Meeting Kim Il Sung in His Last Weeks

BY MARK BARRY, APRIL 15, 2012

The first (non-communist) Americans to meet North Korea’s president Kim Il Sung likely were journalists Harrison Salisbury of The New York Times, and Selig Harrison, then ofThe Washington Post, in 1972. Congressman Stephen Solarz was the first U.S. public official to meet him in 1980, and Rev. Billy Graham later met him in 1992 and 1994. Little did I realize when I met Kim Il Sung on April 16, 1994, weeks before his death, I would be among a very small group of Americans ever to do so. On Sunday, April 15, North Korea celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the “Eternal President,” perhaps the North’s biggest celebration ever. Kim ruled North Korea for nearly half a century, far outliving Stalin and Mao, and holding power from Truman through Clinton. More importantly, Kim Il Sung embodied North Korea, a country and people he molded in his image. His legacy is now carried on by the young Kim Jong Un, who, North Koreans are constantly reminded, resembles his grandfather.

*  *  *

I was senior staff in a delegation organized by a Washington, DC-based NGO, the Summit Council for World Peace, an association of former heads of state and government, that arrived in Pyongyang at the time of Kim Il Sung’s 82nd birthday. The group was chaired by a former president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Carazo, and included a former Governor General of Canada, former Egyptian prime minister, former chief of staff of the French armed forces, a U.S. think tank executive, and CNN’s chief news executive, among others. TV crews also came from CNN and Japan’s NHK. The Council had a prior record of successfully arranging meetings with Kim Il Sung, and Carazo himself had met Kim several times in the past.

Mid-morning on April 16, 1994 – the day after Kim’s birthday – our international delegation was brought in a fleet of black Mercedes to the Kumsusan Assembly Hall in Pyongyang, Kim Il Sung’s official residence. Our minders kept repeating how lucky we were for this opportunity. Inside, we lined up single file and were introduced individually to the waiting Kim Il Sung by a vice chairman of the Korea Asia Pacific Peace Committee. By Kim’s side was his superb English translator, and party secretary Kim Yong Sun, then the number three figure in North Korea (who later played an instrumental role in the 2000 inter-Korean summit) and chair of the Peace Committee. Kim Il Sung stood and walked on his own without assistance, but had a military aide nearby just in case. He did not seem to be wearing a hearing aid. His handshake was firm, he did not look overweight and appeared to be in good health, although his voice was rather gravelly (a Korean affairs analyst later told me this was because Kim used to smoke a lot). Very noticeable on the right side of his neck was a baseball-sized growth, which was benign, but because of its location, was said to be inoperable; official photos of Kim always were taken from a leftward angle to hide the growth.

Official Meeting Photo

After our official greetings, we were brought before a huge mural in the main lobby of the palace for our official photos. They were taken in two groups: the former heads of state and government and other senior members of the delegation, and the journalists. As with other visitors to the palace, we later each received a copy of the official photo with the date gold-stamped.

We were then escorted into the palace conference room with a long table that could accommodate two dozen. Each place setting had a pen, writing pad, and microphone, as well as coffee cup and dish of small candies. After we sat down, the window curtains and room lighting were remotely adjusted. Noticeably, neither the translator nor Kim Yong Sun sat too close to President Kim. On the DPRK side of the table were also Kim Yong Sun’s wife, and two other officials from the Asia Pacific Peace Committee.

President Carazo, who founded the United Nations Peace University in Costa Rica, spoke first, thanking Kim for receiving our group, and noting we were a goodwill delegation that had come to the DPRK for the sake of peace in the entire peninsula. President Kim responded that he regretted that we did not come through Panmunjom because we could then better understand the division of Korea (in fact, we had sought permission from the ROK to do so, but the Kim Young Sam administration denied our request; however, we later traveled to the northern end of Panmunjom, as well as a small town by the DMZ that clearly was not a Potemkin village). Kim added that earlier in the year, Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) had come to see him, and had returned to South Korea by way of Panmunjom, becoming the first American to do so since the Korean War.

Kim then began to expound. He said, “We always open our doors widely. Our only secrets have to do with the military. But apart from that, we are ready to open to the outside.” The nuclear issue, which had become quite serious by that time, was not brought up in this meeting, but was left to the journalists. Later that day, Kim Il Sung would personally hand to Josette Sheeran, then managing editor of The Washington Times (now vice chair of the World Economic Forum), a booklet of his written answers to her questions, that included his candid responses about the DPRK nuclear program. The full-length interview, her second with him, was published on April 19th. I do not believe his answers were ghost-written, but were largely dictated by Kim, because the tone had the same unmistakable authority as when I heard him speak.

Kim then proceeded to boast that in North Korea “there are no beggars, no unemployed, no homeless.” He recalled asking Billy Graham if there were beggars, unemployed and homeless in America, to which Graham said “yes.” While this statement seems laughable in the context of the severe food shortages that North Korea would endure from 1996 on, it was not a ludicrous thing to hear about the North in 1994. Flying in on Air Koryo, President Carazo had peered out the cabin window and saw the expanse of freshly planted rice paddies, and said it appeared North Korea could produce enough food to feed itself. Kim Il Sung also told a story about a visiting Hong Kong businessman who had lost his wallet in a Pyongyang hotel with $10,000 in it. His wallet was returned to him within two hours, everything intact.

Kim then turned to what seemed a favorite theme of his: what made the DPRK different from the Soviet Union, China and other communist states. He said, “After 1945, I tried to find intellectuals to rebuild the country, but could only locate a handful. The partisans who fought with me against the Japanese knew how to fight, but not how to build institutions.” The Japanese in their 35-year colonial rule, he said, left no college functioning in the North. “So I had to start my own, which became Kim Il Sung University, and then other schools. Today [1994], there are 1.76 million intellectuals out of a population of 20 million, almost one out of ten citizens.” What still impresses me about his point is how North Koreans value education, are inquisitive, and possess great human capital that can easily be trained to a high-level of professional skill.

Suddenly, Kim Il Sung leaned to the side and asked Secretary Kim Yong Sun for his Korean Workers Party card. I will never forget the look on Kim Yong Sun’s face. He almost turned white, because even though President Kim wanted the card just to make a point, Kim Yong Sun did not know if the request meant something more serious, such as losing his party post. But as he handed the card to his leader, Kim Il Sung held it up and pointed to the large gold-stamped party emblem, consisting of the usual hammer and sickle, but also a calligraphy brush in the middle. “In 1946, I created this emblem for our party. The brush symbolizes our highest commitment to intellectual pursuits in every discipline. Our emblem is unique among communist parties in the world. This is an example of juche, doing things our own way. We did everything in our own way.” President Kim then handed the party card back to its relieved owner.

At this juncture, Bill Taylor, vice president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was meeting the North Korean leader for the second time, told Kim that he had not changed a bit from two years ago, and looked to be in good health. Kim responded, “I always live with optimism.” Eason Jordan, president of CNN International, greeted Kim on behalf of Ted Turner, founder of CNN, and expressed hope for a face-to-face interview, which did not materialize. Taylor praised Kim’s decision to allow in CNN and NHK as a very important step. In fact, CNN’s Mike Chinoy conducted the first live broadcast from Pyongyang during this trip, using state television’s satellite uplink.

The meeting ended and we adjourned across the hall for lunch. We sat at a large round table with white tablecloth, although most journalists sat at a second table. The northern Korean cuisine was extraordinary, including my first time to taste blueberry wine. Conversation became a bit more free-flowing. Kim was asked about the role of his son and successor, Kim Jong Il. He responded, “I am so proud of him. As an elderly man, I cannot read easily, and every day my son dictates reports into a cassette recorder so I can listen to them later on. But he keeps me fully informed. He is truly a filial son.” The North Korean leader also noted he likes to hunt, especially wild boar. One participant asked him if he would like to come to the United States. He responded, “I have yet to visit the United States, but I hope to do so in the future.” Someone suggested he even come to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 1994. Kim smiled. Though he likely feared flying, the State Department could not have prevented him from coming to the UN with other world leaders in attendance because Kim was head of state of a member nation.

According to one Korean affairs specialist, in Kim’s 1994 discussions with Rev. Billy Graham, a large U.S. National Council of Churches delegation, and former president Jimmy Carter, he frequently returned to his youth and engaged in a discussion of religion with curiosity. In a sense, he began to mellow, as older Korean men can be  quite susceptible to this; among older overseas Korean men, there is an urge to return to one’s hometown in Korea. This seemed to me to be true based on my observation of Kim Il Sung that day.

After the banquet, we said our individual farewells to Kim Il Sung. Several participants told him they wanted to return to the DPRK with others so they could see the country for themselves. One even invited Kim to come to the U.S. to enjoy sport fishing. Kim seemed genuinely appreciative of each gesture. As we walked out of the reception room, Kim was left standing with just Kim Yong Sun, his translator and military aide. He seemed to regret seeing us leave. We were outsiders, non-Koreans, from Europe, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Egypt, and elsewhere. He appeared to enjoy nothing better than to tell us his story, one few foreigners in the non-communist world had heard. For Kim Il Sung, it was a rare opportunity, to get courtesy and respect from foreign leaders and let them know his legacy. We did not realize Kim had only weeks to live.

Kim Il Sung would see two more outside visitors in June 1994, Selig Harrison and Jimmy Carter, as the nuclear issue reached a fever pitch and both the Clinton and Kim Young Sam administrations prepared for a possible outbreak of hostilities. Carter’s historic trip as the first former U.S. president to meet Kim Il Sung*, defused the nuclear crisis, averted war and led to the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze the DPRK nuclear program until 2003. Kim also told Carter he agreed to hold the first-ever inter-Korean summit that summer with Kim Young Sam. It was not to be.

Kim Il Sung died suddenly of a heart attack on July 8, 1994. We later learned that Kim knew he was dying and felt an urgency to initiate major policy measures while still alive to effect a strategic change; Kim Jong Il would have been unable to implement major policy change after his father’s death. Kim senior’s meeting with Carter was that pivotal moment, and U.S.-DPRK relations eventually were elevated to where, in October 2000, the top North Korean general, Vice Marshall Jo Myong Rok, greeted Bill Clinton in the White House and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang weeks later. The same pattern appeared to unfold last fall: Kim Jong Il knew he would not live long, and in his final weeks, set into motion policy initiatives, including toward the U.S., to pave the way for Kim Jong Un’s succession.

*  *  *

Kim Il Sung’s official residence became his mausoleum, renamed the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Kim Jong Il, who died in December, soon will join his father there. In February, Kim Jong Un rechristened the mausoleum the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, named for his father, but foremost for his grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

* Excellent sources for this trip include Marion Creekmore, Jr., A Moment of Crisis: Jimmy Carter, the Power of a Peacemaker, and North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions, 2006, and Douglas Brinkley, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey to the Nobel Peace Prize (cf. Chapter 20, “Mission to North Korea”), 1998. Bill Clinton was the only former U.S. president to meet Kim Jong Il, in 2009.

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A Day That Would Change Korea’s Future: The Birth Of Kim Il Sung

On the 101 anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, Brandon K. Gauthier looks back to a day that would go on to change the future of the peninsula

BY BRANDON K. GAUTHIER, APRIL 15, 2013

Kim Il Sung, just six-years old, watched as thousands of protestors screamed: “Long live the independence of Korea!” Caught up in the excitement of the March 1, 1919 rally, the young boy ran barefoot after the group, straw sandals in hand—anxious to keep up. As the throngs reached Potong Gate in western Pyongyang, shots rang out.  Japanese forces charged the protestors with unforgiving bloodshed.  Innocents died.

Seventy years later, the North Korean leader remembered that moment vividly: “…the demonstrators resisted the enemy fearlessly, becoming human weapons…This was the first time I saw one man killing another.”

Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912 outside Pyongyang, barely seven years before those momentous events.

Born to a lineage of low social status, Kim was “a ‘dragon from an ordinary well,’” as his preeminent biographer, Dae-Sook Suh, once noted.  His family was originally from Jeonju in the south—a fact that later saved that city from destruction during the Korean War. After his ancestors moved north in the 1800s, his great-grandfather, an impoverished farmer, found work as a grave-keeper in Mangyongdae, a hamlet outside Pyongyang.

There, Kim’s grandparents would work as agricultural laborers—“old country people who knew nothing but farming.” His father, Kim Hyong Jik, later improved upon that marginal social status, working as a schoolteacher and then as a doctor of herbal medicine.

After Kim Il Sung’s birth, his family “eked out a scanty living.” They often survived off uncleaned sorghum gruel—barely edible, as the North Korean leader remembered it.  Meat and fruit were almost nonexistent.  Moreover, the family bristled at their inability to afford such mundane luxuries as a clock.

Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910 added insult to the injury of poverty.

The Japanese occupation permeated every element of Korean life. Foreign policemen roamed the streets; the Korean language was forbidden in schools.  Authorities meted out brutal floggings and prison terms to anyone resisting imperial rule.

“Korea in those days was a living hell…the waves of modern history that spelled the ruin of Korea swept mercilessly into our house,” the North Korean leader recalled bitterly.

According to Kim, his father resisted the Japanese occupation through helping organize the “Korea National Association.”  Those efforts, he contends, led Japanese authorities to imprison his father in the fall of 1917.  While little evidence exists to substantiate those claims, Kim’s memory of visiting his father in jail reverberates with emotion:

The visitors’ room was dim, screened from the sunshine.  The air in the room was thick and oppressive…my father was smiling as usual.  He was delighted to see me…The gaunt face of my father who wore prison clothes defied instant recognition…The sound of his voice brought tears to my eyes…His indomitable image that day left a lasting impression on me.

After leaving prison, Kim claims his father traveled to Manchuria, continuing in his efforts against the Japanese occupation. He returned with enchanting tales of Lenin’s new communist government and the Bolsheviks’ struggles in the Russian Civil War.

After watching the March 1st, 1919 movement unfold, Kim’s family moved to the Korean border with China and then into Manchuria. Finding their way to the town of Badaogou, Kim went to school, learning Chinese—a skill that aided him invaluably in the future—while his father worked as a doctor.

In China, the family found solace in Christianity, regularly attending church. The future North Korean leader sang religious hymns and even learned to play the organ in the process. Despite these facts—which Kim admits in his memoirs—he claims his parents were always atheists in disguise.  “Mother, do you go to church because you believe in God?” he once asked.  “What is the use of going to ‘Heaven’ after death?” she responded. “Frankly, I go to church to relax.”  Kim’s father, he also claims, went to church only to encourage resistance against Japan.

In early 1923, Kim’s father announced that his son would return to Korea for secondary school.  Despite earnest protests from his mother, Kim, not yet eleven years old, embarked on that 250-mile journey alone at his father’s wishes.  After enduring onerous struggles and numerous acts of kindness, he arrived at his grandparent’s house in Mangyongdae with instructions from his father that stayed with him: “share the fate of the people in your hometown and experience how miserable they are; then you will see what you should do.”

While the veracity of Kim Il Sung’s autobiography remains much debated, one point is beyond dispute: raw resentment with Japanese colonialism defined his formative years, forever affecting his path in life.

For more information:

• Kim Il Sung. With the Century: Reminiscences, 1. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1994.
• Lankov, Andrei. From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960. London: Hurst, 2002.
• Lee, Ki-baik, A New History of Korea. Translated by Edward W. Wagner and Edward J. Shultz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
• Suh, Dae-sook. Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Picture Credit: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang

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Book Review: Bruce Cumings’ North Korea: Another Country

BY SOPHIA SOLIVIO

Bruce Cumings is the Chairperson of the History Department and Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College at the University of Chicago. In 1975, he received his PhD from Columbia University. Cumings’ professional and academic credentials make his compilation of complaints primarily in regard to the United States’ foreign and domestic policies and his fundamental admiration for North Korea in North Korea: Another Country (2004) especially grating to read because presumably he has the professional experience and academic training to produce a more informative, engaging book about North Korea for the general reader.

Cumings has written well-received scholarly books on Korean history, especially the Korean War. With North Korea: Another Country, however, he does not intend to write for other academics. Instead, he focuses on a readership with little or no familiarity with the history of North Korea or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Korean peninsula, and United States–Korea relations. By the end of Cumings’ 256-page book, that readership may have learned more about the aforementioned topics, but only tangentially and selectively. Unfortunately, Cumings has written a book sidetracked by his supercilious attitude.

In North Korea: Another Country, Cumings seeks to educate “the reader who wishes to learn about our eternal enemy” and wonders “if Americans can ever transcend their own experience and join a world of profound difference.” To help curious readers, even Americans, willingly enter his “world of profound difference,” the author divides the book into six chapters beginning with the brutality, particularly of the United States, during the Korean War and its continuous influence on North Korea; the history of North Korea’s nuclear program and the apparent intransigence of North Korea–United States negotiations over the former’s denuclearization; Kim Il Sung’s life, his fight for an independent Korea, and the appeal of anti-imperialism to North Koreans and Koreans overall; the history of daily life in the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the DPRK; Kim Jong Il’s life and dynamism as a leader; and the crises in North Korea, including floods, droughts, famine, and the collapse of its energy system, following the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994.

Throughout the six chapters, Cumings basically covers the modern history of north Korea and its relations with the United States to show that, contrary to Western narratives about the DPRK, the country is dynamic rather than static and more rational than not. Cumings’ objective, to increase public awareness of North Korea as a somewhat knowable country and to combat perceptions of North Korea as a hopelessly backward, mysterious country, is very worthwhile and admirable. His execution of that objective maybe well-intentioned, but it is also meandering and overbearing. Often, Cumings seems more interested in using North Korea as a lens through which to contemptuously mention and criticize the United States and whatever or whoever else annoys him; this habit frequently detracts from his attempts to educate others as completely as possible, about North Korea.

For example, early on Cumings notes a 1999 CIA study that according to him, “almost grudgingly acknowledged various achievements of this regime: compassionate care for children in general and war orphans in particular; ‘radical change’ in the position of women; genuinely free housing; free health care, and preventive medicine; and infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable to the most advanced countries until the recent famine.” Rather than clarify whether the CIA study “grudgingly acknowledged various achievements” of the North Korean government in a vacuum, in comparison to other Communist states, or even South Korea, Cumings appears to reference the study mainly to underscore the hypocrisy of the United States, where the government and the press relentlessly pigeonholes North Korea as “our” evil Oriental enemy as, at one point, the CIA documents positive socioeconomic developments in North Korea.

Cumings does not bother to examine, point by point, the trajectory of North Korea’s early achievements in social welfare and gender equality. North Korea’s “compassionate care for children in general and war orphans in particular” led to the creation of Mangyondae Revolutionary School, initially chiefly for the education of the next generation’s political elite, the children whose parents died in the Korean War. In addition, in contrast to South Korea’s post-Korean War policy of “exporting” orphans, resulting in approximately 150,000 adopted ethnic Koreans in more than 20 Western countries, Kim Il Sung encouraged domestic adoption of the country’s war orphans although from 1951–52 at least, an estimated 2,500 North Korean war orphans were adopted in several Eastern European Communist countries, such as Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, as well as Hungary and Mongolia. However, the recent famine also contributed to the creation of 200,000 orphans, many becoming ‘kotchebis’ or “ wandering swallows,” street urchins living off black markets in North Korea and/or relying on crossing into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in order to scavenge for food.

Also, while North Korea for instance, on July 30, 1946 announced the enactment of the “Status on Gender Equality” with Clause I stating, “In all areas of the country’s economic, cultural and social political life, women have the same rights as men,” in terms of political power, as of 2001, women represented about 20% of the Supreme People’s Assembly, all in symbolic posts. In 1990, there were only 14 women members of 328 members in the policy-making Central Committee and the Alternative Members of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party. In addition, in the mid-1980s, North Korean defectors claimed about 60–70% of women quit their jobs after marriage.

Yet at the same time, North Korean women may have earned or earn more than 70% of the male income level. Notably, in 2010, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported South Korean women earned 38% less than the male income level and South Korea had the largest income gender gap in the developed world. Similarly, a Beijing Broadcast Agency report on March 6, 1988 announced a gradual increase in the number of highly educated women professionals in North Korea from the 1970s-80s. In 1963, 43,000 of about 294,000 specialists in North Korea were women. In the 1970s, there were 1,310,000 specialists in North Korea and 463,000 were women with about 220 having doctorate or semi-doctorate degrees. Most recently, in 1989, approximately 37% of the 1,350,000 specialists in North Korea are women. Women in North Korea then, are not brainwashed and incapable zombies for non-North Koreans, particularly Americans, to pity or scorn.

Cumings wants to humanize not only North Korean women, but North Koreans in general. Presumably, as a Westerner fortunate enough to have already entered the previously mentioned “world of profound difference,” he thinks and behaves just as, if not more, empathetically and respectfully toward North Koreans as anyone else. His characterization of his experience at the North Korean Museum of the Revolution, however, perfectly encapsulates the contrast between Cumings’ non-stop moralizing and his condescending tone throughout North Korea: Another Country. Commenting on one exhibit of gifts given to Kim Il Sung by foreign dignitaries, Cumings writes,

“My guide, a young woman whose English was less than fluent, paused in front of a glass-encased chimpanzee, and began to instruct me in a sing-song voice that ‘the Gleat Reader’ had received this taxidermic specimen from one Canaan Banana, vice president of Zimbabwe. I dissolved into hysterics and could not stop laughing as she continued to intone her mantra without dropping a single (mangled) syllable.”

