Celebrating Liberation Day and 60 years of the WPK
On 8 and 10 October, the CPGB-ML will be joining with other organisations to celebrate two very important dates in the Korean calendar – the 60th anniversaries of Korea’s liberation from Japanese imperialism and also of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea. A committee has been set up to organise the celebrations, in which our party is participating along with the NCP, the RCPB(ML) and others, to try to ensure that the rich and inspiring revolutionary experience of the Korean people becomes known to a much broader section of people in Britain.
On 8 October, under the chairmanship of Zane Carpenter, our General Secretary, the committee will host a celebratory meeting at Saklatvala Hall in Southall, while on the 10th, a meeting will be held at Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell Green (near Farringdon Station), at which Korean people will relate the history of their struggle. Both these events are being strongly supported by our party, as we feel that British workers have much to learn from the revolution in Korea.
Since liberation, the Korean people have achieved tremendous successes in a variety of fields, ranging from economic construction, educational and health provision to scientific and cultural attainments and the defence preparedness of the country against the ever-present danger of imperialist war. None of these achievements would have been possible had the Korean people not worked hard to defend socialism in Korea. This was well understood by the late Comrade Kim II Sung and is equally understood by Comrade Kim Jong II, whose policy of Songun (which stresses the importance of independence and national sovereignty, as embodied in the ‘army first’ policy) has further strengthened the DPRK’s defence preparedness and thwarted imperialist plans for an attack on the country. We in the CPGB-ML fully support the forward march of the Songun Revolution.
Korea is one
Imperialist aggression and interference has imposed on the Korean people the cruel division of their country. Notwithstanding the stunning victory of the Korean people in the Fatherland Liberation War against the aggressor armies led by US imperialism, the Korean nation continues to be divided. It is the dearly-held wish of the Korean people to reunify their country and expel the occupying armies from the southern part of their country, along with the occupiers’ military arsenal – nuclear and conventional. Meanwhile, the historic North South Joint Declaration, signed five years ago, opened a new vista for the peaceful reunification of the country by the Korean people without any foreign interference. All peace-loving and progressive people should give full support to the demand of the Korean people for the departure of US imperialism from the Korean peninsula and the reunification of their country.
End to nuclear bullying
Our party is firmly of the view that humanity must get rid of nuclear weapons. But we are also firmly of the view that such nuclear disarmament must be universal and non-discriminatory. Imperialism, in particular US imperialism, while arming itself to the teeth with the latest nuclear technology, as well as with non-nuclear weapons, is bent upon disarming all other people for the sole purpose of dominating and subjugating them. In view of this, we are firmly of the opinion that the Korean and other peoples have every right to acquire nuclear capabilities for civil as well as military purposes, in order that the nuclear threat may not be used by the US and other imperialist countries to bully them.
This year marks also the 60th anniversary of the first and only use of full-scale nuclear bombs (in recent years, the imperialists have taken to putting uranium tips onto more conventional missiles, however). US imperialism felt free to drop those bombs because there was no one else in possession of such weapons who might retaliate in kind. These weapons were used not so much in order to secure the surrender of Japan, which was about to happen anyway, but as a warning to the Soviet Union as to what would happen if it dared to oppose the US. It was the subsequent possession of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, and the ending of the US nuclear monopoly, that stopped the US from using them against the Korean and the Indochinese peoples. Would Anglo-American imperialism have dared to commit blatant aggression against Iraq if the latter had been in possession of nuclear weapons? The Korean people have learnt well the lessons of history and have developed nuclear weapons as a deterrent against imperialist aggression. We in the CPGB-ML wholeheartedly support the stance of the Korean people on this question.
The imperialist system is crisis-ridden; it suffers from the crisis of profitability – from insufficient opportunities for profitable investment. It is therefore forced in its never-ceasing thirst for profits to resort to constant acts of aggression as a means of domination. No amount of reasonableness, and no amount of reasoning, can convince imperialism to act otherwise. The only language it understands is that of power and strength. If the oppressed peoples of the world wish to maintain their independence and sovereignty, they have to rely on their own resources and confront imperialism with strength. This was done successfully by the old Soviet Union before the Khrushchevite revisionists betrayed socialism and the Soviet Union – a betrayal that led to the collapse of socialism in the USSR and in the whole of eastern Europe.
The Korean people, under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea, have learnt this historical lesson and prepared themselves against all imperialist machinations. It is a source of great satisfaction to us that the DPRK, this little David, is able to successfully challenge the American imperialist Goliath.
Long live socialist Korea!
