Korea

[blindpig]

Caricature of North Korea in U.S. Media Obscures Kim Regime’s Adaptive Response to Sanctions and Economic Achievements of Country
By Felix Abt - March 30, 2023 0


Friendly gesture: Felix Abt and his wife (sitting on the ground) are spontaneously invited for beer and snacks by North Koreans in a park on a holiday. [Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]

In advance of a webinar hosted by the Canadian chapter of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), which describes itself as a global network of peacemakers, to which I was invited to speak in February 2023, I was asked four important questions. The mainstream media would not ask me such questions. Is there something wrong with my answers or with these media? I share my replies with you and leave you to judge.

1. UPF: How did the ongoing changes with regards to the DPRK’s relationship with the West impact your ability to do business there?

FA: When I settled in North Korea (a.k.a. Democratic People’s Republic or DPRK), there was a spirit of optimism there, even a slight euphoria among some, which could also be felt on the other side of the demilitarized zone, in South Korea. The will to reform was clearly noticeable. Although an interesting experiment had already been taking place in Rason on the Chinese border since the 1990s, modeled on Chinese industrial zones and even allowing South Korean companies to set up factories there, this newly perceived drive was to turn into a nationwide upheaval.


Factories in Rason special economic zone. [Source: ncnk.org]


From left to right: the chairman of the Rason Special Economic Zone as well as Susan Kim, Korean-American scholar who conducted business training courses for North Korean executives in Rason, and Felix Abt [Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]

So the first few years required a lot of persuasion, mutual learning and experimentation with new business approaches. Although difficult, it was ultimately rewarding for my North Korean business stakeholders, such as clients and suppliers, as well as for the authorities, my staff, and myself, as we were able to produce some fruitful outcomes. I’ll give you a couple of examples:

On behalf of European mining equipment producers, I was able to sell equipment to mines that enhanced productivity while improving worker safety and significantly reducing the likelihood of accidents. Or in a drug factory I oversaw, my staff and I became the first pharmaceutical company in North Korea to achieve the WHO-certified international standard of “Good Manufacturing Practice,” which also allowed us to take part in international tenders and outbid foreign rivals for contracts. Producing a wide range of quality medicines at affordable prices made us all happy, as the lives of many patients could be saved.

2. UPF: How do the existing sanctions impact business activity in DPRK?

FA: To demonstrate the effect, allow me to go on with the previous example: The pharmaceutical company occasionally requires replacement parts and even new equipment, both of which can only be purchased abroad with hard currency, which the nation must earn through the export of goods like clothing, fish, coal, metals and minerals. However, since sanctions [by Washington] have made it illegal to export these goods, earning hard currency is no longer possible, at least not legally. In addition, the factory requires a functioning microbiology lab to identify contamination in raw materials and finished goods, just like all pharmaceutical and food processing facilities in North Korea. Sanctions also prohibit the use of such apparatus and consumables, such as reagents. As a result, North Korea is the only country in the world where drug and food manufacturers are unable to guarantee the safety of their products for consumers.

3. UPF: How does the current situation impact personal safety?

FA: When I lived there and later when I visited the country, I always felt safe. Of course, anyone who goes there trying to play James Bond and attempting to recruit spies, or obtain a political trophy by removing a government poster from a hotel floor that is off-limits to the public, insult politicians, or attempt to “liberate” North Koreans will run afoul of the law. However, not many people are foolish enough to do this, and when they are, they are typically sent on the following flight out of the country.

4. UPF: If you had to advise Western political leadership on how to relate to DPRK, what do you consider the most important point to explain to them?

FA: I would strive to convince them that increasing pressure will not make the nation give up its nuclear missiles; on the contrary, it considers them essential for survival. Moreover, the country has achieved remarkable self-sufficiency, so the pressure is pointless. Imagine that my home country, Switzerland, is as mountainous as North Korea and has as little arable land, 17%, as North Korea, but must import most of its food. North Korea had already started a massive land reclamation campaign in the 1990s to increase its agricultural production. In Asia, where rice is the staple food, it is also the only country that has carried out an incredible “potato revolution” and now produces huge quantities of potatoes, which, unlike rice, thrive in mountainous areas, and has bred millions of goats, which, unlike cows, can live in mountainous regions that are difficult to access. These goats now produce a lot of meat, milk, yogurt and cheese.


North Korean goat farmers in the mountainous countryside making goat milk yogurt in the early 2000s. [Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]


North Korean farmers harvesting potatoes in Yanggang Province. [Source: Photo courtesy of Rodong Sinmun]


Within just ten years of the start of the cultivation campaign, the area under cultivation grew to 200,000 hectares, and potato consumption rose to 60 kg per capita. Improved quality of potato seed and seed production, as well as cultivation methods such as pest control and appropriate use of fertilizers, and new storage methods contributed to this success. Even the noodles in North Korea’s famous cold noodle soup are made from domestic potato starch. And North Korean restaurants have added several new potato dishes to their menus, as this poster from a restaurant in Pyongyang shows. [Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]

Finally, as we have already seen, engagement is effective, and I would also urge the politicians to reach a compromise that takes into account North Korea’s security needs. I am confident that this would result in a reduction in tension, a peace agreement and the normalization of relations between the conflicting parties. Additionally, it is a necessary condition for the unification of the two Koreas.

A few impressions


[Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]


[Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]
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At a company outing with North Korean employees. [Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]


[Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]


Together with North Korean executives of the company headed by Felix Abt during a business visit to Shanghai. [Source: Photo courtesy of Felix Abt]

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... f-country/

**********

Songun politics in North Korea
March 30, 5:45 p.m



Songun politics in North Korea

In the spiritual life of mankind there is only one sphere of knowledge, which has never been subjected to persecution, oblivion, misrepresentation, all the rulers have always diligently treated it. This sphere remains free from national, racial, religious prejudices in the sense that scientific conclusions and useful observations in it instantly become desirable for representatives of all states and nations. In many ways, this field of knowledge pushed scientific and technological progress forward, forcing all private and engineering sciences to work in an extremely applied mode, and often in a short time.

This is the sphere of military science, the theory of the most effective use of organized and maximally technological violence. For many thousands of years the art of war has been the most important of the arts. War is one of the most ancient forms of labor.

The fact is that military science is a theoretical reflection of military practice, generalizing positive and negative results with the sole purpose of finding an answer to the question of how to win in general and how to win in given specific conditions. Since, firstly, those interested in finding an answer to this question were not concerned with spiritualization or deceit, but with honest, conscientious research, and secondly, lies and mistakes in matters of strategy led to sad consequences, including for the strategists themselves, insofar as in the military science has always had less speculation, fog, empty speculation than in any other theory. In general, it so happened that in the intellectual, theoretical sphere of society, the subjects of this activity, as a rule, have a lack of responsibility. Theologian, philosopher, physicist, chemist, biologist, an astronomer, political scientist, economist, teacher can carry any nonsense without fear that society can hold them accountable for lies, falsifications and mistakes, and without fear that the fruits of their unscrupulous work will come back to haunt them. Military theorists pay for their mistakes with bitter defeats of their states. They can be compared, perhaps, only with the theorists of medicine, who, however, compensate for their high responsibility with increased caution.

In short, military thought remains one of the most conscientious disciplines, avoiding at least self-deception.

The army plays a key role in the state system and therefore occupies a special place in society. It is easy to see that the form of social relations in the army always strives to be as efficient as possible in terms of the tasks being performed. If we imagine that the army is a process of producing military potential and military action, then it is always ultimately aimed at the result. Unlike agriculture, industry, education, culture, and even medicine, there is no place in the army for far-fetched values, feelings, emotions, fashion, frivolity, and a lot of marriage. At least after the army entered the period of hostilities.

War is a kind of politics that seeks to absorb the entire political life of society, because it is the extreme, violent, ultimate manifestation of struggle. And politics is nothing but a struggle. If mankind were homogeneous, were in the same geographical and socio-cultural conditions, there would be no prerequisites for struggle, then there would be no politics, no state and no wars. War is actually a measure of the potentials of competing states.

Liberals like to compare countries by GDP and other economic indicators, they like to measure them by comfort and standard of living, thus assuming their value and potential. In harsh reality, the potential of states is the estimated ability of them to conduct a full-scale war for survival. Therefore, for example, the potential of miniature Cuba, North Korea and Belarus is relatively high, their voice in world politics is more significant than, for example, wealthy Denmark or Norway. In order to capture and subjugate the former, it will be necessary to mobilize significant forces, despite the small size of these countries, while the latter are themselves happy to submit to a strong, large state.

Any war from a social point of view consists of two components - a civilian "rear" and an army. The rear provides the potential of the army, and the army realizes it in battles. That is why the army as a social entity, as a special and isolated part of society, often becomes, firstly, a significant domestic political factor (this historically applies to Russia to a lesser extent, our officers and soldiers were not able to realize their avant-garde role in domestic politics: you can recall 1612, Arakcheevshchina, 1825, the Kornilov rebellion and the “white movement” in general), and secondly, the arena for the formation and implementation of various innovations, including social ones. For example, Suvorov's theory of the national army in his military doctrine is the forerunner of what is now called civil society. In general, Suvorov was an amazingly progressive person in his views on society for his era, because all his thoughts were about one thing: how to organize a team of people in such a way that it works as a single, harmonious organism. The Soviet military doctrine, developed by Frunze and considered a breakthrough for its time, inherited the main developments of Suvorov.

It is also easy to see that military-led schools and universities produce much less pedagogical marriage than civilian ones. And you can also remember how many outstanding and great scientists, writers, poets, politicians were somehow connected with the army.

In short, the army as a form of collective and military service as a form of social relations are distinguished by increased efficiency and more rational content. This is due primarily to the factors of discipline, unity of command and the minimal role of commodity-money relations. Where the market dominates, competition, private interests, elements and individualism prevail, which hinders the formation of a capable team and partnership. In the army, on the contrary, we need collectivism and ideology, patriotism. The soldier and officer are connected with the Motherland and the people not by contract, as with a hired worker, but by public duty and oath.

Many people who have experienced military life will say that the impression of any army in the world is just the opposite. Nowhere is there such stupidity, impenetrable denseness and bureaucratic idiocy as in the army. What kind of rationality can we talk about in this case? On the one hand, due to the specific position of the army in society, all its shortcomings really always look deliberate. On the other hand, the particular and the general should not be confused. There may be a lot of shortcomings in the private, but the essence of the army lies in the role and mission that it plays at the sharp turns of history. No perfectly well-functioning, beautiful bureaucratic structure that provides excellent services can give rise to such phenomena as military fraternity, mass feat and self-sacrifice.

