On the occasion of the 57th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists send this message in solidarity with the Korean people’s continuing determination to win national sovereignty. Together with other revolutionary-minded working people and youth around the world, we steadfastly oppose imperialism’s ongoing division of your nation. That brutal partition, imposed as a fruit of Washington's victory in World War II, remains one of the great continuing atrocities from the past century. At the same time, we recall and celebrate the victory over U.S. imperialism by the courageous people of Korea at the opening of the 1950s, a victory that prevented imperialism’s occupation under the United Nations flag of the entire Korean peninsula.

Fifty-seven years after its founding, the DPRK continues to face unremitting hostility from this same imperialism. With utter disregard for the most elementary rights of national sovereignty, Washington is today seeking, under the cover of the so-called six-party talks, to prevent north Korea from developing nuclear technology to meet pressing energy needs for industry and agriculture. To the propertied rulers of the United States, it means nothing that it becomes more evident with each passing year that economic and social advancement in the countries long exploited and oppressed by imperialism—in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, the Mideast, and the Americas—cannot be met short of expanded use of all forms of energy production.

Imperialism has been for more than a century, and remains, the enemy of toiling humanity and the greatest obstacle to human progress. Its brutality is highlighted today by the stark class reality of the massive social disaster unfolding in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Thousands of working people have died and others were left to die without medical attention, food, or water beyond what they themselves could organize to get. The reactions of the wealthy toward this calamity for our class range from callous indifference to racist contempt. They are concerned only with holding down their economic losses and minimizing knowledge about the death, hunger, dehydration, and spreading disease that their social system and its Democratic and Republican party spokespeople are solely responsible for.

The wealthiest, most powerful capitalist government in the world, with its dog-eat-dog class values, appeared helpless in face of this social catastrophe. Does the United States lack the resources? The technology? The expertise? No. What is lacking is a government of politically conscious, organized, mobilized, united and self-confident working people that places social needs above all else—a workers and farmers government. What is unfolding is a capitalist disaster, not a natural one—a massive social breakdown that is part of the accelerating crises, marked by spreading wars and political reaction, bred by the very workings of the imperialist world order itself.

On this anniversary, we celebrate together the just struggle of the Korean people against our common enemy. We reiterate our commitment to support the determined fight by working people and youth on both sides of the 38th parallel for the withdrawal of all imperialist armed forces from the seas surrounding Korea, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons; for the removal of all U.S. troops from your country; and, in the process, for the restoration of a united and sovereign Korea.  
 
 
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