For peace on the Korean peninsula

in the Sid French library

by New Worker correspondent

Korean solidarity campaigners met at the NCP’s Party Centre in London last weekend for a hybrid seminar to celebrate the victory of the Korean people over US imperialism and its lackeys in the Korean war and discuss the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula and the way forward for the solidarity campaign in Britain.
    NCP leader Andy Brooks, who chaired the Friends of Korea (FoK) event, welcomed everyone to the meeting, at the Sid French library or by video link, to hear key-note openings from FoK secretary Michael Chant and Dermot Hudson of the Korean Friendship Association and an online contribution from Song Gi Kim from the Democratic Korean embassy in London. This was followed by contributions from everyone in the room and from many of the online participants across the country.
    The Korean war ended on 27th July 1953 with an armistice that promised free elections to end the partition of the Korean peninsula. But the Americans never kept their word and the country remains divided between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north and a puppet regime in the south that is propped up by tens of thousands of US troops and an American nuclear armada off the coast.
    The US has done everything possible to maintain its military presence on the Korean peninsula. But the resistance of the DPRK continues, as the Korean people proudly demonstrate their mettle and build their own future.
    Victory Day is not simply a celebration for commemorating and looking back to a chapter of resistance in a previous era. The day also serves as a reminder that the US imperialists and their lackeys are stepping up war preparations in the Asia Pacific rim, and that the terrible tragedies visited upon the Korean people during the Korean War must never again be permitted. The significance of that war is taking on new meaning today as the US imperialists beat the drums of war to attempt to justify a nuclear catastrophe that threatens the very survival of the Korean people and the peoples of the world. But it further serves as a reminder that it is the people who are the makers of history and that they themselves must prevail against war.

Remembering the Korean people’s victory

Dermot Hudson and Song Gi Kim

by New Worker correspondent

London comrades returned to the Chadswell centre in central London last weekend to mark the outbreak of the Korean war. The war began with an American attack on the people’s government in north Korea on 25th June 1950. It ended with the Americans signing a humiliating armistice on 27th July 1953. 
Chaired by Dermot Hudson speakers, including Theo Russell from the NCP, spoke about the Korean people’s heroic fight against the US imperialists and their lackeys during the war and their efforts to reconstruct their shattered country after the guns fell silent.
Though the American terror bombers had left north Korea in ruins, the masses rallied round the call of Kim Il Sung and the Workers’ Party of Korea to rebuild their shattered country and lead the drive for a modern, independent socialist republic in the free part of the Korean peninsula.
Song Gi Kim, a representative from the Democratic Korean (DPRK) embassy in London pointed out that "in 1950 the Korean war, the fiercest war since the Second World War, broke out. At that time no one ever thought that the DPRK, founded two years before, would defeat the United States, which had been boasting of being the "strongest" in the world with a history of victory in 110 wars since its founding.
“As the world media described, the war was a confrontation between the rifle and the atomic bomb. But the result of the war turned out to be the opposite. The DPRK, a small country in the East, created a miracle by defeating the multi-national forces, which pounced upon a country in the name of the United Nations for the first time in the world."
Dermot Hudson, in his speech, said that the great Korean communist leader, Kim Il Sung “not only humbled the pride of the arrogant US imperialists but smashed the reactionary bourgeois military theory that advocates the omnipotence of weapons over humans.
“The US imperialists not only lost huge amounts of manpower and materials but also suffered irretrievable political and moral defeats. It was a great victory for the Korean people and opened up a new era of anti-US, anti-imperialist struggle. Indeed Korea was the war before Vietnam!"
And Theo Russell pointed out that the US "cannot admit responsibility for aggression against DPRK in 1950 because US still dreams of occupying the north... thus entire might of US and Western systems of thought manipulation is mobilised to maintain the lie. And this includes n apparatus of news, well-financed think tanks, universities, mass media, intelligence agencies"