The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 42           November 6, 2006  
 
 
Washington leads drive to enforce
harsh sanctions against north Korea
(front page)
 
BY OLYMPIA NEWTON  
October 24—U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice toured China, Japan, Russia, and south Korea last week to solidify Washington’s “coalition of the willing” to threaten militarily and squeeze economically the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Rice tried to win compliance from these governments with an October 14 United Nations Security Council resolution calling for cargo “inspections” and instituting other harsh sanctions against north Korea. Washington introduced the resolution after the DPRK announced October 8 it had conducted a nuclear arms test.

After winning a unanimous vote for the resolution, U.S. assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill said, “The issue… is how to make sure countries interpret it in a way that it will really have teeth to it, and I think we are on the right track.”

Just prior to Rice’s arrival in Beijing, officials at four Chinese commercial banks announced they had stopped transactions with north Korea. China, north Korea’s largest trading partner, provides 70 percent of the DPRK’s food and fuel. Beijing began inspecting north Korean cargo at its border October 16.

In south Korea the results were more mixed. “You can’t exactly say she [Rice] got south Korea’s commitment on the Security Council resolution in the way she would have sought it,” said Kim Sung-han of the south Korea-based Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. Seoul did not agree to give up joint economic ventures with the north, despite Washington’s pressures. Businessmen from north and south met in the northern border town of Gaesong October 20 to discuss moving ahead with a joint industrial park there.

U.S. and south Korean military officials also held a “Security Consultative Meeting” last weekend to discuss the position of the 30,000 U.S. troops in south Korea and the command of troops at the “De-Militarized Zone” dividing Korea. The joint communiqué from the meeting assured the “continuation of the extended deterrence offered by the U.S. nuclear umbrella.” Under “extended deterrence” U.S. forces can use nuclear weapons to counter claimed nuclear threats to south Korea.

Some 4,500 people in Seoul protested Rice’s arrival, calling for the lifting of the sanctions against north Korea. Two days later, 10,000 protested U.S.-south Korean trade talks in Sogwipo, south Korea.

In the United States, Democratic Party politicians have been criticizing the Bush administration from the right on north Korea, and much of the middle-class left is following suit. The Communist Party-USA, for example, has joined the Democrats in condemning the DPRK and blaming Bush’s “failed policies” for “allowing” Pyongyang to pursue a nuclear program. Making no mention of the U.S. nuclear-armed warships in the waters surrounding Korea, an editorial in the October 20 People’s Weekly World, which reflects the views of the CPUSA, said Pyongyang’s test “inexcusably disregards the urgent need to banish nukes from the earth.”

Revolutionary working-class organizations have taken a different stance. On October 22, Annalucia Vermunt sent a message on behalf of the Young Socialists and Communist League in New Zealand to the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League, the youth organization of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Vermunt outlined Wellington’s role in the U.S.-led campaign against the DPRK, adding: “We stand with you in your struggle for sovereignty…. Your stance for a non-nuclear and reunified Korea is in the interests of all working people around the globe. We demand all New Zealand, U.S., and other governments withdraw troops and weapons from the Korean peninsula.”
 
 
Related articles:
How working people in Korea pushed back Washington in 1950s war  
 
 
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