Cumings is considered a “progressive” academic. His ostensible liberalism and unique ability to “transcend” his own experience does not make him a less dogmatic, petty person as demonstrated by his paragraph-long mockery of a North Korean woman’s English accent—obviously not up to his standards. Finally, Cumings presents himself as a person and a historian of Korean history (unable or unwilling to speak Korean fluently) who considers Korea and the United States equals culturally and socially, and in an ideal world, politically as well. Following the “cultural exchange” Cumings describes at the Museum of the Revolution, though, who had the privilege of publicly ridiculing and contributing to negative public perceptions of the “Other?” The young, female North Korean tour guide? Or Cumings, an older white guy with a comfortable job at a prestigious American university? …

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KCNA on the Korean War

Pyongyang, March 29 (KCNA) — The Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953) ended in a victory of the Korean people.

But, its consequences were very devastating and disastrous.

The U.S. bombing in the war left more than 8 700 factories destroyed and 90 000 hectares of farmland spoiled.

Power stations and reservoirs were severely damaged and towns and rural communities were reduced to ashes.

The U.S. imperialists said that the DPRK would not be able to get to its feet even in one hundred years.

Convinced of the victory in the war, President Kim Il Sung pressed ahead with preparations for post-war rehabilitation and construction in a far-sighted manner.

In early Juche 40 (1951), he gave an instruction to work out a blueprint for rehabilitating the capital city of Pyongyang. He had a Cabinet decision on reconstructing Pyongyang adopted in May 1952.

After the war, in August 1953 he delivered a historic report “Everything for the Postwar Rehabilitation and Development of the National Economy” at the 6th plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

He, in the report, proposed a basic line of postwar economic construction, the keynote of which was to give priority to building heavy industry while developing light industry and agriculture simultaneously.
The President channeled all efforts to liquidating the aftermath of the war.

Soon after the war, he called at the Kangnam Ceramic Factory and the Kangson Steel Plant, appealing to the workers to restart their operation at an earlier date.

When visiting the Hungnam Fertilizer Factory in South Hamgyong Province, which was heavily damaged in the war, he encouraged the workers there to restore the factory in a short time, mindful that the farmers in Hamju Plain were bitterly lamenting over the ruined factory.

He went to Jangjingang Power Station, Joyang-ri, South Hamgyong Province, Sambong-ri, South Phyongan Province, Wonsan College of Agriculture and other industrial establishments, rural communities and educational and cultural institutions to arouse them to rehabilitation.

In response to his appeal, the workers of the Kangson Steel Plant restored the ruined electric furnace by their own efforts and made the plant operational 40 days after the war.

The then Songjin Steel Plant, too, reconstructed the electric furnace to begin production.

Railway workers opened the train service in all branch lines some days after the ceasefire.

Farmers worked hard to rezone the ravaged farmland and repair the irrigation facilities.

Under his energetic leadership, rapid rehabilitation and development were witnessed in the heavy and light industries and agriculture.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang and other local cities began making their appearances again on the ruins.

Thus, the post-war rehabilitation and construction was successfully carried out in Korea under the President’s wise guidance.

North Korea or the United States: Who is a Threat to Global Security?

North Korea lost thirty percent of its population as a result of US led bombings in the 1950s.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Most people in America consider North Korea as an inherently aggressive nation and a threat to global security.

Media disinformation sustains North Korea as a “rogue state”.

The history of the Korean war and its devastating consequences are rarely mentioned. America is portrayed as the victim rather than the aggressor.

North Korea lost thirty percent of its population as a result of US led bombings in the 1950s. 

US military sources confirm that 20 percent of North Korea’s  population was killed off over a three year period of intensive bombings:

“After destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, [General] LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”

It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerence of another.” (See War Veteran Brian Willson. Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, April, 2002)

Official South Korean government sources estimate North Korean civilian deaths at 1,550,000

Long lines of refugees fleeing from Yongdong on 26 July 1950. The day before, hundreds of refugees were massacred by U.S. soldiers and warplanes at bridge at No Gun Ri, eight miles away.

During The Second World War the United Kingdom lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the US lost 0.32%.

During the Korean war, North Korea lost 30 % of its population. In the words of General Curtis Lemay:

There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders. (emphasis added)

Reflect for a few minutes on these figures:  If a foreign power had bombed the US and America had lost thirty percent of its population as result of foreign aggression, Americans across the land would certainly be aware of the threat to their national security emanating from this unnamed foreign power.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the North Koreans, who lost 30 percent of their population as a result of 37 months of relentless US bombings.

From their standpoint, the US is the threat to Global Security.

Their country was destroyed. Town and villages were bombed. General Curtis Lemay acknowledges that “[we] eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.”

There is not a single family in North Korea which has not lost a loved one.

Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war, especially from the continuous bombing, much of it incendiary and napalm, deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country. “Every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, and village” was ordered bombed by General MacArthur in the fall of 1950. It never stopped until the day of the armistice on July 27, 1953. (See War Veteran Brian Willson. Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, April, 2002)

For the people of North Korea, in their inner consciousness as human beings, the aggressor, which inflicted more than two million deaths on a country of  8-9 million (1950s) is the United States of America.

These facts continue to be concealed by the Western media to sustain the “Axis of Evil” legend, which portrays North Korea as a threat and “rogue state”, to be condemned by the “international community”.

Genocide is defined under the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) as the

“the deliberate and systematic destruction of, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”. Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

What is at stake is an act of genocide committed by the US. During the Korean War an entire civilian population was the target of deliberate and relentless bombings, with a view to destroying and killing a national group, which constitutes an act of genocide under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

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Video: North Korean Song – Reunification

Video: A 100 años del Natalicio de Kim Il Sung

Actividad en conmemoración de los 100 años del nacimiento del Camarada Kim Il Sung realizada por el Partido Comunista Chileno (Acción Proletaria) PC(AP) el día viernes 13 de Abril.

Los comunistas chilenos recalcamos la importancia de esta actividad, ya que apoyar a la República Popular Democrática de Corea es parte importante de la lucha anti-imperialista y por la revolución y el Socialismo.

ACTO DE HOMENAJE AL PRIMER CENTENARIO DEL NACIMIENTO DEL CAMARADA KIM IL SUNG

El 13 de Abril en la ciudad de Santiago de Chile, el Comité Regional Metropolitano, por encargo de la dirección del Partido Comunista Chileno (Acción Proletaria) PC(AP), realizó un significativo acto de homenaje a los CIEN AÑOS DEL NACIMIENTO DEL CAMARADA KIM IL SUNG.

En la ocasión junto a los vídeos, intervenciones y a la música revolucionaria de homenaje al camarada Kim IL Sung, se dio lanzamiento a la edición del libro titulado ” A CIEN AÑOS DEL NACIMIENTO DEL CAMARADA KIM IL SUNG”, el contiene un artículo del camarada Eduardo Artés titulado: ” A CIEN AÑOS DE SU NACIMIENTO, EL CAMARADA KIM IL SUNG VIVE EN LAS MENTES Y CORAZONES DE LA CLASE OBRERA Y DE LOS PUEBLOS” y la obra del camarada Kim IL Sung titulada ” ALCANCEMOS LA GRAN UNIDAD DE NUESTRA NACIÓN”, escrita el 1 de agosto de 1991.

Es de destacar el gran entusiasmo de los asistentes, reflejado, entre otras cosas, en el hecho de que compraron varios ejemplares del libro en lanzamiento, de manera de hacerlo llegar rápidamente a otros camaradas y compañeros. El libro en estos momentos se está distribuyendo por medio de los militantes del PC(AP) en todo el país.

Chile, sus trabajadores y pueblos, desde el PC(AP), no nos hemos quedado al margen de los actos de homenaje que en todo el mundo, partiendo por la República Popular Democrática de Corea RPDC, se llevan a cabo en este primer centenario del gran dirigente comunista, del camarada Kim IL Sung.

¡Honor y gloria al camarada Kim IL Sung!

Comisión Nacional de Comunicaciones
Partido Comunista Chileno (Acción Proletaria)
PC(AP)

www.accionproletaria.com

Statistics on Crimes Committed by US Troops in South Korea

Korea International War Crimes Tribunal, June 23, 2001, New York
Report on US Crimes in Korea 1945-2001

Civil Network for a Peaceful Korea

Over 100,000 Cases of Crimes, Over 100,000 Victims

Crimes committed by US soldiers were found as early as when US troops were first stationed in south Korea. According to the south Korean government’s official statistics, 50,082 crimes were committed by US soldiers from 1967 to 1998 (including those by soldiers’ families), and 56,904 US soldiers were involved (including soldiers’ families) in these crimes. The statistics imply that the actual figure may be higher if take into account those cases not handled by the south Korean police. Based on the statistics, the total number of crimes committed by US soldiers since September 8, 1945 (when they were first stationed in Korea) is estimated to be around 100,000. Unfortunately the south Korean government does not have statistics on US soldiers’ crimes committed before 1967, because SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) went into effect in 1967, allowing the south Korean court jurisdiction over crimes committed by US soldiers with narrow and limited application.

So, from 1945 to 1967, the US had full authority in court. south Koreans were even subjected to American rulings (of course, in English language). And during 1945-1948, when the US military government took control over the south Korean government, a judge was an active US soldier, with no jury system although the court followed American court system. Many problems aroused including language barrier, lack of cultural understanding and even prejudice on the part of the judge, unfair practices on the part of interpreters.

Study by Ministry of Justice of south Korea shows that among the 39,452 cases (45,183 US soldiers involved) of crimes committed by US soldiers from 1967 to 1987, south Korea was able to exercise its jurisdiction only in 234 cases, punishing only 351 US soldiers. Among them, 84 US soldiers were convicted of rape and 89 US soldiers were convicted of murder and robbery. Taking into account the fact that rape cases were more common before 1967, and that many rape cases were intentionally hidden and forgotten, the actual number of rape cases committed by US soldiers will be much higher than what official figures suggest.

1980, the year of civilian uprising in Kwangju alone, over 1,679 crimes committed by US soldiers were reported.

Due to the military dictator, Chun Doo Hwan’s martial law at the time, south Korea lost its jurisdiction that year. Not even a single case was handled in south Korean court.

Countless cases of rape were committed by US soldiers, including a woman gang raped by 4 soldiers’ in March 1946, a 14-year-old schoolgirl raped in 1956, a daughter and a mother both raped in 1967, a woman raped by 8 soldiers in the mountains in 1971, a month pregnant teacher raped in 1986 by 5 soldiers in the middle of Team Spirit military exercise, a handicapped schoolgirl sexually harassed in 1996, and a 6-year-old girl sexually harassed in May 1997.

Gregory Henderson, who served at the US embassy in Seoul in the 1950s and 1960s, recalls in his thesis ‘politically dangerous factors in US troops exercising operation & control right in Korea’:

” … Every US soldier from officer down enjoys material indulgence in Korea. Material indulgence includes abundant supply of fresh bodies of young local women.”

Earnst W. Carston, a former chaplain in US military camp in Korea, also harshly criticized US soldiers in his report to the US government in October 1964: “90% of US soldiers in Korea lead immoral sex lives. On being stationed to their posts, a soldier indulges in illegal sex with prostitutes, and when returning to the US, he sells off the woman, her house, and furniture to the new arrival”.

, in its June 10th 1971 edition, quoted a high-ranking military officer as saying “around 2 million foreign soldiers stayed in south Korea since the Korean war, among which 70% were venereal diseases patients as well as drug addicts”.

Robert Oliver, an American adviser to former south Korean President Rhee Seong-man, once said that 2,000 US soldiers out of total 30,000 stationed in Korea were from poor class. Also, Kevin Heldman, an American freelancer writer, wrote on the Internet in September 1997 that US troops in Korea are potential criminals and losers had they stayed in the US society.

Although above comments seem to lay a blame on those less-educated soldiers from poor family background for the crimes, the crime report shows that it is the officers who are very often commit rape and robbery by faking marriages before secretly returning to the US. There is no official statistics on fake marriages, mainly because victims do not want it reported.

Long Over Stay of US Troops and Their Operation & Control Rights over south Korean military

The first 3-year history of US military government control in south Korea was not based on a mutual friendship between peoples of the two countries. Rather it was based on a cozy relationship between the two governments. Such circumstances have not changed much since then. For example, US military that withdrew after 3 years of government control in south Korea came back during the Korean war to ‘take away’ operation & control rights from the south Korean army on July 15th 1950. In October 1953, immediately after the war, the US introduced Korea-US Defense Alliance Treaty, which allowed long-term stay of the US troops in south Korea. This treaty effectively gave the US a virtual full control over the south Korea’s political, military, and economic power.

In the light of such lopsided treaty which practically handed over a nation’s sovereign rights and the eventual political, military and economical subjugation to US mighty power, it becomes easy to see why such US soldiers crimes are committed easily in south Korea.

No other place in the world, does the US soldiers enjoy such immunity over the crimes they perpetuate.

I t is reported that US troops stationed in Okinawa, Japan, called the local prostitutes ‘Yellow Stool’. It is not only humiliating to Japan, but also to Korea as well. Such word is a good indicator of how US soldiers look at the local people.

Even to these days, when they are subjected to south Korean police investigation, US soldiers frequently say “how dare you Koreans treat an American soldier like this’.

Their debased superiority often comes from the years long of propaganda from US and south Korean governments asserting that it is the US, liberated south Korea from the hands of communist north Korea and without them, north Korea will invade the south Korea right away.

Moreover, the unique military arrangement in which the visiting force, the US controls the operational command over the south Korean military and it’s own general serving as a Joint Chief of Staff of the combined army, only exacerbates the unfair situation.

Although many of the past US Secretaries of Defense have repeatedly stated that it is US’s own interest to have the soldiers stationed in south Korea, and that US troops will remain in south Korea even after the reunification of Korea, many US soldiers still believe that they are in south Korea to fight the cold war.

On sex slavery issue, a Dutch military court in 1946 convicted those who were responsible for rape against minority women. Also in 1995, when three US soldiers gang raped a schoolgirl in Okinawa, Japan, local residents demanded and received an official apology from US President Bill Clinton, US ambassador to Japan, and US military chief. All these are unimaginable in south Korea.

Such stark difference between situations in south Korea, Japan and the Netherlands illustrates international power structure among the nations.

Statistics from south Korean government shows visible drop in the number of crimes committed by US soldiers, from 1967 to 1991, 1,100 – 2,300 crimes were committed per year and from 1992, the number dropped to 700-800 cases per year.

Such improvement was possible because of high-profile murder case of Yoon Kum-i by US soldier Kenneth Markle in October 1992. The cold blooded torture/murder case brought public conscience to the “crimes committed by US troops”. The Movement to Eradicate Crimes Committed by US Soldiers was formed as a result.

However, the south Korean government still exercises very limited jurisdiction over such crimes.

In 1998, Korea handled only 3.9% of all crimes committed by US soldiers.(and 24.6% of crimes by soldiers’ families)

Source

Video: May Day in Democratic Korea

PC (AP): Public Notice

Monday, 18 June 2012

On June 17, the Central Committee of Communist Party of Chile (Proletarian Action), PC (AP) has made its plenary meeting, in which have been discussed and decisions taken regarding:

National and international situation; Labour Party Masses and Fronts International Communist Movement.

We would like to know the following agreements and resolutions:

A) It reaffirms the campaign against the two neoliberal blocks consensus and the alliance, and the forthcoming municipal elections, our policy of abstention to them; The demand and struggle for a constituent assembly for a New Constitution with popular movements. Subjects that will increase the propaganda and activism permanent fronts respective masses.

B) They greet advances in the development of the Party’s mass work in the front student union, art and culture and population, noting an increasing influence on important sectors. Measures shall be taken to achieve new and greater achievements in the tasks. In the areas of union work, we welcome the participation and integration of leading activists and trade unionists to work on developing an alternative class and combative, both within and outside the CUT.

C) The need to develop, in the interests of workers, a line that accounts for the tasks related to the effects of the general crisis of capitalism, which allows us to affirm the correctness of the struggle of peoples for national sovereignty against imperialist intervention. The rejection of the aggression of NATO against the Middle Eastern countries, reaffirm our solidarity with the processes of struggle for independence and national sovereignty of countries like Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador in Latin America. Also, we reaffirm our support to countries that support and build socialism as in the cases of Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The International Communist Movement, reaffirmed the need for unity from the principles of Marxism-Leninism, respecting the peculiarities of the processes of struggle in each country, keeping the discussion on secondary situations miscarry the necessary unity of the international communist claiming the materiality of the class struggle.

Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action)
PC (AP)

On the Day of American Independence

Today is the 4th of July, a holiday celebrated all over the nation as the date of American Independence from the British crown. I was considering burning an American flag to protest US foreign policy, imperial aggression, indigenous holocaust, sponsorship of terrorism, slavery and discrimination of minorities, etc., and promptly began wondering if flag-burning on public property is considered to be a fire hazard. Today is a holiday that is spent trying to spread patriotic feelings among our people, and thus in effect to try and goad them into flag-waving, chauvinism, jingoism and xenophobia. Patriotism, the way the imperialists see it, means love for their government and love for their class of oppressors. It means love for the police, the prison complex, the courts, the army and the ruling class dictatorship. It means love for the exploitive system of capitalism and the settler-fascists that have run it from the start.

On this celebrated day of the creation of the American state, it is time to take a look back at our long, star-crossed history, and it is time to present a challenge to ourselves—what has American really been about all this time? As Frederick Douglass famously said about this particular holiday in 1852:

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

He continues,

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

There are those who might say that Douglass’s words no longer ring true because of the Obama presidency, and then there are those who know that a change in the ruler’s skin color does not abolish racism and oppression overnight. In addition, Major General Smedley Butler from the US Marines speaks about what real role the US military has been playing over the years:

“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps… And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect money in. I helped in the raping of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped get Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”

These revelations are by no means new, since they have been given by many anti-imperialist and anti-colonialists since the beginning of the domination of American imperialism, which started after World War II and strengthened itself through the selling-out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War and the collapse of socialist Albania.

To give a more detailed or complete account of American foreign policy, which has always been driven by nothing more and nothing less than the capitalist system’s desire for global hegemony under American leadership, would take many pages and several lifetimes of research into the history of the modern-day Roman Empire. But this 4th of July, and keeping with our challenge to ourselves, a few examples taken from the recent history of the United States alone should serve to give an idea of what this class dictatorship has really been about since the beginnings of its foundation.

A History Lesson

In 1945, the US invades the Korean peninsula and declares a “temporary” partition of Korea. America installs an illegitimate American-friendly regime in the South, backed by a force of 50,000 troops. After 2,617 troop incursions in the Northern Pro-Soviet half, sometimes with as many as a few thousand troops, a war ensues when North Korea finally invades South Korea in response. A three-year war takes place and millions are killed. Thousands of American troops remain in South Korea to this day.

In 1966, a US-backed coup ousted President Sukarno of Indonesia and replaced him with the fascist butcher Suharto. Over a million people were hunted down and killed, including thousands of popular leftist leaders, whose names were given to the military by the American Embassy. Suharto would go on to rule Indonesia with an iron fist for decades. Newly-liberated East Timor was then invaded by Suharto’s Indonesia the day after President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (both butchers of the Vietnam War) gave them permission. By 1989, over one-third of East Timor’s 700,000 people had been killed. Indonesia had US backing, including armaments, throughout its 24-year occupation.

In 1967, a US-backed military coup took place to prevent Greek politician George Papandreou being elected Prime Minister. The colonels declared martial law, implemented torture, beatings, arrests, leaving 8,000 dead in the first month. The coup leaders were fiercely anti-communist and pro-American, working closely with the CIA. The colonels held power until 1974.

In 1970, Marxist reformist Salvador Allende was elected as President of Chile. He nationalized the giant US companies. Soon, the right-wing, backed by the CIA and US foreign policy, engineered a 1973 coup lead by the infamous General Augusto Pinochet. Allende was overthrown and replaced by a fascist military dictatorship that used mass executions and torture. Thousands were murdered and disappeared. Chile became an economic experiment that led to economic growth for the richest while leaving many homeless and greatly decreasing economic equality.

In 1978 in Nicaragua, the popular and progressive Sandinista movement overthrows the US-backed dictator Anastasio Samoza. The US then launches a military occupation in order to prevent “another Cuba.” A program of terrorism and economic sabotage is begun, which leads to the US support of the infamous Contra death squads. The Contras prove to be one of the most brutal fighting forces Latin America has ever seen, infamous for burning down schools, churches and hospitals as well as using mass murder, rape and torture. The Contras massacre whole villages though to be sympathetic to the Sandinistas. Over 60,000 die. President Reagan labels them as “freedom fighters.”

Summation

From these examples alone—Korea, Indonesia, East Timor, Greece, Chile and Nicaragua, which are merely the most prominent of many dozens more ready-made examples including the Vietnam War—we can see that United States foreign policy has never been driven by a devotion to any kind of morality, nor by any kind of longing for freedom or democracy. From the start, the United States has been driven by the necessity to make the world safe for investment by capitalism, to enrich US armaments who contribute generously to Congress members, to prevent the development of any society which becomes an example of an independent alternative to the capitalist model and to extend its political and economic control over as much of the globe as possible.

Everyone alive today remembers the media immediately after the events of 9/11. “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” the newspapers asked. Gee, I don’t know. Perhaps dropping bombs really pisses some “less civilized” people off. This is a simple list of the nations bombed since World War II:

China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo 1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1965-73, Vietnam 1961-73. Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-2002, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia 1999, Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003 (1).

It is worth noting that violence and exploitation are also not limited to outside the US borders, either. Of all western nations, the US has the greatest income inequality. 40% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. The US has the greatest discrepancy in the world between the wealthy and the poor when it comes to health care, and also when it comes to life expectancy.

Finally, the Land of the Free has the highest number of its population in prison than any other state in the world (2). And all this is without mentioning the minute details of the oppressive structure of the class society as it exists for us every day. These sorts of atrocities will continue until this capitalist system is done away with through struggle and revolution in the US.

On the day of American Independence, among all other days, this is a fact for all of us to remember.

Sources

(1) Taken from Australian Options Quarterly No. 31, Summer 2002.