If we look at the military history of mankind in recent centuries, we will see that the army is the stronger, the more firmly it is connected with the people and the better they understand the tasks it performs. Some countries, including the DPRK, which will be discussed below, called their armies "people's". The term "people's army" usually implies, firstly, an army born in a civil, liberation or revolutionary war, and secondly, formed by a general conscription. The United States and Europe in the 20th century actively imposed on the world their doctrine of a contract army, a professional, compact, high-tech, de-ideologized army. The physiognomy of such an army was wonderfully portrayed by the American journalist Wright in the book “Generation of Killers”, which was filmed by HBO. This is a new reading of the feudal-European practice of military mercenarism.

In general, observation of Western armies shows that in the psychology of a professional military in the United States, Britain, France, etc. it is not conviction or patriotism that dominates, but sports passion. The Ministry of Defense of France on its propaganda posters places the following slogan under the figure of a brave warrior: “I crave adventure. For those who yearn for freedom. Like, stop wiping your pants in offices and complaining about a mortgage, aid, safari about blacks.

A peculiar theory of the army and the militarization of society was implemented in the DPRK. The conditions for the existence of this country have always been quite harsh, but after the collapse of the USSR and the socialist camp, the Jucheists rethought the principles of the country's defense capability, raising the importance of the army in the life of society to an unprecedented, Spartan level. Songun is the policy of the DPRK, which proclaims the priority of the army, so this word is translated.

According to Western sources, after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in order to stay in power, turned the whole country into a military camp and threatens the free world and good southerners. Songun is the most rabid ultra-militarism. Approximately the same thing is written in our academic environment, only without exaggeration.

If you read North Korean literature itself, you can find out the following. First, songun is not some kind of philosophy or a separate line of thought, but a politics determined by external circumstances, or, as the Koreans themselves say, a political art. However, Songun did bring some changes to the theory of society. Secondly, Songun politics covers not so much the problems of the army as the structure and nature of the state as a whole and the specifics of its impact on society. It can be said that Songun is something like the militarization of the state and society, but not in conditions of war, but in conditions of its direct danger.

To speculate that Kim Jong Il retained or consolidated power after his father's death through the advancement of the Songun doctrine would be speculation. We do not know anything about any opposition within the DPRK, about any struggle within the WPK, etc. At least the Juche sources themselves say that in 1994, when the Songun doctrine was put forward, the country was in a very difficult conditions, and from the new leader in the person of Kim Jong Il, everyone was waiting for the manifestation of "the extraordinary power of political art." Songun became something of a symbol of the succession of chiefs, as the rationale behind the policy—the force of arms decides—was actively promoted and implemented by Kim Il Sung.

The main reason for the advancement of Songun ideas was ... the collapse of the USSR and the socialist camp. In the North of Korea, this was perceived as the deepest political crisis, the essence of which is that now they are virtually alone against US imperialism.

Not without a grain of truth, the North Koreans believe that the entire political history of the United States is deeply imbued with imperialism. The Americans, after defeating the enemy, establish control over countries and regions as a metropolis. The first American empire was formed after the victory over Spain at the end of the 19th century, which resulted in the transformation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines into the backyard of the United States. The second American empire was formed after the Second World War, when the NATO bloc was created, and Europe became dependent on the United States. This was the period of the Cold War, when the American empire was opposed by the "camp of socialism" led by the USSR. After the collapse of the USSR and the socialist countries in Eastern Europe, a third American empire was formed, which expanded its sphere of influence not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East. In 1996, the New York Times shamelessly wrote,

The Korean Peninsula has been of interest to the United States since the beginning of the Cold War. In the global strategy, it has the significance of a stronghold that opens the door to the land borders of Russia and China and, in general, to the mainland. South Korea, created and existing thanks to American support and weapons, is not capable of fulfilling the role of such a stronghold purely geographically and in this respect differs little from the Japanese islands. The Australia-Japan-South Korea "Axis" is for the US a stronghold of influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

After the collapse of the USSR, the liquidation of the police department, and later the death of Kim Il Sung, hopes arose in the United States that the new leader would either not stay in power or be forced to change course to a more loyal one. In the early to mid-1990s, the United States increased pressure on the DPRK in this regard. The answer to the complexity of the new situation was the proclamation of Songun. Songun became an alternative to the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cuban ways to overcome the crisis of the collapse of the USSR. Instead of Chinese cunning, Vietnamese compliance and Cuban patience - Korean obstinacy.

The starting point of the Songun doctrine is that the fate of the country and the nation depends on military affairs. This is entirely a conclusion from the current situation and the threat from the United States. “The line of the Songun revolution, Songun politics,” wrote Kim Jong Il, “is a scientifically based revolutionary line and way of doing politics, since it most accurately reflects the dictates of the times and the revolution. Our Party has developed the policy of Songun based on the scientific analysis of the international situation around our revolution and the trend of the rapidly changing situation."

The scientific development was that the only way to prevent an attack by the United States was the military mobilization of society. But something else is interesting here - that songun became the policy of the state in all areas and was declared a means of social construction in general. Moreover, the Songun doctrine mediates the entire political theory in this sense.

Kim Jong Il writes that the army must become a new social entity, the core force of the masses, because ... the working class is no longer the same. This means that the workers, due to the intellectualization of labor, have become almost intellectuals, there is no former discipline, intuition and class training. But at the same time, external hostile forces increase pressure, which automatically increases the importance of the armed forces. From this it was concluded that the army should be made "the main driving force of the revolution", and it would act in the "spirit of the traditions of the working class."

“Now we say: a gun over a hammer and a sickle,” Kim Jong Il.

In practical terms, songun means three things.

Firstly, that in any issue of national importance, priority is given to military affairs, this issue itself is considered from the point of view of the country's defense capability. Whether it's education, medicine, or the centralized selection of songs in kindergarten.

Secondly, the entire society and the apparatus of the state should be guided by the spirit of the Songun, that is, show army discipline, training, unity of command, selflessness, devotion to the party and leader in work and life.

Thirdly, that the army is widely involved in solving civilian, peaceful tasks, and the country, in turn, is turning into a rear for the army. All this together guarantees the sovereignty and development of the country.

Speaking directly about the army, from the Songun point of view, a soldier and officer turns into a revolutionary, not only a defender of the Fatherland, but also a builder of a new society. All the best goes to the military, everything is for the army, because the army solves all the main tasks of the state.

If you rely solely on facts, then the “Songun era” looks good. North Korea has not yet been bombed, like Iraq and Libya, it has become a space and nuclear power, survived the pandemic, etc.

Songun became a new state-legal system. The State Defense Committee (GKO) in terms of legal status, composition, duties and powers has become higher than the Government, the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, local authorities, police and prosecutors. The State Defense Committee became the main body of power in the country on a par with the VNS. The chairman of the GKO is the highest position in the state: he leads all spheres of politics, military affairs and the economy of the country.

But at the same time, the militarization of the state apparatus in Songun is denied, that is, the civil authorities continue to work in the same composition and with the same order of recruitment, only giving priority to military affairs and working "in the spirit of Songun."

Thus, it seems that the Jucheists are trying all the best that military collectivism and unity of command presupposes to apply in the civilian sphere and to society as a whole.

As for defense capability, it should be noted that the North Korean principle of ensuring it is that aggressor empires unleash wars at a time when tensions are on the wane, so the armed forces must be strengthened even at moments of seemingly mitigating the situation.

In general, a brief introduction to Songun gives food for thought. Some of the provisions of Songun seem to be quite relevant in modern times.

By the way, we can recall the successful experience of the economic construction of the Russian army. Who rescued the Motherland at a difficult moment of the pandemic by building 16 first-class medical centers? Gazprom? Rosneft? Sberbank? Unions? People on the Forbes list? Stars, bloggers or patrons? No, the army did it. The army of the Russian Federation turned out to be more effective than all state-owned companies, effective managers and socially responsible entrepreneurs, because it is much less permeated with commercial relations. Back in 2009, V. Putin withdrew military construction from the commercial sector, which helped at a difficult moment not to confuse the needs of society and the state with profit.

Now, in the course of the NMD, the army is transforming, learning, gaining experience, acquiring a higher significance in society and a new historical image. The international situation is escalating, and the role of the country's defense capability will inevitably grow, so it will not be superfluous to rethink the place of the armed forces in the structure of society.

(c) Anatoly Shirokoborodov

https://alternatio.org/articles/article ... gun-v-kndr - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8262934.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

The hostile insides of the USA and their puppets have been confirmed
colonelcassad
April 30, 14:16



The hostile insides of the USA and their puppets have been confirmed

"... As shown by the most hostile rhetorical expressions and overt actions, the US and its puppets will continue to persistently cling to intrigues to start a nuclear war against the Republic under the guise of "providing extended deterrence forces" and "strengthening the alliance." In such a situation, our state must naturally build up a military deterrence force appropriate to the current and future alarming security situation....

The traitor Yoon Seok Yeol's visit to the US, allowing us to reaffirm the reckless hostile nature of the US and the puppets, which will never change, shows that we should not and do not hesitate for a moment and stop for further strengthening and consistent preparation.



... The dangerous intrigues for inciting a nuclear war by the United States and the puppet pack, which go berserk in strangling the Republic, denying the very existence of our state, are by no means unforgivable, for which they will certainly pay dearly

. * *

"We once again became convinced of the need to strengthen the nuclear war deterrence forces, in particular, to fully prepare for the second task of the deterrence forces.

We clearly understand what we need to do.

The more madly enemies cling to nuclear military exercises and transfer more strategic nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, the more our Republic's enjoyment of the right to self-defense will increase in direct proportion.

(c) Deputy Head of the Department of the WPK Central Committee Kim Yo Chen

Full text: http://kcna.kp/ru/article/q/22038cc8d95 ... 0665.kcmsf
https://t.me/nucdprk/2615 - zinc

1. Of course, in the current realities, the DPRK will not agree to any disarmament, let alone denuclearization.
2. On the contrary, the DPRK will intensively build up its capabilities and actively develop its nuclear missile program.
3. The main task of Kim Jong-un is to ensure the possibility of causing unacceptable damage to South Korea, Japan and the United States in the region so that the costs of attacking the DPRK outweigh the benefits.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8325185.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Just said Haha and ran to North Korea
July 19, 10:50



A US Army soldier escaped from South Korea to North Korea. Made the right choice.

