The following are greetings sent to the Korean people by Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes on the anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), which was formed on Sept. 9, 1948.

On behalf of the Socialist Workers Party, I send communist greetings to the Korean people on the occasion of the 48th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Our party reaffirms our solidarity with your struggle to end the forced division of your country. We condemn Washington's recent war games in the Korean peninsula and Pacific region, which continue not only the decades-long bipartisan military provocations but also the unceasing efforts to isolate the DPRK politically and economically, and brutalize the Korean people.

In celebrating the 48th anniversary of the DPRK, we join with the thousands of students in South Korea who mobilized against the Seoul government for nine days in mid-August demanding reunification of the Korean peninsula. The capitalist rulers in the South also face workers' resistance; labor marches in July for higher wages and reinstatement of fired workers were watched on the news with sympathy and admiration by many working people elsewhere. We condemn the recent brutal crackdown on students and workers by Seoul's cops, carried out with Washington's approval and complicity, as such assaults have been for the past half century.

Your anniversary celebration this year comes at a time when U.S. warships and B-52 bombers are once again launching cowardly assaults on the people of Iraq with long-range cruise missiles, as U.S. president Clinton seeks to boost his reelection chances this fall. As the history of this century has repeatedly demonstrated, Washington has no more regard for the national sovereignty of Iraq than it does for that of Korea or of other oppressed nations and peoples the world over. Just as the U.S. government is wielding the food weapon today against the Korean people, the U.S. rulers also are maintaining the brutal embargo on Iraq that since 1990 has condemned hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to malnutrition, disease, and death. These acts of war are a deadly danger not only to the people of Iraq and the Middle East, but to all those who refuse to live by the dictates of international capital.

The Iraqi people and others throughout the Gulf region and Middle East will resist these assaults by Washington, just as they have done in face of colonial and neocolonial outrages for many decades. They will emulate the combativeness and sense of human dignity that has resulted in triumphs over oppression and exploitation from Indochina to Cuba to South Africa since World War II - and that has led the Korean people to victories over arrogant overlords from near and far.

The Socialist Workers Party pledges to continue telling the truth about the aims of U.S. and Japanese imperialism in Korea and to join with other working people and youth to fight efforts by the U.S. government to maintain the division of the peninsula. We look forward to the day when workers in the United States can join the Korean people in celebrating a united and truly independent Korea, free forever from the imperialist boot.  
 
 
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