(2) From Scientific American, Dec. 2005

Source

First Speech of Kim Jong Un translated!

DPRK celebrates centennial of Kim Il-Sung’s birth

PYONGYANG, April 15 (Xinhua) — The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is carrying out a great military parade here on Sunday morning to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il Sung.

In a speech delivered at the grand event, DPRK leader Kim Jong Un lauded the historic contributions to the DPRK’s development by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong IL, and offered the highest respect and honor to the two late leaders.

Noting that the country is facing a momentous opportunity, Kim Jong Un called upon the whole nation to stick to the path blazed by his predecessors and strive for new victories.

Tens of thousands of people attended the ceremony at Kim Il Sung Square in central Pyongyang. A march-past of more than 30 phalanxes of military forces is under way amid thunderous cheers and clangorous music.

The ongoing military parade is one of the many activities planned to celebrate the centennial of the birth of Kim Il Sung, who passed away in 1994.

Days ago, Kim Jong Un became first secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), chairman of the WPK Central Military Commission and first chairman of the National Defence Commission.

Source

Kim Jun Un (C), supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), attends a national meeting celebrating the centenary of birth of President Kim Il Sung at the Kim Il Sung Stadium in Pyongyang, capital of DPRK, on April 14, 2012. (Xinhua/Zhang Li)

DPRK holds national meeting celebrating centenary birthday of Kim Il Sung

PYONGYANG, April 14 (Xinhua) — The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a national meeting at Kim Il Sung Stadium here Saturday to celebrate the centenary birthday of the country’s founder Kim Il Sung.

Kim Jong Un, first secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), first chairman of the National Defense Commission of the DPRK, supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) was among those present.

Addressing the meeting, Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) of the DPRK said Kim Il Sung built socialism centered on the popular masses, and put forth fair, aboveboard and reasonable reunification proposals, including the three principles of national reunification, and provided a new program for achieving great national unity.

“Kim Il Jung set forth outstanding ideas, strategies and tactics on global independence and made an undying contribution to the socialist movement,” he said, adding he made a great contribution to accomplishing the cause of independence against imperialism “with his superb diplomatic strategy and energetic external activities.”

Similar meetings took place in all provinces, cities, counties and industrial complexes.

Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912 and died on July 8, 1994.

Source

Kim Jong Un orders mass of promotions in army

PYONGYANG, April 14 (Xinhua) — Kim Jong Un, supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army (KPA), has ordered promotions for 71 senior military officers, official news agency KCNA reported Saturday.

Kim said the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea armed forces had performed great exploits for the party, revolution, country and its people and were now fully demonstrating their strength in the defense of the country and the building of a thriving nation, the report said.

According to the order, which was issued Friday, Pak Sun Hwan has been promoted to Lieut. General, Kim Yong Hwa, Son Kyong Bok and 68 others to Maj. General.

Kim said they would creditably discharge their duties as vanguard fighters of the Songun (military first) revolution in the sacred struggle to accomplish the revolutionary cause of Juche generation after generation, true to the behests of Kim Jong Il.

Juche is a political thesis of Kim Il-sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which says that the Korean masses are the masters of the country’s development.

Kim Jong Un was elected first chairman of the National Defense Commission on Friday. Earlier this week, he was appointed first secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission.

Source

DPRK holds parade to mark founder’s 100th brithday

BEIJING, April 15 (Xinhuanet) — The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has started a military parade to celebrate the 100th birthday of founding leader Kim Il Sung. This parade is the largest since the foundation of DPRK 64 years ago. Now let’s take a look at some live pictures in Pyong-yang.

The parade is organised by DPRK’s 1.1 million-strong military, the Korean People’s Army. The huge parade showcasing Pyongyang’s military hardware was originally scheduled for April 25. It has been brought up 10 days earlier, coinciding with the country’s founder’s birthday.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s new leader underlined the country’s “military first” policy with a budget that allocates a sizable chunk of funding to defence spending. The parade comes two days after a controversial satellite launch, which DPRK insists is for entirely peaceful purposes.

On Friday, 200,000 people rallied to mark the unveiling of huge bronze statues of the two late leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang, the capital. Olive-uniformed soldiers, women in colorful hanbok gowns and men in dark-grey suits packed Kim Il-sung Stadium in Pyongyang, while Pyongyang people seem to be consumed by the festive mood.

Pyongyang is set to host scores of diplomatic and media delegations, invited to a series of celebrations on an “unprecedented” scale to commemorate the reclusive state’s late leaders and rally.

Source

Media on North Korea

This article gathers and sources statements on the recent developments in the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK) or North Korea. As always, a re-posting of these analyses does not imply an absolute endorsement of them.

– Espresso Stalinist

“The US and the west have been virtually proved wrong on all major issue of North Korea and the Kims. [...] It has been terming the regime as Communist and Marxist-Leninist, though Marxism-Leninism has been replaced by Juche ideology and all reference to Communism and Marxism-Leninism have been removed from the constitution as well as the national governance. Yet by claiming the regime to be communist – gives the imperialist powers a sinful pleasure and credibility to put all what is happening in DPRK to the vice called Marxism.”

http://otheraspect.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/kim-jong-il-dies-son-rises/

“It is true that food shortages have plagued the country. But the vilifying Kim obituaries don’t mention why North Koreans are hungry. The answer is sanctions. US foreign policy, like that of the Allied powers in WWI toward Germany, has been to starve its adversary into submission. This isn’t acknowledged, for obvious reasons. First, it would reveal the inhumane lengths to which US foreign policy is prepared to reach to secure its goals. And second, North Korean hunger must be used to discredit public ownership and a central planning as a workable economic model. North Koreans are hungry, the anti-Communist myth goes, because socialism doesn’t work. The truth of the matter is that North Koreans are hungry because Washington has made them so. Not surprisingly, calls by humanitarian groups for the United States to deliver food aid are being brushed aside with a litany of bizarre excuses, the latest being that food aid can’t be delivered because Kim Jong-il’s son, Kim Jong-eun, has succeeded him. Huh? The real reason food aid won’t be delivered is because it would contradict US foreign policy. The United States once considered the death of half a million Iraqi children “worth it”. Its leaders would consider the sanctions-produced demise through starvation of as many North Koreans worth it, as well.”

 – Kim Jong-il’s Death is a Danger for North Korea, not its Neighbors

“THE tyrant has perished, leaving a failing, nuclear-armed nation in the uncertain young hands of his “Great Successor”. His father, since 1994 the “Dear Leader” of one of the world’s most secretive and repressive states (iconic, to the right in the photo above), died on a train at 8.30am on Saturday morning, of a heart attack. North Korea’s 69-year-old supremo had been in poor health: he had heart disease and diabetes, and suffered a stroke in 2008. Nonetheless his demise places sudden and extraordinary pressure on his third son, his designated but untested successor, Kim Jong Un”

 – The Economist, in an article titled Dear Leader, Departed

“Called the ‘Dear Leader’ by his people, Kim Jong-il presided with an iron hand over a country he kept on the edge of starvation and collapse, fostering perhaps the last personality cult in the Communist world even as he banished citizens deemed disloyal to gulags or sent assassins after defectors.

He came to power after the death in 1994 of his father, Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founder. His inheritance was an impoverished country with an uncertain place in a post-cold-war era. He played his one card, his nuclear weapons program, brilliantly, first defying efforts by the administration of George W. Bush to push his country over the brink, then exploiting America’s distraction with the war in Iraq to harvest enough nuclear fuel from his main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon to produce the fuel for six to eight weapons.”

 – The New York Times piece titled, A Ruler Who Turned North Korea Into a Nuclear State by David E. Sanger

“He was one of the most reclusive and widely condemned national leaders of the late 20th and early 21st century, and left his country diplomatically isolated, economically broken and divided from South Korea.

Unsurprisingly for a man who went into mourning for three years after the death in 1994 of his own father, the legendary leader Kim Il-sung, and who in the first 30 years of his political career made no public statements, even to his own people, Kim’s career is riddled with claims, counter-claims, speculation and contradiction.”

 – The Guardian

“Comrade Kim Jong Il was the most faithful, the most indefatigable and the most brilliant student of Korea’s greatest son, Comrade Kim Il Sung. It was he who took the President’s teachings of the Juche idea and the Songun idea and systematised them into a scientific programme for the revolutionary advance of the Korean people towards a great, prosperous and powerful nation.

…Comrade Kim Jong Il was modest and humble. He saw himself as a soldier and disciple of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung and as a servant of the people. He devoted himself day and night, did his best, devoted his all, to the very last moment of his life, to his revolutionary work: to the defence and security of the country, to improving the people’s livelihood, and to the lofty goals and ideals of socialism and communism.”

 – Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist) led by Harpal Barar

“There is little doubt that without Comrade Kim Jong Il leading the continued building of the DPRK as an impregnable fortress, capable of devastating retaliation on any who violate the peace, the DPRK would long since have fallen prey to the criminal aggression and wanton destruction of Anglo-American imperialism, a repeat of the Korean War of such bitter memory, wreaked upon other countries in recent times. This stand has inspired and will continue to inspire the struggling peoples of the world.

We are convinced that the Korean party and its leadership and the entire Korean people will turn their great grief into strength and march forward on the road of building a prosperous socialist country, sovereign and independent, and bring into being their cherished goal of reuniting the Korean nation by its own efforts, without outside interference. We, as they, will draw inspiration in our struggles from the heroic life and work of beloved Comrade Kim Jong Il.”

 – Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist Leninist) that follows the path of Hardial Bains

 

“Following Kim Il Sung’s footsteps Kim Jong Il led the Workers Party of Korea into the 21st century to build a strong and prosperous democratic republic. Kim Jong Il was a leading Marxist thinker who made an important contribution to the modern communist theory as well as an astute statesman who led the Korean people through thick and thin to overcome natural disasters, imperialist blockade and diplomatic isolation.

While ensuring the DPRK’s defence against the threats and provocations of US imperialism and its lackeys Kim Jong Il worked tirelessly to ease tension on the Korean peninsula to pave the way towards the peaceful reunification of Korea.”

 – New Communist Party of Britain

“Comrade Kim Jong Il led the country and the party during some of the most difficult times in the world’s history, combating the inhuman embargo imposed by the US and the resultant economic hardships. Till his end, he stood steadfast defending the principles of Marxism-Leninism and socialism. Carrying forward the legacy of the late Kim Il Sung and his theory of Juche, Kim Jong Il propounded the theory of the Shogun to suit the conditions of the country.”

 – Communist Party of India (Marxist)

Liberal Holocaust: Imperialism and the Democratic Party

This is a good article from a website that is now down. I disagree with several parts, particularly the labeling of North Korea as a “Stalinist dictatorship,” referring to the Soviet Union as an “empire,” saying that Titoite Yugoslavia was a “Leninist revolution” and denying the genocidal actions of the Milošević government. Regardless, this article makes a very important point about the Democratic Party, and exposes their true imperialist warmongering nature.

 – Espresso Stalinist 

Many people involved in US anti-war movement(s) have this naive belief that Democrats are not imperialists, that US imperialist policies, such as those pursued by the Bush administration, are just a recent deviation or limited to Republican administrations. In fact, the Democratic Party has a long and bloody history of imperialism. Democrats are imperialists and mass murderers. Nor is this limited to the more conservative democrats; left-liberals have done the same. Liberal governments have slaughtered millions.

Starting shortly before the end of World War Two, Democrats began recruiting many Nazi war criminals and using them to help expand the American Empire. Hitler’s intelligence chief in East Europe Reinhard Gehlen was used by the US, after the war, to build an intelligence network against the Soviets in East Europe. They also dropped supplies to remnants of Hitler’s armies operating in Eastern Europe, to harass the Soviet bloc. Other Nazi war criminals employed by the US included Klaus Barbie, Otto von Bolschwing and Otto Skorzeny. Some of these Nazis later made their way to Latin America, where they advised and assisted US-backed dictatorships in the area.

Harry Truman kicked up anti-communist hysteria, which lead to McCarthyism (which occurred during his administration) and helped start the Cold War. He supported numerous dictatorships, including Saudi Arabia. US involvement in Vietnam started under Truman with the US providing support for the French invaders and the CIA carrying out covert actions. In 1950 his administration issued the ultra-hawkish NSC 68. The subversion of Italian democracy was done by his administration – fearing electoral victory in 1948 by the Italian Communist party, the CIA funded various leftover Mussolinite Brownshirt thugs and other former Nazi collaborators, successfully manipulating the results to ensure pro-US candidates won. A secret paramilitary army was formed to overthrow the government just in case the Communists managed to win anyway.

In the years after World War Two a rebellion against the British puppet government in Greece broke out. This client state was largely staffed by former Nazi collaborators who the British had put back in power. The UK was unable to defeat the left-wing insurgency (which had previously fought an insurgency against the Nazi occupation during World War Two) and asked the US for help. In 1947 Truman invaded Greece and proceeded to crush the revolutionaries, keeping the former Nazi collaborators in power. Truman attempted to justify this by portraying the guerillas as mere pawns of Moscow and therefore a form of covert aggression, but he had no real proof of this. The claim is also based on a double standard: when the USSR (allegedly) covertly supports revolutionaries in another country it constitutes “aggression” and is wrong, but when the US (or UK) send actual military forces to another country in order to prop up unpopular dictatorships this is somehow perfectly just.

At the end of World War Two Japan withdrew its forces from Korea, resulting in a brief period of self-rule. A provisional government was set up in Seoul, but it had little power. Across Korea, workers took over their factories and peasants took over their land. Self-managed collectives were organized. This did not last long, as the US and USSR quickly partitioned the country into a North and a South, under the occupation of each power. In the south Truman installed a brutal military dictatorship, run mainly by former Japanese collaborators, complete with death squads, torture chambers and suppression of all opposition. The United States and its client state suppressed an insurgency, leveled whole villages and massacred thousands of innocent Koreans. The Soviets followed a similar policy in the north, where a Stalinist dictatorship was imposed. Forces from each empire repeatedly clashed until war broke out in 1950. Truman & his propagandists tried to portray the war as an attempt to defend South Korea from Soviet/Northern aggression, but the very existence of South & North Korea was the result of aggression by the US & USSR. The Korean War was an inter-imperialist war between rival empires fighting for territory, rather like a turf war between rival mafia dons, in which lots of ordinary people (who had no real stake in the war) were sent to die for their elite.

These policies of mass murder continued in both the subsequent Eisenhower administration and the next democratic administration, Kennedy. Like every other president since World War Two (and many prior to that) he supported numerous puppet dictatorships that slaughtered thousands – Mobutu, the Shah, etc. Kennedy backed a coup against the democratically elected government in the Dominican Republic because it was too independent. And lets not forget the Bay of Pigs and the many terrorist campaigns against Cuba.

Kennedy also escalated US involvement in Vietnam. During Eisenhower’s term the Vietnamese defeated US-backed French invaders and the war with France was brought to an end. The country was partitioned in two, with the Vietnamese nationalists/Communists taking over the north and the French puppet government temporarily ruling the south. Elections were to be held to reunite the two, but the US intervened to prevent this (because the Communists would have won free elections) and put in power a right-wing dictatorship headed by Ngo Dinh Diem which relied on a reign of terror in order to stay in power. In the late ’50s popular rebellions erupted against this dictatorship. By the time Kennedy came to power the survival of Diem’s dictatorship was increasingly precarious and so Kennedy escalated the situation from state terror to outright aggression. The US military, mainly the air force, was sent to crush the resistance. This failed to defeat the resistance, so Johnson fabricated a bogus attack on US destroyers by North Vietnamese forces and used this as an excuse to escalate the war, launching a full-fledged ground invasion of the south and began bombing the north. US forces set up concentration camps (called “strategic hamlets”) and committed numerous atrocities during the war. Even John Kerry testified:

“Several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. … They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. … We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. … We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals. … We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater.”

Kerry has since claimed that Vietnam was an exception to the norm, but the evidence presented in this article shows otherwise. This testimony is corroborated by numerous other primary sources, including many Vietnam veterans. Colin Powell admitted these atrocities occurred and defended them, writing in his memoirs (My American Journey):

“If a helo [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM [military-aged male], the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen, Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong.”

In addition, Powell defends the torching of civilians’ huts in his memoirs. There are also many Vietnam veterans who strongly deny that the United States committed any kind of atrocities or wrongdoing in Vietnam at all, but they are not the first murderers to strongly deny murdering anyone. These are the kinds of atrocities the Democrat’s foreign policy leads to.

Democrats (and Republicans) tried to portray the war as a result of Chinese (or even Soviet) aggression that had to be stopped or else it would cause a “domino effect” leading to “Communist” conquest of the globe. This is shear fantasy.

Vietnam became independent in 1945 and for a brief period of time the whole country was united under the rule of Ho Chi Min and his fellow nationalists and Marxists. Then France invaded, with US support, leading to the creation of “South Vietnam,” which was a foreign puppet from day one. Attacks on it by Vietnamese were no more “aggression” than attacks on the Vichy government by the French resistance. Communists in China didn’t come to power until 1948, whereas Vietnam declared independence in 1945, so portraying the war as “Chinese aggression” is particularly absurd. Eventually, China did provide weapons, money and advisors to Vietnam (as did the USSR), but merely giving supplies to people fighting for independence hardly constitutes “aggression.” If China giving some weapons and supplies to a Vietnamese movement with substantial popular support constitutes “aggression” then what are we to make of the US, which went well beyond sending weapons and sent over 100,000 troops to keep in power a deeply unpopular puppet government? By this kind of logic, the American war for independence constituted French aggression because France gave the rebels support, just as China & Russia gave the Vietnamese support, except France went even further and sent warships to fight the British and help the US win the war. The Vietnam War was a brutal colonial war, started mainly by democrats, against a people struggling for national liberation.

Even if we ignore Vietnam, Johnson was still a murderous warmonger. In 1965 Johnson launched a secret war on Laos, which would eventually drop more bombs on it then were dropped during World War Two, in order to defeat the leftist Pathet Lao. When a popular rebellion erupted against the US-backed dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, LBJ invaded and defeated it, keeping a US puppet government in power. In Brazil LBJ supported and encouraged a fascist coup against the mildly reformist Goulart administration. Johnson also backed a right-wing coup in Indonesia. The previous ruler, Sukarno, committed the crime of trying to stay neutral in the cold war and desiring to build a strong Indonesia independent of foreign powers. So he was removed and general Suharto seized power. The US helped Suharto liquidate dissent and gave him lists of “subversives” to kill. Between 500,000 and a million people were massacred by Suharto in the period following the coup, with the covert help of the Johnson administration. When the Greek ambassador objected to the President’s plan for a resolving a dispute over Cyprus LBJ told him:

“Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good. … We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long.”

In 1965 the Greek king, aided by the CIA, removed Prime Minister George Papandreou (who’s foreign policy was too independent for Washington) from power. In 1967 the Greek government was forced to finally hold elections again, but when it looked like George Papandreou was going to win again a military coup prevented him from coming to power. George Papadopoulos, leader of the coup and head of the new military dictatorship, had been on the CIA payroll for 15 years and was a Nazi collaborator during World War Two.

Carter, the so-called “human rights” president, was also an imperialist warmonger. He continued US support for brutal tyrants in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. Carter supported Pol Pot’s forces after they were thrown out of power due to a war with Vietnam. Under Ford Indonesia invaded East Timor and proceeded to slaughter 200,000 people. Although this invasion occurred under Ford, the worst atrocities happened under Carter’s reign. As atrocities increased, he increased the flow of weapons to the Indonesian government, insuring they wouldn’t run out and could continue massacring Timorese. Carter also backed the massacre in Kwangju by the South Korean military dictatorship. Many of the things which liberals like to blame Reagan for were actually started under Carter. Deregulation began under Carter, as did US support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Six months before the Soviets invaded he also initiated US support for the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists/”freedom fighters” in Afghanistan which would later include Bin Laden.

Bill Clinton was a mass murderer and war criminal, too. He backed numerous dictatorships, continued the proxy war against Marxist guerillas in Columbia and bombed more countries than any other peacetime president, including Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Clinton laid siege to Iraq with sanctions, “no fly zones” and bombings, killing 1.5 to 3 million people. UN-approved sanctions on Iraq were originally imposed at the start of the Gulf War in response to the invasion of Kuwait, but continued after the end of the war at US (and UK) insistence. The United States used sanctions as a weapon against Iraq. One military intelligence document titled Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities noted:

“Iraq depends on importing-specialized equipment-and some chemicals to purify its water supply … With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations sanctions to import these vital commodities. … Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease and to certain pure-water-dependent industries becoming incapacitated, including petrochemicals, fertilizers, petroleum refining, electronics, pharmaceuticals, food processing, textiles, concrete construction, and thermal power plants. Iraq’s overall water treatment capability will suffer a slow decline, rather than a precipitous halt … Unless water treatment supplies are exempted from the UN sanctions for humanitarian reasons, no adequate solution exists for Iraq’s water purification dilemma, since no suitable alternatives … sufficiently meet Iraqi needs. … Unless the water is purified with chlorine epidemics of such diseases as Cholera, Hepatitis, and Typhoid could occur … Iraq could try convincing the United Nations or individual countries to exempt water treatment supplies from sanctions for humanitarian reasons. It probably also is attempting to purchase supplies by using some sympathetic countries as fronts. If such attempts fail, Iraqi alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements. … Some affluent Iraqis could obtain their own minimally adequate supply of good quality water from northern Iraqi sources. If boiled, the water could be safely consumed. Poorer Iraqis and industries requiring large quantities of pure water would not be able to meet their needs. … Alternatives are not adequate for their national requirements.”

