The agreement also includes clauses on the repatriation of prisoners of war from the north, still held in Seoul's jails, proposals for joint economic projects, and a pledge not to engage in offensive military operations against each other. Government officials are supposed to meet to flesh out the agreement's details.

Four days after the talks ended U.S. president William Clinton announced the easing of a near-total trade embargo against north Korea imposed in 1950. The measure "rewarded" Pyongyang's moratorium on missile testing, implemented nine months earlier. U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright plans to follow up the summit with a visit to Beijing and Seoul. The Clinton government, slandering north Korea as a "rogue nation," is using different avenues to try to pressure Pyongyang to make concessions on its national defense.

Despite Washington's official support for the talks, the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in the south will remain. "Discussion of withdrawing American troops [is] premature," said U.S. officials cited in a New York Times report. "Any discussion of troop strengths or any number of other issues will have to be addressed as the process moves forward," said National Security Council spokesperson Lt. Col. David Stockwell on June 18. South Korean president Kim Dae Jung has said he supports a permanent U.S. military presence in the interests of "stability."

The Pentagon's 37,000 troops back the half-million-strong south Korean forces at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which divides the countries. The two armed forces hold large-scale military exercises every year, blatantly aimed at the north.

A heavy U.S. military presence in Korea has been a fact of life since the late 1940s. The peninsula was divided into Russian and U.S. zones of influence following the defeat of Japanese imperialism in World War II. From 1950 to 1953 Washington donned the United Nations colors and led an assault that involved troops from 15 nations. The U.S.-dominated forces hurled military destruction at the north--and backed a military dictatorship in the south--in its attempt to crush the revolutionary movement of workers and farmers, retake the whole territory, and threaten the Chinese revolution as well. Four million died as a result of Washington's war. The U.S. Air Force ran out of meaningful targets in the flattened north.

Fought to a standstill by the Korean fighters and Chinese volunteers, Washington signed an armistice dividing Korea at the 38th parallel. A peace treaty has never been signed, leaving the combatants still officially at war. As recently as 1996 U.S. president William Clinton rejected a proposal by Pyongyang for a separate peace treaty with Washington.

Seoul and Washington's policy of armed hostility and preparation for a war of aggression was summarized by the south Korean president in 1996. He said that "south-north Korean issues can be settled only through military strength."

Alongside the massive U.S. military backing for successive regimes in the south, U.S. capitalists have invested heavily in south Korea, which has become a major exporter of industrial products. A super-wealthy capitalist class has emerged over the years whose interests do not always exactly coincide with those of U.S. imperialism. Despite its relatively high level of economic development, however, south Korea remains a semicolonial country, under the domination of Washington.

In the north the government undertook a land reform and extensive nationalizations--measures backed by the workers and peasants, who wrested the country from imperialist control and drove forward the creation of a workers state.  
 
Demands for reunification
North Korea's government has consistently called for an end to the division of the peninsula. In contrast, through several decades U.S.-backed military dictatorships in the south cracked down on any expressions of support for national reunification. The National Security Law--still used by police in south Korea--forbids any political activity favorable to the north or in support of reunification.

In recent years the growth of popular struggles for democratic rights, and of powerful unions in south Korea's car factories and other huge industrial plants, have emboldened many to support reunification more openly. By the late 1990s Koreans from both the north and south were confident enough to stage an annual march along Unification Road and attempt to meet, despite Seoul's prohibitions.

The summit meeting was widely publicized in Korea, and according to press reports was closely followed by millions in the south. Photographs, news stories, and television shows of the two leaders embracing and engaged in talks has undercut decades of propaganda demonizing the government in the north. Books about the north have reportedly become overnight best-sellers in the south.

The two-and-a-half-mile-wide DMZ between the two countries is split by a broad-based concrete wall standing between 16 and 26 feet high and 33 and 62 feet wide. It was built by Seoul in 1977 with Washington's backing. Running coast to coast for 150 miles, it is nearly six times the length of the now-demolished Berlin Wall. The DMZ marks the most explosive unresolved national division in the world today

This is the context of the June summit, and the reason it generated so much interest among Korean working people. During the presidential summit students in the south reportedly celebrated the talks by hanging north Korean flags in defiance of Seoul's laws.  
 
Signs of economic recovery in north
Seoul and Washington also had to adjust their political stance as reports testify that north Korea has survived the crisis and food shortages of the early 1990s. The north's "economy is believed to have grown slightly," according to the New York Times.

In the early 1990s north Korea's agricultural and industrial resources were hit by devastating floods and tidal coastal waves, and an energy shortage which caused periodic heating cutoffs. The country also suffered from the impact of capitalist depression conditions in southeast Asia in the mid-1990s, and from an abrupt halt to oil imports after the breakup of the Soviet Union--a major trading partner--at the opening of the 1990s. Grain production fell by more than half through the early years of the decade.

