KCNA on Tremendous Damage Done to DPRK by US

KCNA on Tremendous Damage Done to DPRK by US

Pyongyang, June 24 (KCNA) -- The Korean Central News Agency released the following report Thursday to expose all forms of crimes the U.S. imperialists committed against the Korean people up to now since their occupation of south Korea: Six decades have passed since the U.S. imperialists, the sworn enemy of the Korean people, unleashed a war on this land, where they were leading a peaceful happy life. The U.S. imperialists, chieftain of evils, committed the most barbarous and hideous crimes against the Korean people ever in the world history of wars during the last Korean War. They committed thrice-cursed genocide, destruction and pillage during the war. They have regarded new People's Korea as a thorn in the flesh ever since their occupation of south Korea. They have persistently pursued an unprecedentedly harsh policy of isolating and stifling the system of the DPRK in wanton violation of the UN Charter and publicly accepted norms of international law, thus doing inestimably tremendous damage to it. The Committee for Investigation into Damage Done by the U.S. to the Northern Half of Korea summed up all human and material damage brought by the U.S. imperialists to the northern half of Korea for the past six decades since they landed in south Korea on Sept. 8, 1945. The total damages amount to 64 959 854 million U.S. dollars. This calculation is based only on old records and official testimonies made by survivors. So it is presumed that there are much more damage that has not been ascertained. The total amount will be incalculable if political, moral and cultural damages caused by slandering the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK, destruction of treasures of lasting value including revolutionary sites, historic sites and relics and other precious cultural assets, infliction of moral pressure on the Koreans through the moves for a new war and threats of preemptive nuclear attack and vicious bourgeois ideological and cultural poisoning are included. With nothing can the U.S. make full compensation to the DPRK for the damage it caused to the DPRK by impeding Korea's reunification after illegally occupying south Korea and, accordingly, inflicting moral pain and misfortune upon the Korean people for more than half a century-long tragic division and hindering the unified political, economic and cultural development of the north and the south of Korea. The crimes committed by the U.S. imperialists against the DPRK are something beyond human imagination in view of their scope and protracted, barbarous and shameless nature. The Korean Central News Agency releases a report on the newly surveyed and ascertained damage done by the U.S. imperialists to the northern half of Korea in order to disclose all forms of crimes committed against the Korean people and force them to pay for all of them. Massacres aimed to exterminate the Korean nation The most serious damage done to the northern half of Korea by the U.S. imperialists was the monstrous killing of a great number of peaceable inhabitants. Since their occupation of south Korea, the U.S. imperialist aggressors had perpetrated ceaseless attacks, gun and rifle firing and terrorism against areas north of the 38th parallel in order to destabilize the new country for the people advancing toward socialism and nip it in the bud, thus killing or abducting more than 13,900 people before the war. The shuddering massacre of civilians the U.S. imperialists committed in the northern half of Korea after igniting the Korean War was unprecedentedly harsh barbarism in wanton violation of international laws on protection of civilians in time of war and publicly accepted wartime laws and regulations. At least 1,231,540 peaceful inhabitants were cold-bloodedly killed by the U.S. imperialist brutes in the northern half of Korea during the three-year war. During their temporary occupation of Sinchon County, the U.S. imperialist ogres killed a quarter of the county population. The number of the people killed by them in the whole period of the war stood at least 401,940 in Hwanghae Province, more than 162,180 in South Phyongan Province, over 129,390 in Kangwon Province, at least 116,220 in North Phyongan Province, over 115,300 in South Hamgyong Province, more than 82,020 in North Hamgyong Province and at least 64,240 in Jagang Province. The U.S. imperialist brutes indiscriminately killed more than 157,840 inhabitants in Pyongyang alone. Another thrice-cursed crime committed by the U.S. imperialist aggressors during the war was the large-scale germ warfare strictly banned by international law and the massive use of chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction. From late January to late March of 1952 the U.S. imperialists dropped germ bombs full of flies, fleas, bugs, mosquitoes and other harmful insects in over 400 places in the northern half of Korea more than 700 times, thus spreading dreadful malignant and acute epidemic viruses including pest, cholera, smallpox and epidemic hemorrhagic fever. The poisonous gas bombs dropped as part of ill-famed germ warfare and chemical warfare claimed more than 