Eyewitness Korea

Andy Brooks makes his point

 by  New Worker

  correspondent

THE KOREAN people marked the 60^th anniversary of the defeat of US imperialism and its lackeys with a great parade through Pyongyang last month. And last Saturday friends and comrades gathered in central London to hear an eye-witness account of the commemorations and peace marches held in the DPR Korea to mark the end of the Korean War.

Dermot Hudson, who spent a week in the DPR Korea, told the meeting of his impressions when he joined hundreds of thousands of Korean workers to see the great demonstration of Democratic Korea’s defence forces on 27^th July. He also took part in the reunification march and visited Panmunjom on the ceasefire line where the Americans were forced to accept an armistice.

Dermot from the Juché Idea Study Group said: "The situation in the DPRK is extremely good. Pyongyang is alive with massive construction work everywhere including many new apartment blocks. Since I last visited the DPRK in September 2012 many new cultural-leisure facilities such as the Ryugyong Health Complex have opened. On our way to Kaesong and Sinchon we could see crops growing in the fields well. There were maize plants as tall as a person. The rice looked lush and green, the beautiful rice paddies seemed to stretch for miles."

            Dermot’s   report was followed by an opening on the Korean War by Shaun Pickford and an intervention by NCP leader Andy Brooks on Korean friendship and the Juché  Idea. A question and answer session, which soon developed into a general discussion, took up the rest of an afternoon getting to know Democratic Korea and standing by the Korean people, who daily defy the threats and sanctions of US-led imperialism.

            The meeting was organised by the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) which regularly organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the NCP, RCPB (ML), Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and the European Regional Society for the Study of the Juché Idea on the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular events in London.