BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
PYONGYANG, Korea - "We strongly demand that the concrete wall dividing the land on which the Korean people have lived together in harmony generation after generation be dismantled without any delay," said Toshio Ishimatsu, a representative of the Socialist Youth League of Japan.

He was reading an "Appeal to the Progressive Youth and Students of the World" at a solidarity rally of 3,000 people here July 23. The meeting was organized by the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League. Kim Il Sung was the general secretary of the Workers Party of Korea and president of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) until he died in 1994. "Korea's unification is the common desire of the Korean nation," the statement said. "We demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. soldiers and their nuclear weapons from south Korea!"

The appeal was issued by a 13-member fact finding delegation that visited the DPRK July 18-25 on the initiative of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY). It included representatives of youth organizations from Austria, Brazil Cuba, Greece, India, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Syria, and the United States. Another six people, representing youth and other groups from Libya who planned to take part in the trip, arrived in Pyongyang July 24. They said it took them five days to get to Korea through three countries because of the embargo on air travel and other sanctions the United Nations has imposed on Libya, at Washington's initiative, since 1992.

"The maintenance of the concrete wall our delegation observed is part of the effort by the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean government to make the artificial division of Korea permanent," said Singh Harchand, general secretary of WFDY and a leader of the All India Democratic Youth Federation, in his remarks to the rally. "We will leave no stone unturned to win all the progressive students and youth to join the fight for Korea's reunification."

In his remarks to the rally, Ri Il Hwan, first secretary of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League, pointed to a five- point policy for reunifying Korea, explained in a letter by Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers Party of Korea, in April. This includes rejecting reliance on and interference by foreign powers, promoting national unity through recognition and respect for the two different social systems in the northern and southern parts of the peninsula, and cooperation with all social layers in the south -including businessmen and army officers -who support unification without dependence on U.S. troops. He also stated that prospects for improving north-south relations are not great at the moment because of Seoul's and Washington's stance.

`We're not afraid of imperialists'
"U.S. forces continue to stage military maneuvers with their south Korean puppet troops - the infamous `Rimpac' exercises - thus bringing the Korean peninsula to the brink of war," said Ri Il Hwan. "We do not want war, but we are not afraid of it either, in any way. They should remember we have already defeated two imperialist enemies - Japan and the U.S.A."

Speaking on behalf of the leadership of the Young Socialists in the United States, Samantha Kern pointed to actions for Puerto Rican independence in the United States and Puerto Rico that would take place two days after the Pyongyang rally. "Many Puerto Ricans have been in the forefront of the fight against U.S. imperialism," Kern said. "During the Korean War tens of thousands of young Puerto Ricans who were drafted in the U.S. army refused to join and go kill their brothers and sisters in Korea and serve as cannon fodder for Yankee imperialism."

About 100,000 in Puerto Rico violated the draft law passed by Congress in 1948 and 28.5 percent of those eligible refused to register for conscription. The new rise of the Puerto Rican independence movement is taking place as U.S. imperialism weakens and coincides with a pick up in the class struggle inside the United States. Pointing to the strike against General Motors by auto workers and struggles by strawberry pickers against company goons in Watsonville, California, the YS leader said, "It is these fighters that are among the best allies of the Korean people in your struggle for reunification of your country and for the removal of the 40,000 U.S. troops."

Given Washington's role over the past half century in instigating and maintaining the partition of this country, class-conscious workers, farmers, and youth in the United States, especially, have an obligation to learn what the U.S. government has done to Korea and win others to energetically oppose it. Kern said the Young Socialists will continue their efforts to do precisely that.

Other speakers included Iraklis Tsaldaridis of the Communist Youth of Greece; Raoul Narodoslavsky, president of Kinderland, the pioneers group of the Communist Party of Austria; Christiano Aristimunha Pinto of the October 8 Revolutionary Youth of Brazil; and Argiris Malapanis of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States.

The delegates who did not address the rally spoke at a press conference the next day. Nirsia Castro Guevara, political consul at the Cuban embassy in the DPRK, noted the common struggle by the Korean and Cuban people against U.S. imperialism and spoke to the press about her government's unconditional support to the fight to end Korea's division. Pointing to the spreading depression conditions in the south, she said, "It is capitalism, not communism, that is in crisis. Socialism, far from having been dealt a mortal blow, is more relevant today than ever and presents the only alternative to humanity."

José Ramón Rodríguez, representing the Union of Young Communists of Cuba, and others spoke of the activities of the fact-finding delegation during the week-long stay.

