Democratic Korea – a beacon of progress

Michael Chant, Andy Brooks and Thae Yongho

By New Worker correspondent

FRIENDS of Korea met at the John Buckle Centre in south London on Monday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the commencement of Kim Jong Il’s work at the Central Committee of the WPK on 19th June 1964 and hear a top DPRK diplomat talk about the Korean leader’s revolutionary work in the service of the Korean people.

The meeting opened with the screening of a new documentary about the Korean People’s Army. NCP leader Andy Brooks then opened the formal part of the celebrations which started with talks from Thae Yongho from the London embassy of the DPRK and Michael Chant from the RCPB (ML).

Comrade Thae opened on the vital role of Kim Jong Il in developing Songun politics and the Juché idea, starting at a time when Khrushchov had not long made his 20th Congress attack on Stalin and communists throughout the world were in turmoil. Michael talked about Kim Jong Il’s immense contribution to the struggle and the building of a human-centred socialist society that shines like a red beacon of progress in Asia and throughout the world.

Great leader Kim Il Sung, who developed Korean-style socialism and the Juché Idea,

 said that working people could only become genuinely emancipated if they stood on their own feet. In the western world Juché is simply described as “self-reliance” but it is much more than that.

 Juché elevates the philosophical principles of Marxism-Leninism as well as its economic theories and focuses on the development of each individual worker, who can only be truly free as part of the collective will of the masses. Kim Jong Il followed in his footsteps to lead the Workers’ Party of Korea to further victories in overcoming the natural disasters that wracked the country in the 1990s, breaking the imperialist economic and diplomatic blockade and pioneering the scientific and technical advance that has guaranteed the defence of the modern people’s government in the north of the divided country.

And today young leader Kim Jong Un is following the footsteps of those who have gone before him to build a better tomorrow for the Korean people in the DPRK

            This sparked off a lively discussion amongst the other comrades about the meaning and relevance of the Juché idea in the modern era which naturally overflowed during the buffet which included Korean sushi and kimchi.

The meeting was organised by the Co-ordinating Committee of the Friends of Korea, which brings together all the major movements active in Korean friendship and solidarity work in Britain today.  It is chaired by Andy Brooks and the secretary is Michael Chant.

The Friends of Korea committee consists of the New Communist Party of Britain, Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (ML), Socialist Labour Party, European Regional Society for the Study of the Juché Idea and the UK Korean Friendship Association. The committee organises meetings throughout the year in London, which are publicised by the supporting movements and on the Friends of Korea blog.