Tuesday 28 November 2017

Why China cannot "shut down 'People's Korea and some other issues

UK KFA Delegate  and Chairman of the Juche Idea Study Group of England Dr Dermot Hudson attended a meeting on US threats to north Korea and world peace held on the 22nd of November

The meeting had a civilized atmosphere. 

The speaker Kenny Coyle gave a good historical outline of Korea's revolutionary development . He stated that the DPRK is a socialist state and had come about as the result of a popular revolution . Land reform in the DPRK had been extremely popular and had benefited the people.
Moreover although comrade Coyle does not like the use of the term puppet to describe south Korea  he conceded that basically that is what south Korea is apuppet because it does not have the right of operational control over its armed forces  so yes it is a puppet . !
Coyle rightly attributed Korea's division to the interference of US imperialism. Coyle also rightly drew attention to Japanese militarism , something which ignored by the British left.

Coyle pointed out the DPRK is not a satellite of China and is no one's puppet.

However Comrade Coyle's speech and the discussion  had a couple of serious flaws and errors .

Firstly , Coyle said that the question of who fired the fist shot in the Korean war was irrelevant as it was a 'civil war'. Of course there is some truth in such an assertion , however it is deeply problematic for a number of reasons . Saying  it was a civil war between People's Korea and the fascistic , feudal , reactionary puppet regime in the south does tend to absolve US imperialism for  the responsiblity for starting a war in which millions perished. It is wrong to try and portray the Korean War or Fatherland Liberation War as the result of contradictions within the Korean nation , this can lead to the bourgeois liberal 'plague on both your houses 'position . Two opposing systems on the Korean peninsula came into existence but one was created by the intervention and inteference of the US imperialists who landed in south Korea on the 8th of September 1945 and dissovled the people's committees in south Korea.
     Whilst is may be tempting to regard the Korean war a civil war between the DPRK and the Syngham Rhee puppet regime , it is a fact that US imperialism and its lackeys blamed the DPRK for starting the war and used this as the legal grounds to send forces of 15 satellite states of US imperialism under the cover of the UN .
   The basic facts about the provocation of the Korean war are as follows : The DPRK was established only two years before the war , its goal was economic construction and improving people's living standards. The last thing it needed was a destructive and costly war. No group or section of society in the DPRK would profit from a war. The US on the other wanted to stop what it saw as "communist expansion " in Asia and decided on the doctrine of "rollback ", "a crusade to wipe communism off the face of the globe". The US arms manufacturers stood to make huge profits out of a potential war . Moreover there were fears at the end of the 1940s that the US economy was entering another slump, War is a way out of economic crisis as it creates high demand in the economy  and the unemployed put in the army.
       Western historians purposefully ignore the fact that John Foster Dulles the US presidential envoy visited south Korea on the 18th of June a week before the war began and visited front line areas. Dulles visit and the outbreak of war a week later cannot be a coincidence. The US evacuated American women and children from south Korea in the early hours of the morning of the June 25th of June , just before war broke . Secret documents of the  US imperialists and Korean people's army that were captured by the Korean People's Army when it liberated show the US instigated its south Korean puppets to start the war .
Secondly, Comrade Coyle  claimed that China "could shut down the DPRK if it wanted to ! " .(which actually contradicted what he said earlier that the DPRK is no one' satellite or puppet) This is complete nonsense . The DPRK  has an independent , self -reliant national economy based on the great Juche idea.

The DPRK's independent national economy can produce almost any product from a wrist watch to a nuclear missile. In the 1970s the DPRK was able to produce 98% of its own machinery and 75% of fuel and industrial materials.Whilst it may be true that a big proportion of the DPRK's foreign trade is with China it needs to be stressed that in the DPRK foreign trade is not a big proportion of economic output . Foreign trade is a small percentage of gross national product in the DPRK unlike the south Korean puppet regime which has 88% of its gross national product coming from foreign trade and is therefore highly dependent. Thus a large part of the DPRK's GDP would be unaffected by sanctions. $ 1 billion only amounts to about 3.5 per cent of the Western estimate of GDP for the DPRK but as the real GDP of the DPRK is in fact higher it is a much lower figure.
  Visiting the DPRK during the 1990s there were many Chinese goods in the shops but nowadays there are not so many . The DPRK is making more things at home and further import substitution is possible .

  It should be remembered that Khruschov's  USSR(a far stronger state than todays PRC ) in the early 1960s tried to 'shut down the DPRK' and failed ! It was worth recalling how Albania and China fell out in the late 1970s and how China stopped aid and credits to Albania but Albania did not collapse . The DPRK today is in far stronger position than Albania in 1978.

Thirdly , a member of the audience spoke taking the position of blaming both sides for the tension in Korea , basically equating the DPRK  a country of some 25 million with the colossus of US imperialism which spends billions and trillions on the military and has a a global empire of military bases. This is a typical liberal pacifist position that basically serves US imperialism by confusing and distorting the issue. The person concerned then went on to say that all nuclear weapons are wrong whether they in hands of US imperialism or in hands of socialist and anti-imperialist countries. Coyle agreed this statement . Again a typical non-class , absolute pacifist position . This approach ignores the realities of the world  ! Iraq, Yugoslavia , Afghanistan and other countries did not have nuclear weapons and were attacked by US imperialism. Col Gadhafi of Libya believed that Tony Blair was his friend , that imperialism was the friend of Libya and abandoned the Libyan nuclear programme . This proved fatal for Libya and Gadhafi as Libya was invaded by the US and NATO and Gadhafi killed by a mob of counter-revolutionary hooligans. Are we to believe that the CPB is urging the same thing for the DPRK ?

Fourthly , maybe rather sheepishly and defensively Comrade Coyle said that the DPRK should adopt Chinese style policies , stressing it was his own view (implying not necessarily the position of the CPB). At present the DPRK is defying the sanctions of the US imperialists forging ahead under the banner of self-reliance and the self-development first idea . Whatever successes China may have achieved in the economic field , it is a fact that in China there is a big gap between rich and poor . Large parts of Beijing look like a Western capitalist city with advertising and branches of McDonalds and KFC. The DPRK does not have capitalist advertising or McDonalds or KFC or Western imperialist banks . This is most impressive.
Fifthly, Comrade Coyle slandered the DPRK solution to the succession issue and the Supreme leadership of the DPRK calling it 'ridiculous !. The fact is that dear respected Marshal KIM JONG UN is the chosen leader of the DPRK . The 3rd Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea (which has millions of members ) held in 2010 elected comrade KIM JONG UN to the Central Committee and Central Military Commission of the Workers'Party of Korea. He was elected vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the WPK . When the great leader generalissimo KIM JONG IL passed away in 2011 , the daily paper of the WPK Rodong Sinmun urged comrade KIM JONG UN to take the leadership of the Party ,state and army and he was subsequently appointed Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army on the 30th of December by the decision of the Political Bureau of the WPK. Subsequently in April 2012 the 4th Conference of the WPK elected comrade KIM JONG UN as first secretary of the WPK and the 7th Congress of the WPK elected Marshal KIM JONG UN as Chairman of the WPK in May 2016. He was elected as Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the WPK  by the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK in June 2016. Thus Coyle basically insults the Korean people because they are the ones who have elected
respected Marshal KIM JONG UN as their leader.

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