A US soldier ended up in North Korea during a trip to the demilitarized zone. He was the first American detained in North Korea in five years. On Wednesday, July 19, reports The Guardian.
Prior to crossing the border, Private Travis King spent several months in a South Korean prison for assault. On Monday, he was released and sent to Texas, where the military faced additional disciplinary action and dismissal from service.
The American was escorted to an airport in South Korea but left the building and joined a joint security zone tour in the Korean border village of Phanmunjom. Here he crossed the border of North Korea.
An eyewitness, who was part of the same tour group as King, said they had just visited the building and then "this person was yelling 'Ha ha ha' loudly and just ran between the buildings," the post reads. editions.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed that a US service member is in North Korean custody. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the US is working to "resolve this incident" with North Korea.

Now he will be able to actively study the works of the classics on the ideology of Juche Songun.
What Biden has brought the United States to, even if the soldiers are already fleeing to North Korea.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8502668.html

Google Translator

Eh, these Russians give too much 'credit' to Biden, were that the case we'd have a much easier time dealing with this 'scab of a nation driven insane'.

[blindpig]

JULY 28, 2023 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Russia, China have a shared vision for North Korea


North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (R) and Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu at a pavilion displaying North Korea’s newest 3-stage solid-fuelled ICBM Hwasong-18, Pyongyang, July 26, 2023

The three-day state visit on July 25-27 by Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu, accompanied by a military delegation, to Pyongyang is the first-ever such high-level visit from Moscow in the post-Soviet era. Shoigu’s meeting with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday altogether elevates what would have passed as a friendly gesture by the Kremlin on the 70th anniversary of the armistice that led to a cessation of Korean War hostilities to an altogether different universe.

At the most obvious level, it punctures a hole into the iron curtain of sanctions that the US built around North Korea. But Shoigu’s visit, coinciding with the Africa Summit in St. Petersburg chaired by President Vladimir Putin, needs to be seen as part of Russia’s message that it has returned with a bang on the centre stage of world politics.

The icing on the cake was a conducted tour of North Korea’s arsenal of missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, including its newest ballistic missile achievement Hwasong-18, which Kim personally undertook for the Russian military delegation.

The North Korean News Agency [NKNA] reported that Shoigu handed over a hand-written letter from Putin to Kim. It commented that “Recollecting with deep emotion the history of deep-rooted DPRK-Russia friendship, they at the talk exchanged the appraisal and opinions on the matters of mutual concern in the field of national defence and security and on the regional and international security environment and reached a consensus of view on them… [Emphasis added]

“The meeting between Kim Jong Un and Sergei Shoigu at an important time serves as an important occasion in further developing the strategic and traditional DPRK-Russia relations as required by the new century and further boosting in depth the strategic and tactical collaboration and cooperation between the two countries in the field of national defence and security to cope with the ever-changing regional and international security environment.” [Emphasis added.]

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Shoigu’s visit “would contribute to strengthening bilateral military ties and mark an important stage in the development of cooperation between the two countries.”

The accent in the North Korean readout is unmistakably on defence and security concerns, calling attention to the volatile environment in the Far East, and specifically on “strategic and tactical collaboration and cooperation.” Moscow refuted western reports about military cooperation with North Korea. A new page is possibly opening.

Shoigu’s visit took place alongside the visit by Li Hongzhong, vice chairman of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, signalling Russia and China “stand close” to North Korea — to borrow from a Global Times commentary — in response to the Biden Administration accelerating the deepening of a trilateral alliance between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.

Washington is taking advantage of the political transition in South Korea with the election of the pro-western South Korean president Yoon Suk-Yeol last year in May who reversed his predecessor Moon Jae-In’s independent foreign policy trajectory toward Moscow and Beijing and altogether gave up the efforts to work out a detente with Pyongyang.

The US approach to the Far East draws comparison with its strategy in the Middle East where also it used to whip up Iranophobia and block any regional security process from crystallising, which helped boost its military presence in the region and promoted massive scale of arms exports. The main difference lies in the thrust of Washington’s Far East strategy that lies in containing China and Russia.

There is no question that the US is aggravating the situation in Asia by provoking Pyongyang and undermining the situation on the Korean Peninsula to keep it in a state of suspended animation that can be revisited anytime. The recent successive visits in July by two US nuclear submarines to the South Korean naval bases is a case in point.

In the recent period, the frozen confrontation between the two Koreas is constantly approaching escalation due to the deepening military cooperation between Washington and Seoul. A defining moment came in April when Biden and Yoon signed the Washington Declaration on deterring North Korea, which involves the creation of an advisory group on issues in the nuclear sphere and greater frequency of the appearance of American strategic weapons, as well as the visits of nuclear submarines to South Korea.

To be sure, the doubling down by Washington provoked a sharp reaction from Pyongyang and a vicious circle is forming in the absence of any interest on the American side to re-engage with Pyongyang. In effect, therefore, Americans are escalating the situation under the pretext of supporting South Korea.

Plainly put, this creates synergy for the US’ capacity to counter the Sino-Russian axis in the Asia-Pacific region. Izvestia newspaper reported last week quoting defence ministry sources in Moscow that a strengthening of Far East deployment is under consideration and that may include the basing of strategic missile carriers Tu-160 “White Swan” in the Amur region — a multi-mode supersonic strategic bomber with variable wing geometry, designed to hit in the deep rear at speed up to 2000 km/h.

The military expert Yuri Lyamin told Izvestia, “Special attention should be paid to Japan, with which we [Russia] still have territorial disputes over the Southern Kuril. Recently, this country [Japan] has been increasing its military spending, and also plans to develop shock weapons systems. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen our deterrence forces in order to neutralise the threat from this direction.”

However, the geopolitics of the Far East has other dimensions too. The commercial value of the Arctic shipping route is in the spotlight, “which is an important area where China and Russia have potential and should strengthen collaboration,” Global Times wrote this week.

Russia is currently testing the Arctic shipping route with a cargo of crude oil for China, which is expected to arrive on August 12 at Rizhao in East China’s Shandong Province. This route could reduce the maritime distance between Europe and Northeast Asia by almost one-third, compared with the Suez route, which is currently used for most of the Russian oil exports to China and India.

No doubt, climate change fuels interest in Arctic shipping. But this is also setting a new stage of global power competition, involving both political and economic interests for trade between Asia and Europe. The strategic significance is profound, since the Northern Route is not under American control, unlike Malacca Straits.

The Global Times wrote: “From the perspective of geopolitics, early planning and precaution in terms of the diversification of shipping routes is paramount to China’s economic and trade security. Therefore, China needs to team up with Russia on the development of new shipping routes in the Arctic for their long-term strategic interests.”

Suffice to say, the deepening cooperation between the Chinese and Russian navvies, especially joint patrol, etc. — is a game changer in the geopolitics of the Far East and Western Pacific.

Where does North Korea come in? Simply put, Rajin Port, located on North Korea’s northeast coast, happens to be the most northerly ice-free port in Asia.



Rajin could become a “logistics hub” if it is linked into the Trans-Siberian Railway. Already, there is a railway connecting Russia and North Korea via the crossing at the Tumen River to reach the port at Rajin (as per a 2008 agreement signed between the railways of the two countries.



A Special Economic Zone in Ranjin dovetails on the one hand into the the Arctic shipping network while on the other hand, falls squarely within the group of ports in Northeast Asia at which ships transiting the Norther Sea Route could arrive at or depart, three of whom — Busan, Qingdao, and Tianjin — also being the world’s top 10 busiest container ports.

Indeed, the US plot to keep tensions high in the situation surrounding North Korea is self-evident. To really turn Rajin into a logistics hub would likely require massive changes to the political situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Shoigu’s pathbreaking visit to Pyongyang has a much bigger agenda to integrate North Korea into the geoeconomics of Eurasia. To view it in zero-sum terms will not do justice to Russia’s intellectual resources to plan for the future with a far-sighted vision. Don’t be surprised if Shoigu’s talks in Pyongyang will figure in Putin’s forthcoming visit to China in October with focus on the Belt and Road Initiative.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/russia- ... rth-korea/

[blindpig]

JULY 30, 2023 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Lessons from the Korean War


The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Springfield in Busan for a port visit, South Korea, July 22, 2023

The psychology of forgetting and why memory fails is a tantalising topic in the life of individuals or nations. Cognitive psychology spawned many theories about it. The main theory, the motivated forgetting theory, is the most charming as it is easy to relate to it: people forget things in the pitiless flow of life because they either do not want to remember, and painful and disturbing memories are, thus, made unconscious and very difficult to retrieve, albeit they still remain in storage in the attic of the mind.

The United States and the Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) is a case in point. Succinctly put, the war ended at a juncture when a “stalemate” prevailed, which in reality meant that defeat was staring at the face of the UN forces — as happened in Afghanistan. In the chronicle of America’s wars, the Korean War, therefore, became the “forgotten war,” subject to forgetfulness and put away in the attic of collective consciousness.

However, torchlights are being held at the attic, as the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement stealthily approached last Thursday. One principal reason for the curiosity must be the contemporary relevance of the Korean War, which was also a proxy war for the Cold War, like the US’ ongoing war in Ukraine against Russia, which is also in a stalemate insofar as the NATO failed to win the war, and another humiliating defeat, but much worse than in Afghanistan, is probably in store.

It is China which has the greatest stakes in resurrecting the true lessons of the Korean War. What perturbs Beijing is not only that the Washington elite have not only drawn some wrong lessons, but they are also “all targeted at China, specifically referring to the Taiwan question.”

The most notable revisionist theory has been advanced by none other than Mike Gallagher, the 40-year old former US Marine Intelligence Officer who is currently the Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and is a trenchant critic of China’s policies on the Hill, and also an ambitious politician who is already a leading voice of the Republican right across the board — who once sought legislation to ban federal agencies, such as the departments of the Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defence from purchasing drugs manufactured in China; and, currently advocates for President Biden to give F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

Hard truth about nuclear wars

What surprised China, perhaps, was that last Wednesday, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Korean Armistice, Foreign Affairs magazine featured an article by Gallagher, which postulated three “lessons” that the Korean War taught the US — first, “Washington must not neglect deterrence and readiness,” and should always be prepared to fight and enhance military capabilities; second, “politics and combat are deeply intertwined”; and, third, once fighting breaks out anywhere with US involvement, “excessive self-restraint can invite further aggression.”

No doubt, these “lessons” drawn in the Beltway are manifestly targeted at China, and the timing of Gallagher’s essay in a leading public diplomacy organ of the US foreign policy establishment is not coincidental.

