The agreement between the two governments states that "the north and south agree to solve the question of the country’s reunification independently by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation." Issued at the conclusion of the first summit meeting between the heads of state of north and south Korea since the forced division of the country in 1945, the joint declaration includes provisions for family, cultural, athletic, health, and other exchanges between the two governments.

The June 2000 North-South Joint declaration was a product of the refusal of either the people in north Korea or hundreds of thousands of workers, students, and others in south Korea to back off their fight to advance national reunification, despite the large U.S. military presence in the south.

Currently, 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in south Korea, including many along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The DMZ occupies the area on the 38th parallel where the U.S. imperialist rulers, with the complicity of the government of the Soviet Union, partitioned Korea at the end of World War II.  
 
North-South railways to reopen
Despite Washington’s disruptions, the governments of north and south Korea met here April 3–5 to discuss further measures to improve relations. In a joint press release issued April 6, Kim Yong Sun of the Workers Party of Korea and Rim Tong Won, special adviser to south Korean president Kim Dae Jung, announced plans to reconnect the Sinuiju-Seoul railway and roads on the east coast of Korea, as well as the Kaesong-Munsan road in the west.

The Sinuiju-Seoul railway is the main artery connecting the two halves of the peninsula. Land mines will have to be removed from the roadbed and surroundings, a fact the U.S. and south Korean governments had previously pointed to as a rationalization for keeping the railway closed.

The joint press release also announced plans for a meeting of families separated by the division of the country as well as further steps to develop joint tourism at Mount Kumgang in north Korea. A second round of talks is scheduled for May 7–10 in Seoul.  
 
Washington’s provocations
The recent renewal by Seoul of talks with Pyongyang follows several months of increasingly aggressive threats against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) by Washington, which has maintained close political and military ties with the government of south Korea for the last 57 years.

During his State of the Union address in January of this year, U.S. president George Bush fingered north Korea as part of a worldwide "axis of evil" along with Iran and Iraq.

Then, in March, the Pentagon’s recent Nuclear Posture Review was "leaked," naming north Korea as one of seven countries that are potential targets of Washington’s nuclear arsenal. A spokesman for the foreign ministry of the DPRK responded March 13 to the "leak" by pointing out that the Pentagon document "shows that the U.S. disregards every kind of international agreement and pursues a policy of world domination by force, and that if it sees any nation as an obstacle in the implementation of its policy, it tries to breach bilateral agreements."

An article in the March 23 issue of the English-language Pyongyang Times called on the U.S. government to "apologize for defining the DPRK as part of an ‘axis of evil’ and demanding it change its system." It noted that the "south Korean authorities are making every possible effort to strengthen the ‘close military cooperation’ with the United States, perpetuate the presence of U.S. troops in the south of Korea, and support the aggressive policy of the U.S. toward Korea."

Washington and Seoul conducted joint military exercises near the DMZ on the south Korean side March 21–27. These exercises, which were the first such operations since 1993 and the largest since the 1950–53 Korean War, involved 37,000 U.S. troops currently stationed in south Korea, 650,000 south Korean troops, and U.S. troops stationed in Japan and Guam.  
 
Imperial arrogance
In addition, Washington continues its eight-year pattern of refusing to comply with the 1994 Agreed Framework it signed with the government of north Korea. Under this accord, Washington, Japan, south Korea, and other countries promised to provide $4 billion for the construction of two nuclear power reactors in north Korea, in exchange for an agreement by Pyongyang to freeze any efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Under Article 3, Section 1, of the Agreed Framework, Washington also offered "formal assurances against the threat of use of nuclear weapons by the United States" against the DPRK.

As of this moment, however, not a drop of cement has been poured to begin work on either of the two reactors, which were supposed to be completed by 2003 and are needed to meet the country’s pressing energy demands. U.S. officials now say the reactors will be constructed by 2008 at the earliest.

The Japanese government is also intensifying its aggressive stance against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Having already suspended food assistance to the DPRK last year, Tokyo says that any steps toward improving relations with the north Korean government depend on settling the issue of 11 Japanese citizens allegedly kidnapped in recent decades and being held in north Korea.

In response to these accusations, a DPRK delegate addressed the United Nations Commission on Human Rights March 22. He noted that Tokyo has turned reality upside down, since it was the Japanese government, during its nearly half-century-long colonial occupation of Korea until 1945 that "forcibly conscript[ed] six million young and middle-aged Koreans for forced service or labor, killing more than one million of them, and forcing nearly 200,000 Korean women to serve as sexual slaves for the Japanese army in war zones."

By the end of World War II some 12 percent of the Korean population was living either in Japan or in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, the vast majority against their will.

An article in the April 6 issue of the Pyongyang Times explained that "Japan’s crimes did not end here." During the 1950–53 Korean War launched by Washington, the article said, Tokyo "offered its military bases to U.S. forces and directly dispatched soldiers of its defeated Imperial Army and police forces into the front line."

The authors are currently in Pyongyang as members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists leadership delegation there. Jack Willey is the third member of the delegation.  
 
 
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