This and other documents show that the United States intentionally used sanctions to destroy Iraq’s water supply with full knowledge of the consequences. In addition to water problems, the sanctions also interfered with the importation of basic necessities like food and medicine. The UN itself, the organization that implemented the sanctions (due to US/UK insistence), reported that they resulted in mass death. UNICEF found that on average 5,000 children died every month as a result of sanctions. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported in 1995 that 567,000 children in Iraq had died as a result of the sanctions. Those sanctions continued until the invasion in 2003, killing even more. This began under the first Bush administration, but most of it occurred under Clinton’s administration.

In 1996, faced with mounting humanitarian concerns that threatened to end the sanctions, an “oil for food” program was implemented. Officially, this was supposed to allow Iraq to import a limited amount of food and supplies in exchange for limited amounts of oil but in practice it did little to alleviate the suffering of Iraqis caused by the sanctions. Everything imported by Iraq had to be approved by a UN sanctions committee that, due to US/UK influence, frequently stopped or delayed importation of needed supplies. All money Iraq made from the sale of oil was kept by the UN in an escrow account with the bank of Paris and was not at the discretion of the Iraqi government. Some of this was used to pay for administrative costs related to the sanctions and about a third were used to pay reparations to Kuwait, the remainder was inadequate for Iraq’s needs. In 1998 Dennis Halliday, the first head of the UN’s “oil for food” program resigned because the sanctions continued to result in a humanitarian catastrophe. In 2000 Hans Von Sponeck, the new head of the “oil for food” program, resigned for the same reason. On the May 12, 1996 edition of “60 minutes” journalist Lesly Stahl asked Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state,

“We have heard that a half million children have died [from sanctions on Iraq]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s response was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Clinton attacked and dismembered Yugoslavia, using a “divide and conquer” strategy to install US/NATO puppet governments ruling over its corpse. During and after World War Two Yugoslavia underwent its own Leninist revolution, independent of Soviet tanks, and eventually evolved a market socialist economy based on a limited form of worker self-management. Most of the economy was run by enterprises that were officially worker owned, with elected managers, and sold their products on the market. Yugoslavia was a federation of different nationalities in southeastern Europe, with six different republics united under a federal government.

As the Soviet empire declined and fell western financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank began pressuring Yugoslavia to implement neoliberal capitalist reforms such as privatization, austerity measures and so on.

Yugoslavia implemented these on a limited basis. These programs lead to a declining economy that opened the door for opportunistic politicians to whip up nationalism for their own benefit, scapegoating other nationalities for economic problems. They also stressed relations between the federal government and the republics because money that would have gone to the republics instead went to servicing Yugoslavia’s debt. The United States and Western Europe took advantage of this to encourage the breakup of Yugoslavia into NATO protectorates.

In 1990 separatists won elections in Slovenia, Bosnia and Croatia. The new Croatian government began to persecute the Serb minority living in Croatia, even bringing back the flag and other symbols from when it had been a World War Two Axis puppet government (run by a fascist organization called the Ustase) that attempted to exterminate the Serbs (who were regarded as “subhuman”). Croatian President Franjo Trudjman refused to condemn the Ustase and claimed, “the establishment of Hitler’s new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the Jews.” Croatia and Slovenia declared independence in 1991. West Europe and then the US recognized Slovenia and Croatia as independent states despite warnings from the UN that this would encourage Bosnia to declare independence and bring about a civil war, which it did.

The Yugoslav federal government fought a small ten-day war with Slovenia, after which Slovenia was allowed to leave Yugoslavia. Croatia and Bosnia fought bloody civil wars with the Yugoslav government. In Bosnia the main forces fighting against the federal government were Croat fascists, supported by Croatia, and Islamic fundamentalists, led by Alija Izetbegovic, who aimed to turn Bosnia into a theocracy similar to Iran or the Taliban. Most of Bosnia’s Serb minority sided with the Yugoslav federal government. The US covertly backed the Islamists and fascists by secretly supplying them with weapons and even flying in Muslim ‘holy warriors’ from Afghanistan so they could join the Jihad. Initially the Islamists and fascists in Bosnia worked together against the Serbs and Yugoslav government. Later they started fighting each other, but US & West European pressure eventually put a stop to that. When the Yugoslav government started winning the war NATO sent in the air force to bomb them and support the separatists. Many atrocities were committed on both sides of the war, but Western governments and media emphasized and exaggerated Yugoslav and Serb atrocities while downplaying or ignoring atrocities committed by the separatists.

In 1995 the war came to an end, in a defeat for Yugoslavia. Under a UN fig leaf, NATO “peacekeeper” troops occupied much of the former Yugoslavia while Bosnia was made into a de-facto NATO colony, occupied by NATO troops and with a “high representative” responsible to foreign powers in charge of the country. Yugoslavia was dramatically shrunk, with only two out of six Republics, Serbia and Montenegro, remaining in the union (Macedonia had been allowed to peacefully leave the union in the early ’90s but at this time was still largely outside the Western sphere of influence).

The next phase of Clinton’s conquest of Yugoslavia began in the late ’90s when the CIA began covertly supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist organization that has been linked to Osama Bin Laden. The KLA launched a guerilla war in the Kosovo province of Serbia, advocating independence for Kosovo. In 1999, under the guise of “peace negotiations,” the US/NATO issued an ultimatum demanding Yugoslavia allow NATO troops to occupy the entire country. Yugoslavia obviously refused this unreasonable demand and Clinton used this refusal as an excuse to begin a major bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. After several months of bombing pulverized the country a peace deal was reached allowing NATO “peacekeeper” troops to occupy Kosovo (but not the rest of Yugoslavia), effectively turning the province into a NATO protectorate. A year later a revolt led by US-funded groups and politicians overthrew the Yugoslav government, putting pro-US/NATO leaders in charge. The new government abolished Yugoslavia and became a Western puppet. This conquest was completed shortly after Clinton left office, when KLA forces attacked Macedonia. Macedonia saw the writing on the wall and allowed NATO troops to occupy it. Clinton succeeded in not only ripping Yugoslavia apart, but in achieving US/NATO domination over the Balkans and in forcing an economic system favorable to Western investors on the region. A wave of privatization has swept over the former Yugoslavia, transforming it into a corporate capitalist economy colonized by Western capital.

The standard excuse Clinton used to justify the military interventions in Yugoslavia was that it was supposed to stop “ethnic cleansing”/”genocide” allegedly being perpetrated by the Serbs/Yugoslav government. This is obviously bogus because the US helped instigate the conflicts that lead to the various massacres in the war and also because Clinton largely turned a blind eye towards atrocities committed by separatist forces (like the massacres in Gospic and Krajina). It is also not credible because Clinton ignored other genocides (such as Rwanda) and even funded Turkey’s genocide against the Kurds, which occurred at roughly the same time and resulted in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Kurds.

The death toll of the democrats is quite large:

Greek Civil War: 160,000 (Truman)
Korean War: 3 million (Truman)
Assault on Indochina: 5 million (started under Truman, accelerated under Kennedy & LBJ)
Coup in Indonesia: 1 million (LBJ)
East Timor: 100,000 (Carter)
Kwangju Massacre: 2000 (Carter)
Argentine Dirty War: 30,000 (mostly Carter)
Iraq sanctions: 1.5 million (mostly Clinton)
Turkish Kurdistan: 40,000 (mostly Clinton)

That’s at least 10,8022,000 killed by democrats, 9,292,000 if one only counts the liberal governments (Clinton wasn’t really a liberal). For comparison, the Nazi holocaust killed roughly 6,000,000 Jews. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; these are only the most famous incidents over the last couple of decades. If you add up the total from periods preceding this and the less famous incidents the number get much, much higher. If you add in starvation (a direct result of capitalism) it gets even higher.

Democrats could have stopped the congressional authorization for the Iraq war (via filibustering) but instead lots of them defected to the warmongers’ side. They could have stopped many of the nasty things the Republicans are doing by filibuster but choose not to. Many democrats actively supported the war. Most of those who did oppose it offered little opposition, chickening out when the shooting started and either abstained or voted in favor of the pro-war “support our troops” resolution in March. Even Dennis Kucinich, leader of the “anti-war” opposition in the house, abstained from the vote instead of voting against it. It was only after Bush’s war started going sour that vocal criticism began to come from democrats, which is completely opportunistic. Bush’s lies and fabrications about the Niger Uranium had already been exposed prior to the war, but it wasn’t until after the invasion was completed and the democrats needed an issue to attack Bush with that they started whining about it.

The Democratic Party, the party of slavery, has a long history of mass murder and empire building. They are not an alternative to the American Empire. Especially on foreign policy, there is remarkable consistency between republican and democratic administrations. If the Nuremberg standards were applied every President since World War Two, both democrat and republican, would have to be hung. Both parties have the same basic goals; they just disagree on minor details. It would have been much harder for Bush to conquer Iraq (perhaps politically impossible) if Clinton hadn’t been waging war against it for his entire term. The policies implemented by the US government have more to do with the specific circumstances of the time period then with which particular individual happens to occupy the white house. If a democrat is elected he will inherit this Pax Americana and it is unlikely that he would dismantle it (or even be capable of dismantling it). A vote for the democrats is a vote for imperialism and war (as is a vote for the Republicans).

Video in Spanish: El enigma de Corea del Norte (The Enigma of North Korea)

Democratic Korea in solidarity with Occupy movement

Biggest Protest against Capitalism in 300 Odd Yrs

Pyongyang, October 18 (KCNA) — The working masses’ struggle against capitalism was staged all at once across the world on Oct. 15 and 16. This was the biggest organized one ever in history of capitalism spanning more than 300 years.

Taking part in it were millions of people from all walks of life in more than 1 500 cities in 80 odd countries.

This struggle was erupted at Wall Street in Manhattan of New York in the United States, the heart of the capitalist economy and a synonym for monopolistic capital on Sept. 17. Under the slogan of “Occupy Wall Street!” dozens of protestors set up tents outside a stock exchange in New York to go into an action of protest. This turned in a twinkle to a chain movement across the U.S. including Washington, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The Occupy Wall St movement was an eruption of the exploited classes’ pent-up wrath at the exploiters. It was also an expression of the will to remove the stronghold of capitalism as a whole which brings only exploitation, oppression, unemployment and poverty to the popular masses. In San Diego, California, a man in his forties jumped down from a high-rise building to death to protest against the corrupt society where the rich get ever richer and the poor get ever poorer.

Young Americans formed a mainstream of the ranks of demonstrators at first. But they were joined by people from all walks of life who varied in their ages including day laborers, poor and unemployed Americans as well as employees of companies and housewives.

Their actions included marches, sit-in strikes, occupation of bridges and various other forms of protests and non-stop protests at night.

The protesters are now expanding their ranks after setting forth such slogans clearer in nature as “equality, democracy and revolution”.

Ruling quarters in the U.S. are crying in distress that the “class struggle has been launched.” The authorities have arrested and cracked down upon the demonstrators with mobilization of huge armed police to soothe over the class contradiction but failed to check the spread of the struggle.

The U.S. chief executive formally recognized that this is a manifestation of feeling of frustration toward the U.S. society.

The American protestors set October 15 as “day of international movement”, calling on the working people the world over to respond to it.

In response to this call anti-capitalist demos took place all at once in Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Australia, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan, etc. on October 15 and 16.

The protestors contended that the blame for the capitalist economic crisis is on the greedy financial capital and corrupt politicians. They demanded final end to poverty and economic inequality, chanting such slogans as “Reject capitalism!” and “Give us jobs!”

In south Korea more than 400 civic and public organizations and workers’ organizations launched protest, chanting “Occupy Seoul!”

These unprecedented actions of the working masses in capitalist countries are attributable to the extremely acute socio-class contradictions created after the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2007.

Various relief measures taken by the Western countries after the financial crisis eruption were, in essence, for saving the huge monopolistic capitals on the maw of bankruptcy. Those steps deepened concentration of capital only on big monopolistic enterprises while bringing the popular masses’ life to worse phase.

Suffering biggest are working masses laid off due to the wholesale dismissal measure taken by the business side to make up for the loss.

401 000 people were registered as unemployed in the U.S. for first one week in October. The number of the unemployed reached 22 785 000 in EU countries in August.

The unemployment is bound to lead to the increase of the poor.

The number of people under poverty stood at 46.2 million last year, an increase of 2.6 million from the year before. The income of the U.S. families showed nearly 10 % decrease for the past four years. Economists estimate that the living conditions of Americans are the worst in scores of years and the economic slowdown has not stopped yet.

About 80 million people are living under the poverty line in EU countries.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner, voicing his support for the protest sweeping the capitalist world, clarified that the society is covering the losses caused by the avarice of financial capitalists while a few bankers are raking in the profits.

Source

“New Albania: A Small Nation, A Great Contribution!” Part IV: International Relations and the Foreign Policy of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania

Albania is the only socialist country in the world today, and as such its foreign policy is different from the foreign policy of any other country. It follows an open, independent policy, guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. This means that Albania constantly guards and maintains its independence and defends the interests of the socialist homeland. This also means that Albania supports the revolutionary struggles of the working class and people throughout the world, for national liberation and socialism working always to assist these struggles and to increase the fighting unity of the people against their common enemies.

In taking this stand, Albania opposes the threats and interference of the two imperialist blocs, headed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In contrast to the two superpowers, who dictate and dominate over the world’s people and whose rivalry for power is threatening all humanity with a new world war, Albania maintains a policy of peaceful coexistence with countries of different social systems. It develops foreign trade, cultural and scientific exchanges based on equality and mutual interest, and respect for freedom and national independence. It has always worked to strengthen sincere relations of friendship and collaboration with all the freedom-loving and peace-loving peoples, with all those who fight against the aggressive and hegemonic policy of imperialism.

Self-Reliance Paves the Way For Foreign Trade

On the basis of forty years of socialist construction, Albania has been able to build a strong and diversified economy. As a result it has increased its foreign trade, adding new products to its exports and achieving a balance of imports and exports. At present Albania has trade relations with over 50 countries and hundreds of firms. Its exports include fuels, electric power, chromium, ferrochrome, basic nickel carbonate, tobacco, fresh and canned vegetables, agricultural and artisans’ goods and other products. Machinery and some kinds of raw and primary materials for the expansion of production make up the overwhelming portion of imports. During this Five-Year Plan (the seventh), Albania is working to keep the growth of exports higher than imports. It gives priority to exports so as to ensure that the export-import balance results in the increase of their reserves for foreign currency.

In addition to foreign trade, Albania has cultural and scientific exchanges with many countries. It has always highly valued the friendship of peoples throughout the world, and their contributions to culture, science and the progress of humanity. lt has worked to extend its friendly relations on every continent. The reports of trips to and from Albania in the magazine, “New Albania”, give a vivid picture of the growing ties and friendship of Albania with the people of the world. Diplomatic relations have grown from year to year and in 1981 numbered 95 stetes and commercial and cultural relations exist with many more. These include countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as in Europe.

How Does Albania Conduct Trade Relations While Remaining Free From The Domination and Dictate of the Superpowers?

One of the problems which confront the developing countries of the world is interference and control over their economies by one or the other superpower. The newspapers have been filled with the serious difficulties faced by the Latin American countries as they suffer under tremendous debt to the U.S. and particularly the U.S.-controlled International Monetary Fund. Using these debts as a club, the U.S. is demanding even greater sacrifice by the peoples of these countries and further increasing its control over these countries.

How is it that a small country like Albania is free from such domination? The answer lies in the socialist policies of Albania, beginning with the victory of the people’s revolution and continuing today. Albania has never accepted any inequality, discrimination, exploitation and political or economic submission it rejects all imperialist attempts to gain a foothold in Albania under the guise of trade.

Speaking at the Paris Peace Conference, 1946

Albania has been able to do this by implementing from the beginning the Marxist-Leninist principle of establishing state monopoly on foreign trade. This means that the state, which is controlled by the working class, concentrates in its hands all foreign trade activity. Albania’s economy is protected from indiscriminate flow of foreign goods and from the economic crisis of the capitalist countries. Thus, imports and exports are included in the economic plan. Albania trades its surplus of mineral products and energy in order to obtain products and technology it needs to sustain its industrial growth and meet the material needs of the people.

Visiting China

Since liberation, Albania has never allowed the resources of the country to be given away to foreign companies. As its Constitution states, “…In the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, the granting of concessions to, and the creation of foreign economic and financial companies and other institutions or ones formed jointly with bourgeois and revisionist capitalist monopolies and states, as well as obtaining credits from them, are prohibited.” Albania is completely free of foreign debt and the entanglement and domination by the superpowers and other capitalist states which these debts create.

Thus Albania is living proof that even a small country and one which started out very backward economically can achieve socialist construction and maintain complete independence from the big imperialist powers, by relying on its own resources and uniting all its people in a valiant struggle.

Albania and the Struggle Against Revisionism

During World War II and after, Albania allied with the Soviet Union, then a socialist country. Under the leadership of Stalin, the Soviet Union provided assistance and fraternal aid to Albania. Based on a united struggle for building socialism and supporting the revolutionary struggles around the world, Albania and the Soviet Union had Lies of mutual benefit and cooperation.

But with the death of Stalin and rise of revisionism in the Soviet Union, a struggle broke out — not only between these two countries but between all the true fighters for socialism in the world and the traitors of the Soviet Union, who destroyed socialism and re-established capitalism. This was a just and vital struggle in the interests of the people, and the Albanians, led by their Marxist-Leninist Party, the Party of Labor of Albania, played a leading role in exposing the Soviet revisionists. They put forward for all to see that the path the Soviets had taken was against the interests of the people and would cause the Soviet Union to become an aggressive, imperialist power. Reality today proves the Albanians right.

E. Hoxha being welcomed at Moscow airport by Soviet Minister V. Molotov, 1947

After World War II, the Albanians also had relations with Yugoslavia and China. In both of these cases, a similar struggle unfolded. The Yugoslav government and party tried to make Albania an appendage of the Yugoslav economy and to hamper the socialist industrialization of Albania. They tried to isolate Albania and exploit the country through unequal exchanges and hostile interference. And here too, an ideological struggle developed, with the Albanians once again exposing that the policies and stands of the Yugoslavs reflected not socialist ideals, not Marxism-Leninism, but capitalism and service to the rich.

Albania and Yugoslavia were allies in the anti-fascist war before the Titoite deviation into the capitalist camp.

The situation with China developed at a later date. Again there was a fierce ideological struggle, with the Albanian people fighting to defend the interests of the working class and people, and the Chinese taking a stand in support of U.S. imperialism. The Chinese, like the Yugoslavs and Soviets, promoted revisionist lines and policies which harmed the struggles of the people and caused great confusion.

Stamp made to celebrate the warm relations between E. Hoxha's Albania and Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam

In each case, the revisionists attempted to sabotage the economy of Albania, unilaterally canceling contracts and agreements. They tried to fool the Albanians into accepting their dictate and when this didn’t work they resorted to other means of attack leaving projects unfinished, providing false reports on mineral deposits and so on. In the face of this, the great strength and determination Albania has shown to oppose all forms of revisionist and imperialist attack and to continue on the socialist road is a great inspiration to all people interested in freedom and progress.

With General Secretary of the CP-Peru (M-L) Saturino Paredes Macedo

The struggle waged by the Albanians under the leadership of the PLA, has been discussed and analysed in recent works by Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the PLA. In these books – The Khrushchevites, The Titoites, Reflections on China (on the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and China respectively), and Imperialism and the Revolution, Hoxha provides great detail and insight, while making important contributions to the understanding and analyses of imperialism and revisionism on a world scale. These books, as well as  the consistent and open policy which Albania pursues today readily show why the imperialists slander Albania. They attack Albania because it refuses to accept revisionism and the path of betrayal of the people, and because it remains independent of the dictate and domination of the imperialists. In fact, it is a great danger to the imperialists and social-imperialists and thus they do everything to silence its voice and confuse people about Albania. But day after day, Albania shows the world that it is the imperialist powers who are becoming more and more isolated, as the peoples increase their struggle against the superpowers and all their local tools of reaction.

The Foreign Policy of Albania: Based on a Marxist-Leninist Analysis of the World

In order to have a consistent internationalist stand which both safeguards the revolution in Albania and supports the struggles of the world’s peoples, the Albanians make a careful objective analysis of the international situation. They explain that imperialism is the source of all aggression and predatory wars, the source of the suffering of the world’s people. U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism are competing and maneuvering to carry out various aggressions and occupy other countries. These two superpowers, along with other imperialist and capitalist powers (European countries, Japan, China, etc.), are trying to outdo each other in gaining economic, political and military superiority and in capturing new strategic positions. This is what leads to dangerous tensions and threatens the peoples with a new world war. The superpowers make secret deals and interfere in and attack various countries and nations in order to gain markets, raw materials and other advantages.

With Gensek of CP France, W.M. Thorez, 1959

The Albanians show that imperialist war, oppression and exploitation have run into great resistance from the working class and peoples of the world. They bring out that the struggles of workers and other oppressed peoples is a cause for great optimism.

While analysing that the imperialist superpowers and their NATO and Warsaw Pact allies are powerful and ferocious, the Albanians also expose that they are in decay, suffering from all round crisis. They explain that for the world’s people to escape once and for all from the suffering they experience under capitalism, under the neo-colonialist yoke of foreign imperialists and domination by local reactionary rulers, there is only one path. This is the path of socialist revolution, to overthrow imperialism and all reactionaries. This struggle is an objective historical process that no force can stop.

Albania Supports The International Working Class and Oppressed Peoples

Albania strengthens its support for the working class world-wide while safeguarding and defending socialism at home. In every available international forum, Albania presents a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the world, which recognizes that the working class in every country is the leading force of the revolution. And as their own experience confirms, the victory of the revolution depends on the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party of the working class on the ability of this party to unite the people in struggle against their enemies and to organize the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. For this reason, the PLA pays great attention to strengthening and increasing its unity with Marxist- Leninist parties worldwide, and on developing the unity and strength of the international communist movement. Its consistent struggle against revisionism has been a very valuable contribution to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement world-wide. The great accomplishments of Albania in socialist construction and its firm stand against imperialism and revisionism has made it the leading ideological and political force in the international Marxist-Leninist movement.

