No political support for dictator Kim Jong-un
Kim Jong-un, the young dictator of North Korea threatened the USA with nuclear Armageddon for the first week of April, promising a shower of missiles on the American continent and on American bases in Hawaii and Guam.
He declared “state of war” with South Korea, announced that he was going to reactivate a reactor for the production of plutonium in his nuclear park at Yongbyon and prevented South Korean managers from entering the nuclear park at Kaesong, where South Korean companies employ 53000 North Koreans with extremely low salaries. All this happened after 25th February, when the regime had carried out a nuclear test, their third, and received new sanctions from the UN Security council with blessings from Peking.
Furthermore, these measures are an answer to the joint drills of American and South Korean Armed Forces in the region with the sending of America B2 bombers, invisible to radar and hunters F-22. B-2 bombers can transport 26 nuclear bombs of 1100kg each.
For a long time now imperialism has been moving ever increasing forces to the Asiatic region, even to the detriment of other regions. Within this framework, the escalation of the conflict drove the USA to move two destructors with guided missiles towards Western Pacific – the USS John S. McCain and the USS Decatur – with the alibi of seeking protection against North Korean ballistic missiles. At the same time, South Korean President, Park Chung-hee, stated that “if North Korea provoked or did things against peace, we must make sure that they will win nothing with all that and will pay for what they do, but if their promises are kept, South will act likewise.”
Behind these statements of the President there is the qualitative strengthening of Sour Korean armed forces with weapons of latest generation supplied by Obama administration, such as ultra modern aeroplanes that had not yet been used by the United States Air Force and have already been yielded to South Korea. That is to say: South Korea can all by their own means destroy the neighbouring country.
This is not the first time that conflicts between North Korea and the USA, seconded by their semi-colony, South Korea, occur. On 25 May 2009, Korea carried out their second nuclear test. Immediately, the President of the USA, Barack Obama, asked the world “to face up to North Korea”. Robert Gates, who was American Secretary of Defence at that time, said, “We are not going to stand there looking while North Korea reaches their capacity of causing destruction on any target in Asia or on us.”
Seemingly, this imperialist movement produced no effect at that time. According to New York Times, “even if three presidents had said they would not tolerate a nuclear North Korea, they were forced to tolerate it.”
The nuclear issue and the imperialist hypocrisy
The USA was the first county to develop nuclear weapons. They carried out over a thousand nuclear exposing millions of people to radiations and develop many systems of long distance transport.
Between 1940 and 1996, the USA spent at least $8.5 billion for development of nuclear weapons. In 2010 there were estimated 5113 warheads in about 20 premises all over the country.
In 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which they were creators and original signatories states, that the USA is one of the five states authorised to have a nuclear arsenal. It is no coincidence that these five countries are members of the Permanent Security Council of the UN.
Such data are sufficient evidence of the hypocrisy of the only country that used nuclear weapons un the bomb raids of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the II World War and who now stands as an advocate of world peace, with their permanent policy of invading countries which they consider to be “enemies of democracy”.
Furthermore, this country uses its power to punish or protect nuclear countries in accordance with their own interests. So, after India and Pakistan tried nuclear weapon in 1998, President Bill Clinton meted out economic sanctions on both. However, in 1999, these sanctions were lifted for India but not for Pakistan with the alibi that there was a “hostile” government there. However, in 2001, the need to use Pakistan as a base for invading Afghanistan made President George Bush had the sanctions against that country lifted.
And while the USA assume a policy of silence in relation to Israel, even though they know that Israel possesses between 200 and 300 warheads, America threatens Iran North Korea and imposes sanctions on simply because these two countries are not unconditional allies. So this policy is clear, and it is not all about “strengthening democracy” against dictatorship as the permanent support of the USA for Israel, Saudi Arabia and a long list of “etceteras” shows. The problem is that North Korea is not a semi-colony of theirs so they want to force them to surrender by means of sanctions and a fence and the UN is a useful forum for that purpose when everybody joins in for the policy of imperialism.
China’s priority is to defend their own interests
China is North Korea’s main ally with a policy of simultaneous supply of energy and consumer goods and economic domination of the country. It has been estimated that China provides 90% of energy and 80% of consumer goods “in exchange for” control of the borderline and of the penetration of their bourgeoisie in that country, since capitalism was restored in North Korea in the 90’s.
Due to such political and economic links, imperialist spokesmen in the world press demand a solution from China to this current conflict, and they demand more than the mere support for the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council and take effective measures such as blocking Kin Jong-un’s banking accounts (estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars) and the embargo.
But China takes other factors into account. Its influence on North Korea is strategic; it controls a state cap on the border with South Korea – a semi colony of the USA in their Northeast region. It is also regarded important to have friendly relations with a country that masters nuclear technology in their backyard.
That is why they insist on solving the conflict by means of negotiations without imposing too heavy sanctions on North Korea and without stopping the cooperation with imperialist policy of putting an end to North Korean nuclear programme, something that goes in their own interest because – in their opinion – the end of the nuclear programme would put an end to the pretext for American greater military presence in the east of Asia.
On the 8th April, pressed by this reality, president of China, Xi Jinping, declared at the Boao Forum, “Nobody is entitled to plunge the entire region or even the whole world into chaos for the sake of their own benefit.” Bur he promised “unrelenting efforts to fight adequately with relevant issues through dialogue and negotiation”.