Indeed, China is today far more capable of inflicting pain and damage to adversaries trampling upon its security interests and national sovereignty. The fact of the matter is that the US paid a heavy price by its intervention in a proxy war in the Korean Peninsula, predicated on flawed premises — to begin with, misperceiving the conflict as the first step in a Soviet plan under Stalin to use military means to achieve global dominance. (Around 36000 US military personnel were killed in Korea, out of a total of around 40,000 deaths for the UN forces combined.)

Equally, the US made the catastrophic overreach to ignore Peking’s warnings as bluffing and blithely estimated that China wouldn’t intervene if the US forces crossed the 38th parallel. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the US commander, assured President Harry Truman that China would not enter the war. (But Mao already had decided to intervene after concluding that Beijing could not tolerate US challenges to its regional credibility!)

Similarly, invading North Korea was an incredible blunder that transformed a three-month war into one lasting three years.

However, a historically contentious detail still remains without definitive conclusion — that the US had toyed with the idea of using atomic weapons against North Korea (and possibly China as well) with a view to shift the overall military balance in its favour and force them to the negotiating table. Indeed, both President Truman and his successor Dwight Eisenhower continued to posit that such an option was on the table, as it emerged by the end of the summer of 1950 already that the good guys would lose the war.

Of course, in the event, an atomic attack by the US never materialised despite the fact that the Soviet atomic capabilities were still extremely limited compared to American ones, Washington’s nuclear monopoly was largely intact, and the US remained the only nation capable of delivering an atomic bomb to a distant target.

Looking back at the end of the day, although steps were taken to ensure that an atomic option was available — through a series of threats, feints, and even practice runs — it remains debatable how serious the American leadership was.

The bottom line is that in the Korean War, the US confronted the hard truth that threatening a nuclear attack would not be enough to win the war. And the nuclear Korean War simply petered out. That is a historical truth that is unlikely to be forgotten today as a “lesson” when the US faces not one but three nuclear powers in Northeast Asia and all three with deterrent capability.

That is why the visit by a US nuclear ballistic missile submarine to Busan, South Korea, on July 22, the first visit by a US submarine since 1981, which some US congressmen interpret as not only a warning to North Korea but also a deterrent against China, can only be seen as empty bravado.

Against such a historical complex backdrop, a Global Times editorial hit out on Wednesday: “China decided to resist the US aggression and aid North Korea during the Korean War, it had repeatedly sent stern warnings that if US forces crossed the 38th parallel China would not sit idle. However, the US did not take it seriously, thinking that China was only making empty threats and would not take action. As a result, they were caught off guard when they encountered the Chinese People’s Volunteers Army on the battlefield. Today, a similar major misjudgment toward China is occurring in Washington. The biggest difference between now and the Korean War era is that China’s strength has greatly increased. The consequences of infringing upon China’s security interests and national sovereignty will undoubtedly be much more severe… However, it must be clear that if there is another strategic misjudgment this time, the price it will pay will surely be much higher than 70 years ago.”

The aphorism frequently attributed to Mark Twain comes to mind — ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’ Certainly, the history of the Korean War rhymes with the war in Ukraine. While the details, circumstances or settings may have changed, similar events have essentially recycled.

Ukraine rhymes with Korean War

The fundamental difference is that while not even the worst detractors of the US would allege that Washington precipitated the Korean war, when it comes to Ukraine, even the best apologists of the western narrative draw a vicarious pleasure that the US set up a bear trap by its obduracy not to negotiate Russia’s legitimate security concerns and brilliantly turned Ukraine into an anti-Russian state. In effect, the US created the setting for a proxy war — unlike in Korea where its direct intervention in the inter-Korean conflict and MacArthur’s belligerent escalation transformed it as a protracted war that lasted for 3 years.

The big question is whether it was the US’ nuclear blackmail that spurred peace talks brought about the armistice in July 1953. Let facts speak for themselves. During the spring of 1953, Eisenhower developed plans for nuclear attacks on China and conveyed them to the Communists to intimidate them into accepting favourable terms for an armistice. Did Mao feel intimidated?

Wouldn’t China (and Russia) have known that the frightened US allies in Western Europe had registered strong opposition to using nuclear weapons in Korea — and, furthermore, that worries about allies withdrawing from the Korean theatre and leaving the Americans in a limbo would have made it difficult to nuke China and North Korea? The salience is that in any future war, a nuclear power would be more likely to use atomic bomb than one wanting to maintain the support of allies. Wouldn’t the Russians know it in Ukraine? (See Nuclear Blackmail and the End of the Korean War by Edward Friedman, Modern China, Jan 1975)

Anyway, there has been a paradigm shift today. Russia today has nuclear superiority over the US and its allies. Unlike during the Korean War, North Korea and China now possess nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. But a cardinal difference in this paradigm shift is also that neither Pyongyang nor Beijing developed nuclear weapons capabilities as part of plans to initiate a war but, instead, to deter a US attempt to destroy them. The same holds good for Russia in Ukraine.

[blindpig]

Still fighting for Korea’s liberation: An interview with Comrade Ahn Hak-sop

‘In 1952, I came here to liberate the southern half of the peninsula, and I need to stay here and continue that struggle.’
Derek Ford


A veteran of the Korean Fatherland Liberation war who spent 42 years in south Korean jails under the most brutal conditions, Comrade Ahn Hak-sop refused to recant his communist affiliation, withstanding all kinds of torture over many decades. Although two other ‘unconverted’ comrades who were finally released went north, Comrade Ahn remains in south Korea, a living example to his struggling people and the embodiment of their determination to see their country fully liberated and reunited.

This interview is reproduced from Liberation School, with thanks.

*****

Ahn Hak-sop was an officer in the Korean People’s Army (KPA) of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or north Korea) during the Korean war.

In 1952, he was captured by the United States and its proxy forces while on his way to a meeting in the southern part of Korea. He served decades as an unconverted political prisoner before finally winning release in 1995.

Today, he is still active as a peace and reunification activist in the Republic of Korea (ROK, or south Korea). Derek Ford of Liberation School interviewed Mr Ahn in November 2019 at a peace church in the civilian control zone just south of the 38th parallel that divides the Korean peninsula.

Comrade Ahn was a speaker at the party congress of the People’s Democracy Party (PDP) in Gwangju in May 2023, and addressed a meeting in the demilitarised zone attended by delegates of the World Anti-imperialist Platform.

Interview with Derek Ford
Thank you so much for speaking with us today, Mr Ahn. It’s wonderful to see you again. To begin, can you tell us about how you got involved with the Korean struggle for peace, independence and reunification?

My birth town is Ganghwa island. I was born in a poor household, in the era of Japanese imperialism. My family was Confuscianist. I went to elementary school and was taught an imperialist education.

They didn’t teach me that Korea was a colony. I found that out in second grade. Through my experiences in the imperialist education, I found out that Korea was not independent, and since that time the feeling of anti-imperialism grew in my mind.

At the time of liberation from Japanese imperialism, I was in hiding because of anti-imperialist activism, and that is where I met the resistance forces. On the afternoon of 15 August, I knew that I was liberated from Japanese imperialism.

What was your understanding of US imperialism at that time?

At first, I thought the US army was a liberation army. But soon General MacArthur referred to the USA as an occupying army. There was no word of liberation, only occupation; so I was suspicious, but only partly so.

Although I was young, the whole nation was full with division between the rule of the USA and Soviets. In September of 1945, Koreans went out to greet the US army, but the US army shot at them.

After the Moscow committee, the US army said explicitly that they were there to block the Soviet Union. But in 1948, the Soviet Union withdrew all of their troops. But the US army didn’t withdraw.

In almost every town, there was a people’s committee for self-rule, but the US army crushed the people’s committees with tanks and soldiers. There was a lot of resistance and revolt at that time.

On 8 August 1947, when I was returning home with a colleague from a meeting to prepare a celebration for the liberation, someone shot at us, and my colleague was wounded and arrested. I survived and ran away and went underground to Kaesong, which was in the northern part of the peninsula, although there was no 38th parallel at that time.

While I was in Kaesong, I went to engineering school. The south Korean police went to school to arrest me, but the school protected me.

What happened after that, during the war?

During the war, I enlisted in the Korean People’s Army, but the school delayed my admittance. I was sick, and so I wasn’t able to fight when I finally joined. I served in intelligence gathering.

The KPA sent me to the south in 1952 as an intelligence officer, where I was arrested. In early April of 1952, I was going to a meeting of the Workers Party in the district of Kangwondo. I was observed on my way there and arrested.

While I was in jail, I had a lot of obstacles to overcome. There was spying and torture for 42 years. There was pressure to convert from Juche ideology into capitalism beginning in 1956.

First they tried to make theoretical arguments against the DPRK. But they couldn’t defend their beliefs to me. After that, they tried to bribe me with property. After that, there was torture.

There is a small place in the jail, and they would throw water in the room in the winter. They take all of your clothes and bedding. I tried to survive. So I ran and exercised to keep my body warm. But I couldn’t last forever. I became unconscious, and they dragged my body out to keep me alive.

There were other forms of torture. I could overcome all of this. What was most painful was when the police brought my family, my mother and brother to the prison.

When and how were you finally released?

On 15 August 1995 I was released from jail. They didn’t want to do it, but they had to release me because of the Geneva Convention. They should have released me in 1953. At that time, I should have been sent to the DPRK, but the USA and south Korea didn’t do that.

They said I was a spy, and so I didn’t fall under the convention, which they said only applied to battleground soldiers, not information operatives.

I tried to litigate for many years, and the army and prison did everything they could do to block the law. I couldn’t send any letters or meet with anyone. I finally got one letter out, however, and human rights lawyers took up my case. The government was forced to try and justify my detention, but there was no justification. They had to release me.

Two other prisoners came out of jail with me. Two of them went to the DPRK in 2000 after the 15 June declaration. Those comrades went to the north because they thought that shortly there would be free movement between the two states. They went to the north to study and thought they would come back later.

Why did you stay in the south?

I remained in the south by my own choice. There are three reasons. First, I thought it was a temporary situation.

Second, there were young progressive people here in the south, and they asked me to stay. They said: “If the unconverted prisoners go the north, we will lose the centre of the struggle.” It became very important for me to stay.

The third reason is that Korea is now divided, and the USA occupies the southern part. We have to keep struggling here for the withdrawal of US army, the peace treaty, and peaceful reunification. I decided to stay here to fight for these goals.

In 1952, I came here to liberate the southern half of the peninsula, and I need to stay here and continue that struggle.

What has your life been like since release?

The government required me to have one guaranteed supervisor when I was released, so if there was any problem with me they could hold them accountable. I tore up the paper and said: “I will not give you a hostage.”