Speaking at a rally of the people, 1967.

Consistent with assisting the unity and struggle of the working class world-wide is Albania’s support for the struggle of all people for democracy, independence and socialism. The Albanians support each step in the struggles for freedom, independence and social progress won by other peoples, such as those of the Iranians in overthrowing the U.S.-backed Shah and the Nicaraguans in overthrowing the U.S.-backed Somoza. These triumphs help them and the other peoples of the world by weakening the common enemy.

With Gensec of Romanian Worker's Party, G.Georgiu Dej, 1956.

In the international arena, the Albanians work to expose the superpowers and their allies and to put forward an internationalist stand in support of the just struggles of the people for national and social liberation. For example, the consistent exposure of the phony character of the disarmament talks by the superpowers is one effort the Albanians have made to prevent the world’s people from being fooled.

E. Hoxha meeting with Kim Il-sung

The fact that Albania vigorously opposes, ideologically and politically, the stands of other countries does not prevent them from having friendly relations. Yugoslavia, for example, has taken hostile actions toward Albania and has attempted to destroy its socialist homeland. Despite the ideological differences with the Yugoslav revisionists, and their continuing plots against Albania, the Albanians aim to carry on normal diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia . At the same time, they have repeatedly warned the Yugoslav government against continuing its brutal, chauvinist policy toward the almost two million Albanians in Kosova and other parts of Yugoslavia. These people were separated from Albania during the imperialist dismemberment of the country before World War II. The Kosovars have demanded their own republic within the Yugoslav Federation, the right to develop their own national art and culture, to become acquainted with their own history and so on. The Kosovars have refused to reconcile themselves to an inferior status among the peoples of Yugoslavia, where their political, economic and national rights have been denied. Albania has never interfered in the internal affairs of Yugoslavia, but it has defended and will continue to defend the rights of the Kosovars in Yugoslavia.

With Stalin, 1947

Albania works not only for good relations with Yugoslavia, but with all the Balkan countries (Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania) and with European states in general. It aims to create a friendly atmosphere and to relax tensions. It seeks to resolve disputes by protracted negotiations rather than by threats and violence. It has called on these countries (as well as those in the rest of the world) not to ally themselves with the superpowers, saying that there is no safety under their aggressive “nuclear umbrellas”. It has also called on its neighbors to refuse to allow superpower military bases on their soil or to permit the superpowers to use their ports for refueling or rest stops.

Albania has formal diplomatic relations with China, but since 1978 when the Chinese social-imperialists lined up against the PLA and the Albanian people, there have been no other contacts. In 1978 the Chinese violated official agreements between the two countries, revealed information harmful to Albania’s security and sabotaged projects underway.

At a meeting of working in a Leningrad factory.

As for the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the Albanians consider them the most savage enemies of the freedom and independence of the peoples and of peace and security in the world. They do not and will not have relations with these enemies of the people and will resolutely continue their exposure of these powers’ aggressive and hegemony-seeking policy and activity. Albania also refuses to have diplomatic relations with South Africa and Israel.

The foreign policy of Albania is an open, correct and principled policy, which defends the victories of socialism and supports the progressive struggles of people in the world. Providing a clear example of what is possible when a people rely on their own efforts, and unite under the leadership of a true Marxist-Leninist party, the Albanian people and state have won the respect and sympathy of millions of people all over the world.

Conclusion

In spite of the conspiracy of silence in all the U.S. bourgeois media the achievements of socialist Albania cannot and should not be hidden from democratic and progressive Americans. This pamphlet has been produced to help break this silence and to tell the inspiring story of this small country and its forty years of brilliant achievements since liberation and the triumph of the people’s revolution.

Alternating with the capitalist media’s usual silence have been lies and falsifications about Albania. But progressive organizations world-wide and many eyewitnesses to Albania’s socialist construction insist an spreading the true facts about the new socialist life being developed.

Facts show the Albanians are blazing a historic trail. Socialist Albania, the first country in the world to abolish taxes, the only country without such capitalist evils as inflation and unemployment, is a country that anyone eager to learn how these “miracles” have been accomplished should investigate. Starting as the country which was the most backward in Europe before World War II, Albania has become completely self-sufficient in feeding its people and constantly provides a better material and cultural life for its people.

Albania has accomplished all of this despite constant attacks and pressures by the imperialist powers. In particular, the United States government has been responsible for ongoing attacks against Albania, in collaboration with Britain, Yugoslavia and other European countries. These provocations continue today.

Albania deserves the support of all democratic and progressive people. It provides a shining example of how the working class and people can completely change their lives for the better. Using the experience of centuries of struggle against foreign occupation, the Albanian people rose and developed their Communist Party, the strong leadership capable of meeting the historic challenge before them. This Party, now the Party of Labor of Albania, led the people in defending their rights and waging a war of national and social liberation. Today after forty years of triumphant socialist construction the people, firmly united around the Party, are actively participating in the running and organizing of the state and economy, defending their homeland and joining with the people of the world to fight for peace, democracy and social progress.

Socialist Albania shows the reality that can be achieved when the working class and people take history into their hands and determine their own destiny.

Kim Jong-il’s Death is a Danger for North Korea, not its Neighbors

By Stephen Gowans

There are a few facts to keep in mind to understand what’s going on in the wake of the death this week of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

#1. US foreign policy vis-a-vis North Korea has always sought to force the latter’s collapse to pave the way for its absorption into the US-dominated South [1] — and did so well before Pyongyang began to work on nuclear weapons. US hostility toward North Korea has never been about nuclear weapons. On the contrary, North Korea’s nuclear weapons are a consequence of US hostility. US hostility, now in its seventh decade, is about what it has always been about: putting an end to what Washington mistakenly calls North Korea’s Marxist-Leninist system (Marxism-Leninism has been replaced by Juche ideology—a home-grown doctrine of self-reliance), its non-market system, and its self-directed economic development [2]. None of these offer much latitude for US profit-making at North Korea’s expense, and hence are singled out for demolition.

#2. North Korea only began to seek nuclear weapons after the United States announced in 1993 that it was retargeting some of its strategic nuclear missiles from the former Soviet Union to North Korea. Since then the country has only been able to develop its nuclear capability to a kindergarten level. [3] The plutonium devices it tested in 2006 and 2009 produced only one-tenth the power of the Hiroshima blast. There is no evidence it has miniaturized a warhead to fit atop a missile. And its missile program is plagued by problems. [4]

#3. North Korea is a military pipsqueak, whose personnel are deployed in large numbers to agriculture. The military budgets and weapons’ sophistication of its adversaries, the United States, South Korea and Japan, tower over its own. If the Pentagon’s budget is represented by the 6’ 9” basketball player Magic Johnson, North Korea’s military budget is 1”, about the height of a small mouse. South Korea’s is 4.5” and Japan’s 3.9”, multiple times larger than the North’s. [5]

#4. North Korea has no more military heft to mount a provocation against the United States than a mouse has to beat Magic Johnson on the basketball court. Nor has it the capability to wage a civil war against its southern compatriots and expect to win. North Korea is not an aggressive threat. “In the Obama analysis,” writes New York Times reporter David Sanger, “the North is receding into what the president’s top strategists have repeatedly called a ‘defensive crouch,’ trying to stave off the world with a barrage of missile and nuclear tests…Constantly on the brink of starvation, its military so broke that it cannot train its pilots, it has no illusions about becoming a great power in Asia. Its main goal is survival.” [6]

#5. Because the United States is a military Gargantua compared to North Korea, and South Korea and Japan have better equipped militaries, they can safely stage provocations against the North, forcing Pyongyang into a defense-spending drain of its treasury, bringing closer the realization of the US goal of tipping the country into crisis and possibly collapse. On the other hand, North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party wants to avoid confrontations at all costs, short of surrendering to the demands that it close up shop, and re-open under South Korean management.

#6. Provocations, then, are all on the other side. There are few acts more provocative than the United States’ targeting of North Korea with strategic nuclear missiles, nor former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s warning that the Pentagon could turn North Korea into a charcoal briquette [7]. Six decades of Washington-led economic warfare against the country is equally provocative, and a principal cause of North Korea’s impoverishment. Tens of thousands of US troops are deployed along the North’s southern borders, US warships and nuclear missile-equipped submarines prowl the periphery of its territorial waters, and US warplanes menace its airspace. Pyongyang is only the immediate architect of North Korea’s Songun (military-first) policy. Washington is the ultimate architect. Finally, US and South Korean militaries conduct regular war games exercises, one of which, Ulchi Freedom Guardian, is an exercise in invading North Korea. Who’s provoking who?

#7. Kim Jong Il, the recently deceased North Korean leader–literally depicted in South Korean children’s books as a red devil with horns and fangs [8]–has been equally demonized in the Western mass media for starving his people. It is true that food shortages have plagued the country. But the vilifying Kim obituaries don’t mention why North Koreans are hungry. The answer is sanctions. [9] US foreign policy, like that of the Allied powers in WWI toward Germany, has been to starve its adversary into submission. This isn’t acknowledged, for obvious reasons. First, it would reveal the inhumane lengths to which US foreign policy is prepared to reach to secure its goals. And second, North Korean hunger must be used to discredit public ownership and a central planning as a workable economic model. North Koreans are hungry, the anti-Communist myth goes, because socialism doesn’t work. The truth of the matter is that North Koreans are hungry because Washington has made them so. Not surprisingly, calls by humanitarian groups for the United States to deliver food aid are being brushed aside with a litany of bizarre excuses, the latest being that food aid can’t be delivered because Kim Jong-il’s son, Kim Jong-eun, has succeeded him. [10] Huh? The real reason food aid won’t be delivered is because it would contradict US foreign policy. The United States once considered the death of half a million Iraqi children “worth it”. [11] Its leaders would consider the sanctions-produced demise through starvation of as many North Koreans worth it, as well.

#8. The death of Kim Jong-il is a potential boon for US foreign policy. There is a possibility of disorganization within the leadership, and internal conflicts leading to a fraying unity of purpose. Rather than focusing on external threats, the leadership may be divided, and pre-occupied with succession. If so, this is, from the perspective of the United States and South Korea, a pivotal moment—a time when the country may be tipped into collapse. And so, at this moment, who would you expect to unleash a provocation: Pyongyang? Or Washington and Seoul? At the best of times, Pyongyang wants to avoid a fight. At this critical juncture, it absolutely needs to. But the calculus works the other way round for the predators. Now is when North Korea is most vulnerable to predation.

#9. Predators never let on that they’re the hunters. Always they portray themselves as seeking to safeguard their security against the multiple threats of a dangerous world. Through guile and cunning, the mouse might just outmanoeuvre Magic Johnson and sink a basket or two. So it is that the United States, South Korea and Japan are said to be on high alert, in case the North Koreans stage another “provocation,” like the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan (for which the evidence of North Korean involvement is laughably thin at best [12]) or another Yeonpyeong Island artillery barrage (which the South set off by firing its own artillery into disputed waters, that, under international customary law, belong to the North. [13])

But as we’ve seen, it makes no sense to expect the scenario of a North Korean-furnished provocation to unfold. The more likely explanation for why US, South Korean and Japanese militaries are on high alert is because now is an ideal time for pressure on Pyongyang to be intensified, and because the triumvirate might be preparing to intervene militarily if conditions become propitious.

Sources

1. New York Times reporter David Sanger (“What ‘engagement’ with Iran and North Korea means,” The New York Times, June 17, 2009) notes that “American presidents have been certain they could … speed (North Korea’s) collapse, since the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953.” At the same time, Korea expert Selig S. Harrison has written that “South Korea is once again seeking the collapse of the North and its absorption by the South.” (“What Seoul should do despite the Cheonan”, The Hankyoreh, May 14, 2010.)

2. According to Dianne E. Rennack, (“North Korea: Economic sanctions”, Congressional Research Service, October 17, 2006) many US sanctions have been imposed on North Korea for reasons listed as either “communism”, “non-market economy” or “communism and market disruption.”

3. In an article on Newt Gingrich’s fantasies about North Korea or Iran setting off a nuclear device far above US territory in order to unleash an electromagnetic pulse attack, New York Times’ reporter William J. Broad cites a US military expert who characterizes “the nations in question (as being) at the kindergarten stage of developing nuclear arms.” (“Among Gingrich’s passions, a doomsday vision”, The New York Times, December 11, 2011.)

4. Keith Johnson, “Pyongyang neighbors worry over nuclear arms”, The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011

5. The annual military budgets in billions are: United States, $700; North Korea, $10; South Korea, $39; Japan, $34. With the exception of the Pentagon’s budget, annual military expenditures were estimated by multiplying a country’s GDP by its military spending as a percentage of GDP, as estimated by the CIA and reported in its World Factbook. The source for the Pentagon’s military budget is Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Weighing Pentagon cuts, Panetta faces deep pressures”, The New York Times, November 6, 2011.

6. David Sanger, “What ‘engagement’ with Iran and North Korea means,” The New York Times, June 17, 2009.

7. “Colin Powell said we would…turn North Korea into a ‘charcoal briquette,’ I mean that’s the way we talk to North Korea, even though the mainstream media doesn’t pay attention to that kind of talk. A charcoal briquette.” Bruce Cumings, “Latest North Korean provocations stem from missed US opportunities for demilitarizaton,” Democracy Now!, May 29, 2009.

8. David E. Sanger, “A ruler who turned North Korea into a nuclear state”, The New York Times, December 18, 2011.

9. See Stephen Gowans, “Amnesty International botches blame for North Korea’s crumbling healthcare”, What’s Left, July 20, 2010. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/amnesty-international-botches-blame-for-north-korea%E2%80%99s-crumbling-healthcare/

10. Evan Ramstad and Jay Solomon, “Dictator’s death stokes fears”, The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011.

11. Asked about a UN estimate that sanctions had killed 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said infamously, “It’s a hard choice, but I think, we, think, it’s worth it.” 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4. Retrieved June 19, 2011

12. See Tim Beal’s Crisis in Korea: American, China and the Risk of War. Pluto Press. 2011.

13. See Tim Beal, “Theatre of war: Smoke and mirrors on the Korean peninsula on the anniversary of the Yeonpyeong incident,” Pyongyang Report V13 N2, December 6, 2011 http://www.timbeal.net.nz/geopolitics/Theatre_of_War9.pdf and Stephen Gowans, “US Ultimately to Blame for Korean Skirmishes in Yellow Sea”, What’s Left, December 5, 2010. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/us-ultimately-to-blame-for-korean-skirmishes-in-yellow-sea/

Source

PC (AP) Statement on Kim Jong-Il’s Death

I post this article here despite disagreements with the PC(AP)’s line on the DPRK, which seems to differ from most M-L parties.

— Espresso Stalinist

Dear comrades:

On December 17 comrade Kim Jong Il, top leader and leader of the Labour Party of Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Korean people, died. His death attracted various comments and speculations by capricious and malicious agencies, reactionary and imperialist news, and even the machinery of war in Japan, U.S. and South Korea which are put on “maximum alert” and of course, as usual, not only the openly reactionary and imperialist pour their poison, also false anti-imperialist leftists stick their voice to refer to the death of Comrade Kim Jong IL, as the death of a “dictator”, a “Stalinist” to the Communists never been an offense, rather it is that we honor appoint “Stalinist.” All with morbid excitement seeking “signs of popular discontent” in order to reaffirm their reactionary plans, last minute, to justify an imperialist military progression.

For those who, from Marxism-Leninism, assume the national liberation struggle for popular democracy and socialism, the death of Comrade Kim Jong IL, is a source of genuine and deep regret. Korean people, under his guidance, learned to face the aggressive maneuvers of imperialism and the South Korean puppets, always sought the support and supported those who dared to walk on their own feet and use their own heads, who are not subjected to imperialist hegemony, many unresolved battles and all the lands with which the DPRK under the leadership of Comrade Kim Jong Il, has demonstrated the dignity, courage and to stand with those who fight and defend self-determination, anti-imperialism, and socialism.

Comrade Kim Jong Il, through great courage and as an internationalist revolutionary, was not discouraged by the revisionist betrayal restored capitalism in the former USSR and other Eastern European countries, on the contrary, scientific and burning attachment revolutionary, unmasked as a betrayal of the working class, the people and its system, socialism, stating clearly that the main cause lies in the fact that the leaders of those countries moved away and abandoned the ideology of the working class, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

At present we can only join the pain of the workers and people of Korea, and with them to honor the memory of Comrade Kim Jong IL, a loyal fighter for self-determination, national sovereignty, for socialism Only then can we impose the truth of the workers and peoples of the manipulations, falsifications and lies of the reactionaries and imperialists, and only win!

Honor and Glory to Comrade Kim Jong IL!

Eduardo Artés

First Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action) PC (AP)

Source

Kim Jong-Un Becomes Head of North Korea

By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: December 26, 2011

SEOUL — North Korea indicated on Monday that Kim Jong-un, the son and successor of its deceased leader, Kim Jong-il, was being elevated to the top of the ruling Workers’ Party’s hierarchy, calling him head of its Central Committee.

The young successor’s apparent rise to the party leadership came two days after the North’s state-run news media published an entreaty for him to become supreme commander of the country’s Korean People’s Army, whose support is considered crucial to his consolidation of power. The top brass also moved quickly to swear their allegiance to Mr. Kim.

Since Kim Jong-il’s death was announced on Dec. 19, a series of pronouncements from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, have indicated that his son was rapidly consolidating his grip on power by assuming top titles, or that whoever was rallying the key agencies of power behind the young leader was ensuring that the son would not share power, at least in the public eye.

Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack on Dec. 17. His funeral is set to take place on Wednesday, and a memorial is scheduled for Thursday.

On Monday, Kim Jung-un met the first South Korean visitors since his father’s death when a former South Korean first lady and the chairwoman of Hyundai-Asan, which had business ties with North Korea, expressed their condolences at Pyongyang’s Kumsusan mausoleum, where the late leader lay in state, according to the South Korean government.

Lee Hee-ho, the widow of former President Kim Dae-jung, and the Hyundai-Asan chairwoman, Hyun Jeong- eun, the widow of Hyundai’s former chairman, Chung Mong-hun, were the only South Koreans allowed by the government in Seoul to lead private delegations to Pyongyang.

Mr. Kim thanked the South Korean visitors, the North Korean official news agency, K.C.N.A, said.

Ms. Lee and Ms. Hyun laid their wreathes and walked around Kim Jong-il’s glass coffin to show their respect, K.C.N.A said. In a message in the visitors’ log, Ms. Lee wrote that she hoped the two Koreas would achieve an “early reunification” by honoring a 2000 summit agreement in which her husband and Kim Jong-il promised to encourage political reconciliation and economic exchanges.

The younger Mr. Kim, his father’s third son, is believed to be in his late 20s. There has been no indication that he had worked in the government or the military before his father, who had a stroke in 2008, unveiled him as his successor last year and put him on a fast track to be groomed as heir.

On Monday, the North’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, urged North Koreans to “defend the party’s Central Committee headed by respected Comrade Kim Jong-un.”

The same slogan was used for his father when he was alive. Over the weekend, the North Korean media were blessing the son with the same honorifics until now reserved for his father: “heaven-sent leader,” “the sun of the 21st century” and eobeoi, the Korean word for parent, which North Korea has used only for Kim Jong-il and his father, Kim Il-sung, the North’s founding president.

Under the charter of the Workers’ Party, the head of its Central Committee doubles not only as general secretary but also as chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission.

Kim Jong-un was made vice chairman of the Central Military Commission when he was anointed as successor.

The Seoul government said that Ms. Lee and Ms. Hyun were reciprocating for the North Korean delegations that visited Seoul to express condolences over the deaths of President Kim Dae-jung and of Mr. Chung.

Hyundai-Asan led a flurry of South Korean investments that followed a 2000 summit meeting between the two Koreas. But the South suspended its signature project in North Korea — a hiking and spa resort near the North’s Diamond Mountain — after North Korean guards shot a female South Korean tourist who had strayed off the resort in 2008.

“I hope my trip will help improve South-North relations,” Ms. Lee told reporters before crossing the border on Monday.

On Sunday, striking a typically strident note, North Korea reiterated that if the South blocked private delegations from visiting Pyongyang for Mr. Kim’s funeral on Wednesday, there would be “unimaginably disastrous consequences” for relations between the two.

Source

Cuba decreed official mourning for death of Kim Jong Il

Havana, Dec 19 (Prensa Latina) Cuba’s government today declared official mourning for the death last Saturday by the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong Il.

According to a note read through the National Television, the State Council established the duel, which will run on 20, 21 and 22 December.

During those days, the Cuban flag shall be flown at half mast on public buildings and military institutions, the statement said.

Kim Jong Il, 69, died last Saturday because of a heart attack while he was working with a trip by train.

Korean leader began working in 1964 at the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) and in February 1974 became a member of Central Committee Political Bureau. Since October 1980, Kim Jong Il was a member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau, secretary of the WPK Central Committee and member of the Central Military Commission.

In his long political career he was also elected deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly from 1982 to 1998 and from December 1992 to April 1993, in succession, Supreme Commander of the KPA, and later senior vice president of the Commission National Defence.

On October 8, 1997, Kim Jong Il became general secretary of the WPK and received the honorary title of Hero of the DPRK in 1975 and 1982.

Among many honors and awards, in April 1992 was given the title of Marshal of the DPRK.

Source

Kim Jong Il dies, leader of the DPRK since 1994

Today is a sad day for the Korean people and all peoples of the world who struggle for their liberation, as it did the people of Korea in the first 45 years of last century. The President of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the KPA and Secretary General of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim Jong Il, in Pyongyang has died at 69 years of age.

