An afternoon for Korea

By New Worker correspondent

FRIENDS of the Korean revolution returned to the historic Lucas Arms in north London on Saturday for a further celebration of the foundation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Academics and school students joined Korean solidarity workers to take part in the meeting called by the British Juché Idea Study Group at the Kings Cross pub, which has been a working class venue for many years and was the place where the Committee to Defeat Revisionism for Communist Unity was founded to challenge the leadership of the old Communist Party of Great Britain in 1963.

             Dermot Hudson opened the meeting by saying that the 65^th anniversary of the DPRK was proudly celebrated by the successful Worker-Peasant Red Guard parade in the DPRK on September. He also paid tribute to Madame Kim Jong Suk the mother of Korea who passed away 64 years ago on the 22^nd September.

                  Shaun Pickford, the secretary general of the group, was unable to travel into London as his father is gravely ill. But he sent a paper that stressed the remarkable achievements of Democratic Korea over the past 65 years, including free medical care, free housing, no taxation and other benefits of the DPRK's social system. In the DPRK there is the tradition of collectivism throughout society, the spirit of single-hearted unity.

Dermot then followed with a contribution on the Juché and Songun politics that had transformed the DPR Korea into a modern socialist republic. And this was taken up Dr Hugh Goodacre, a senior lecturer in economics who explained the deep significance of anniversary of the foundation within the context of the Juché Idea. He said that in the DPRK the people are the masters of the state.  The great leader President Kim Il Sung was a great man of the people, Hugh said, who mixed with workers and farmers and even shook the ink-stained hands of academics!

Dr Goodacre, who is an accomplished linguist, demonstrated his talents by singing the national anthem of the DPRK in Korean to the applause of the audience and the meeting ended in informal discussion and a buffet.