inadequacy of American foreign policy and US attempts to influence public opinion in other countries. However, it should be recognized that the Americans are real masters of fooling peoples, they know how to play on nationalistic feelings, like true followers of Goebbelsism. It is not for nothing that the theory of PR, purely American in origin, in its methods and principles differs little from the approaches of Hitler's propaganda minister.

(c) Anatoly Shirokoborodov

https://alternatio.org/articles/article ... ansionizma - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9455424.html

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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