The death took place last Saturday, while leader Kim Jong Il on the train. During the trip, the leader suffered a stroke that had fatal consequences.

The funeral of Kim Jong Il will be held on December 28 in Pyongyang, and is chaired by Kim Jong Un, commander of the KPA and distressed son of leader Kim Jong Il.

The Government of the People’s Republic of Korea has declared a mourning period from Saturday 17 until Thursday 29 December.

Finally, announce that the remains of Kim Jong Il will rest forever in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, which houses since 1994, the embalmed body of President Kim Il Sung.

Source

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dead at age 69

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic longtime leader, has died of heart failure. He was 69.

In a “special broadcast” Monday from the North Korean capital, state media said Kim died of a heart ailment on a train due to a “great mental and physical strain” on Dec. 17 during a “high intensity field inspection.” It said an autopsy was done on Dec. 18 and “fully confirmed” the diagnosis.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008, but he had appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media. The communist country’s “Dear Leader” – reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine – was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

“It is the biggest loss for the party … and it is our people and nation’s biggest sadness,” an anchorwoman clad in black Korean traditional dress said in a voice choked with tears. She said the nation must “change our sadness to strength and overcome our difficulties.”

South Korean media, including Yonhap news agency, said South Korea put its military on “high alert” and President Lee Myung-bak convened a national security council meeting after the news of Kim’s death. Officials couldn’t immediately confirm the reports.

The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary succession. Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

Traffic in the North Korean capital was moving as usual Monday, but people in the streets were in tears as they learned the news of Kim’s death. A foreigner contacted at Pyongyang’s Koryo Hotel said hotel staff were in tears.

Asian stock markets moved lower amid the news, which raises the possibility of increased instability on the divided Korean peninsula.

South Korea’s Kospi index was down 3.9 percent at 1,767.89 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.8 percent to 8,331.00. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 2 percent to 17,929.66 and the Shanghai Composite Index dropped 2 percent to 2,178.75.

Source

DPRK civilians admit faking papers on chemical weapons testing on humans

Four family members of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) said on Tuesday they faked the papers the BBC used as the basis for allegations that the DPRK has tested chemical weapons on prisoners.

Four family members of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) said on Tuesday they faked the papers the BBC used as the basis for allegations that the DPRK has tested chemical weapons on prisoners.

At a press conference at the People’s Culture Palace in Pyongyang, 59-year-old Kang Pyong-sob, his wife, second son and daughter, of DPRK’s South Hamgyong Province, told reporters that his eldest son Kang Song-guk, who escaped abroad, cheated them to fake the materials detailing the testing of chemical weapons on humans.

In February, the BBC quoted these documents saying that prisoners were seen gassed to death in the DPRK.

The DPRK later called the charges lies invented by the defectors.

Kang Song-guk fled abroad many years ago and helped his family escape abroad later. To make a living, Kang decided to make false materials to obtain money from human rights organizations, the four said at Tuesday’s conference.

Kang vamped-up five fake documents with the help of his family on Nov. 25 last year, they said.

The names and experiences of the five people in the documents, except one who has since died, were completely made up, they said.

Although the “reliability” of the documents was greatly enhanced by their make-up, the seal, which Kang secretly had made,appears to be false apparently for its raw and careless design and lettering, the four noted.

They said they felt very sorry that the fake materials were mis-used by foreign media “to attack the fatherland”.

They said they wanted to clarify the truth.

Source

Truth behind False Report about “Experiment of Chem. Weapons on Human Bodies” in DPRK Disclosed

Pyongyang, March 30 (KCNA) – Kang Pyong Sop and his family who are makers of false documents about the “experiment of chemical weapons on human bodies” in the DPRK called a press conference at the People’s Palace of Culture here Tuesday to clarify the truth behind the false report about this experiment in the DPRK released by media of south Korea and the West.

He said:

There are five members in my family including myself, my wife, two sons and a daughter who is married. The documents on “experiment of chemical weapons on human bodies” widely misused by enemies were false documents fabricated by my first son Kang Song Guk, who defected to the south seven years ago, and my family, he said, disclosing the truth of the case before Korean and foreign journalists as the maker, observer and witness of those false documents.

He continued:

We received messages from our first son on several occasions, saying that he had caused many troubles to his parents and requesting us to meet him in China so that he could give us some money. So I crossed the border illegally with my wife on the 29th of August last year and met him in Yanji. And in early November I met my second son Song Hak there, too.

Song Guk said to his parents that if they would say that they had brought important information about “the experiment of chemical weapons on human bodies” at a workshop in the February 8 Vinalon Complex where his father works, they would be given a huge sum of money by human rights organizations in the south.

When I said the production of chemical weapons was unthinkable at my complex, my son told me that he would prepare documents, insisting that those human rights organizations in the south would simply believe that the complex is a chemical factory and may produce such things.

Then Song Guk took several papers out of a cardboard box on which such letters as “Certificate of Transfer”, “name, sex, date of birth”, “place of birth” and “place of residence” are printed.

Then he asked me to recall the names of those who died in one or two years back.

We wrote the name of Rim Chun Hwa, elder maternal cousin, on one paper. He worked as a farmer in Sinhung County, South Hamgyong Province and died of an illness. Names of four more people were written on separate papers though we knew nothing of them.

I told my son Song Guk that “songmyong” and “saengnyonwolil” (which means ‘name’ and ‘date of birth’ in the Korean translation of old Chinese characters) are not used in documents in the DPRK but ‘irum’ and ‘nannal’ (which means the same, but is a pure Korean language) are used. When I told him what was the use of making such false documents, he reproached me instead, saying that he would take care of everything.

He said that his handwriting would not do because they would easily recognize it. Then he asked me to write a few letters. As my handwriting looked bad, he asked his brother Song Hak, a university graduate, to copy it from a draft paper. He then took out a seal and an ink-pad from a box and stamped the false documents with a seal.

When seeing that seal, I knew that the seal was a fake because the national emblem on the seal was not real. The mountain above the hydro-power station was not Mt. Paektu, but an ordinary mountain and there was only a dam without any generating house beside it.

This is the real story about how false documents about the “experiment of chemical weapons on human bodies” which we have never witnessed or heard of and which has never taken place came into being and were delivered to the south by Song Guk.

The fabrication of false documents was, in the long run, a criminal act that tarnished the image of the dignified DPRK.

Kang Song Hak, who had been enticed into writing out the false documents, said:
My brother said that we were doing it to make a large sum of money. But I think that it was a political farce orchestrated before we went to China.

My brother was idle from his early years and did not like to study at all. It is hard to believe that such false documents were invented by my brother’s head.
I think that my brother was allured by some agents who sought to isolate and stifle the DPRK and tempted us to fabricate the false documents about the non-existent “experiment of chemical weapons on human bodies”.

Speaking of how the false documents were written, Song Hak said in the “certificate of transfer” in the name of Rim Chun Hwa, he put Rim’s place of birth as “Huinsil-dong, Sapho District, Hungnam City, South Hamgyong Province.” But Sapho District is in Hamhung City, not Hungnam City. As I filled in what my elder brother dictated, I wrote down a wrong name which hardly be found among the administrative districts of the DPRK.

My elder brother waited for the sealed space of the papers to get completely dry before crumpling them and putting them in water.

Then he took out and spread all the papers before drying them again. When I asked him why he was doing like that, he answered it was necessary to make any examiner to take them for real, not for false ones.

This was how I wrote the horrifying false documents on the DPRK’s alleged “experiment of chemical weapons on human bodies” the kind of which the Nazi Germany committed against POWs during World War II and which I had only seen in movies.

Kang Song Hak then showed his handwriting to the journalists.

Daughter Kang Hye Yong said:

My motherland showed leniency to my family for our frank confession of crimes, and allowed us to live together as before after we returned home. I’ve been hearing about and experiencing the benevolent and all-embracing politics of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Government of the DPRK time and again but I’ve never felt it so keenly and deeply as now.

I curse my eldest brother Kang Song Guk who betrayed not only his own family but his own motherland. I also hate those who instigated him to drive our family into such an abyss of sin.

Kang Pyong Sop’s family asked journalists to disclose the truth of the mean trick of those trying to slander our dignified DPRK to the whole world.

Source

“Why is it that people in North-Korea are starving but at the same time magnificent buildings are being built?” Against the lies about “famine” in the DPRK

Please note this blog does not necessarily endorse all of the viewpoints of this article.

– Espresso Stalinist

“Why is it that people in North-Korea are starving but at the same time magnificent buildings are being built?”

Against the lies about “famine” in the DPRK

The bourgeois media insist on reporting on the one hand about the so-called “famine” in the DPRK, on the other hand they confront the “suffering and misery of the North-Korean population” with so-called “magnificent buildings” and with “the good life of the communist dictator Kim Jong Il”.

What does it look like in reality with “famine” in the DPRK?

The DPRK produces sufficient food and is self-sufficient. 80 % of the country is mountainous country and only up to a point appropriate for agriculture. 14.1 % of land area is used as agricultural area under cultivation, 12.1 % is irrigated. Yet: each square metre of usable area is being planted.

The agriculture of the DPRK is still burdened with the after effects of the US war 1950 – 1953 against the young socialist country. During their aggression the US employed bombs and especially napalm to an extent which led to destruction and drastic reduction ot the stock of trees in the mountains. During the 3 years of war the US carried out more than 115 000 air raids only on the DPRK. 85 % of the bombing was directed against civilian targets. 600 000 tons of napalm and other bombs were dropped. The US employed a great number of napalm bombs, chemical and biological weapons as well to cause fatal epidemics among the population or simply to make them die in agony.

On wide areas irreparable environmental damages were caused. As a result of the destruction of millennium old stock of trees in the North-Korean massifs entailed through the first war of environmental destruction in the history of man carried out by the US Air Force it has not been possible till today to stop the danger of flooding of the mountain slopes and valleys or plains. Though greatest efforts were undertaken by party leadership, government and the people of the DPRK to reafforest and further effective precaution measures against flooding were taken again and again big agricultural problems arose.

Heavy rainfall in the years 1995, 1996 and 1997 led in spite of the increased afforestation of the mountain slopes to flooding of the rice-fields with masses of mud which destroyed the rice harvest in those years. Rice is the staple food. Because of harvest-losses caused by natural effects the government of the DPRK felt compelled on one hand to carry out rationing of rice-sale, on the other hand to raise enormous sums of financial means for rice imports because of the still existing embargo-politics of the USA and their imperialist allies. Per day dan per grown-up person 750 gr dried rice was distributed. Children received according to their age from 350 up to 500 gr. There was no discrimination at the rice rationing.

Each person got the same daily ration regardless of whether they were workers, farmers, employees in the administration, university professors, officials of the Party of Labour of Korea or member of the government of the DPRK. Yet – and this is not concealed as well by the official side of the DPRK – there were considerable problems in supplying the population in the initial state of the rice-rationing, when rice import was just starting. Elderly and ill people were süecially affected and quite a number of them died. But never was there any question of a “famine” or “mass deaths”. However rice rationing for children was constantly maintained up to the termination of the rationin measure in October 2000.

Under the guidance of the Party of Labour of Korea the people of the DPRK mad supreme efforts up to October 2000, not only to stabilise rice cultivation, but also to increase it. Besides the cultivation of potatoes was considerably increased. The production of other agricultural products was not affected by the three natural disasters. Fruit and vegetables were always available in sufficient amounts for nutrition for the people of the DPRK. During my visit to the DPRK a year ago I was also in my capacity as guest of the society of social sciences of the Party of Labour of Korea, affected by the rice rationing. But I did not have to go hungry.

Those are the realities the bourgeois media conceal. If they reported about it they would have to accept the superiority of the socialist society over the capitalist world. In this capitalist world aren’t there 40000 children dying of hunger daily, aren’t there millions of children marked by malnutrition?

Answering the matter concerning “famine” one should then get a completely different view concerning the so-called “magnificent buildings” in the DPRK.

There are certainly super-modern magnificent buildings in so many countries on earth and there are not a few countries where those buildings have been erected right near the slums. So this makes clear the huge contrast between wealth on the one and poverty on the other hand!

If in our “modern” capitalist Germany a good many “people on the left” are taken in by the bourgeois lies about a “famine” in the same connection with the erection of “magnificent buildings” in the DPRK and believe it, it only shows how much these “people on the left” are tainted by the bourgeois ideology. They forget that the “magnificent buildings” in the capitalist industry monopolies and in many countries of the “3.rd world”, too are a product of exploitation of man by man. They forget that especially the working population in our Germany (like in the other capitalist industry nations) take advantage of the exploitation of the people in the “3.rd world” and consequently enjoy that relatively high standard of living. Only the people on the left – you needn’t be communist! – who accepts and realises that, will see socialism with other eyes.

In Korean society where the exploitation of man by man has been abolished, where the means of production belong to all of the working-class, where the human being is the focus of all social development, there is another relation between the Marxist-Leninist Party of Labour and the working population of the DPRK.

When in 1945 the Korean people had shaken off Japanese colonialism after more than 30 years millions of Koreans were confronted with the awful legacies of the colonial exploitation of the Japanese. Korea had no industry, no universities, a few 4-year schools, an underdeveloped system of communications and of transport. But the Korean people realized that with their victory over the Japanese colonial masters they had gained their freedom and their national independence.

This freedom has nothing to do with the bourgeois description of the concept of “freedom”. The Korean people had been fighting a 20 years lasting liberation fight for a freedom which had freed them from exploitation of man by man.

Guided by the party of work of Korea after liberation they instantly began with the rebuilding of their country. Industry was set up, schools, children’s- and cultural establishments, apartments were built by the people. A whole nation realized how their country and their life changed through their work.

5 years after the liberation of the Japanese yoke the South Korean rulers started their war against the Korean Democratic People’s Republic. After the attack of the South Korean aggressors had been beaten off by the Korean People’s Army and 90 % of South Korea had been liberated, the US entered the war under the cloak of UN. 3 years later the US was forced to sign the armistice treaty.

Three years of US war meant US-American application of “scorched earth” tactics. The capital Pyongyang was practically “razed to the ground”, the country was “bombed back into the to Stone Age”.

But for the Korean people, guided by the Marxist-Leninist Party of Labour of Korea and their great leader comrade Kim Il Sung, the signing of the armistice treaty meant a triumph in defending their freedom.

The working population of the DPRK instantly began to rebuild their country. Supported by the solidarity and aid of all socialist countries, also the GDR, a modern socialist state came into being. What had been created within 40 years until the victory of the counter-revolution , was the works of working people of the DPRK and it was for their benefit. Yet they had realized that their work could only bear fruits if the results of the socialist structure were defended.

When in 1989/1991 the counter-revolution triumphed in the socialist countries hard times began for the DPRK. 50 % of the foreign trade had been transacted with the Soviet Union. The GDR and the Czechoslovakia were also important foreign trade partners of the socialist DPRK.

Imperialism that time speculated that in the DPRK the “reformers” would win and that there would follow a change of the socialist conditions back into capitalist ones. But they made a mistake because they didn’t realize that the consistent application of Marxism-Leninism with its constituents Marxist Philosophy, Political Economy and Scientific Communism (Juche-Ideology) sets the human being in the focus of social development. They didn´t realize that it is exactly this item which determines the relation between the Marxist-Leninist party of work of Korea and the working population. This relation gave rise to the strength to continue the successful building of socialism also in spite of the hard times in the DPRK after the victory of the counter-revolution in the socialist countries of Europe.

The working population of the DPRK managed to compensate with great efforts the break-down of the socialist world system and the embargo imposed on them by the USA. Today the working population of the DPRK are able to produce everything within their own economy that is needed to successfully going on to shape the building of socialism.

Certainly you can’t compare the standard in the socialist political economy with the economic level of the western industry nations. But you shouldn’t forget that the setting up of the socialism in the DPRK isn’t older than 50 years and isn’t based on exploitation of the “3.rd world”.

“Pompous” buildings in the DPRK? When there was practical loss of the rice harvest for 3 years and the country had to import great quantities of rice the government of the DPRK decided to cut investments in favour of securing the feeding of the population. So that time no “pompous buildings” were set up whereas the housing scheme, social establishments included, went on unchanged.

Maybe one should define the term “pompous buildings”. Are they 5-stars-hotels? Are the government palaces? Are they cultural- and sport-palaces? Or are they memorial places of the revolutionary fight of the Korean people?

There is a difference if in Germany with its almost 10 million unemployed, 3 million people living on social welfare and 1 million homeless persons you build the government quarter and the large-scale-project “Lehrter Bahnhof” in Berlin with the tax yield of the working population for a small socio-economic group we call bourgeoisie or if you build in the DPRK a cultural palace the entering and using of which the working population has not to pay a penny for. Who will deprive the working population of the right to set up memorial places and monuments of the revolutionary fight against the Japanese oppression and of the Great Patriotic War 1950 – 1953 because they honor their heroes there?

In the DPRK people needn’t pay for the rent of their flat – no matter whether they are 2-storey dwelling houses from the 50ties or 30-storey tower blocks of the 90ties . Attending cultural houses and sports-places, national education, medical care, children’s care in crèches and kindergardens is free of charge. There is no unemployment and homelessness, there is barely any criminality, no prostitution and drugs. The low infant mortality is of world standard.

I would think that the enclosed photographs convey an impressive illustration of the real life of the people in the socialist DPRK.

Achim Churs

The Juche Idea in the Light of Marxism-Leninism

By Gary Howell

1. CONTEXT

In 1992, the DPRK revised its constitution to exclude any reference to Marxism-Leninism, having previously described the Juche Idea as a development of Marxism-Leninism. Also in that year, the so-called “Pyongyang Declaration” was signed by a number of parties claiming to be Marxist-Leninist.

These events need to be seen, as many comrades have explained, in the context of the Workers’ Party of Korea trying to exert a leadership role over the various “Communist” parties and National Democratic movements throughout the world, following the complete degeneration of the Khruschevite revisionist bloc into capitalist restoration and the revisionist betrayal of Socialist Albania by the traitor Ramiz Alia, et al.

In this context should also be seen the WPK’s desire to foist the two Kim’s Juche Idea onto the international “Communist” movement, under the pretext that Marxism-Leninism had shown its “limitations and ideo-theoretical immaturities”. So, what exactly is this Juche Idea, which the WPK claims – not in so many words mind! – the International Proletariat is in need of to explain present day conditions, now that Marxism-Leninism has shown its “limitations”?

2. THE JUCHE IDEA

Kim Jong Il claimed, in his essay “The Juche Philosophy is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy” that the Juche Idea is no mere development of Marxism-Leninism, but an entirely new revolutionary philosophy:

“We must give a clear understanding of the Juche Philosophy as a new revolutionary philosophy, not as a mere development of the preceding philosophy.”

And…

“…some development of materialism and dialectics does not constitute the basic content of the Juche philosophy.”

And…

“The Juche philosophy is an original philosophy which is fundamentally different from the preceding philosophy in its tasks and principles.”

So, to sum up the differences between Marxism-Leninism and the Juche Idea, in their tasks and principles, and answers to the basic question of philosophy, according to Kim Jong Il:

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION of MARXISM-LENINISM:
” The relationship between material and consciousness, between being and thinking.”

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION of the JUCHE IDEA:
“The relationship between the world and man, and man’s position and role in the world.”

This leads to the PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLE of JUCHE:
“Man is the master of everything and decides everything.”

So, the MAJOR TASK OF MARXISM-LENINISM:
“The clarification of the essence of the material world and the general law of its motion.”

Whereas

The MAJOR TASK of the JUCHE IDEA:
“The clarification of man’s essential characteristics and the law of the social movement, man’s movement.”

But, what exactly are the differences between Marxism-Leninism and the Juche Idea according to Kim Jong Il? Well, the answer is, when you read what he says, rather banal:

In a nutshell, he doesn’t deny that the universal laws and categories of Dialectical Materialism operate in nature and society (and, by definition, thought as well). He also does not deny that the laws of social development operate in society, thus:

“Of course, society, too, changes and develops in accordance with a certain law, not by man’s own will… Some of the laws of society governs every society in general irrespective of social systems, and some of them governs a particular society.”

But, Marxism-Leninism, according to Kim Jong Il, mechanically applies Dialectical Materialism to society -

“The major limitation of the materialistic conception of history is that it failed to correctly expound the peculiar law of the social movement and explained the principles of the social movement mainly on the basis of the common character of the motion of nature and the social movement in that both of them are the motion of material.

“Marxist materialistic conception of history broke down society into social being and social consciousness and attached determining significance to the social being; it also broke down the social structure into productive force and production relations, foundation and superstructure, and attached decisive significance to material production and economic relations. This means an unaltered application of the principle of materialistic dialectics to society, the principle that the world is of material and changes and develops in accordance with the general law of the motion of material. The world, viewed by the founders of Marxism when applying the general law governing the material world to social history, is an integrity of not only nature but also man and society in that they are material beings. If you consider man as a part of the world, a material integrity, not as a social being with independence, creativity and consciousness, and apply the general law of the movement of material world to social history, you cannot avoid seeing the social-historical movement as a process of the history of nature.”

The above quotation of Kim Jong Il should serve as a monument to the incoherence and self-contradictory nature that is the essence of the Juche Idea.

Kim Jong Il starts off by asserting that an Apple is not an Apple but an Orange, and then proceeds to demonstrate beyond doubt that all the features of the Orange – texture, feel, look, taste, etc., are those of the Apple – but still asserts that the Apple is an Orange!

The “principle that the world is of material and changes and develops in accordance with the general law of material” IS “society, too, changes and develops in accordance with a certain law, not by man’s own will.”