Visit to Liberation War Museum
One of the most interesting visits was the two hours the delegation spent July 20 at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang and a meeting at the end with two retired generals of the Korean People's Army who fought against U.S. troops in the Korean War. The museum is a quite large but modest looking building. It was first opened in 1953 and then rebuilt and expanded by soldiers in 1974. It has more than 80 rooms on two floors. The delegation was only able to visit a handful and could have spent two days or more there. It tells more of the real story of the Korean War than any museum, monument, or movies ever released in the United States.

"Here you can see how the Korean people defeated two enemies - the Japanese and U.S. imperialists - in one generation," said retired Gen. Kim Sang Hun, who showed the delegation around.

The museum includes exhibits on the struggle against Japanese colonial rule. Korea increasingly came under Japanese domination at the beginning of this century and was formally annexed by Japan in 1910.

Koreans were dispossessed of their land and natural resources. Stolen land was sold cheaply to Japanese landlords. The Japanese occupation forces suppressed the Korean language and place names, and forced observation of the Shinto religion as opposed to Buddhism and other religions practiced in Korea. Peasants deprived of their land were forcibly conscripted into the Japanese army or taken against their will to Japan as laborers in mines, on construction sites, and in munitions factories. By the end of World War II, 2.1 million Koreans, or 10 percent of the country's population, had been removed to Japan. This included 360,000 conscripts in the Japanese army and 170,000 Korean women who were forced to accompany the army as prostitutes, officially known as "military comfort women."

Korea remained under Japanese domination until the end of the second world imperialist slaughter, when Japanese forces surrendered. During the years of Japanese colonial rule a significant independence movement developed. On March 1, 1919, 2 million Koreans took part in peaceful rallies across the country, during which the Japanese authorities arrested thousands and killed or wounded 8,000. Other mass protests followed. They were combined with an armed guerrilla struggle based in the area along the Korean-Chinese border.

Tokyo's surrender to its imperialist rival in Washington on August 15, 1945, sparked a massive social upheaval throughout Korea. "People's committees" spread throughout the countryside and cities - uniting forces that had been active in the anticolonial struggle - and began to assume control of many areas. A wave of union organizing swept through the factories and other workplaces, and organizations of peasants, women, and youth sprang up. On Sept. 6, 1945, the Korean People's Republic was proclaimed in Seoul. The new government had close links to the people's committees. It called for an independent Korea; radical land reform; nationalization of factories, mines, and railways; universal suffrage for men and women over 18; an eight-hour day and other prolabor measures; freedom of speech, assembly, and religion; and compulsory elementary education.

Aiming to block these anti-imperialist and anticapitalist mobilizations, the U.S. government landed its troops in Korea. They arrived in Seoul on September 8, two days after the new government had been announced there.

Washington instigates Korea's division
On display at the museum were many secret U.S. documents captured by the Korean People's Army during the 1950-53 war, including initial orders by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur declared he would accept the surrender of Japanese forces south of the 38th parallel. He announced U.S. military control of south Korea and made English the official language in that part of the country in a Sept. 7, 1945, proclamation. On November 2 of that year, the U.S.-imposed military government decreed that all laws established by the hated Japanese occupiers would be enforced in the south. The laws put in place by the people's committees were annulled and the committees violently repressed by the authorities.

The U.S. rulers feared that a victory by the workers and peasants there would not only push back Washington's interests in Korea. It would hasten the day when working people of neighboring China - where a revolutionary struggle was under way against the dictatorial regime of Chiang Kai- shek - would also get rid of imperialist domination and exploitation.

In their effort to deny Korea's right to national self- determination, the U.S. rulers secured the de facto cooperation of the regime headed by Joseph Stalin, which had usurped power from the working class in a political counterrevolution in the late 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union. Moscow agreed to accept Tokyo's surrender north of the 38th parallel and sent its troops there. The U.S. and Soviet governments had already tacitly agreed on the division of Korea into two spheres of influence.

Hundreds of thousands of Korean workers, peasants, and youth refused to go along with the deal, however. A major rebellion against the "Made in America" regime occurred in the south in 1946. The revolt was crushed by U.S. and south Korean troops and right-wing thugs organized by the puppet government in Seoul. But a guerrilla movement developed once again. Between 1945 and 1950, about 100,000 Koreans who participated in strikes, peasant protests, and armed resistance were killed in the south.

In northern Korea, the Soviet forces recognized the existence of the people's committees, which soon became the foundation of a new government. By the end of 1946, landlord domination had been broken and land redistributed to tenant farmers and other toilers in the countryside who needed land. The mines and other industrial enterprises were nationalized. On Sept. 9, 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was founded in the north - a workers state where capitalist social relations had been abolished. From that moment on, its government, headed by Kim Il Sung, declared its determination to win unification of the country. During this period, tens of thousands of Koreans in the north fought alongside the revolutionary forces in China's civil war battling the imperialist-backed Chiang Kai-shek, whose government was overthrown in October 1949.