50,000 people in the northern half of Korea including 1,379 inhabitants in Nampho City. The U.S. imperialists, in utter disregard of the international convention on the treatment of POWs, killed at random POWs of the DPRK side and even used them as guinea pigs, not content with maltreating them. The American barbarians launched a wholesale man-slaughter operation, wounding more than 2,463,090 and crippling at least 294,020 out of them. They are now under the state protection with no working ability, their hearts burning with towering hatred for the U.S. imperialist murderers and the strong determination to take revenge upon them. A lot of people were abducted or went missing after being taken in by the U.S. imperialist aggressors' propaganda amidst the war holocaust. This left an indelible scar in the nation's history. Even after it signed the Armistice Agreement, yielding to the heroic Korean people, the U.S. committed non-stop military attacks, assaults, terror and sabotage operations against the DPRK on the eastern and western coasts and on the land and in the air, leaving more than 24,910 people killed, abducted or wounded. The U.S. imperialists carried out a terrorist operation against an airliner flying in the air above the Caribbean Sea in Oct. 1976, killing DPRK officials working in the field of the external affairs. This stripped naked their true colors as murderers before the world. The U.S. imperialists killed or wounded a total of at least 5,060,770 civilians of the DPRK: 1,247,870 killed, 911,790 abductees and more than 391,740 reported missing. According to damages calculated by international practices, they total 26,168,823 million U.S. dollars: 16,533,396 million for the dead, abductees and missing people and 9,635,427 million for the wounded and disabled when taking their possible working years and expected earnings, interest for the compensation unpaid and change in the U.S. currency value into due consideration. These damages, however, do not include damages for organized and group human rights abuses such as assault and rape of women which the U.S. imperialists committed regardless of whether they were aged or juvenile or pregnant during their temporary occupation of the northern half of Korea. It is elementary conscience and obligation of human being for an assailant to apologize and compensate to his victim. This also serves as a moral basis for peace of humankind and sound development of the international community even in light of relations among countries. The U.S., however, requested Cuba to pay an indemnity to the tune of 62,333,333 U.S. dollars for its each pilot who met a death after intruding into the territorial air of Cuba in the mid-1990s. But it has persistently sidestepped the compensation to the Korean people for indiscriminately killing Koreans, doing harm to their lives and health and destabilizing their life, far from uttering even a word of apology. In fact, damage done by the U.S. imperialists to the lives of the people in the northern half of Korea is hideous crimes unprecedented in human history in the light of the territory and population of the country and unpardonable from international legal and ethical points of view. The Korean people, therefore, have legitimate right to force them to pay for these crimes to the last. Indiscriminate Destruction and Plunder The destruction and plunder committed by the U.S. imperialists in the northern half of Korea surpassed by far those committed during the world war in the light of their scope and savage nature. Property damages done to the Korean people by the U.S. for the past six decades total 16,703,169 million U.S. dollars. The material and economic damages were summed up on the basis of internationally recognized calculation method. The U.S. imperialists massively infiltrated terrorists and saboteurs into the northern half of Korea which was alive with the construction of a new country after the liberation. Those gangsters destroyed 3,029 blocks of peaceful structures including industrial establishments and dwelling houses, devastated and burned 1,073 hectares of cultivated land and 1,630 hectares of forests and looted properties and household articles of citizens including more than 1,069 cattle and pigs and thousands of heads of other domestic animals, to say nothing of state and public properties. Property damages caused by the U.S. imperialists in the northern half of Korea up to the period before the start of the war amounted to 20,281 million U.S. dollars. During the Korean War the U.S. imperialist aggressors reduced the cities and villages in the northern half of Korea to debris, in breach of war laws and regulations banning attack or bombardment on peaceful cities, villages, dwelling houses and buildings by any means. This war represented a history laying bare the brutality of the U.S. imperialist aggressors and their crimes. Blustering that they would wipe 78 cities of north Korea off the surface of the earth, the U.S. imperialist aggressors massively bombed and shelled the whole territory of the northern half of Korea and even used internationally banned napalm bombs and bio-chemical bombs, thus turning its whole territory into wilderness of cinders and ashes. The atrocities committed by the U.S. imperialists on the ground and in the sea and air resulted in severely destroying 50,941 buildings of industrial establishments, 28,632 school buildings at all levels, 4,534 public health buildings including hospitals and clinics, 579 scientific research institutions, 8,163 printing and cultural institutions and 2,077,226 dwelling houses. 