Cohen says "you have to ask yourself" why the DPRK maintains a large, well-trained military. It really isn't that complicated. In 1950, Washington launched a war against the Korean people that went on for nearly four years. Massive bombings, including napalm, leveled the country. The peninsula was divided against the will of the Korean people, and 37,000 U.S. troops remain in the south of Korea to this day to enforce that division. The Seoul regime came into existence drenched in the blood of the 2 million combatants slaughtered in the Korean war.

Since then, Washington and Seoul have continued their bellicose stance, staging all sorts of provocations, including violating DPRK air space. And after this history, Washington asserts that north Korea is the aggressor?

The U.S. rulers claim aid is not linked to imperialist demands for the DPRK to neutralize its defenses. Yet one U.S. official after another has made it clear the opposite is true - corn comes on the tip of an imperialist bayonet.

The Clinton administration has no interest or intention of aiding malnourished Koreans in the north. Instead Washington and Seoul blame the food crisis Pyongyang is experiencing - a result of two consecutive years of severe flooding - on the so- called economic inadequacy of the workers state. The $15 million worth of corn Washington has "offered" north Korea is chicken feed compared to the UN-estimated $126 million needed to resolve the near-famine conditions. The onus for the deaths of any Korean children who die of malnutrition rests on the White House door step.

What makes the imperialists hate and fear the workers state in north Korea so much is the ever-looming specter of unification. The Korean people have fought for five decades, both in the north and south, for one sovereign Korean nation. This drive for reunification is a substantial factor in the resistance by working people in south Korea to government austerity and the gradual crumbling of the capitalist economy there, signaled by the collapse of several major steel industries and banks. Hundreds of thousands joined in strikes and protests there in December and January against antilabor and antidemocratic laws the government tried to impose.

Workers, youth, and all those who support the struggle for national self-determination, should call for: Imperialists hands off Pyongyang! Food to north Korea now!  
 
 
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