With this policy of pressure and negotiation, China seeks to convince North Korea to abandon their nuclear programme by offering their won arsenal for protection. Two aims could be reached in this way: an even greater independence of North Korea and secondly, they would try to negotiate the reduction of American presence in the region as from their good services additionally they would prove their cooperation with the UN and the USA and all this in the name of “world peace”.
A dictatorship thriving on the hunger of its own people.
The press and imperialism constantly and knowingly keep on defining North Korea and its dictator as “communists”. We have already responded to this in a previous material “The death of Kim Jong-il causes uncertainty for North Korea (Muerte de Kim Jong-il lleva incertidumbre a Corea del Norte) saying that to dub a country governed with an iron fist by a military dictatorship capable of transforming his regime into a hereditary dynasty and lead the people to genocide by hunger in the name of “military priority” as a constitutional pillar of the country may make any honest revolutionary in the world absolutely sick.”
This reality is still valid. The former workers’ state restored to capitalism in the1990s (see the above quoted material) by the father of the current dictator is one of the poorest in Asia. According to the periodical The Economist(Inside the Cult of Kim, 6/04), one out of every four children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Even if the official rate of exchange of currency is 100 won for $1m on the black market , on the black market this can be as much as 8 000 won per dollar. A good salary in the public service is 3000 won that is to say, $30 at the official rate and under $0.5 at the non-official rate. As the food ration book was eliminated with the restoration of capitalism, families buy food at the market where, probably, they will pay according to the parallel exchange.
Barely 18% of land in North Korea is cultivable, farmed with crude tools and manual ploughs. There are no tractors as almost the entire industry is devoted to “military priority” that built privileged military elite,patronising quarters for tourists and owners of goods that the toiling masses cannot afford.
In order to maintain peace in this regime, the dictatorship maintains concentration camps for political opponents, members of parties fallen into disgrace and eventhose who practice religions. According to Amnesty International, there are about 200 thousand political prisoners in the country, 50 thousand of them in Camp 22, the closure of which had been announced by the government but recent satellite activities show intense activity in the area.
It is this dictator whom trends of Stalinist left, such as PCdoB in Brazil try to defend politically, accustomed as they are to defenduncritically such dictators as Kadafi of Libya and As-Assad of Syria.
Actually, the power that can make imperialism and its sanctions recoil is the toiling masses of the entire Korean peninsula. But precisely because the Workers’ Party of North Korea, identified as culprits for this murderous bourgeois dictatorship, has no authority to address the toiling masses of South Korea and call for a mobilization against the hedge and for the reunification of both Koreas. Today, if the North Korean masses had the freedom to choose, they would most probably migrate to South Korea to flee from famine and dictatorship.
Defence of North Korea against imperialism but no political support to the dictatorship.
Imperialism, armed to the hilt, with all kinds of weapons – including nuclear ones – and their puppet institutions, such as the UN, has not right to dictate to other countries what weapons they are entitled to or whether they are allowed to have nuclear programmes or not. As long as imperialist military power exists on the planet, any country has a right to build nuclear arsenal for their self-defence if this is what they wish to have one for their self-defence.
However, in the same manner as we have always defended the end of operations of nuclear plants for production of energy within the capitalist system we also stand for the end of all nuclear weaponry. A nuclear explosion in a populated area, regardless of what country may cause it, would cause genocide much greater than what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki because the power of these bombs has accrued several times over and no government has a right to do this to the population of any other country. But the first step should be taken by the most belligerent nation on this planet: the USA and their satellites, such as Israel, and the remaining countries members of the Security Council of the UN, including China. These are the most dangerous countries on the planet, capable of anything for the sake of their profits, and that include the destruction of the Earth, something that has already been happening in relation to the ecologic catastrophe.
That is why, without agreeing or defending in the least the genocidal dictatorship of the Kim dynasty, we shall be on the side of North Korea against any attack that imperialism or South Korea may carry out – even if it is with the alibi of self-defence.
And we defend North Korea against the sanctions and against military attacks of imperialism, because it is a semi-colonial, exploited and oppressed country suffering an attack from imperialism and not because it is said to be a socialist state, as Stalinist sectors say, or a “bureaucratised workers’ state” as TS asserts. In this we follow the tradition of the Morenist trend, the best example of which was the military support granted by the former Argentine PST (the party that was in the foundation of IWL-FI) to the dictatorship ruling the country at that time, when the latter declared war on the imperialist democratic England for the possession of the Falklands and yet, not even for an instant was there any political support for the military dictatorship.
At the same time, we assert that the most important task that North Korean working class and peasantry have to do is to pull down this dictatorship that has lasted for three generations, which usurped the revolution carried out by the workers after the II World War and pushed the country to capitalist restoration and ruin. This is the only way that the reunification of Korean Peninsula under the leadership of workers and their allies from the countryside in both North Korea and South Korea, putting a brake on American colonisation and the voracity of the Chinese bourgeoisie. To reunite the peninsula, we need struggle and union of workers and union of both sides: of those from the south, against the semi-colonial regime and against the presence of imperialist troops on their territory; and those of the north against their dictator. This is the way to guarantee the end of the jeopardy of war on the Korean Peninsula.
