Flag of Juche Raised High at Pochonbo 80 years ago ! Special Article by Dr Dermot Hudson

                                                       

On the 4th of June it will be 80 years since  the immortal red flag of Juche was raised high above the Korean town of Pochonbo. This great will be significantly commemorated in the DPRK as well by Juche idea and Songun idea followers.
Under the command of the great leader comrade KIM IL SUNG the anti-Japanese revolutionary fighters of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army stormed the border town of Pochonbo in 1937 destroying a police station and other Japanese imperialist repressive institutions.The attack shook the Japanese rigid .One prominent Japanese figure said that "In calm retrospect now, I feel as if the harvest gained over many a day of hard labour has been reduced to ashes in a twinkling in this Pochonbo incident"

As  President KIM IL SUNG said later in his reminiscences With the Century " The Battle of Pochonbo showed that imperialist Japan could be smashed and burnt up, like rubbish. The flames over the night sky of Pochonbo in the fatherland heralded the dawn of the liberation of Korea, which had been buried in darkness.

The Pochonbo Battle was a historic battle which not only showed to the Korean people who thought Korea to be dead that Korea is not dead but alive, but also gave them the confidence that when they fight, they can achieve national independence and liberation"
Korea had become a Japanese colony in 1910. The Japanese imperialist had enforced the most barbaric and cruel colonial rule in Korea. It was forbidden for Korean people to speak in their own
language .The Japanese imperialists preached killing a 100 Koreans because out of the 100 one of them might be a revolutionary.  They also plundered huge amounts of resources.
The Korean people  wanted and need independence and to be free from oppression by Japanese imperialism . However no force or leader existed that could deliver them from the iron rule of Japan. Petitions and appeals were useless , strikes and demos were suppressed by force and the streets run with the blood of Korean workers and peasants . Bourgeois nationalists proved to be useless in leading the nation, they split into factions and squabble as they were totally divorced from the popular masses.Such elements turned to  national reformism which meant capitulation to Japanese imperialism. Some seeing the example of the USSR the first workers and peasants state in the world started a communist movement but this quickly collapsed into flunkeyism and factionalism and was therefore unable to lead the struggle against Japanese imperialist rule.  In those days there was a tendency within the international communist movement to see the struggles of people in the colonial countries as simply a reserve force of the world proletarian revolution .
  President KIM IL SUNG who was born into a revolutionary and patriotic family decided that old methods of struggle did not work and instead forged a new path of struggle based on relying on the popular masses, relying on the internal resources of one's own nation and confronting force with force.In 1926 he formed the Down-With -Union . He put forward the unique Juche-orientated line of
armed struggle at the Kalun meeting in 1930 and formed the Korean Revolutionary Army , later he founded the Anti-Japanese People Guerilla Army in 1932  which became the Korean People's Revolutionary Army. President KIM IL SUNG was like a modern day Robin Hood continually attacking the Japanese marauders and achieving social justice by redistributing land in the liberated zones. He opposed the inactivity of the bourgeois nationalists who advocated the non-existent peaceful road to Korea's independence as well as the disastrous factionalists who had wrecked the communist movement and also the national reformists . President KIM IL SUNG formed the Association For the Restoration of the Fatherland , a mass united front organisation in 1936 and the Korean National Liberation Union which was an organisation of the ARF in the Korean homeland was created.
  The great leader President KIM IL SUNG stressed the importance of advancing into Korea and fighting the Japanese on the soil of Korea. He said at the Nanhutou meeting in February 1936 that
"the masters of the Korean revolution are none other than the Korean communists.Today it depends entirely on us whether or not our anti-Japanese national liberation struggle is stepped up or not...
   In order to bring about a great upswing in our anti-Japanese armed struggle , at present we must shift the main  force of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army to the border and gradually extend the theatre of struggle into the homeland "
 He also militantly proclaimed that “Let us advance into the homeland as early as possible and show our mettle. Let us demonstrate that the Korean nation is not dead but alive, the Korean nation does not recognize ‘the oneness of Japan and Korea’ and ‘the common ancestry of the Japanese and Koreans’ but refuses to be a ‘imperial nation’ and the Korean nation will continue resistance with arms until Japan is defeated."
   President KIM IL SUNG led the anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters into the Korean homeland where they established guerilla bases  including the Mt Paektu guerrilla base.
   The town of Pochonbo in the northern border region of Korea was an ideal target . It was of strategic importance. Moreover it has a police station and other organs of repressive Japanese colonial rule such as the sub county office and forestry office. Japanese imperialist monopoly financial capital was also present in the form of a bank .
    On the 3rd of June President KIM IL SUNG and his men occupied  the Konjang hill near to the town. At 10pm on the 4th of June he fired his pistol to signify the start of the assault on the town. Under the command of the great leader President KIM IL SUNG  the anti-Japanese fighters of the KPRA used adroit Juche-based guerrilla tactics and easily wiped out the Japanese imperialist aggressors.They destroyed   the police substation and a number of the enemy´s ruling organs such as sub-county office, post office, foresters´ office and fire department hall were wrapped in flames.  Japanese imperial rule in Pochonbo had gone up in smoke .People rushed out into the streets, some of them still in pyjamas, to greet the guerillas. There were shouts of 'LONG LIVE GENERAL KIM IL SUNG  ! LONG LIVE KOREAN INDEPENDENCE !.
                     

