Sixty-Five Fighting Years!

By New Worker correspondent

ON THE 9^th SEPTEMBER 1948 the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the free northern part of the Korean peninsula that had once been part of the Japanese Empire. In the DPRK it is a public holiday and hundreds of thousands of Koreans packed Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang for a spectacular military and civilian parade through the capital.

It’s a special day for Koreans on both sides of the divided country and amongst the overseas Korean community because on that day in 1948 the Korean people expressed their democratic will through popular power and immediately took the first steps towards building a new socialist life for the workers and peasants who had fought to free themselves from the Japanese yoke that had enslaved them for many decades.

 It’s also special day for communists all over the world who showed their solidarity with Democratic Korea. London was no exception. Communists and Korean solidarity activists joined diplomats, journalists and business-people at a lunch-time reception at the DPRK embassy that was opened by DPRK ambassador Hyong Hak Bong last week.

Andy Brooks, Hyong Hak Bong and Michael Chant at the reception

 The leaders of the NCP and the RCPB (ML), Andy Brooks and Michael Chant, were there along with veteran London communist Monty Goldman from the CPB, who was jailed for two months for protesting against the Korean War, as well as Daphne Liddle, the joint editor of the New Worker, and Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association.

And Comrade Hyong Hak Bong returned to south London as guest of honour at a meeting and social to honour the 65^th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that was opened by Andy Brooks, who chairs the Friends of Korea, in south London on Sunday.

The event, at the south London headquarters of the RCPB (ML) kicked off with a spirited rendition of the DPRK national anthem and the Song of Kim Il Sung by the violinist Leslie Larkum, who has recently visited Democratic Korea. This was followed by the screening of a documentary covering the recent visit of a RCPB (ML) delegation to Democratic Korea produced by one of their own comrades.

Comrades heard lively eye-witness reports from comrades who took part in the recent 60^th anniversary celebration in the DPRK of the Korean people’s victory in the Fatherland Liberation War in July. Michael Chant, Leslie Larkum and Dermot Hudson painted a vivid picture of Democratic Korea which is led by Kim Jong Un and guided by Marxism-Leninism and the Juché Idea and also determined to struggle for reunification and defend its socialist path.

Comrade Hyong Hak Bong addresses the meeting

 And a 16-year-old student who was also in Pyongyang in July told us about his impressions of the socialist capital and his struggle to tell the truth at school about the reality of the DPRK today.

Other friends of Korea, like John McLeod of the Socialist Labour Party and Theo Russell of the NCP, who have also been to north Korea, joined in a general discussion that ended with an appeal from Hyong Hak Bong for everyone to go to the DPRK, if they can, and see for the new life for the Korean people with their own eyes.