Still, there are security police who follow me. Whenever there is a problem with the north and south, they raid my house and stand guard outside my property. One time at a demonstration, conservative forces attacked me. The police did nothing to protect me.

I’d like to explain more about the Security Surveillance Act, which mandates that police watch former political prisoners. Every week or every other week, the police come to my house and ask about my activities, who has visited my house, and so on.

Once every other month I need to report to them about what I did, who I met, and who visited me. Every two years I need to go to court. However, I don’t report to them or go to court. That is their law, and it’s unjust.

It’s not easy to continue fighting this law. I can’t leave the country. I can’t visit my hometown. But I’ve lived my whole life for reunification and anti-imperialism, and I’d like to live the rest of my life for that.

https://thecommunists.org/2023/12/08/ne ... interview/

******

DPRK space program
December 7, 15:41



On the current state of the DPRK space program. The topic recently became relevant again after the North Koreans successfully launched a military reconnaissance satellite, which had already managed to photograph Washington and other objects in the United States. The United States and its subordinates have already managed to angrily condemn the younger Kim for such “impudence.”



https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8813525.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

U.S. Policy in Korea is Stuck in a Time Warp With Little Having Changed Since 1950
By Dermot Hudson - January 15, 2024 1


[Source: reddit.com]

The DPRK Has Thwarted U.S. Designs to Control the Korean Peninsula in a Major Historical Accomplishment.

On August 15, 1945, Korea was liberated from Japanese imperialist colonial rule thanks to the arduous armed struggle waged by the anti-Japanese partisans led by the guerrilla leader Kim Il Sung.

Japanese imperialist rule, which had appeared so strong and permanent, crumbled virtually in an instant. Thirty-six years of oppressive rule by Japanese imperialism, which had been a close ally of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, finally melted into history.

One misunderstanding that is frequently encountered, even among anti-imperialists and progressives, is that Korea was liberated from Japanese rule solely by the Soviet Union and that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the state that arose from the ruins of Japanese imperialism, was simply a creation of the Soviet Union.

In fact, the Soviet Union had concluded a neutrality pact with Japan and had only declared war on Japan on August 9, 1945, whereas the anti-Japanese guerrillas led by future President Kim Il Sung had begun fighting the Japanese in the 1930s.


Kim Il Sung (back row, 3rd from left) in 1938 in command of the Sixth Division of the Second Directional Army in Jilin, China. [Source: koreanhistory.info]

In the northern part of Korea’s people’s committees, organs of popular rule were established by the people. The old oppressive Japanese ruling machinery was destroyed. The Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea (PPCNK), a new type of government, was established on February 8, Juche 35 (1946).

The entire Korean people elected Kim Il Sung as the Chairman of the PPCNK. Many vitally important democratic reforms were carried out soon after liberation, such as the historic agrarian reform that eliminated feudal exploitation.

Nationalization of basic industries was carried and progressive legislation on workers’ rights and sexual equality was enacted. The Labor Law enacted in 1946 even gave workers and office workers free medical treatment on an insurance basis, some two years before the National Health Service (NHS) was created in Britain.

In contrast to this progress in the northern half of Korea, reaction reigned in southern Korea. Tragically, Korea had been divided. A former U.S. Army colonel, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Dean Rusk, the future Secretary of State and key architect of the Vietnam War, had simply drawn a line with a ruler across a map of Korea at the 38th parallel.


Dean Rusk [Source: britannica.com]

Some 5,000 years of history as a unified nation were destroyed by the stroke of a pencil and the destiny of small nations trifled with by big powers.

The U.S. imperialists fixed the 38th parallel as the demarcation line and occupied southern Korea on the pretext of “disarming the Japanese troops in the south of the 38 degrees north latitude.” They reigned over it as colonial rulers, throwing a grave obstacle in the path of building a new society by the south Korean people.

It needs to be clear that the U.S. played no part whatsoever in the liberation of Korea, their troops did not arrive in Korea until three weeks after liberation, indeed they were in no position to advance to Korea. There was also no need for them to go into south Korea as Korea had already been liberated on August 15.

When I first visited the DPRK in May 1992, I went to the Korean Revolution Museum. There I saw a map of the anti-Japanese revolutionary armed struggle led by President Kim Il Sung. Some were surprised to see that this struggle had been waged not only in north Korea but in the south as well. Someone asked why a unified Korean government was not set up as there were progressive and revolutionary forces in the south as well. The guide replied “the U.S. imperialists did terrible things, they divided Korea.”

As President Kim Il Sung remarked:

“The U.S. imperialists occupied south Korea, reactionaries from home and abroad, and the former stooges of Japanese imperialism became lackeys of U.S. imperialism and opposed the Korean people. We were confronted with the aggressive policy of the U.S. imperialists who were not only opposed to the Korean revolution and the building of an independent unified state by the Korean people but were also seeking to extend their influence to north Korea.”


Kim Il Sung is regarded in North Korea as having founded the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army on April 25, 1932. [Source: koreanhistory.info]

U.S. imperialism had coveted Korea for a long time. In 1866 they sent an armed ship, the SS General Sherman, up the Taedong River in an attempt to open trade with the isolationist Joseon dynasty, prompting Koreans to destroy the ship. Other incursions by U.S. warships occurred. Later, the U.S. concluded the so-called Friendship Treaty with Korea in 1881.


Postage stamp commemorating arrival of the SS General Sherman on the shores of the Taedong River in 1866, the first major U.S. imperial incursion into Korea. [Source: colnect.com]

Significantly, the U.S. actually aided and abetted the Japanese takeover of Korea in the early 20th century in the form of the “Taft-Katsura” agreement of 1905. The U.S. agreed with the Japanese to allow them to occupy Korea in return for a free hand in the Philippines.


[Source: minzokjaju.wayful.com]

During the period of Japanese colonial rule, although Japan was the main colonial occupier, the U.S. owned the gold mines at Unsan, Taeyudong and Suan and carted away tons of gold. Now in 1945 they seized one half of Korea.


Miners and foreign workers pose together at the American-owned Oriental Consolidated Mining Company (OCMC) in Unsan in this undated photo. [Source: popularresistance.org]

Prior to the entry of their armed forces into south Korea in September 1945, the U.S. imperialists, under the pretext of “maintaining public peace in south Korea,” kept intact the government-general in the period of Japanese imperialist rule and retained the defeated generals of the Japanese army—war criminals—in their posts.

The U.S. imperialists, therefore, denied the liberated south Korean people freedom of all political activities for building an independent and sovereign country and issued one “proclamation” after another, forcing them to “submit” to the colonial rule by the governor-general of Korea.

On September 2, 1945, in his “proclamation” entitled “To All People in South Korea,” John Reed Hodge, former commander of the U.S. 24th Army Corps, announced that “proclamations and orders issued to the people shall be made public through the existing government offices” (meaning organs of Japanese rule and that “orders” from the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers “shall be strictly followed and executed, and any person who unfortunately disobeys them shall suffer punishment.”


John Reed Hodge [Source: upload.wikimedia.org]

The successive “orders” and “proclamations” of the U.S. imperialists were aimed at preventing, with the help of Japanese imperialism, the establishment of an independent government by the Korean people themselves before the landing of their troops, trampling upon the democratic rights and freedom of the south Korean people and creating conditions favorable to their occupation of south Korea and colonial rule in it.

Having completed the preparations for the occupation of South Korea, the U.S. imperialists landed the “advance contingent” of the 24th Army Corps in Inchon on September 7, 1945. The following day, on September 8, two division forces of the 24th Army Corps (45,000-strong) started occupation of south Korea under the direct command of Hodge.

The U.S. troops swarmed into South Korea. From the start, they committed atrocities and barbarities against the Korean people.

Simultaneously, MacArthur successively made public his proclamations Nos. 1, 2 and 3, all dated September 7, which were dropped from planes all over south Korea.

In “Proclamation” No. 1 MacArthur announced the institution of a military occupation system in south Korea, preservation of the property of landlords and capitalists and prohibition of free political activities. Moreover, he declared that inhabitants in south Korea were duty-bound to unconditionally obey his orders and that “acts of resistance to the occupying forces or any acts which may disturb public peace and safety will be punished severely,” and forced the use of English as the official language for all purposes.


General Douglas MacArthur and South Korea’s U.S. client leader, Syngman Rhee. [Source: maxvandaag.nl]
These “proclamations” constituted flagrant violations of the sovereignty of the Korean people. They were a prelude to the enforcement of a cruel military government which the U.S. imperialists could not bring into reality even in vanquished Japan. They were also a declaration to the whole world of the U.S. occupation of south Korea and the beginning of their colonial rule. American journalist Mark Gayn wrote: “We were not a liberation army. We rushed there in order to occupy it, in order to watch whether the Koreans obey the conditions of surrender. From the first days of our landing we have acted as the enemy of the Koreans.” (Mark Gayn, Japan Diary).


Mark Gayn [Source: digitalarchives.tpl.ca]
A governor-general ruling system, in essence, was established using the pretext of direct military administration. Along with the establishment of the “Military Government Office,” the so-called “court-martials” were set up in Seoul and all provinces and a “military court” in each county to restrict and suppress the free activities of the Korean people.

As a result, a signboard of the “U.S. Military Government Office “ was hung out on the former building of the Japanese “Government-General Office,” the old fascist machines and ruling methods were retained and inherited and colonial sovereign power was transferred to the U.S. imperialists.

It is relevant to point out that the U.S. imperialists became the colonial exploiter in South Korea as it seized Japanese property, which accounted for about 80 per cent of property in south Korea.

The U.S. imperialists renamed in February 1946 the “Oriental Development Company,” the former Japanese agency for plundering land and grain, as the “New Korea Company”’ and expropriated the total arable land of South Korea.

At that time, the total property held by the “New Korea Company’” reached the sum of $1.25 billion; it owned roughly 286,000 hectares of cultivated land to which more than 554,000 farm households, or 27% of the total farm households of south Korea, owed their existence.

This meant that, through the “New Korea Company” the U.S. imperialists became the biggest landlord in south Korea, acquiring nearly one-tenth of over 2,670,000 hectares of the arable land and 27% of the farm households in South Korea.


U.S. 7th Division Troops at Inchon, September 8, 1945. [Source: forum.axishistory.com]

In this way, the history of colonial rule by U.S. imperialism started in South Korea, replacing that of Japanese imperialism. From that time, South Korea began to be reduced to a U.S. imperialist military base for a new war. The U.S. was the new master in south Korea.

In its policy of political enslavement aimed at turning south Korea into U.S. colony, the “U.S. Military Government” put the main stress on the suppression and liquidation of the democratic and patriotic forces of the Korean people by arms and the rallying and fostering of the reactionary forces, so that it might consolidate its political foothold for the establishment of colonial rule in south Korea and the domination of all Korea.

