The Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists send revolutionary greetings on the February 16 national holiday of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. We reaffirm our common struggle to defend Korea’s sovereignty and to achieve national reunification. We condemn the escalating military threats and ongoing political and economic blackmail of the DPRK by Washington, Tokyo, and other imperialist powers.

Dressing up its drive for expanded world domination as a “global war on terrorism,” Washington has singled out the DPRK as a special target, different even from their unremitting and bullying pressures on the governments of Iran and Syria. The U.S. rulers use the testimony of former U.S. “weapons inspector” David Kay, as well as recent statements by the Libyan and Pakistani governments, to paint a sinister face on the DPRK’s decades-long efforts to defend its sovereignty in face of U.S. imperialism’s brutal, nuclear-armed might in south Korea, the surrounding waters, and throughout Asia and the Pacific.

Less than six months ago Washington launched the so-called Proliferation Security Initiative. Today along with 15 other countries, and claiming the support of another 35 countries, these imperialist bandits carry out their piracy. Under the PSI, the U.S. government asserts the “right” — a right it has acted on and will continue to act on— to carry out acts of piracy on the high seas, in the air, and on the ground against ships, cargo planes, and any other vehicles carrying goods to or from the DPRK and other nations. What imperial hypocrisy from a government that unleashed nuclear weapons to incinerate hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II, and that is continually expanding and upgrading its massive nuclear arsenal on the ground, at sea, in the air, and soon in space as well!

At the same time, the imperialist government of Japan this month has just adopted new legislation enabling Tokyo to impose unilateral economic sanctions against the DPRK. This action comes as Japan’s capitalist rulers, the former colonial overlords of Korea, are for the first time since World War II sending combat troops to war zones abroad. Initial contingents are already being deployed in southern Iraq as part of the some 1,000 Japanese troops pledged by Tokyo to bolster the Anglo-American-led armed forces occupying Iraq.

As the propertied ruling families of the United States consolidate their aggressive military course, however, spreading depression conditions worldwide are simultaneously laying the groundwork for stepped-up resistance by workers and peasants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, to the United States, Europe, and other imperialist centers themselves. It is among such forces engaged in battles against capitalist exploitation and imperialist oppression that the workers and peasants of Korea, on both sides of the U.S.-imposed border, will find the most consistent and selfless allies in their fight for national reunification and social justice.

On this anniversary, the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists pledge to renew our efforts to get out the truth about the Korean people’s ongoing struggle against imperialism and to join with others in demanding of the U.S. government: No to military threats and provocations! End the economic embargo! Normalize diplomatic relations with the DPRK! All U.S. troops out of Korea!
 
 
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Tokyo passes bill tightening squeeze on north Korea  
 
 
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