The joint maneuvers come at a time of heightened military threats by Washington against Pyongyang, the DPRK statement notes. Over the past month the Bush administration has named the north Korean government part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq, included the DPRK in an unofficial "leak" of seven nations that are potential targets for U.S. nuclear attack, and refused to certify the country is meeting commitments under a 1994 nuclear development accord.

In a March 19 interview with the Militant, Pak Gil Yon, Permanent Representative of the DPRK to the United Nations, said, "The size and character of this military maneuver is unprecedented; it is larger that the annual Team Spirit exercises" last conducted by Washington and Seoul in 1993.

Under an "antiterror" pretext, Pak added, "the U.S. government is sending its troops to a number of areas of geopolitical importance." In addition to nearly 40,000 U.S. troops stationed in south Korea, backed by warships and nuclear weapons, Washington has 48,000 sailors and soldiers in Japan.

"Now they are deploying forces in the Philippines, and possibly Indonesia, Yemen, Georgia. Their real purpose is to conquer the whole world under the 'antiterror' pretext," Yon said, adding that the people and armed forces of north Korea are prepared to defend their country against imperialist attacks.

A March 13 statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency said the DPRK "will not remain a passive onlooker" in face of these threats. The United States is "working in earnest to prepare a dangerous nuclear war to bring nuclear disasters to our planet and humanity," it said. Mentioning Washington's use of atomic weapons against the people of Japan at the end of World War II, the north Korean government said that "if the U.S. intends to mount a nuclear attack on any part of the DPRK, just as it did on Hiroshima, it is grossly mistaken."

The threats from Washington have met broad opposition among the peoples of both Japan and south Korea, sending ripples through bourgeois politics. South Korea's conservative opposition Grand National Party has called on the regime there to protest the nuclear threats. The party of President Kim Dae Jung cautiously demanded a fuller explanation from the White House while reaffirming its strong ties to Washington.

In agreements between Washington and Pyongyang in 1993 and 1994, the U.S. government "assured us they will not use or threaten the DPRK with nuclear weapons," the ambassador said. "Declaring the potential use of nuclear weapons--the Americans clearly mentioned possible use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK--means they are willing to annihilate the whole of the Korean nation."  
 
Roots of Washington's hostility
The roots of Washington's hostility toward north Korea lie with the revolutionary struggle by the Korean people to rid their country of first the Japanese, then the American imperialist occupation forces. Meeting in Yalta in February 1945, representatives of the United States and the Soviet Union, the two major allied powers in World War II, agreed to the postwar occupation of Korea and its later division at the 38th parallel.

The struggle in the north led to the establishment of a workers and farmers government and the overturn of capitalism. In the south, Washington brutally suppressed rising battles of workers and peasants, then carried out a war of aggression in 1950 under the fig leaf of the United Nations.

Some 4 million Koreans were killed in the war, along with 54,000 U.S. troops. Washington leveled every meaningful target in the north in its attempt to overturn the socialist revolution and open up a drive to retake China, which itself had been freed from the imperialist boot by a powerful revolution in 1949.

The U.S. rulers sustained their first military defeat in this war, as Chinese volunteer troops joined Korean soldiers to push U.S. forces from the Yalu River in the north back to the 38th parallel. No peace treaty was ever signed by Washington, leaving the combatants officially at war today. With U.S. backing the south Korean regime has built a 150-mile-long wall along the demilitarized zone between two halves of the divided nation.  
 
Korea will be unified
Ambassador Pak told the Militant that the north and south Korean governments signed agreements in 1991 that they will not launch a military assault against each other and that the reunification of the country "will be through the united efforts of the Korean people themselves without depending on outside forces."

"Our country has been the object of U.S. military threats and economic blockade by the United States for more than a half a century," Pak said. "If there are no American troops stationed in south Korea, we would not need the effort and expense we currently put towards defense. But we have to defend ourselves, with our own efforts, with whatever defensive or offensive weapons are needed.

"We don't need nuclear weapons," the ambassador said, "because the southern part of Korea is also the Korean nation. The Korean nation is one. It was one and it will be one."  
 
 
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