The “National Security Law” enacted on December 1, 1948, which forbids organized support for the DPRK and the promotion of communist ideas, is a prime example of this.

In fact, all the policies adopted by U.S. imperialism toward south Korea, including that of establishment of the “U.S. Military Government,” were, without exception, related to its aggressive design to convert South Korea into a colonial military base and use it as a stepping-stone for the conquest of the whole of Korea.


In carrying out its plan of aggression on Korea, U.S. imperialism considered it most important to stamp out the sovereignty of the Korean people and place them under its domination. As an initial step toward this, it had to suppress and dissolve through the “Military Government” the People’s Committees at the point of the bayonet and prohibit the political activities of patriotic democratic forces in all walks of life.


Edgar Snow [Source: edgarsnowfoundation.org]

In October 1945, Hodge announced: “The Military Government is the sole government of Korea.” The Communist Party and other progressive forces were suppressed. As U.S. writer and journalist Edgar Snow remarked, “When everything has been said about our occupation of Korea, probably the most significant thing is that we stopped a revolution here.”

The U.S. imperialists and their puppets in south Korea carried out fascist terrorism not only against workers and peasants but against political figures.

Ryo Un Hyong, leader of the south Korean People’s Party and a respected nationalist, was assassinated on July 19, 1947. So was Kim Gu, a rightwing figure who had come out against the U.S. occupation of south Korea and significantly had attended a north-south joint political conference held in north Korea in April 1948.


Ryo Un Hyong [Source: historia.org]


Kim Gu [Source: wikipedia.org]

Direct U.S. military rule in south Korea was basically colonialism and was opposed by the South Korean people.

In September 1946 there was a general strike of south Korean workers. The U.S. imperialists felt the need to create a puppet regime to camouflage their rule in south Korea. They put in power the elderly Syngman Rhee, a Korean who had lived in the U.S. and was trained by the U.S. over many years.


Owen Lattimore [Source: wikipedia.org]

Syngman Rhee had also embezzled funds of the nationalist movement. The Syngman Rhee puppet regime was characterized by one famous U.S. Asia expert, Professor Owen Lattimore, as follows: “America, which has in China complained of the bad luck of having inherited the Kuomintang through no fault of its own, has in Korea manufactured its own Kuomintang. To support our proclaimed policy of world-wide opposition to police states, we have in South Korea created a weak and unreliable police state of our own.”

The south Korean people fought against the Syngman Rhee puppet regime and the U.S. imperialists. In April 1948 the people of Jeju island rose up against separate elections but this was put down by the U.S. imperialists and Syngman Rhee puppets, who killed between 33,000 and 70,000 people (33,000 being an official estimate which was very conservative).

Numerous shackling and aggressive agreements, pacts and treaties such as the ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty of January 1950, were concluded. South Korea became a forward advance military base of the U.S. and a bullet shield.


Painting depicting atrocities committed by U.S. troops during the Korean War at the Museum of American War Crimes in Pyongyang. [Source: thesanghakcommune.org]

The Syngman Rhee regime emerged as a neo-colonial puppet regime armed and controlled by the Americans, an instrument of U.S. domination. As such it was a regime for carrying out U.S. imperialism’s aggressive policies in Korea and Asia. Syngman Rhee, who ignited the Korean War, that resulted in millions of deaths on the orders of his U.S. masters on June 25, 1950, was the first of a series of puppet rulers in South Korea: Park Chung Hee, Chon Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, Kim Young-sam, Lee Myung-bak, Park Geun-hye and now Yoon Suk Yeol.

Even supposedly liberal and “progressive” rulers in South Korea—such as Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in were beholden to the U.S. and never mounted any substantial challenge to U.S. domination and control over South Korea.

Although there have been many changes in the world and on the Korean peninsula since 1945, the U.S. domination over South Korea remains unchanged. In fact, in some ways it has been tightened, as South Korea is now paying more than $1 billion annually for the “upkeep” of U.S. troops in South Korea so it is basically paying for the privilege of U.S. occupation.

The far right regime of Yoon Suk Yeol is committed to deepening dependency on the U.S. and allowing the U.S. to use South Korea in a war against the DPRK. On April 26, 2023, Yoon met U.S. President Biden and signed a declaration to create a so-called “Nuclear Consultative Group” which would “strengthen extended deterrence, discuss nuclear and strategic planning” or, in other words, target the DPRK.


President Joe Biden toasts his “perfect partner” Yoon Suk Yeol at state dinner at the White House attended by celebrities. [Source: twitter.com]

Since the beginning of 2023, joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises threatening the DPRK have been escalated. In reality, nothing has changed since that fateful day in June 1950 when the U.S. pushed its puppet South Korea into war against the DPRK.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... ince-1950/

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JANUARY 23, 2024 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Geopolitics is moving North Korea’s way


President Vladimir Putin (3rd from Right) met North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui (3rd from Left), Moscow, Jan. 16, 2024

In less than three years, the erosion in the US hegemony that began cascading with the defeat in Afghanistan in August 2021 spread to Eurasia, followed by the massive eruption in West Asia by the end of 2023. As 2024 begins, we hear distant drums in the Far East, as North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un instinctively senses a rare alignment of positive factors appearing in the existential conflicts in Eurasia and West Asia and capitalises on it with a strategic shift to challenge what Pyongyang calls a US-led ‘Asian version of NATO’.

The Korean Central News Agency reported on a statement from the country’s Foreign Ministry that North Korea “warmly welcomes President Putin to visit Pyongyang and is ready to greet the Korean people’s closest friend with the greatest sincerity.”

Kim, an astute practitioner of geopolitics, aims to create synergy through a strategic fusion that actually dates back to Joseph Stalin who purposefully sought to entangle the US in a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula and forestall the outbreak of a third world war.

Stalin’s calculation was that a US, exhausted from the Chinese intervention in the Korean War, “would be incapable of a third world war in the near future.” Indeed, he was proven right.

Stalin wrote a highly confidential letter to then Czechoslovak President Klement Gottwald on 27 August 1950 to explain his decision-making, which found its way from the ex-Soviet archives in 2005, to appear in the original Russian in the historical journal Novaya I Noveishaya Istoriia.

Apparently, Stalin went along secretly with Kim Il Sung’s plan, during the North Korean leader’s secret trip to Moscow in April 1950, not because he miscalculated that the US would not get involved in the war (as western historians estimated) but precisely because he wanted the US to become entangled in a limited conflict in Asia.

Stalin was reassuring Gottwald, a nervous ally, about the international situation and Moscow’s decision to withdraw from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in January 1950 and the rationale for the Soviet absence from the UNSC in July 1950 when it discussed the Korean issue as well as the Soviet abstention and failure to exercise its veto against the US resolution seeking deployment of a UN force in Korea.

Stalin wrote that “it is clear that the United States of America is presently distracted from Europe in the Far East. Does it not give us an advantage in the global balance of power? It undoubtedly does.”

Put differently, Europe was the main priority in the Soviet Union’s international strategy, and the Korean War was seen as an opportunity to strengthen socialism in Europe while diverting American interests and resources from that continent.

What distinguishes great powers like Russia is the sheer profundity of their historical consciousness to co-relate time past with time present and to comprehend that the germane seeds of time future are largely to be found embedded in time past. After all, time cannot be treated in abstraction but as the vital ground of human reality. That must be one reason why there is such agonising speculation in the US today regarding the recent surge in Russia-DPRK ties.

The White House’s senior director for arms control Pranay Vaddi said last Thursday that the nature of the security threat posed by North Korea could change “drastically” in the coming decade as a result of its unprecedented cooperation with Russia. “What we’re seeing between Russia and North Korea is an unprecedented level of cooperation in the military sphere,” Vaddi told Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He added, “And I say ‘unprecedented’ very deliberately — We have never seen this before.”

Vaddi said it was necessary to pay close attention not just to nuclear-armed North Korea’s help for Russia war in Ukraine, primarily in the form of missile systems, but “what could be going in the other direction as well.”

He asked, “How could that improve North Korea’s capabilities? And what does that mean for our own extended deterrence posture in the region with both Korea and Japan?” The US has got Russia’s message alright.

Vaddi’s remarks that were anything but off-the-cuff, followed the 5-day official visit by the DPRK Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui to Moscow during which Putin, in a rare gesture, received the visiting dignitary at the Kremlin. The Russian readout taunted the Americans by cryptically characterising Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s talks with Choe as “a meaningful exchange of opinions on topical matters dealing with developing bilateral ties with a focus on “practical matters” and “further improve the contractual legal framework.” Readouts seldom go that far in transparency.

Anyway, the point of reference was the implementation of “agreements” between Putin and Kim during their meeting in September at the Vostochny Space Launch Centre (Russian spaceport above the 51st parallel North in the Amur Oblast in the Russian Far East).

Commenting on minister Choe’s meeting with Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov asserted that North Korea “is our very important partner, and we are focused on the further development of our relations in all areas, including in sensitive areas.”

In essence, as a Reuters report took note, “Moscow says it will develop ties with whatever countries it wants… Russia has gone out of its way to publicise the renaissance of its relationship, including military ties, with North Korea…. For Putin,.. courting Kim allows him to needle Washington and its Asian allies.”

Indeed, Kim is keen to play his role as well. In the past week alone, North Korea conducted a test of its underwater nuclear weapons system and Kim announced that unification with South Korea is no longer possible. Kim said the North “did not want war, but we also have no intention of avoiding it.”

Without doubt, Russia has chosen to double down on its alliance with North Korea. And Kim expressed his interest in deepening ties with Moscow in a highly public manner by making a personal visit to Russia in September. The timing of that trip was bold given recent moves by the US to strengthen trilateral deterrence efforts against the North with South Korea and Japan.

A de facto trilateral ‘bloc’ with Russia and China in opposition to the US–South Korea–Japan trilateral alliance is in the making. DPRK’s support for Russia in Ukraine would serve China’s interests by containing US power. And North Korea gains immeasurably in strategic depth, thanks to the support by two veto-holding UN Security Council members.

A press release by the foreign ministry in Pyongyang following minister Choe’s talks in Moscow said “The DPRK side highly appreciated the important mission and role of the powerful Russian Federation in maintaining the strategic stability and balance of the world and expressed expectation that the Russian Federation would continue to adhere to independent policies and lines in all fields in the future, too, and thus make a great contribution to international peace and security and the establishment of an equal and fair international order.”

