The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 40           October 23, 2006  
 
 
Socialist Workers Party, Young Socialists leaders:
Support reunification of Korea!
(front page)
 
The following message was sent October 10 to Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers Party of Korea, by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, and Olympia Newton on behalf of the Young Socialists.

The Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists send revolutionary greetings on the sixty-first anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea. We affirm our commitment to the Korean people's fight for national reunification, for a united Korea free of Washington's troops and its armaments, armaments destructive beyond imagination. We pledge our solidarity with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in face of today's escalating threats of expanded economic sanctions and acts of piracy against your freighters and cargo planes by the U.S. and Japanese imperialist governments and their allies.

The U.S. rulers, who wield the world's largest strategic nuclear arsenal, are once again trying to turn the victim into the criminal. Washington is the only government on earth ever to have used nuclear weapons, against the defenseless Japanese and Korean populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sixty-one years ago. Then, in 1950, as pointed out by the SWP's first national secretary, James P. Cannon, the Truman administration threatened "to repeat the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by using the atom bomb in Korea"—as U.S. warplanes unleashed nearly 650,000 tons of explosives to level Korean cities and scorch the countryside bare. To this day the U.S. government deploys more than 30,000 troops on Korean soil and maintains nuclear-armed warships and planes throughout the surrounding waters.

It is these capitalist rulers of the United States and their "willing" allies who present a threat of annihilation to the people of Korea, Asia, and the world. Singling out the DPRK as their common enemy, the U.S. and Japanese governments are strengthening "missile defense" cooperation to advance toward a nuclear first-strike capacity in the region. The U.S. rulers' unending aggressions against Korea are part of their arrogantly declared "long war"—from Iraq, to Afghanistan, and beyond—to try to reverse the growing disorder of the world capitalist system and tighten their bloody oppression and brutal exploitation of workers and farmers both at home and abroad. The U.S. government and its NATO allies promise Iran increasing economic strangulation and threaten military assault if it continues to enrich uranium for nuclear power needed for economic and social development. And Washington's own warheads target socialist Cuba 365 days a year, despite the Cuban government's repeated assertions, consistent with its revolutionary course, that it needs no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and has no intention of ever developing them.

Working people and youth the world over, as we engage in struggles and look for ways to fight more effectively and win, develop a hunger for the true history of our class and its allies. The proud record of the Korean people in resisting imperialism is part of that record—from your struggle in the opening half of the twentieth century against Tokyo's degrading colonial rule, to handing Washington its first-ever military defeat in the Korean War.

On the occasion of the sixty-first anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists stand in solidarity with the DPRK and its right to defend Korea's national sovereignty. We support the DPRK's call for the denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula and its surrounding air and waters.

We remember with pride our participation in Korea in the activities surrounding the 45th anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea in 1990—from Pyongyang to the DMZ. As we did then, we continue to speak for the historic interests of the working class in the United States in demanding of the two-party, anti-Korea coalition in Washington: No to sanctions against the DPRK by the U.S. government, other imperialist powers, or their pawn, the United Nations! No to acts of piracy against Korean ships and cargo planes! Withdraw all U.S. forces and U.S. arms from Korean soil and waters! Denuclearize the region!

Korea will be one!
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. hands off Korea!
Washington demands ‘enforceable’ sanctions against north Korea  
 
 
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