With bipartisan support, White House officials have attempted to justify their actions by depicting Pyongyang as a nuclear-armed threat. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has smeared Pyongyang as a "terrorist regime."

One slander must ring particularly hollow to Korean working people is the claim that Pyongyang starves its people.

It is the U.S. rulers who are today using food as an instrument of their hostility toward the north, as they withhold promised grain shipments and pressure Tokyo and Seoul to do the same. This is consistent with their past opposition to progress made by working people in the DPRK, including the land reform which broke the grip of rapacious landlords.

Why such hostility toward north Korea?

Washington’s stance reflects the class antagonisms between imperialism and the north Korean workers state. The tiny minority of billionaire families who rule the United States cannot reconcile themselves with the defeat inflicted on them by Korean workers and peasants, who made a revolution and overturned capitalist property relations in the north. In response, the U.S. rulers organized a bloody war against Korea that killed up to 4 million people and devastated cities and factories.

Although U.S imperialism lost, they kept troops there to reinforce division, and to oppose reunification. Washington, however, is facing more opposition from working people and youth in south Korea who--contrary to myth--don’t see U.S. troops as their "protectors." This rising sentiment was seen in the recent large demonstrations sparked by the acquittal of U.S. soldiers whose vehicle ran over and killed two Korean schoolgirls.

These and other manifestations of the growing desire for reunification among broader layers of Koreans across the peninsula help to strengthen the north Korean workers state in the face of U.S. military threats and give its workers and peasants confidence that they can resist and win solidarity across the DMZ.

Working people around the world need to defend north Korea’s assertion of its sovereignty and champion the reunification of the Korean people. We can deal a blow to the warmongers by extending a hand of solidarity to demand:

Imperialist hands off north Korea!

U.S. troops out of south Korea!  
 
 
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