Tass played up the press release, carving no less than 3 wholesome reports out of it. In effect, a new geopolitical vector is appearing in the Far East, which, unlike Ukraine or Gaza, is also a nuclear flashpoint. Geopolitics is moving North Korea’s way, finally — a country that seven years ago was already harbouring dreams of sinking a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier “with a single strike”. The point is, that fantasy remains untested.

In politics, the underdog often starts the fight — and occasionally the upper dog deserves to win, but seldom does. Hamas, the Houthis, Kim — it’s always fun to surprise people. For, it puts less pressure on them, as they’re only a winning mindset away from battles that could transform an underdog into a champion and achiever. Putin’s journey to Pyongyang will be carefully watched by the Biden administration.

Andrey Sushentsov, a prominent Russian pundit, wrote recently, “Our confrontation with the Americans will last for a long time, although we will see certain pauses… Russia’s task will be to create a network of relationships with like-minded states, which may even eventually include some from the West. The US strategy is to forcibly extinguish points of strategic autonomy, which Washington succeeded in doing in Western Europe in the first phase of the Ukraine crisis, but that move was one of the last successes in this regard.

At any rate, an eastern front is opening in the US-Russia confrontation, supplementing the western and southern fronts in Eurasia and West Asia respectively.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/geopoli ... oreas-way/

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Misunderstood in the West, the Juche Idea Has Helped North Korea Survive U.S. Wars and Sanctions and Even Thrive
By Dermot Hudson - February 1, 2024 0


[Source: youtube.com]

The Juche idea or Juche ideology has been the guiding idea of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for many decades.

Juche is synonymous with the DPRK. Without understanding the Juche idea, it is impossible to have any understanding of the DPRK. However, much of the media in the West and some so-called academic experts on the DPRK totally ignore the Juche idea in their discourse on the DPRK. Others show a crude and distorted understanding of the Juche idea which is essentially dismissive of it.

Frequently, Juche is described as meaning “self -reliance.” Self-reliance indeed forms a core part of the Juche idea but it has a far wider and deeper meaning.

A typical example of the Western mainstream media dismissal of Juche can be found in Reuters on September 14, 2017. The article, written by Jack Kim and Kiyoshi Takenaka and syndicated in other publications, like the UK’s Daily Mirror, claimed that “Juche is the North’s ruling ideology that mixes Marxism and an extreme form of go-it-alone nationalism.” This is, of course, a caricature of the Juche idea.

At no point did any of the DPRK’s leaders ever say that the DPRK would or should “go it alone”—although at different moments in its history has had to “go it alone” in order to survive.

An example of the latter was in 1962 when the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) suspended cooperation with the DPRK and imposed sanctions on it.

Worse are those who claim that Juche is a form of “ethno-nationalism,” or a “state religion” or “cult.”

A lot of misinformation about the Juche idea has been spread by American and European academics based in South Korea. Among them are B.R. Myers and Andrei Lankov, who are held up as “Korea experts” but actually know very little about the DPRK.

Even on the Left in Western Europe and North America there exists a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding about the Juche idea.

The Juche idea was the brainchild of the DPRK’s founding father, President Kim Il Sung, who led the anti-Japanese national liberation struggle.

Juche is a Korean word of two syllables: “Ju” meaning one’s self, and “Che” which means master. In other words, it means “master of one’s self.”


Tower of the Juche Idea in Pyongyang. [Source: tripadvisor.com]

The term “Juche” was first used publicly and explicitly in 1955 in a speech President Kim Il Sung made to party ideological workers—titled “On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work.” In his speech Kim asked: “What is Juche in our Party’s ideological work? What are we doing? We are not engaged in any other country’s revolution, but solely in the Korean revolution. This, the Korean revolution, determines the essence of Juche in the ideological work of our Party. Therefore, all ideological work must be subordinated to the interests of the Korean revolution.” [Kim Il Sung Works, Vol. 9, p. 402]


Kim Il Sung [Source: juche007-anglo-peopleskoreafriendship.blogspot.com]

At the time President Kim Il Sung made the speech, there was an urgent need to clear away dogmatic and formalistic attitudes that were hindering the advance of the Korean revolution.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was blazing a new trail in the construction of socialism; ready-made formulas, therefore, did not fit.

Some dogmatists in the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea wanted to do everything according to old Marxist textbooks or to copy the experiences of the USSR.

However, the DPRK’s situation was different from other socialist countries; it was a divided country that had emerged from the ruins of Japanese colonialism and feudalism.

It was really impossible for the DPRK to follow the path of other countries. There was a need for independent and creative thinking and for the DPRK to assert its independence.

The assertion of the DPRK’s independence became more important than before because the USSR, after the death of Stalin, dropped its anti-imperialist stance and, later, the socialist camp and international communist movement was split into pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese wings.

Moreover, establishing Juche was essential as Korea was sandwiched between great powers and menaced by the U.S. imperialists who had occupied southern Korea after 1945. In the past, Korea had lost independence due to the idea of relying on and fawning to big powers (this is known as flunkeyism).

The flunkeyist or sycophantic mentality had been deeply ingrained in the old feudal ruling class. In the closing years of the 19th century and the early 20th century, Korea’s feudal rulers had done virtually nothing to organize the work of defense against the menace of Japan.

The ruling class was split into pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, pro-U.S. and pro-Japanese factions. Different big powers—such as Japan, the U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France—all coveted Korea; in the end, however, Korea was occupied and annexed by Japan.

The nationalist movement in Korea was also captivated by flunkeyism, the mentality of relying on big powers. Some wanted to rely on the U.S., believing in Woodrow Wilson’s doctrine of “self-determination,” while others looked to China or to the USSR. Some even believed that the colonial suzerain Japan would grant independence to Korea if they begged hard enough.

Although Juche was first explicitly mentioned in 1955, in fact, it goes back much further. It was actually first outlined in an embryonic form by Kim Il Sung when he addressed a meeting of the leading activists and cadres of the Young Communist League of Korea and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League at Kalun, China, in June 1930 (many Koreans had been exiled to China in those days and many Korean independence activists were based in China). At the time, the Korean people were looking for a new way to successfully conduct the revolutionary struggle for independence and national liberation as well as for social justice.

The young Kim Il Sung keenly realized that a new path for the Korean revolution needed to be charted. He stressed that the Korean revolution should be carried out independently and by relying on the ordinary people, the popular masses.

In his speech, titled “The Path of the Korean Revolution,” he explained his ideas and put forward an independent line for the Korean revolution. He castigated those who believed in relying on big powers or splitting into many different factions:

“Experience shows that in order to lead the revolution to victory, one must go among the masses of people and organize them, and solve all problems arising in the course of the revolution independently on one’s own responsibility in accord with the actual conditions, instead of relying on others.

Drawing on this lesson we regard it as most important to take the firm standpoint that the masters of the Korean revolution are the Korean people and that the Korean revolution should by all means be carried out by the Korean people themselves in a way suited to the actual conditions of their country.” [Kim Il Sung Works, Vol. 1, p. 5]


Portrait of Kim Il Sung as he speaks to supporters of the Korean revolution. [Source: tumblr.com]

This is the basis of the Juche idea and its starting point. The idea that the masses are the masters of the revolution was first voiced at Kalun in 1930. Kim Il Sung also stressed that “The masters of the revolutionary struggle are the masses of the people, and only when they are organized and mobilized can they win the revolutionary struggle.”

Many years later, on September 17, 1972, President Kim Il Sung explained to journalists of Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun that: “In a nutshell, the idea of Juche means that the masters of the revolution and the work of construction are the masses of the people and that they are also the motive force of the revolution and the work of construction. In other words, one is responsible for one’s own destiny and one has also the capacity for hewing out one’s own destiny.” [Kim Il Sung Works, Vol. 27, p. 324]

President Kim Il Sung also said that “Independence is what keeps man alive. If he loses independence he cannot be called a man; he differs little from an animal.” [Kim Il Sung Works, Vol. 27, p. 328] This is a succinct elucidation of the humanistic and liberating nature of the Juche idea.

In March 1982, Kim Jong Il, who was at the time Secretary for Organizational Affairs of the Workers’ Party of Korea, published the treatise “On the Juche Idea,” which explained and expounded the Juche idea in depth and in a systematic and structured form.


Kim Jong Il [Source: al.com]


[Source: goodreads.com]

Kim defined the Juche idea as having philosophical principles, socio-historical principles and guiding principles. The core principle of the Juche idea is that humans are the masters of everything and decide everything. In the work Kim Jong Il explained that man is a social being with the attributes of independence, creativity and consciousness, all of which were interrelated. The guiding principles of the Juche idea, which are applied concretely in practice, were: Juche in ideology, independence in politics, self-sufficiency in the economy, and self-reliance in national defense.

The Juche idea postulates that the masses are the subject of the revolution, not its object. Accordingly, in order to carry out the revolution, the masses should be awakened and should play the role of the masters of the revolution; therefore, priority should be given to ideological work. This is one of the main reasons why the DPRK did not collapse like the socialist states of Eastern Europe and the USSR.

Some self-styled “Leftist” detractors of the Juche idea, who reject the socialist experience of the DPRK, claim that “Juche rejects Marxism-Leninism.” This, however, is not true. In fact, Marxism-Leninism is an important component of Juche.

In his youth Kim Il Sung studied the works of Marx and Lenin, including Capital and The State and Revolution. Kim Jong Il himself pointed out that: “Our Party and people respect Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the leaders of the working class and speak highly of their distinguished service.” Moreover, the DPRK is one of the few countries in the world where you can take a university course in Marxism-Leninism and dialectical materialism. So it is a false statement that Marxism-Leninism has been rejected by the DPRK.


Marx’s portrait in Pyongyang. [Source: youngpioneertours.com]

Nor is Juche simply narrow nationalism or a cover for nationalism. Kim Jong Il said in his work “On the Juche Idea” that “Independence is not in conflict with internationalism but is the basis of its strengthening. Just as the world revolution is inconceivable without the revolution in one’s own country, internationalism divorced from independence cannot exist. As a matter of principle, internationalist solidarity must be based on freedom of choice and equality. Only when it is founded on independence will internationalist solidarity become based on free choice and equality and become genuine and durable.”

Guided by the Juche idea, the DPRK has always been internationalist. It has materially supported revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggles in many countries, such as Vietnam, Cuba, Angola and others.


Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pose for a photo during a 2018 meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea. [Source: scmp.com]

The Juche idea is the secret weapon of the DPRK which has enabled it to not only survive in difficult circumstances but to thrive and prosper. Thanks to the application of the Juche idea the DPRK was able to maintain independence.

