The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.32           September 22, 1997 
 
 
U.S. Provocations Mount Against North Korea  
 In a provocative move against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Clinton administration announced August 26 that it would grant political asylum to two north Korean diplomats and their families. U.S. officials openly state that they organized the defections of Chang Sung Gil, who was the DPRK ambassador to Egypt, and his brother Chang Sung Ho, a trade official at Pyongyang's mission in Paris.

The U.S. State Department made this announcement one day before scheduled negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington on weapons sales. The north Korean government canceled the talks in protest, demanding U.S. officials turn over the two men, who it said defected to escape charges of embezzlement and leaking state secrets.

Just a week earlier, the Clinton administration announced that it had imposed new economic sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea for alleged "missile technology proliferation activities." Washington already has a complete trade embargo against north Korea.

Meanwhile, a tidal wave hit the western coast of the DPRK in late August, flooding some 265,000 acres of farmland and leaving nearly 29,000 people homeless. This will exacerbate the already serious food shortages in north Korea, the result of two years of flooding followed by drought. Washington has provided only token food aid, and actively worked to stymie Pyongyang's requests for international assistance.

Printed below are excerpts from a message by Socialist Workers Party national secretary Jack Barnes to the Korean people responding to these provocations by Washington.

*****

On behalf of the Socialist Workers Party, I send communist greetings to the Korean people on the occasion of the 49th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Our party... continues to demand that Washington get its troops and nuclear weapons out of Korea; sign a peace treaty ending the state of war the U.S. rulers and their allies have maintained despite the failure of their destructive campaign in the early 1950s to occupy the entirety of your country; and normalize diplomatic relations with the DPRK.

We condemn the recent provocations by Washington and its agents, engineering the defection of two former north Korean diplomats to coincide with the scheduled resumption of U.S.- DPRK negotiations.... As the U.S. rulers continue their belligerent course in Korea, NATO forces, with U.S. officers at the helm, are threatening to use "lethal power" to enforce their occupation of Bosnia and other Yugoslav republics, an occupation whose aim is the reimposition of the domination of capital in that country....

The currency crises sweeping southeast Asia today - from Thailand to Malaysia, Indonesia, and beyond - is another sign of the volatile consequences of decelerating capitalist growth and sharpening financial instability worldwide. As the exploiting classes in semicolonial countries use such crises to demagogically demand greater "sacrifice" from workers and farmers, however, they are meeting labor resistance....

Within the imperialist centers themselves, the working class is resisting the bosses' demands for more "belt- tightening." The victory of the recent 15-day strike by 185,000 Teamsters members against United Parcel Service is an example. In San Francisco, Korean workers joined Teamsters picket lines, beating their drums in solidarity with the strikers....

It is among fighters such as these that the Korean people will find their best allies. The Socialist Workers Party pledges to continue joining with the broadest layers of working people and youth to fight efforts by the U.S. government to maintain the division of your country.

Jack Barnes
SWP National Secretary  
 
 
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