By the time the Soviet troops pulled out of the DPRK in late 1948, and most U.S. troops in June 1949, the division of the country was becoming institutionalized. The two governments were based on two conflicting social systems with different class interests and property relations. A U.S. military advisory group remained to supervise the forces of the regime in the south. Resistance to the puppet government of Syngman Rhee and to U.S. domination mounted there, including within the south Korean army.

"On March 7, 1949, at age 23, I was part of a rebellion in my army unit in the Hon Chon area of south Korea," said Kan Tae Mu, now a retired general of the Korean People's Army (KPA). He spoke to members of the fact-finding delegation at the end of the visit to the Liberation War Museum. Kan, a company commander in 1949, led dozens of fellow soldiers to desert Rhee's armed forces, cross the 38th parallel to the north, and join the KPA. He said many similar revolts took place at the time, especially in the areas of south Korea near the 38th parallel. Many were drowned in blood. In May 1949 the crew of a south Korean navy ship defected to the DPRK, with the vessel.

"I had joined the army when I was 19," Kan said. "At the beginning I was loyal to Seoul. My company took part in the military parade during Syngman Rhee's inauguration as president. I remember MacArthur on the reviewing stand. Soon we discovered that the government was simply a puppet of the U.S. forces that intended to maintain the division of the country and possibly invade the north to dominate Korea in its entirety." His disillusionment began at a meeting with high-ranking officers of the U.S. and south Korean armies in 1948 where plans for an attack on north Korea were discussed, he said.

1950-53 Korean War
Among the documents on display at the museum was an operational map drawn up by the U.S. military showing plans for an invasion of the northern half of Korea. "It was the south Korean puppet army and their U.S. superiors that launched an attack on June 25, 1950," Gen. Kim Sang Hun told the delegation. The Korean People's Army soon crossed the 38th parallel and its forces entered Seoul within three days, rapidly liberating 90 percent of Korean territory. In areas where Rhee's troops were routed, the KPA instituted land reform, a measure the impoverished peasants welcomed.

The Democratic administration of President Harry Truman claimed the movement of soldiers from north to the south was a "communist invasion." Truman used this as a pretext to send large numbers of troops, ships, planes, and tanks to try to smash the DPRK army and regain control of part of Korea and then of the entire peninsula. Washington cloaked this assault on Korea's sovereignty in the blue flag of the United Nations, under the auspices of the UN Security Council and with the participation of troops from 15 other countries. But the U.S. armed forces made up the decisive majority of the so- called UN forces waging the war.

Washington failed to deal a decisive blow to the Korean People's Army but was able to push its troops to the Yalu river, which borders China. The new workers and farmers government in China sent massive numbers of volunteer troops to the aid of their Korean brothers and sisters. By the end of 1952, 1.2 million Chinese troops were engaged in the war and some 900,000 Chinese volunteers fell in battle during the fighting.

"The security of China itself was threatened," Gen. Kim Sang Hun told the visitors. "The involvement of the Chinese volunteers helped us defeat the imperialist invaders." By the middle of 1953, Korean forces fought the U.S. troops to a stalemate at roughly the 38th parallel.

U.S. atrocities and defeat
Washington and its allies carried out large-scale bombing of the country, especially the northern part, to force working people to give up - to no avail.

More than 428,000 bombs were dropped on Pyongyang alone - a city whose prewar population was 400,000 - virtually flattening it. Pilots bombed five of the 20 major dams in the north, causing massive flooding and loss of civilian lives. The only reason U.S. and allied forces didn't destroy all the dams was because they feared an international outcry against the indiscriminate death and destruction that would result.

The Korean War was even unpopular among the majority of working people in the United States, despite the anticommunist hysteria and witch-hunting that both Democratic and Republican politicians were attempting to whip up in those years.

According to museum exhibits more than 717 million pounds of napalm - jellied gasoline - was dropped on Korea, more than four times the amount used in World War II and a harbinger of what the Pentagon carried out in Vietnam 10 years later.

The public television documentary Korea: The Unknown War, aired in the United States in 1990, showed Sen. John Glenn describing this as the "nape scrape." U.S. forces used tactical air power to scrape entire sections of the population off the face of the earth with giant sheets of flaming napalm. Glenn, who was a Marine in the war, said the U.S. bombing command stated by the end they had literally no more targets left in north Korea; everything they could see from the air, including huts, had been leveled. A segment of the documentary - shown earlier in Britain but cut from the U.S. version - cited historian Bruce Cumings stating that both Truman and MacArthur had wanted to extend the war into China.