“Material” means “Objectively”, i.e., independently of man’s will, outside of man’s consciousness, but it seems Kim Jong Il’s mind operates according to a different logic than the rest of humanity, one where 1+1 really does equal 3 and where one really can square circles on a daily basis. But, in the real world, his assertions are patent nonsense. It should be apparent now that the features I have outlined so far are those that have an identity with all brands of revisionism, from Bernstein’s brand onwards, namely that “new conditions” necessitate the “creative development” of Marxism-Leninism, which, in reality means divesting it of its revolutionary essence, the difference, in the WRP’s case being that Marxism-Leninism’s “limitations and ideo-theoretical immaturities” necessitate its wholesale replacement with the two Kims’ scatter-brained petit bourgeois farrago of distortions of Marxism-Leninism – aka, the Juche Idea. This shouldn’t come as any surprise to Marxist-Leninists who are well aware of the feudalistic personality cult that surrounds the two Kims, the anti-Marxist leadership theories that have been perpetrated in the DPRK, where, it is said, over 30 000 monuments to the “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung, have been erected.

To assert that because the universal laws and categories of Dialectical Materialism apply to society, as they apply to nature and to thought, that therefore, Marxism views man as an animal in nature, is sheer lunacy, that even Kim Jong Il himself contradicts, further on in his essay. He is just thrashing about, trying to find holes in Marxist-Leninist philosophy that are just not there, so he resorts to ‘straw man arguments’ against Dialectical and Historical materialism, in order to try and justify their replacement with the decidedly dodgy Juche Idea.

Here is another of Kim Jong Il’s ‘straw man arguments’:

“The Marxist philosophy defined the essence of man as an ensemble of social relations, but it failed to correctly expound the characteristics of man as a social being. The preceding theory explained the principle of the social movement mainly on the basis of the general law of the development of the material world, because it failed to clarify the essential qualities of social man. For the first time the Juche philosophy gave a perfect elucidation of the unique qualities of man as a social being.”

Further on…

“The origin of man’s essential qualities must be sought not in the development of his features common with those of other material beings (animals – G) but in the characteristics unique to him.”

As regards the concept of “social being”, it should not be understood as Marxist-Leninists understand the term:

“Regarding man’s essential qualities, it is important to have a correct understanding of the social being. The founders of Marxism, while raising the question of man’s essence in social relationship, used the phrase social being as a concept meaning the material conditions and economic relations of social life which exist objectively and are reflected in social consciousness. Since they regarded man as a component of productive forces, as the ensemble of social relations, the phrase social being they used implied man as well. However, they did not use it as one having the particular meaning that defines man’s essential qualities. Systematizing the Juche Philosophy, we used the term social being as one having the particular meaning that defines man’s essential qualities. In the theory of the Juche philosophy man is the only social being in the world.”

Further…

“The Juche Philosophy is a new philosophy which has its own system and content, so its categories must not be understood in the conventional meaning.”

So, according to the Juche Idea, “Man is a social being with independence, creativity and consciousness.”

The sheer banality of this definition will be obvious to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. It is the marxist-leninist definition of man’s essential qualities which is the adequate explanation, not the vacuous distortion that is the Juche definition.(1)

The Juche definition of man’s essential characteristics rips man out of time ands space – in other words, it is an abstraction. Marxism-Leninism, never abstracts man from the world. In Marxism-Leninism’s characterization, man is always concrete man. Man exists exclusively in a concrete time and place, in a definite social-economic formation, in definite relationships with other people, e.g., class, family, nation, peer group, work collective and so on.

So, in effect, the Juche Idea’s definition of man’s essential qualities is meaningless and worthless in the scientific reflection of the objective law-governed world and man’s position and role in it.

DEFINITION OF THE NATION

“The following happened when Kim Jong Il was a student at Kim Il Sung University, One autumn day in 1960, during a lecture on Korean history, there was an argument on whether or not Koreans overseas could be considered a part of the Korean nation, since the Marxist-Leninist classics said that only when the foregoing conditions – common language, territory, economic life and psychology manifested in culture – were met could the people constitute a nation.

‘ In those days, scholars who dogmatically accepted the existing theories held that the Korean nation had been formed either in the 18th century when Korea was in the initial stage of capitalist development or in the period of Japanese imperialist colonial rule or even after liberation on August 15, 1945. Kim Jong Il criticized their dogmatic view based on the Marxist-Leninist Classics and said that the basic indexes of a nation are homogeneity of bloodline, a common language and a common territory; in particular, that bloodline and language are the most important in defining a nation, and that a nation is a solid group of people who are united with homogeneity of bloodline, language and territory.

‘He went on to say that Korean nation has long lived in one territory, inheriting the same bloodline and speaking the same language, and it is a nation with a history of 5,000 years and with a splendid culture, and that expatriates, too, belong to Korean nation. A nation is a cohesive group of people that was formed historically and the largest unit of social life. A nation is not formed or broken up easily by a change in the social system. The formation of a nation conditions the appearance of social classes and strata. Even in a classless society the nation still exists. If one’s bloodline and language are same, one belongs to one and the same nation, even though one’s ideology, ideals and territory are different. This is his outlook on the nation.

‘Our nation is a homogeneous nation descended from Tangun that has inherited only one bloodline for 5,000 years. Such a phenomenon is rare in the world. Homogeneity of bloodline is the most important characteristic of a nation. If we regard a common economic life as the main mark of a nation as held by previous theories, our fellow countrymen who live under the different economic systems of north and south Korea should be divided into a “bourgeois nation” and a “socialist nation”, and several million Korean expatriates could not be regarded as part of our nation. Viewed from this angle, Kim Jong Il is the benefactor who has identified all the people in the north and south and the several million expatriates as belonging to one and the same nation. Language is another important factor defining a nation. Of the several factors defining a nation, territory and culture may be altered, but the homogeneity of bloodline and a common language cannot be changed. Since the people of north and south Korea have inherited the same bloodline and speak the same language, even though they have lived in different territories and under different economic conditions for more than 50 years since the country’s division, they have a feeling of affinity and friendship. A common territory is not the same as the territory ruled by State power.

‘The territorial definition of a nation means the land where fellow countrymen of the same bloodline and speaking one language have lived their lives from generation to generation. The territory of a national community might be occupied by foreign forces, but it cannot be lost; even a subject nation cannot abandon the land where their forefathers have lived.

‘The main territory of Koreans is the land of 3,000 ri (One ri is 400 metres) where they have lived for 5,000 years. (5,000-ri means the total length of Korea’s territory.) This land remained our nation’s home in the 41-year period of Japanese colonial rule and cannot be land owned by Americans because they have occupied the southern part of our country for half a century. It is our nation’s living space and nest today and will be forever in the future as in the past.

‘A common culture needs to be viewed by taking bloodline and language as the common features. This is because the character, mentality and consciousness of a nation are unthinkable apart from communities based on blood and language.

‘As seen above, Kim Jong Il’s definition of a nation based on one’s blood and language is correct and scientific. Kim Jong Il gave a wise answer to the question of our nation’s formation. Criticizing the dogmatic view which fixed the time of the formation of our nation to the development of capitalism, he said: “Our people is a homogeneous nation who have inherited one bloodline, language and culture in one territory from olden times, and it is a wise nation with 5,000 years of history, a brilliant culture and splendid traditions.” The question of a nation’s founding is a basic one for the theory of the nation and is the starting point to systematize a nation’s history.

‘The Korean nation was not formed in modern society in the course of capitalist development. Our compatriots long lived in one territory having one blood, language and culture, and in the course of history they became a single nation. The beginnings of the nation’s formation can be seen in clan society. With the emergence of the state, the clan became a special group settling in a certain region. In due course, this developed into a nation. This is a brief summary of his view on the formation of our nation. His Juche-oriented view of the features of our nation and of its formation presents a compass for people who were in the past obsessed with flunkyism and dogmatism to use their own brains and think independently about national questions.”

(Full Embodiment of National Independence – from Guiding Light General Kim Jong Il, Foreign languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, DPRK, 1997)

Kim Jong Il’s definition of the Nation here is not a million miles removed from the Nazis’ mystical views on “blood and soil” (blut unt boden). There is no such thing as a pure “race” or a pure “ethnic group”. We are, in the words of the scientists, “energetic mongrels”. The idea that the definition of a nation can be thought of in terms of “bloodline” is just laughable and merely reflects the pseudo scientific character of the “Juche Idea”. Kim Jong Il’s ideas on the nation are eclectic and metaphysical. They certainly do not reflect the dialectical nature of the objective law governed world. What, in Kim Jong Il’s mind would Britain, France and Germany represent then, with their multi ethnic, multi-cultural states, let alone the USA and Canada and Australia?

There are not many countries that would fit Kim Jong Il’s definition of a nation, if we accepted his thesis.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion I assert that it is Marxism-Leninism that enables man to scientifically comprehend the world in all its aspects and properties, in dialectical unity and development. Comrade Enver Hoxha, in his book “Reflections on China” summed up Kim Il Sung as a ‘vacillating revisionist megalomaniac’. His definition of Kim Il Sung hits the nail on the head not only as regards Kim Il Sung and his offspring, but the “theory” of Juche as well, which perfectly reflects in ideas, the psychology so effectively laid bare in Comrade Enver’s polemic.

I hope that this article will serve as an additional component of the Marxist-Leninist polemic against the Juche Idea, to be read with comrade Norberto Steinmayr’s article and our departed Comrade Bill Bland’s articles against the Juche Idea.

Comrades need to be aware that in these days of continuing ideological confusion, the defense of Marxism-Leninism against all brands of petit-bourgeois distortions of our science must be taken up and all their schemes to foist their subjective, eclectic, metaphysical and hence, idealist “theories” on the international revolutionary working class movement must be soundly defeated.

That the total degeneration of the Soviet revisionist bloc countries should have been the catalyst to the elevating of the Juche Idea to the level of a completely brand new scientific socialism, replacing Marxism-Leninism in its entirety came as no surprise to those Marxist-Leninists such as Bill Bland who were well acquainted with how revisionism rears its ugly head, every time the social conditions provide for its appearance. Now that we know about the Juche Idea in detail, in part due to the wonders of the internet, Kim Il Sung’s petit bourgeois pseudo scientific nonsense can be exposed and expelled…let the struggle begin!

Sources for this article:

Kim Jong Il:” The Juche Philosophy is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy” (1996).

Kim Jong Il:”Full Embodiment of National Independence”

Enver Hoxha: “Reflections On China” Vol. II, p.143

(1) Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”: “Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence. But the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.” And further on; “Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the ‘religious sentiment’ is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom he analyses belongs in reality to a particular form of society.” (Karl Marx, Selected Works, Progress Publishers, p.14)

Bill Bland: The Workers’ Party of Korea and Revisionism

Written by Bill Bland for the Communist League

INTRODUCTION

In his paper entitled ‘THE WPK’S STRUGGLE AGAINST REVISIONISM’, Comrade Dermot Hudson expresses agreement with a reported statement by Nina Andreyeva:

“As the Russian communist leader Dr. Nina Andreyeva remarked at the Copenhagen Seminar on the Juche Idea in 1995…” (Dermot Hudson: ‘The WPK’s Struggle against Modern Revisionism’; p. 1).

The statement concerned was to the effect that the critique of modern revisionism made by the Workers’ Party of Korea was

” … more throroughgoing and mature … ” (Nina Andreyeva: Statement at Copenhagen Seminar on the Juche Idea’ (1995), cited in: Dermot Hudson: ibid,; p. 1).

than that made by the Albanian Party of Labour.

Two short quotations are enough to demonstrate the questionable accuracy of Andreyeva’s assertion. In December 1960. the leader of the Party of Labour of Albania, Enver Hoxha, told the Central Committee of the PLA:

“Following his advent to power, Khrushchev and his revisionist group had worked out a complete plan: Marxism- Leninism would be negated and all those trends and persons that had been unmasked, attacked and defeated as anti- Marxists, or who had been liquidated by Marxism-Leninism in action, were to be rehabilitated … This meant that both Lenin and Stalin had to be attacked … Today it has become even clearer that these intriguers, liars, opportunists and revisionists are doing all these things openly … Our Party is fully convinced that such monstrous accusations and slanders were brought against Stalin to discredit both him as a person, and the work of this great Marxist-Leninist … Khrushchev and his group are on a revisionist course”. (Enver Hoxha: Closing Speech at the 21st Plenum of the CC of the PLA (December 1960), in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 3; Tirana: 1980: p. 167-68. 169).

In contrast, a Korean delegation in Moscow, signed in July 1961 a joint communique saying that the talks which had been been held there had shown

” … ‘complete identity of views’ between the Soviet and North Korean leaders on questions relating to the international communist movement” (Soviet-Korean Joint Communique (10 July 1961), in: ‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 13: p. 18,246)

while, for its part, the WPK accepted the Khrushchevite-led Communist Party of the Soviet Union as

” … the universally recognised vanguard of the world Communist movement”. (Soviet-Korean Joint Communique (10 July 1961), in: ‘Keesing’s Contemporary Archives’, Volume 13: p. 18,246).

Furthermore, Comrade Hudson holds that the WPK saw

” … modern revisionism as originating in the 1950s … rather than … as a phenomenon of the late 1980s, associated with Gorbachev”. (Dermot Hudson: ibid,; p. 1).

And yet, when Kim Il Sung visited the Soviet Union in October 1986, he expressed support for the socio-economic reforms adopted at the 27th Congress of the CPSU and, in his banquet speech, praised Gorbachev by saying:

“This new change now taking place in the Soviet Union is unthinkable apart from the energetic activities of Comrade M. S. Gorbachev, a staunch Marxist-Leninist”. (Kim Il Sung: Moscow Banquet Speech of 24 October 1986, in: Dae-Ho Byun: ‘North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Juche Ideology and the Challenge of Gorbachev’s New Thinking’; Seoul: 1991; p. 186).

Clearly, the attitude of the WPK to revisionism is not that of principled opposition since the 1950s suggested by Comrade Hudson.

THE DEFINITION OF REVISIONISM

Lenin’s definition of revisionism is that it is ” … a trend hostile to Marxism within Marxism” (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘Marxism and Revisionism’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 11; London; 1943; p. 704).

Perhaps a more comrehensive definition of revisionism would be that it is an ideology which claims to be a development of Marxism but is in reality a deviation from Marxism which assists the anti-socialist aims of a capitalist class.

Clearly, revisionism has direct relevance only to people who believe they are Marxists. To the extent that it can persuade such people of its validity, it separates them from genuine Marxists and diverts them into anti-Marxist political activity.

The struggle against revisionism is thus of particular importance in the period of building a Marxist-Leninist Party in countries where such a party does not yet exist. Some comrades have no difficulty in recognising the revisionist character of Khrushchevite revisionism of the type of ‘The British Road to Socialism’, which is clearly anti- revolutionary, but cannot understand how other types of revisionism may support revolution. But when we say that ‘revisionism assists the anti-socialist aims of a capitalist class’, one must understand that the anti- socialist aims of all capitalist classes do not follow an identical pattern, and we can identify different brands of revisionism corresponding to these different aims.

In particular, the aims of revisionists in developed capitalist countries differ from those of revisionists in colonial-type countries. Thus, the former is anti-revolutionary typified by Khrushchevite revisionism of the type of ‘The British Road to Socialism’. However, revisionism in colonial-type countries is to a certain extent revolutionary, reflecting the desire of national bourgeoisies of colonial-type countries to carry through the national-democratic stage of the revolutionary process in such countries, but to halt the revolutionary process before it proceeds to the socialist stage; this second form of revisionism is typified by ‘Mao Tse-tung Thought’ and, as we shall see, by ‘Kimilsungism’.

THE MARXIST-LENINIST FACETS OF KIMILSUNGISM

In some important respects, Kimilsungism is fully in accord with the Marxist-Leninist principles of the revolutionary process in colonial-type countries. These principles are:

Firstly, that the revolutionary process in such countries consists of two stages: that of national-democratic revolution and that of socialist revolution.

In the first stage,

” … the Korean people … are … faced with the tasks of carrying out an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘On the Building of New Korea and the National United Front’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; Pyongyang; 1975; p, 3).

“Comrade Kim Il Sung … pointed out the need to continue the revolution after the completion of the anti- imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution so as to build socialist, communist society”., (Kim Han Gil: ‘Modern History of Korea’; Pyongyang: 1979; p. 34).

Secondly, that the Marxist-Leninist Party should strive to mobilise the maximum of class forces objectively possible for each stage of the revolution:

“It is possible to conquer the more powerful enemy only by … necessarily, thoroughly, carefully, attentively and skilfully taking advantage of every, even the smallest, opportunity of gaining a mass ally, even though this ally be temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this fail to understand even a grain of Marxism”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘”Left-wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder’; in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 10; London; 1946: p. 112).

“The Communist Party of each country must unfailingly avail itself of even the smallest opportunity of gaining a mass ally for the proletariat, even if a temporary, vacillating, unstable and unreliable ally”. (Josef V. Stalin: ‘Notes on Contemporary Themes’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 9; Moscow; 1954; p. 337).

Thirdly, in the first stage of the revolutionary process, the democratic stage, these forces include the national bourgeoisie:

“To build a Democratic People’s Republic, a united front must be formed of all the patriotic democratic forces, including … the national capitalists” (Kim Il Sung: op. cit.; p. 4).

“The national capitalists participated in the democratic revolution”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang: 1977; p. 20).

Fourthly, that the Party should strive to gain the leadership of this stage of the revolution:

“In the struggle to establish a Democratic People’s Republic, the Communists … should be at the head of the masses of the people and lead them forward”. (Kim Il Sung: op. cit.; p. 5).

THE REVISIONIST FACETS OF KIMILSUNGISM

The revisionist facets of Kimilsungism relate to the period of transition to the socialist revolution, and to the socialist revolution itself.

The Question of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

According to Marxism-Leninism, socialism can be constructed only through the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat:

“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. To it there corresponds a period of political transition, in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”. (Programme of the Communist International’, in: Jane Degras (Ed.): ‘The Communist International: 1919-1943; Documents’, Volume 2; London; 1971; p. 490).

“The revolution will be unable to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie, to maintain its victory and to push forward to the final victory of socialism unless, at a certain stage in its development, it creates a special organ in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as its principal mainstay”. (Josef V. Stalin ‘The Foundations of Leninism’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 6; Moscow: 1963; p. 112).

According to Kimilsungism, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat is unnecessary in a colonial-type country like Korea:

“The democracy we aspire to is fundamentally different from that of Western capitalist countries, nor is it a slavish copy of that in a socialist country … Ours is a new type of democracy most suited to the reality of Korea”. (Kim Il Sung: “On Progressive Democracy’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 1; Pyongyang; 1980; p. 257).

“The establishment of the power of the proletarian dictatorship by force was followed as a last resort in some countries, … In the northern half (of Korea — Ed.) … this was not necessary”. (Baik Bong: ‘Kim Il Sung: Biography’, Volume 2; Beirut; 1973; p. 176).

Accordingly, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, established in North Korea in September 1948, was officially described as a state based on the joint dictatorship of several classes, including the national capitalists:

“A Democratic People’s Republic … must be built by forming a democratic united front … which embraces … even the national capitalists”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘On the Building of New Korea and the Mational United, in: ‘Works’, Volume 1; Pyongyang; 1980: p. 298).

According to Marxism-Leninism, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a state in which the proletariat holds power alone, and does not share power with other classes:

“The class that took political power did so in the knowledge that it was doing so alone. That is intrinsic to the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It has meaning only when one class knows that it is taking power alone”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: Speech Delivered at the All-Russia Congress of Transport Workers, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 32; Moscow; 1965; p. 273-74).

“The class of proletarians … does not and cannot share power with other classes”, (Josef V. Stalin: ‘Concerning Questions of Leninism’, in: ‘Works’, Volue 8; Moscow; 1954; p. 27).

However, in violation of these Marxist-Lenininist principles, by 1958 the leadership of the WPK was presenting this state of the joint dictatorship of several classes, including the national bourgeoisie, as ‘belonging to the category of the dictatorship of the proletariat’:

“Some people say that our people s power is not one that exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat because it is based on a united front. This is a completely erroneous view. Today our people’s power is a state power that belongs in the category of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘For the Successful Implementation of the First Five-Year Plan’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 12; Pyongyang; 1983; p. 115).

The Transition to the Stage of Socialist Revolution

Marxism-Leninism holds that, in the transition from the national-democratic stage of the revolutionary process to the socialist stage

” … the proletariat pushes aside the national bourgeoisie”. (Josef V. Stalin: ‘Questions of the Chinese Revolution’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 9; Moscow; 1954; p. 225).

In violation of this Marxist-Leninist principle, Kimilsungism holds that the transition to the socialist stage of the revolutionary process can be carried though in continued alliance with the national bourgeoisie:

“The entrepreneurs and traders of our country are fellow- travellers … not only in carrying out the democratic revolution but also in socialist construction”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘On the Immediate Tasks of the People’s Power in Socialist Construction’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 37).

“From the beginning our policy in regard to the national bourgeoisie was not only to carry out the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution together with them, but also to take them along with us to a socialist, communist society”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘Let Us further Strengthen the Socialist System of Our Country’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 6; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 317).

“The national capitalists … came out in support of the Party’s line of the socialist revolution”. the Party’s line of the socialist revolution”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 20).

Peaceful Remoulding of the National Capitalists

Kimilsungism, while accepting that there is the ‘risk’ of class struggle between the working class and the national bourgeoisie in a colonial-type country, maintains that this can be resolved peacefully, by remoulding the national capitalists, by education and persuasion, into working people:

“The capitalist elements still remaining in town and country will have to be … remoulded along socialist lines, instead of expropriating them”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘Every Effort for the Country’s Reunification and for Socialist Construction in the Northern Half of the Republic’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 9; Pyongyang; 1982; p. 201).

“The socialist transformation of private trade and industry … proceeded in close combination with the remoulding of men, with the result that private traders and manufacturers were reshaped into socialist working people”. (Kim Han Gil: op. cit.; p. 387).