7,491 churches, chapels, cathedrals and other buildings for religious services disappeared. This brought the total number of severely damaged buildings to 2,416,407. Railways extending 4,879 km, roads extending 4,009 km and bridges totaling 1,109 km and 1,489 locomotives, 4,803 trucks and 6,281 fishing boats and ships were destroyed, and 1,715 reservoirs and relevant facilities were blown up or destroyed, causing tremendous human, material and environmental damage. 563,755 hectares of cultivated land were devastated and more than 155,500 hectares of paddy and non-paddy fields lost and millions of domestic animals were slaughtered or looted including 369,101 heads of cattle and 764,604 pigs. Valuable national cultural heritages were ruthlessly vandalized or looted: 40,755,640 volumes of ancient and old books, documents and data including ancient books listed as national treasures more valuable than billions of dollars were burnt or plundered. The inhabitants in the northern half of Korea lost most of all their personal properties during the devastating war. Everything in the northern half of Korea was so severely destroyed that the U.S. imperialists predicted that Korea would not rise again even in 100 years. Property damages caused by the U.S. imperialists to the northern half of Korea during the war reached 16,661,622 million U.S. dollars. This proves that the Korean war of aggression launched by the U.S. imperialists was the most barbarous and destructive war ever fought in the world history of wars. In the postwar period, too, the U.S. committed ceaseless provocations on the land and in the air and sea. It systematically infiltrated terrorists and saboteurs into the DPRK to destroy or burn peaceful facilities. In this course it inflicted 21,266 million U.S. dollar worth of damage upon it. After defeating the aggressors the Korean people built with dignity a socialist power from scratch in a short span of time by their own efforts. But unspeakable was the aftermath of the indiscriminate destruction of the DPRK's economic foundation by the U.S. imperialists before and after the war. The U.S. imperialists' sabotage deterred the normal development of the economy. This caused a productivity loss of 10,896 million U.S. dollars before the war and 5,461,460 million during the war. Availing itself of this opportunity, the DPRK has to state that the U.S. is obliged to pay for many crimes. Even in the early period of building a new country after its liberation, the Korean people used a lot of raw materials, funds and manpower for rehabilitating reservoirs to supply a large amount of electricity to the south Korean people and full irrigation water to the area of South Yonbaek from the compatriotic step. The U.S. military authorities, however, collected a fabulous amount of water and electricity charges from the peasants of the said area and other south Korean inhabitants but have not properly paid to the DPRK for them. They also issued at random currencies amounting to nearly 28.7 billion won by taking advantage of the situation in which the north and the south used common "Korean bank notes" after the liberation of the country and made them circulate in the areas of the northern half of Korea. In this way they plundered it of lots of foods, aquatic products and large quantities of natural resources including fuel and raw materials, thus throwing a big hurdle in the way of the Korean people's building of a new society. The U.S. imperialists also brought enormous damage to the northern half of Korea by conducting the bio-chemical warfare on a large scale to seriously polluting the ecological environment. The poisonous substance and germ sprayed by the U.S. imperialists over the areas of the northern half of Korea inflicted big damage on the lives and properties of the Korean people and living environment. In the postwar period, too, they massively sprayed defoliant in the areas along the Military Demarcation Line to contaminate the air and inflict big damage on the growth of crops and animals and plants of the DPRK side. The amount of damages done by them reaches 4 448 million U.S. dollars. A long period was required and a fabulous amount of funds were spent to restore to its original state the environment destroyed and polluted by the U.S. imperialists. For example, the DPRK government was compelled to disburse enormous fund for decades only to combat epidemic hemorrhagic fever pathogens spread by the U.S. imperialists during the Korean War. The amount of economic damages caused by the U.S. imperialists' environmental degradation and contamination in the areas of the northern half of Korea reaches nearly 505,356 million U.S. dollars. The U.S. can never evade the responsibility for having inflicted big material and economic damage and losses on the Korean people