Indeed, former British Prime Minister John Major paid an unusual backhanded compliment to the DPRK when he said it was a “country with undiluted independence.”

The DPRK does not have foreign troops stationed on its soil. It is not a member of the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), World Economic Forum (WEF) or Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

It has been able to build an independent national economy and industrialize despite being under blockade and sanctions by the U.S. since almost day one, as well as increasingly by the United Nations Security Council since 2006.

The DPRK has been able to manage with its borders closed since January 2020 when others would be lucky to last beyond a couple of days. At the same time and despite the sanctions, the DPRK has been able to maintain an impressive social program, with free medical care, free education up to university level, free housing, low-cost public transport and other measures but without levying tax on citizens as this was abolished in 1974.


State of the art health-care facility in Pyongyang. [Source: nknews.org]

In the past few years, a massive housing construction program has been carried out not just in Pyongyang but in rural areas.

Thus, the Juche idea has produced tangible results in the DPRK. There is no doubt that the DPRK’s socialism is the most durable socialism.

Therefore, it is not surprising that, since the 1960s, groups for the Study of the Juche Idea have appeared in many countries. The first one was founded in Mali in 1969; in 1978, the International Institute of the Juche Idea was established, with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.


Seminar on Juche Idea in Tokyo. [Source: juche.v.wol.ne.ip]

As Dr. Vishwanath, director of the international institute of the Juche idea, once said, “Study the Juche idea; it will cost you nothing but pay in plenty.”

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... en-thrive/

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Protests Erupt in South Korea Over Plans to Increase Work Day
By Dermot Hudson - February 14, 2024 0


South Korean workers at August protest. [Source: wsws.org]

Part of mounting popular disaffection against South Korea’s conservative leader whom the RAND Corporation branded as a “perfect partner” for the U.S.

South Korea is hitting the headlines again but not for the reasons that its leaders would like.

Protests have erupted in the wake of a new law supported by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that would allow an employee work even 21.5 hours per day so long as the total number of hours did not exceed 52 hours in that week.

The South Korean Supreme Court ruled in December 2023 that no amount of overtime was illegal so long as the total number of working hours in a week did not exceed 52 hours, and the Ministry of Employment and Labor changed the administrative interpretation of overtime work accordingly

These measures do not sit well with Korean labor unions and many in the public who worry about the potential for exploitation.


[Source: koreaboo.com]

The legislation and protests dent the carefully crafted media image of South Korea as a“liberal human rights paradise.”

Not only is it passing anti-labor legislation, but South Korea has been continuously ruled by regimes which subordinate the interests of South Korea to the U.S.

Many on the left have long seen through the façade of South Korea, recognizing it as a neo-colony of U.S. imperialism synonymous with slums, destitution and prostitution centering on the many U.S. army bases.


One of many U.S. military bases in South Korea. [Source: dailymail.co.uk]

The country’s deep internal contradictions are more and more coming to the surface in the form of the mounting labor protests, which are predictably being ignored by most Western media outlets.

South Korea is a society with deep class and social divisions. The huge gap between the rich and the poor is typified by films like Parasite, a thriller about a poor family who infiltrates a very wealthy family, and television series Squid Game, about young people facing financial hardship who risk their lives to win a billion-dollar prize.


[Source: globalgranary.life]


Source: wikipedia.org]

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, high rates of mental illness, and a declining birth rate.

The society values conformity as well as competitiveness which can be a toxic brew and the lives of workers in South Korea can be miserable. South Korea is well known for subcontracting and acting as a base for the transnational corporations to cheaply assemble goods. Even prior to the passage of the new law, South Korea had some of the longest working hours in the world, with its workers having fewer holidays than other workers. Labor safety is also appalling.

In 2017, the UK’s Financial Times, an authoritative voice for business, reported:

“The country has among the highest industrial death rates in the developed world, and a culture of covering up accidents, say lawmakers, workers and experts. The issue points to yet another governance problem in the east Asian nation that entangles its biggest groups and the western companies that use them as suppliers. “ [Financial Times, June 12, 2017]

Among other perils, South Korean workers face high housing costs.

In Seoul, the price to buy a studio flat or small apartment can be as much as $200,000

Additionally, there are high food costs and high costs for education and medical treatment.

Many South Korean workers are heavily in debt.

According to the Bank of South Korea, three million people spent almost all of their income on repaying principal debt and interest as of the end of the first quarter.

Yoon’s crazy plans to increase working hours will inevitably meet strong opposition from organized labor in South Korea.

Since it has taken power in May 2022 after replacing the more liberal Moon Jae-in government, Yoon’s regime has been rocked by protests and strikes.

Yoon is a far-right conservative and former Prosecutor General of South Korea whom the RAND Corporation identified as a perfect partner for the U.S.


South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden arrive for a state dinner at the National Museum of Korea in Seoul on May 21, 2022. [Source: rand.org]

Geopolitical analyst Ben Norton wrote on Twitter that “this South Korean administration [led by Yoon] is one of the most right-wing, anti-worker, pro-US, and anti-China governments in modern history.”

Yoon’s party is bizarrely named the People Power Party, which makes it sound like a left-wing party when, in fact, it is a party of the far right (a continuation of previous ruling parties in South Korea which have existed in one form or another since the late 1940s).


[Source: wikipedia.org]

Almost as soon as he was sworn into office, Yoon went on the warpath against workers and trade unions in South Korea. Yoon declared that he would not tolerate ‘unlawful activities” of trade unions and announced an increase in the workweek from 52 hours to 69 hours. The proposal elicited such outrage that it was quickly withdrawn.

Also, Yoon pushed for restructuring of industries and for job cuts. Arguably, the Yoon government is more aggressively pro-business than previous South Korean administrations, or it may be the case that he is simply more open about it than previous South Korean rulers.

It did not take long for Yoon to come into conflict with the trade unions in South Korea which consist of two main bodies: the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Trade Unions (KFTU), with the KFTU being the more conservative and passive of the two bodies.

In November 2022, six months after Yoon became president, the KCTU started organizing mass protests against the anti-labor measures he was pushing.


Protests urging Yoon to step down. [Source: koreapro.org]

On November 12, 2022, 90,000 trade unionists marched in Seoul, chanting slogans that included “Stop anti-worker reforms,” “Reform Articles 2 and 3 of the Labor Union Act,” and “Halt privatization.”

This annual rally, commemorating the anniversary of the death of Jeon Tae-il, a 22-year-old textile worker and activist who committed suicide by self-immolation on November 13, 1970, to protest the brutal conditions in sweatshops under the pro-American Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian regime.


Jeon Tae-il [Source: alchetron.com]


General Park Chung Hee [Source: pinterest.com]

South Korean hospital, railway and subway workers and truckers have been among those to mount strikes against Yoon since he took office.

Yoon’s regime, using draconian anti-labor legislation that was amended in 2004, ordered the truckers to return to work.

A failure to comply with a return to work order without “justifiable reason” is punishable by up to three years in jail or a maximum fine of $22,400 (£18,200). On December 3, 2022, thousands marched in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, to denounce the government’s attempts to force striking truck drivers back to work.


Thousands marching in Seoul in support of the truckers’ protest in December 2022. [Source: ny1.com]
Faced with mounting discontent among workers and opposition from trade unions, Yoon turned to the old tactic of red-baiting while stepping up repression against the dissenters.

On January 18, 2023, the South Korean police combined with the hated National Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Korea to raid the offices of the KCTU and the Korea Health and Medical Workers’ Union (KHMWU).


Investigators from the National Intelligence Service and police search the Korean Metal Workers’ Union’s local chapter in Changwon, about 300 kilometers south of Seoul, on February 23, 2023. [Source: en.yna.co.kr]

This was supposedly on the grounds that the KCTU had violated the National Security Law of South Korea, a law inherited from the era of Japanese colonialism that forbids any unauthorized contact with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) or sympathy for the DPRK by South Koreans.

The KCTU leaders were accused of being in “contact with North Korean agents overseas, possibly in Cambodia and Vietnam, and receiving orders from them.”

The allegation is ludicrous and almost certainly a frame-up by the South Korean authorities.

In the past there were many “spy ring cases” in South Korea, often resulting in those accused being sentenced to death.

One notorious example was the People’s Revolutionary Party cases in 1965 and 1975. In the latter case, eight South Koreans were sentenced to death for treason—listening to a North Korean radio broadcast—in a blatant show trial; they were executed 18 hours later.

Most of the spy cases of the Cold War era were fabricated by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), a creation of the CIA, in order to suppress dissent.


Defendants in the 1975 People’s Revolutionary Party case that was a blatant show trial. [Source: morethanwitnesses.blogspot.com]

Clearly, the charges against the KCTU leaders had nothing to do with any “spying” for or “orders” from the DPRK, but everything to do with a desperate attempt to stifle mounting labor protests by arresting trade union leaders on false charges.

At the same time Yoon’s regime pushed forward the revision of trade union and labor laws in order to further restrict trade union activity.

However, despite McCarthyism and repressive measures, strikes and protests by trade unions in South Korea have continued unabated.

One shocking incident that was airbrushed by the mainstream media was that, on May 1, 2023, Yang Hoe-dong, a leader of the Construction Workers Union in South Korea who had been arrested on trumped-up charges of “racketeering” by the South Korean authorities, set himself on fire and died the next day.

Yang wrote before he set himself on fire: “I am setting myself afire today because my rightful union activity is regarded [by the government] as an obstruction of business and racketeering…My self-worth can’t tolerate this.”

Yang’s death was reminiscent of that of Jeon Tae-il’s some 23 years earlier.


Yang Hoe-dong [Source: jacobin.com]

If this incident had happened in Russia, Belarus, the DPRK, China or Iran, the mainstream media in the West would never let us forget it. But because it happened in South Korea, a puppet state of the U.S. empire, it was barely mentioned by the mainstream media.

Yang’s death galvanized South Korean workers into organizing more protests with daily candlelight vigils taking place as well as protest rallies and strikes by workers in different sectors. In July 2023 South Korean trade unions staged a two-week general strike calling for the resignation of Yoon. Some 400,000 workers went on strike until July 15th. Because of censorship by the South Korean state, it is hard to know how successful the general strike was.

What is clear is that the protests by South Korean trade unionists, including demonstrations and strikes, will not only continue but will intensify as Yoon tries to both crack down on trade unions and attempt to increase the workday and week.

Yoon’s repressive tactics have not worked. We can expect to see widespread industrial unrest and mass protests in South Korea in the coming months, putting the continued existence of the Yoon regime in jeopardy.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/0 ... -work-day/