NEW YORK — Some 120 people gathered here April 29 to demand an end to the bellicose annual U.S.-South Korea war games, an end to all sanctions imposed on North Korea by the U.S. government, and an end to U.S.-imposed restrictions on the right to travel to North Korea. They called on Washington to sign a peace treaty, which the U.S. rulers have refused to do since they agreed to a 1953 armistice.
They also demanded the removal of all U.S. troops from Korea and for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula. Korea was forcibly divided by Washington, with the connivance of the Stalinist regime in Moscow, at the end of the second imperialist world war.
Washington occupied the south of Korea after Japan surrendered, installed the puppet government of Syngman Rhee and used its armed forces to crush rising struggles by workers and peasants. Then the U.S. provoked the Korean War in 1950.
After a spirited rally inside Grand Central Station, participants marched to the United Nations South Korean Mission. The original plan, to form a human chain between the North and South Korean Missions, had to be changed due to heavy rain. The action was organized by the 6.15 NY Committee for Reunification of Korea in coalition with other Korean organizations.