much bigger than those in the world war and laid serious obstacles to the social development and economic construction in the northern half of Korea. Product of the U.S. Policy of Isolating and Stifling the DPRK The U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK is a policy of state-sponsored terrorism aimed at bringing down the dignified Korean-style socialist system chosen by the Korean people. Since it divided Korea into two, the U.S. has ceaselessly committed all forms of war provocations, focusing on the moves to stifle the DPRK by force of arms. The U.S. imperialists committed hundreds of thousands of cases in wanton violation of the Military Armistice Agreement as evidenced by the infiltration of their armed spy ship "Pueblo" into the territorial waters of the DPRK. They have escalated military confrontation and screwed up tension on the Korean Peninsula while getting frantic with exercises for a war of aggression against the DPRK under various codenames every year including Team Spirit, Foal Eagle and Ulji Focus Lens aimed at mounting a preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK. Their increased war threat laid big hurdles in establishing a new society and building socialism in the northern half of Korea and hindered the planned and balanced development of the national economy, compelling it to allocate huge additional funds. The Workers' Party of Korea and the DPRK government were compelled to put forward the line of putting all the people under arms and turning the whole country into a fortress to cope with the U.S. moves for igniting a new war. They had no choice but to carry on economic construction and defence upbuilding simultaneously while directing big efforts to civilian defence training at all times. This did damage worth 2,380,186 million U.S. dollars to the economic development and the improvement of the standard of people's living. The U.S. imperialists' economic sanctions and blockade have been the keynote of their policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK. It has been subject to their most protracted and harshest sanctions and blockade in the world. The successive U.S. rulers have persistently applied systematic and overall economic sanctions and blockade against all sectors including trade, finance, investment, real estate, insurance, transport, post and telecommunications and visits of people for more than a half century to isolate and suffocate the DPRK firmly adhering to independence under the uplifted banner of socialism. The U.S. started slapping economic sanctions and blockade against the DPRK and other socialist countries after faking up the "the Coordinating Committee for Export to Communist Area" (COCOM) in November 1949. It has intensified economic sanctions and blockade against the DPRK year by year by invoking more than 20 laws including "the Trading with the Enemy Act" and "Export and Import Bank Act," all unilaterally fabricated in wanton violation of international law. From the 1990s, difficult years when the socialist movement suffered a temporary setback, in particular, the U.S. formed the imperialist allied forces to totally isolate and stifle the DPRK, a socialist fortress, and left no means untried to achieve their purpose. All these moves were unimaginably vicious. In July 1996 the U.S. cooked up such conspiratorial mechanism as the so-called "Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-use Goods and Technologies" to replace the COCOM which collapsed after the end of the Cold War. It worked hard to totally suffocate the economy of the DPRK through the international sanctions by applying the above-said arrangement to every case. The U.S. has become evermore reckless in its offensive for international pressure on the DPRK in the new century. It kicked off a frantic nuclear racket after listing the DPRK as part of an "axis of evil". It listed the DPRK as a "sponsor of terrorism" after faking up fictitious cases. After running the whole gamut of sheer intrigues such as "counterfeit notes", "human rights abuses" and "drug trafficking" the U.S. prodded its satellite countries into knocking into shape and effectuating PSI and the "Regional Maritime Security Initiative" aimed at maritime blockade. Through this campaign for collective sanctions and blockade the U.S. escalated the pressure and blackmailing against the DPRK. The U.S. persistent sanctions and blockade badly affected every sector of the peaceful economic construction in the DPRK. Damages are on the steady increase. The U.S. behavior is indescribably base. It froze properties of not only state and public institutions of the DPRK but its citizens. It even prevented individual persons from inheriting properties and froze insurance money. Not content with this, it blocked remittance and prohibited the sending of parcels. The U.S. most vicious moves to stifle the economy of the DPRK found their manifestation in the sanctions against trade and financial transaction. It banned not only its businesses but its civilians from having any dealing with businesses and citizens of the DPRK. It put pressure on those countries, businesses and individuals having economic relations with the DPRK, disturbing