The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 2           January 20, 2003  
 
 
Oppose threats against north Korea
(editorial)
 
To justify their policy of aggression, U.S. officials claim the government of north Korea poses a nuclear threat. This turns reality on its head. It’s true there is a danger of "wea-p-ons of mass destruction" on the Korean peninsula--but that threat comes from the imperialist government in Washington, not from north Korea. Millions of people in both south and north sense that reality.

Through its murderous war in 1950–53, Washington partitioned the country. For years it propped up dictatorships in south Korea. Five decades later, the U.S. rulers enforce the division of that nation despite the Korean people’s deep aspirations for reunification. Some 37,000 U.S. troops occupy Korean soil in the southern half of the peninsula. Their nuclear and "conventional" weapons are aimed at working people on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone.

Today the U.S. rulers are preparing a war of plunder in the Mideast by targeting Iraq--another country branded as part of an "axis of evil" by the Bush administration. The imperialist powers’ moves there reinforce their threats against other peoples and countries around the world. While the immediate target of war today is Iraq, the stepped-up U.S. actions and threats against north Korea are real. They include the seizure of a merchant ship in the Indian Ocean in early December, the withholding of oil to strangle the economy, the criminal use of food as a weapon, and efforts at diplomatic isolation.

In south Korea the acquittal of two U.S. soldiers who ran over and killed two girls has sparked a renewed wave of outrage at Washington’s trampling on national sovereignty.

In the years following World War II the Korean people dealt big blows to imperialist domination. Capitalist rule was overthrown in the north. In the Korean War, Washington was dealt its first major military defeat. The resistance of the Korean people to U.S. imperialism and their irrepressible fight for reunification have strengthened the struggles of working people and the oppressed worldwide.

Working people in the United States have a particular obligation to join with the Korean people in demanding an end to U.S. threats and economic sanctions against north Korea, normalization of diplomatic and trade relations between Washington and Pyongyang, and the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula.
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. actions, threats against north Korea increase
South Korea: acquittal of U.S. GIs fuels outrage  
 
 
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