“Since our Party adopted a policy of transforming capitalist traders and manufacturers peacefully, instead of expropriating them, the form of class struggle could not but assume a specific character. Class struggle attendant on the socialist transformation of capitalist trade and industry was unfolded mainly by means of persuasion and education”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 26).

Already in April 1929, Stalin was pouring ridicule on the revisionist thesis of ‘remoulding’ capitalists:

“Until now, we Marxist-Leninists were of the opinion that between the capitalists of town and country on the one hand, and the working class, on the other hand, there is an irrencilable antagonism of interests. That is what the Marxist-Leninist theory of the class struggle rests on. But according to to Bukharin’s theory of the capitalists’ peaceful growth into socialism, all this is turned upside down, the irreconcilable antagonism of class interests between the exploiters and the exploited disappears, the exploiters grow into socialism … One thing or the other: Either Marx’s theory of the class struggle, or the theory of the capitalists growing into socialism. (Josef V. Stalin: ‘The Right Deviation in the CPSU (B)’, in: ‘Works’, Volume 12; Moscow; 1955; p. 32, 33).

A SPURIOUS SOCIALISM

If a new society was established in North Korea in cooperation with the national bourgeoisie, then, according to Marxism-Leninism, it could not be a genuine and must be a spurious socialist society.

However, Kimilsungism differs from Maoism in rejecting the strategy of forming joint state-capitalist (joint state-private) enterprises in favour of forming ‘cooperatives’ in conjunction with the national capitalists:

“Our country was the first to transform capitalist traders and manufacturers along socialist lines by using the cooperative economy … This is an original experience”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 28).

“Comrade Kim Il Sung held that, different from some socialist countries, it was wholly unnecessary for the peaceful transformation of capitalist trade and industry to assume the form of state capitalism”. (Baik Bong: op. cit., Volume 2; p. 520).

This process of cooperativisation was not enforced upon national capitalists, but was an entirely voluntary process:

“Our Party adopted the line of transforming capitalist trade and manufacturing along socialist lines and saw to it that the capitalist traders and manufacturers were drawn into diverse forms of cooperative economy in strict observance of the voluntary principle”, (Kim Il Sung: ‘Let Us further Strengthen the Socialist System of Our Country’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 6; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 317).

“The important demand of the voluntary principle is … to strictly guard against coercive methods in cooperativisation and conduct this movement according to the free will of private traders and manufacturers”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 31).

Of the three forms of cooperative introduced into Korea, two forms were open to national capitalists to join if they wished. In the second form, the national capitalists received what amounted to interest on the capital they brought with them when they entered the cooperative:

“The second form (of cooperation –Ed.) was a semi- socialist form in which the means of production were under both joint and private ownership and both socialist distribution according to work done and distribution according to the amount of investment were applied. The third form was a completely socialist form in which … only socialist distribution applied”. (KIm Han Gil: op. cit.; p. 387).

As has been said, the national capitalists were empowered to choose not only whether to join a cooperative, but which type they would join:

“The essential requirement of the voluntary principle is to make private traders and manufacturers … choose the forms (of cooperation — Ed.) of their own accord, instead of imposing any form on them”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Industry and Industry nd (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang: 1977; p. 72).

The voluntary principle and the principle of mutual interests were observed in the cooperative transformation of capitalist traders and manufactuerers”. (Baik Bong: op. cit., Volume 2; p. 520).

Thus, most national capitalists tended to choose the second form of cooperation, since in this way they received

” … reasonable dividends upon the investments”. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 143).

“The second form (of cooperation — Ed.) was popular in the cooperation of capitalist trade and industry. It was a rational form which was readily acceptable to capitalists because it applied distribution according to the amount of investment”. (Kim Han Gil: op. cit.; p. 387).

However, according to the WPK, the mere act of joining a cooperative transformed national capitalists into ‘socialist working people’:

“By joining the producers’ cooperatives, the entrepreneurs and traders … were transformed into socialist working people”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘The Democratic People’s Republic is the Banner of Freedom and Independence for Our People …’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 5; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 151).

By August 1958,

” … the ratio of private traders and industrialists who joined cooperatives stood at … 100% by the end of August 1958″. (‘Socialist Transformation of Private Trade and Industry in Korea’; Pyongyang; 1977; p. 153).

So that, on this basis, Kim Il Sung felt able to declare in September 1958:

“The socialist transformation of production relations has now been completed … Thus, our society has become a socialist one”. (Kim Il Sung: ‘Against Passivism and Conservatism in Socialist Construction’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 233).

Loyalty to the Leader Marxism-Leninism condemns the concept of loyalty to an individual. As Stalin said in a letter of April 1930:

“You speak of your ‘devotion’ to me… I would advise you to discard the ‘principle’ of devotion to persons. It is not the Bolshevik way. Be devoted to the working class, its Party, its state. That is a fine and useful thing. But do not confuse it with devotion to persons, this vain and useless bauble of weak-minded intellectuals”. (Josef V. Stalin: Letter to Comrade Shatunovsky (August 1930), in: ‘Works’, Volume 13; Moscow; 1955; p. 20)

and in a talk in December 1931 with the German writer Emil Ludwig:

“Decisions of individuals are always, or nearly always, one-sided deisions… Out of every 100 decisions taken by individual persons without being tested and corrected collectively, approximately 90 are one-sided”. (Josef V. Stalin: Talk with the German Author Emil Ludwig, in: ‘Works’, Volume 13; Moscow; 1955; p. 109).

In contrast, Kimilsungism holds the leader to be the the determinator of policy, to whom loyalty is a cardinal necessity:

“The party’s line and policies, strategy and tactics, are put forward by the leader… The leader is the supreme controller of the party, and the party’s leadership is precisely his leadership. Remaining unwaveringly loyal to the leader … is a natural communist obligation”. . (Kim Jong Il: ‘The Workers’ Party of Korea is a Juche-type Party …’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 86, 96, 106).

“The leader … plays the decisive role in shaping the destiny of the popular masses… Loyalty to the leader is the highest expression of the party, working-class and people-oriented spirit”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘On Some Problems of Education in the Juche Idea’ in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 160).

“The revolutionary struggle is conducted under the guidance of the leader and in accordance with his ideas and will… The more we are faithful to the leader’s ideology and will, … the more worthy a life … we shall enjoy”.(Kim Jong Il: ‘On Establishing the Juche Outlook on the Revolution’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 195).

This anti-Marxist-Leninist conception gave rise to an exagggerated cult of the personality of both Kim Il Sung and his son and designated successor Kim Jong Il:

“The personality cult as practised in North Korea is unparalleled. For example, birthdays for both Kims are internationally celebrated. The 1992 celebration of Kim Il Sung’s 80th birthday required many working days of preparation by thousands of people, young and old, and lasted well into May. The cost was estimated to be almost $1 billion, including many millions spent on some 3,000 performing artists from eighty different countries”. (Pong S. Lee: ‘The North Korean Economy: Challenges and Prospects’, in: Sung Yeung Kwack (Ed.): ‘The Korean Economy at a Crossroad: Development Prospects, Liberalisation and South-North Economic Integration’; Westport (USA); 1994; p. 183).

For example, Kim Il Sung’s biographer declares:

“The national histories of all countries tell of celebrated heroes and leaders. Looking through them all, it is hard to find any record that compares with such a national hero and outstanding leader as Comrade Kim Il Sung, who has rendered such distinguished service to the revolution of his own country and to the world revolution… Where else in history can you find another leader like him?… Where is there any such leader equipped with all these qualities, an outstanding leader with such rich experience that has performed the greatest revolutionary exploits even during the hurricane of the long-drawn revolution, to compare with our Comrade Kim Il Sung, equipped with the wisdom of genius and indomitable fighting spirit and stamina, profound revolutionary theory …?”. (Baik Bong: op. cit., Volume 3; p. 621, 633).

For his part, Kim Jong Il is described in a recent biography as

” … the great thinker and theoretician, outstanding genius of leadership, boundlessly benevolent teacher of the people, and the great man of the century”. (Choe In Su: ‘Kim Jong Il: The People’s Leader’, Volume 2; Pyongyang; 1991; p. 374).

Sometimes, indeed, it is implied that the Kims possess divinity. On the occasion of Kim Jong Il’s appointment as General Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party, the official Korean Central News Agency reported miraculous events around Mount Paektu, Kim Jong Il’s birthplace:

“At around 05.10, when the special communique informed the people of the election of General Kim Jong Il as General Secretary of the WPK, a coloured cloud appeared on Mt. Paektu… Its rims were dyed with seven colours… At that moment, mysterious sounds reminiscent of cheers and applause came from the surface of Lake Chon… Witnessing these wonderful natural phenomena, its inhabitants said that nature also celebrated Kim Jong Il’s election”. (Bulletin of Korean Central News Agency, 20 October 1997; p. 3).

JUCHE

From the 1930s on, the Workers’ Party of Korea increasingly used the term ‘Juche’ to describe its overall policy. This is a Korean word usually translated as

” … self-reliance”. (‘Europa World Year Book 1999′, Volume 2; London: 1999; p. 2,061).

According to Kim Jong Il, in June 1930 Kim Il Sung

” … explained the principles of the Juche idea at the Meeting of Leading Personnel of the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League held at Kalun in June 1930″. (Kim Jong Il: ‘On the Juche Idea’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 13).

In its early years, Juche was officially defined as a development of Marxism-Leninism:

“The Juche idea inherits all the revolutionary principles of Marxism-Leninism. … It does not abandon the ideological and theoretical achievements of Marxism- Leninism, but further develops and enriches them”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘On Some Problems of Education in the Juche Idea’ in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 148-49).

However, the Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was amended in April 1992

” … in order to remove mention of Marxism-Leninism and to replace it with references to Kim Il Sung’s Juche ideology”. (‘Keesing’s Record of World Events’, Volume 39; p. R73).

Article 3 of the new Constitution reads:

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is guided in its activities by the Juche idea, a world outlook centred on people, a revolutionary ideology for achieving the independence of the masses of people”. (‘Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’; Pyongyang; 1993; p. 1).

The demagogic character of statements that the WPK’s policy is one of promoting ‘self-reliance’ is shown by its actual policy, from the 1980s on, of encouraging foreign investment, joint ventures with foreign capital, and the establishment of ‘special economic zones’ on the Chinese model:

Article 37 of the Constitution of the DPRK adopted in April 1992 declares:

“The State shall encourage institutions, enterprises and organisations in our country to joint ventures and cooperation of enterprise with foreign corporations and individuals”. (‘Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’; Pyongyang; 1993; p. 9).

The new Constitution, in fact,

” … encouraged foreign investment and guaranteed the rights and profits of foreigners operating in North Korea”. (‘Keesing’s Record of World Events’, Volume 39; p. R73)

and in October 1992 the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly approved Korea’s first law on foreign investment:

“The new law permitted foreign investors to establish equity and contractual joint ventures within the country, and to set up and operate wholly foreign-owned enterprises in special economic zones. Foreign companies would be able to remit part of their profits abroad”. (‘Keesing’s Record of World Events’,Volume 38: p. 141-42).

Then, in 1991,

” … the government announced the creation of a special economic zone (SEZ) totalling 621 square kilometres . . ., expanded in March 1993 … to 742 square kilometres, … A spate of additional laws followed, stablishing the legal framework for foreign firms operating in North Korea”. (Marcus Noland: ‘Prospects for a North Korean External Economic Opening’, in: Thomas H. Henriksen & Jongryn Mo (Eds.): ‘North Korea After Kim Il Sung’; Stanford (USA); 1997; p. 55-56).

“About 80 joint ventures have been established in North Korea. Most of them are run by Korean residents of Japan”, (Dae-Ho Bryn: ‘North Korea’s Foreign Policy: The Juche Ideology and the Challenge of Gorbachev’s New Thinking’; Seoul; 1991; p. 223).

Degeneration into Philosophical Idealism The pretext given by Kimilsungism for revising Marxism is that ‘it is now obsolete’:

“Marxism … represented the era when the working class had emerged in the historical arena and was waging a struggle against capital. … But the times have changed and history has developed, so Marxism has acquired inevitable historical limitations”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘The Historical Lesson in Building Socialism and the General Line of Our Party’ , in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 293-94).

The main factor in this change is alleged to be the fact that it is now not objective conditions, but man that plays the decisive role in history:

“It is not objective conditions but man that plays the decisive role in the development of history”. (Kim Song Il: ‘On Some Problems of Education in the Juche Idea’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995: p. 144).

But Marxism regards the laws of science, including the laws of economics, as proceeding objectively, independently of the will of man:

“Marxism regards laws of science — whether they be laws of natural science or laws of political economy — as the reflection of objective processes which take place independently of the will of man. Man may discover these laws, get to know them, study them, utilise them in the interests of society, but he cannot change or abolish them. Still less can he form or create new laws of science”. (Josef V. Stalin: ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR’; Tirana; 1979;p. 545).

Thus, to Marxist-Leninists freedom is not freedom from the operation of the laws of nature, but the recognition of these laws, the ‘appreciation of necessity’:

“Freedom is the appreciation of necessity. … Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence of natual laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends”. (Friedrich Engels: ‘Herr Eugen Duhring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Duhring); New York; 1939; p. 125).

“What can this ‘appreciation of necessity’ mean? It means that, having come to know objective laws (‘necessity’), man will apply them with full consciousness”. ‘(Josef V. Stalin: ‘Ecomomic Problems of Socialism in the USSR’, in: ‘Selected Works’; Tirana; 1979; p. 546).

In contrast, Kimilsungism presents man as being above the laws of biology:

“Unlike biological beings, man is the master and transformer of, master of the world. He shapes his destiny on his own by transforming the objective world to meet his needs”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘Socialism is a Science’; Pyongyang; 1994; p. 12).

Thus, Kimilsungism presents man as free from the operation of the laws of nature:

“Man … is a social being with independence, … whereas all other material lives maintain their existence through subordination and adaptation to the objective world. … On the strength of this quality, man throws off the fetters of nature”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘On the Juche Idea’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 14, 15).

But this is to degenerate into philosophical idealism, which asserts

” … the primacy of spirit to nature”. (Friedrich Engels: ‘Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy’, in: Karl Marx: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 431). that is, in respect of ” … the relation of thinking and being”, (Friedrich Engels: ibid.; p. 430).

The primacy of the former, that is, the primacy of mind over matter. According to Kimilsungism, unlike the lower animals, man is not bound by the laws of nature:

“Animals are part of nature and their destiny is determined by the natural laws of change and development, whereas man… is not a being which obeys the natural laws of change and development”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘On Some Problems of Education in the Juche Idea’, in: ‘On Carrying Foward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 144).

“Unlike all other living matter, which is subordinate to … the objective world, man dominates and transforms the world in accordance with his will and desire”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘On Some Questions in Understanding the Juche Philosophy’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 5).

This idealist concept is embodied in the slogan of the Workers’ Party of Korea:

“When the Party is determined, we can do anything”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘Our Socialism centred on the Masses shall not Perish’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p, 289).

Furthermore, Marxism-Leninism holds that the mode of production determines the consciousness of man:

“The mode of production in material life determines the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”. (Karl Marx: Preface to: ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; London; 1943; p. 356).

“Marxism pointed the way to an all-embracing and comprehensive study of the process of rise, development and decline of social-economic formations. People make their own history. But … what are the objective conditions of production of material life that form the basis of all historical activity of man; what is the law of development of these conditions — to all this Marx drew attention and pointed out the way to a scientific study of history”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘Karl Marx’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 11: London; 1943; p. 20).

This principle is what Lenin calls

“… the materialist conception of history”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘Karl Marx’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 11; London; 1943; p. 19).

However, Kimilsungism rejects this fundamental facet of Marxism-Leninism:

“The theory of socialism in the preceding age, based on a materialist outlook on history, was not free from historical limitations. The theory did not regard the social and historical movement as a movement of the motive force . . ., but as a natural historical process which changes and develops due to material and economic factors… Seeing material and economic factors as fundamental in the revolutionary struggle, the preceding theory of socialism failed to raise the task of strengthening the motive force of the revolution and enhancing its role as the basic way to carry out the revolution”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘Socialism is a Science’; Pyongyang; 1994; p. 5-6).

The Rejection of Objective Class Categorisation

According to Marxism-Leninism, social class is an extremely important objective social category:

“Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation … to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of their share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different place they occupy in a definite system of social economy”. (Vladimir I. Lenin: ‘A Great Beginning’, in: ‘Collected Works’, Volume 29; London; 1974; p. 421).

But here again Kimilsungism degenerates into philosophical idealism. In place of the objective division of society into classes, it divides society into ‘the masses of the people’ and others, purely on the basis of the ideas they hold:

“The basic criterion for deciding whether one is a member of the masses of the people or not is not one’s social and class origin, but one’s ideas. … Anyone who loves the country, the people and the nation … is qualified to be a member of the masses of the people”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘Socialism is a Science’; Pyongyang; 1994; p. 19).

In line with this philosophical idealism, Kimilsungism rejects the Marxist-Leninist principle that the Party should lay primary stress on changing the objective conditions of society:

“In the past, the founders of Marxism evolved socialist theory by putting the main stress on material and economic conditions”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘Socialism is a Science’; Pyongyang: 1994; p. 8).

Kimilsungism gives priority to the ideological remoulding of man:

“In socialist society, the transformation of man, his ideological remoulding, becomes a more important and primary task than that of creating the material and economic condtions of socialism” (Kim Jong Il: ‘Socialism is a Science’; Pyongyang; 1994; p. 7).

Indeed, according to Kimilsungism, the ‘frustration’ of socialism in many countries was due, not to the penetration of the international communist movement by revisionism but to the failure to give priority to the ideological remoulding of the masses of the people:

“The basic reason for the frustration of socialism in some countries is that they did not put the main emphasis on strengthening the motive force for building socialism and on enhancing its role”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘The Historical Lesson in Building Socialism and the General Line of Our Party’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang: 1995; p. 293).

and Kimilsungism defines

” … the driving force of social movement” (Kim Jong Il: Socialism is a Science’; Pyongyang; 1994; p. 7)

as

” … the popular masses”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘Socialism is a Science’; Pyongyang: 1995; p. 7).

Rejection of Marxist-Leninist Principles of Distribution Marx held that it was essential that under socialism, the lower phase of communist society, workers should be given the material incentive of payment according to the quantity and quality of work performed:

“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth-marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society … exactly what he has given to it. What he has given to it is his individual amount of labour, … The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another”. (Karl Marx: ‘Critique of the Gotha Programme’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 2; London; 1943; p. 563).

But Kimilsungism denounces Marx’s position on this question as ‘anti-socialist and revisionist’, and demands that, under socialism, priority is given to political and moral incentives:

“The position of giving prominence only to the material incentive for labour can be attributed to the neglect of the communist character of socialist society. … Those who regard material incentive as the most important demand that the system of material incentive be introduced into the whole economic framework. They claim that stimulating the working people materially is the most effective method for encouraging their enthusiasm for increasing production and developing the economy rapidly. They argue that even after the establishment of the socialist system the remnants of the old ideology left over from the exploiter society remain to a large degree in the minds of workers. … This is anti-socialist and revisionist theory. … If we raise the question of which to lay emphasis on, . . . the political and moral incentive should be stressed”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘On Having a Correct Understanding of the Political, Moral and Material Incentives’, in: ‘Selected Works’, Volume 1; Pyongyang; 1992; p. 211).

Opposition to an International Marxist-Leninist Organisation Contrary to Marxist-Leninist principles, Kimilsungism opposes the revival of an international Marxist-Leninist organisation:

“Times have changed and the days are gone forever when the communist movement needed an authoritative international centre. … This provides no room for the existence of any international ‘centre’. … Therefore, declared Comrade Kim Il Sung, no such relationship should be permitted to arise within the international communist movement”. (Baik Bong: op. cit., Volume 3; p. 600-01).

And brushes aside the achievements of the former Communist International:

“The time is long past when there was one centre in the international communist movement and individual parties acted as its branches. … In the past … the parties of some socialist countries did great harm to the development of the international communist movement by failing to rid themselves of the customs of the Communist International. The party of a certain country claimed to be the ‘centre’ of the international communist movement and ordered other parties to do this or that. It acted without hesitation to put pressure on other parties and interfere in their internal affairs if they refused to follow its line, even though it was a wrong one”. (Kim Jong Il: ‘The Historical Lesson in Building Socialism and the General Line of Our Party’, in: ‘On Carrying Forward the Juche Idea’; Pyongyang; 1995; p. 301).

CONCLUSION

Comrade Hudson’s claim that the Workers’ Party of Korea made a ‘more thoroughgoing and mature’ critique of revisionism than that which was made by the Party of Labour of Albania cannot be reconciled with known facts.

Indeed, Kimilsungism’s characterisation of the differences in the international communist movement borders on the farcical:

“The differences of opinions between the fraternal parties and fraternal countries … are of a transitory character which come from the difference in the historical and geographical conditions of the socialist countries. . . . The differences are an ideological and theoretical divergence between class brothers who have the same political and economic basis and who struggle against imperialism and colonialism for the same goal of building socialism and communism”. (Baik Bong: op. cit., Volume 3; p. 595).

IN FACT, AN ANALYSIS OF THE OUTLOOK OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY OF KOREA MAKES IT CLEAR THAT KIMILSUNGISM OR JUCHE IS ITSELF A BRAND OF REVISIONISM ELABORATED TO SERVE THE INTERESTS OF THE CAPITALIST CLASS OF A COLONIAL-TYPE COUNTRY LIKE KOREA, A BRAND OF REVISIONISM WHICH AIMS TO HOLD THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS AT THE STAGE OF DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION AND PREVENT IT FROM GOING FORWARD TO THE STAGE OF SOCIALIST REVOLUTION.

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