A number of the bombs did not explode and caused deaths for years to come during clean-up operations. Bomb shells and photos of the devastation the U.S. assault caused could be seen at the museum. Also on display were dozens of the insects U.S. forces employed to carry out biological warfare.

The estimated deaths were 4 million Koreans in a nation of 30 million in 1950, including 2 million civilians and 500,000 troops in the north. Fifty-four thousand U.S. troops were killed among 5.7 million used.

In addition to this visit and other meetings where discussion focused on the Korean War, the delegation had a chance to see a couple of documentary films that showed footage of the tenacious resistance of the Korean people. One, titled "The U.S. imperialists are the no. 1 enemy of the Korean people," focused on the 1945-50 period. The other showed resistance during the war in the rear guard. Footage included scenes of entire textile and ammunition factories operating underground, mostly staffed by women, as U.S. bombers were destroying the country's industry and infrastructure.

The wall dividing Korea
On July 27, 1953, U.S. generals were forced to sign an armistice agreement with the DPRK. The country was divided at roughly the 38th parallel, and a 2.5-mile wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was set up across the peninsula. Thousands of U.S. and Korean troops patrol both sides of the DMZ because a state of war still exists. Washington and Seoul have refused to sign a peace treaty. The U.S. government maintains over 40,000 troops in south Korea to this day and a massive arsenal of weaponry, including nuclear weapons, on 40 military sites.

Panmunjom is the village on the dividing line where the two sides meet. The building where the armistice treaty was signed is now a museum. "The U.S. aggressors knelt down before the Korean people right here," said Lt. Col. Kim Sun Nam who showed the delegation around on the morning of July 21. "U.S. generals wanted to sign the treaty in open air, on a tank or a ship. We said no. The place of their capitulation must have a physical presence in history. In five days, 200 soldiers of the Korean People's Army built this structure."

The entire DMZ is a very tense area. When the delegation arrived at Punmunjom, six U.S. soldiers quickly came on the scene taking photos and videotaping the visitors. The GIs initially outnumbered the south Korean troops. As everyone on the delegation began taking pictures of their own, the U.S. soldiers melted in the background and were replaced by more south Korean guards. Within 10 minutes, only one U.S. officer could be seen.

Later that day, at an observation post on the north side of the DMZ, the concrete wall dividing Korea could be seen through military binoculars. The heavily fortified wall was built by the south Korean government in 1977 with the aid of their U.S. protectors. It is 16-26 feet tall and 33-62 feet thick at its base. It runs across the entire length of the Korean peninsula, 150 miles, on the south side of the demarcation line. By comparison, the Berlin Wall that divided that German city was 26.5 miles long.

Looked at from the south, the wall is not visible. It is covered by dirt and vegetation, giving the appearance of a hill. "It's part of the south Korean authorities' campaign to deny its existence or minimize its impact in the eyes of the world as a physical barrier to unification of the country," said Kim Chung Song, a translator and member of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League.

When the atmosphere is clear the wall can be seen clearly from the north side through binoculars, about 2.5 miles away. The south Korean posts have huge slogans painted on them. "Come to south Korea: 45 days holidays, freedom to travel, welfare," read the ones on the post directly across. This sounds more bitterly mocking each month as depression conditions worsen in south Korea.

Later, as the authorities on the other side figured out that visitors on the north were looking at them, they turned on their loudspeakers with Korean and U.S. music - including the finale to the "William Tell Overture" - and slogans in Korean and probably in English. The way the wind was blowing that afternoon made it hard to hear what they were saying. Lt. General Kan Ho Sop, in charge of that KPA post, who gave everyone an explanation of how the wall was built, said the loudspeakers are turned on regularly every day for several hours. The main message is about the evils of communism, the virtues of capitalism, and invitations to "defect to south Korea."

José Ramón Rodríguez of the UJC from Cuba told everyone a story of a previous delegation of Cubans who had visited the same spot. The south Koreans and their superiors from the United States began broadcasting slogans against Cuba, saying that communism is collapsing there as it will soon in north Korea. "They wish!" Rodríguez said with a laugh.

"The maintenance of the wall shows their weakness," said Kan Ho Sop in an interview. "It gives the lie to their so- called freedom to travel. Tell young people in the United States about it. It's a good reason why they should refuse to become cannon fodder for the imperialist army. It's a good reason why they should join our fight to tear it down and to unify Korea."

Samantha Kern, a YS member in San Francisco, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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