In the face of food shortages Pyongyang appealed for international food aid. Washington seized on this as a means of pressuring the workers state, sabotaging, and withholding United Nations food relief.

Despite the enormous strains these calamities imposed on working people in the north, the imperialists' hope that the workers state would "implode" has faded. "There is no popular uprising against the Communist government in the North," wrote journalist David Sanger in a June 16 New York Times commentary. "They'll break even [in 1999]," said an unnamed U.S. official in January.

North Korea has made some progress on the world diplomatic stage in recent years as well. Diplomatic relations have been established with Rome, and discussions with the governments of Japan and Australia have been occurring.

On June 13, in an attempt to cool down tensions, Pyongyang switched off loudspeakers on its side of the DMZ. Three days later Seoul reciprocated. In line with the June 15 agreement, north Korea's Red Cross Society has contacted its southern counterpart to seek talks on reuniting families. Many families were split up by the division of the country in 1953.

A visit by U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright to China and south Korea was announced immediately following the summit's conclusion. Albright will "focus on Korean developments," said government officials.

In the June 16 New York Times David Sanger hinted at Washington's demands, and at the kind of carrots--complementing the stick of their armed forces--used by the U.S. rulers to try to entice concessions. "Is [Kim Jong Il] prepared to pull his troops back from the demilitarized zone?" he wrote. Alleging--without citing any facts-- that north Korea's "major export consists of missiles and arms shipped to the Middle East," he asked if Pyongyang can "break off that arms trade, or satisfy the United States that it should be removed from the State Department's list of terrorist nations?

"If its actions match its good words," wrote Sanger in typically supercilious style, "the desperately poor country will suddenly be eligible for a range of international goodies, including aid from the World Bank and the I.M.F."

After 50 years of blanket sanctions, Washington announced June 19 that it will draft new regulations to allow a variety of economic contacts between the U.S. and north Korea. "The action was a reward for North Korea's agreement not to test long-range missiles," according to a Reuters report. "Trade in most goods between the countries is now allowed," continued the dispatch, "as are direct personal and commercial financial transactions, investments, cargo shipments, and commercial flights. Exporting military goods and sensitive technology to North Korea remains banned."

State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said that a U.S. Chamber of Commerce delegation may travel to north Korea soon, but "the actual opportunities for trade may be limited. Korea's reserves of iron ore, copper, zinc, and other minerals may attract interest, said analysts.

The south Korean industrial giant Samsung is reportedly considering investing $1 billion in a consumer electronics plant in the north to "take advantage of the country's highly skilled, low-cost labor force," according to a New York Times report.

South Korean president Kim Dae Jung calls for Pyongyang to "follow the example of China and Vietnam. They have maintained their political systems, while gradually opening up economically," he said recently.

The statement describes the president's "sunshine policy" which also bows to the mass support for reunification. Kim Dae Jung--first elected in 1998--was himself sentenced to death nearly 20 years ago for speaking out against the military dictatorship. This and his lip service to unification help explain his popularity. On a visit to the United States in June 1998 he announced he would release political prisoners without requiring they sign letters in which they renounce their political beliefs.  
 
Sheen off south Korean 'miracle'
Much is made of the disparities in modernization, industrialization, and productivity between the two territories. But the sharp depression suffered by the southern economy in the "Asian crisis" that began in 1998, and widespread layoffs that have hurled workers into the streets in a country without a social welfare system, have rubbed the sheen from the south Korean economic "miracle."

Ultrarightist politician and likely Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan is one who claims that "South Korea has an economy twenty times that of North Korea, a population twice as large, a vast technological advantage, and access to U.S. weaponry two generations ahead of anything the North can produce or purchase."

Buchanan is a lone voice among U.S. capitalist politicians in calling for the withdrawal of "all U.S. armed forces from the Korean peninsula.... Seoul is fully capable of providing all the manpower and material for its own defense," he wrote in June following the talks.

Furthermore, he added, "The rise of anti-Americanism in the South tells us the U.S. occupation, begun more than half a century ago, should come to an end."

The ultrarightist figure was referring to the widespread opposition to the U.S. occupation forces. Two days after the talks ended, 1,000 people marched on the U.S. Air Force bombing range at the Koon-Ni Range in Maehyang-ri. "This is our land! Let's drive out U.S. troops!" they chanted, coupling the demand of the occupants of a nearby village gathered at Maehyang-ri to relocate the range with the demand for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in south Korea. Police assaulted 100 auto workers who tried to join the protest from the nearby Kia Motors plant.

The villagers have stepped up their protests since May when six people were injured and houses damaged by the impact of bombs dropped during bombing exercises. They explain that at least nine people have died in "accidents" linked to the range.

On June 18 the north Korean government reiterated its demand for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the Korean peninsula. "The United States imperialists pretend to be interested in peace," stated the Rodong Shinmun, the newspaper of the governing North Korean Workers Party, "but their actions only result in increasing the danger of war and escalating tensions."  
 
 
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