  The Proclamation of the Korean Peoples Revolutionary Army expeditionary force and the "Ten Point Programme of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland " were pasted up on walls. The flag of Juche-orientated revolutionary armed struggle waved high over the town of Pochonbo on the night of June 4th 1937 !
The great leader President KIM IL SUNG made a speech titled " Let Us Fight on Staunchly for the Liberation of the Fatherland " saying  that " Brothers and sisters, look at the flames over there. Those raging flames show that the enemy is doomed. Those flames show the whole world that our nation is not dead but alive, and that if we fight against the Japanese imperialist plunderers we can win. Those flames will shine like a ray of hope in the hearts of our people suffering from maltreatment and hunger, and will spread throughout our three-thousand-r/ land like a torch of struggle.
The Korean people are not of the “same descent” as the Japanese imperialist villains, and we do not acknowledge the idea noisily propagandized by them that “Japan and Korea are one”.
We, the KPRA, will tighten our grip on our weapons of revenge and liberate our 23 million fellow countrymen suffering from hunger and poverty, ignorance and darkness. We will liberate our fatherland come what may, and establish a people’s country free from oppression and exploitation on the land of the independent fatherland."
  The crazy Japanese imperialists tried to avenge their defeat by attacking the anti-Japanese guerrillas after the battle  mobilizing up to 2,000 crack troops.However the KPRA fighters under the command of the great leader comrade KIM IL SUNG , a gifted military strategist and iron-willed brilliant commander , annihilated the Japanese imperialists at the battles of  Kouyushuishan and Jiansanfeng.
 Referred later to the the battle of Pochonbo President KIM IL SUNG  pointed out that "The significance of the battle does not lie in the fact that a few
Japanese were killed in the battle but in the fact that it showed that the Korean people were not dead, but alive; it offered revolutionary rays of hope which inspired them with the confidence that they could defeat Japanese imperialism if they fought it. The Battle of Pochonbo declared to the whole world: the Korean people are resisting Japanese imperialism; they do not accept the idea that ‘Korea and Japan are one;’ they say the Japanese and the Koreans are not of the ‘same descent;’ the Koreans will not join the Japanese in invading China; the Koreans will not abandon  their mother tongue, nor will they change their surnames into Japanese ones; the Korean people are not dead but alive; and they can defeat the Japanese scoundrels if they fight them. This is the strategic significance of the Battle of Pochonbo. Herein lies the historic significance of the Battle of Pochonbo.”
 The significance of the battle of Pochonbo was many sided and diverse . Firstly , it demonstrated that the spirit of the Korean people had not been broken by 27 years of grinding Japanese imperialist oppression. Secondly, it shattered the myth of the omnipotence and mightiness of Japanese imperialism which had lorded it over Korea and Asia. Thirdly, it showed that the line of Juche, the line of Songun  which meant carrying out armed struggle against Japanese imperialism was correct. Fourthly, it proved that line of self-reliant struggle rather than waiting for big powers to step in and hand independence to the people , was right . Fifthly, it showed that that the armed struggle could successfully be carried into the Korean homeland , that Korea was no an impregnable base of Japanese or 'safe rear' for Japanese. Sixthly, it paved the way to the final victory of the anti-Japanese armed struggle in August 1945.

  The significance of the the Pochonbo battle was not just confined to Korea or even Asia .  The Japanese press such as Domei News, Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun, and Osaka Asahi Shimbun reported the news as did Chinese newspapers Manchurian Daily, Manchurian News and Taiwan Daily. The media of the Soviet Union such the renown Pravda and TASS news agency also reported the battle. Japanese imperialism  was a shock force of international fascism . In the late 1930s fascism was expanding all over the world : Nazi Germany and fascist Italy seized different countries , the Spanish

Franco fascists caused the Spanish Civil war and overthrow the legitmate Spanish government and even in the UK Mosleys's blockheaded blackshirts marched on the streets !. The victory at Pochonbo 

dealt a blow to the expansion of international fascism. Moreover it was a powerful inspiration to anti-imperialist national liberation struggles throughout the world as it showed that a big imperialist power can be smashed by by self-reliant Juche-oriented armed struggle . As one anti-imperialist liberation fighter wrote "The beacon fire of Ponchonbo marked a great event which gave confidence in struggle to not only the Korean people under the colonial rule of Japanese imperialism , but also to the world revolutionary oppressed people, groaning in those days under the heels of the imperialist aggressors -fascist Germany, Italy , Japanese imperialism and American and British imperialism"
 Thus the single shot fired by the great leader comrade KIM IL SUNG on the evening of the 4th of June 1937 was a signal heralded the doom of oppressive Japanese imperialism as well as an upsurge in the anti-imperialist national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples. Today the idea of the great leader comrade KIM IL SUNG are carried forward by the dear respected leader Marshal KIM JONG UN who continues the anti-imperialist line of the Songun revolution. Each new DPRK missile test is blow against US and world imperialism ! The spirit of Pochonbo pulstates in the DPRK today !
Dr Dermot Hudson

President Association For the Study of Songun Politics UK
Chairman Juche Idea Study Group of England
Official Delegate UK Korean Friendship Association
Member International Committee For the Study of Songun Politics.