trade. DPRK traders were subject to U.S. watch and control wherever they went. These obstructions to free trading activities caused the DPRK to suffer enormous losses in export and import aimed at developing the nation's economy and improving the standard of people's living. In case the DPRK banks settle accounts with those of other countries in U.S. dollars, the U.S. enforced vicious financial sanctions, unconditionally freezing the relevant funds at U.S. banks. This rendered it impossible for the DPRK to make any settlement in international markets, causing big financial losses in its business. The U.S. is putting pressure on other countries not to extend any credit or give economic assistance to the DPRK and barring even individuals from making any investment in it. It is also pressurizing its satellite countries not to sell any new equipment or transfer technology to the DPRK. Worse still, the U.S. did not hesitate to commit such piracy as seizing by force of arms DPRK trading ships when they were sailing in the open seas the free sailing in which is allowed by international law and confiscating their cargo as evidenced by the forcible search of its trade cargo ship "Sosan" carried out by the U.S. in the open seas near Yemen in broad daylight by prodding Spain. The U.S. moves to economically stifle the DPRK and bring down its system found their vivid manifestation in the fact that it deliberately delayed and scuttled the provision of light war reactors and delivery of heavy oil, the hardcore commitments under the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework adopted in October of 1994. The U.S. dragged on the construction of light water reactors and the provision of heavy oil, deliberately laying hurdles from their outset, and finally suspended both of the jobs which it had conducted for form's sake. This shameless action of the U.S. caused the power industry of the DPRK to suffer electricity losses amounting to astronomical figures and brought awful consequences to the national economy and the people's living after the adoption of the said agreed framework. Due to the U.S. delay in the construction of light water reactors and suspension of the provision of heavy oil the DPRK suffered the loss amounting to 1,165,008 million US dollars. Immeasurable is the damage the Korean people suffered owing to the economic sanctions and blockade, the products of the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK. But the damages brought to light bring the total amount of the accurately estimated damages incurred by the U.S. to the DPRK for six decades up to 2005 to 13,729,964 million U.S. dollars. The DPRK's building of a thriving nation was impeded due to the "resolutions on sanctions" the U.S. cooked up by instigating the UNSC, calling into question the launch of satellites for peaceful purposes in recent years and labeling the nuclear test conducted by it in a legitimate manner to defend the supreme interests and sovereignty of the country a "threat to peace." These damages are yet to be calculated. The despicable economic sanctions and blockade perpetrated by the U.S. for more than a half century are the illegal and brigandish crimes and a wanton encroachment on the sovereignty of the state with no ground in the light of international law. Nevertheless, the U.S. has neither compensated for such base crimes nor repented of them. It is defiling the inviolable dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK by faking up the case of warship "Cheonan" just like a thief crying "Stop the thief!" and working with blood-shot eyes to impose disasters of a nuclear war on this land. The U.S. has used the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula for systematically isolating and stifling the DPRK, not for ensuring peace there. It deliberately derailed the six-party talks. Persistently sidestepping the peaceful co-existence with the DPRK, the U.S. is fostering division and confrontation between the north and the south and hindering the uniform development of the Korean nation, ceaselessly doing unspeakable damage to the former. All these facts once again clearly prove that the U.S. imperialists are the vicious and barbarous aggressors, murderers, shameless wreckers of peace and the sworn enemy of the Korean nation. The more reckless the U.S. becomes in its moves to hurt the dignified DPRK, far from apologizing and compensating for its crimes committed against the Korean nation, the higher the hatred of the army and people of the DPRK for it will mount and the stronger they will grow in their resolution to take revenge upon it. The provokers will get nothing but merciless destruction and death for their political and military confrontation. The army and people of the DPRK who have grown to be matchless revolutionary ranks under the leadership of the Party and the leader will never pardon the crimes of the U.S. imperialists but force them to pay a thousand-fold price for them. They will bolster up the deterrent for self-defence in every way under the banner of Songun, firmly defend the peace in the Korean Peninsula and the rest of the world and build a great prosperous and powerful socialist nation on this land without fail.