Critique of the John Ellinson series of articles on Korea in the "Morning Star "

Recently the revisionist Morning Star or people' daily or socialist daily as it would prefer to be styled ran a three -part series of articles on Korea written by the journalist and writer John Ellinson. Whilst this was an improvement on the "Morning Star' earlier coverage of the DPRK ,which has been out-rightly hostile  basically recycling bourgeois and imperialist slanders against People's Korea and its supreme leadership , and a welcome contrast to extreme vilification of the bourgeois media, the article still  left something to be desired and still managed to fall short of the task of defending People's Korea and Juche -based socialism .

  However whilst offering a more apparently independent perspective on Korea , Ellinson has fallen into the trap of heavy reliance on US bourgeois  liberal historian Prof Bruce Cumings . Whilst Cumings is indeed a noted academic authority on Korea his work is very much from a 'plague on both your houses' position blaming both US imperialism and Korean Juche -based socialism. Ellinson draws heavily on  Cuming's "Korea's Place in the Sun "  and  "Korea the Unknown War " written by Prof Cumings and wealthy British Notting Hill Trotskyite fake Leftist Jon Halliday(Halliday being well known in the past as a virulently anti-DPRK author having written a number of articles including a very bad one  in New Left Review back in the 1980s).
  The first part of the article is titled "  Trouble in the hermit kingdom: Life in Korea before the war ".The term 'hermit kingdom' is never used by Korean historians and writers as it is a racist construct of imperialist and Western historigraphy , it is is basically an insult to the Korean nation.

Juche airbrushed out  

Incredibly , after double-checking ,  the Juche idea is not mentioned once in the articles .I found it amazing that anyone can write a 3 part article on Korea and not mention the Juche Idea which is the guiding ideology and philosophy  of People' Korea . Even the bourgeois media mention Juche now !.

(see http://juche007-anglo-peopleskoreafriendship.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/what-really-is-juche-in-answer-to-daily.html) but sadly it is appears to be a No No, a taboo subject for the Morning Star ! The Juche Idea was first elaborated by the great leader President KIM IL SUNG at the historic

Kalun meeting in June 1930 and the first public use of the word Juche was in December 1955. An understanding of the Juche idea is central to understanding the system , policies , lines and indeed the history of People's Korea .

 For more information on Juche the reader is referred to this link

http://juche007-anglo-peopleskoreafriendship.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/juche-idea-answers-to-hundred-questions.html

Prettification of Japanese imperialism 

Ellisnon writes " The aristocracy suffered little other than loss of direct control of government." Not strictly speaking true  as the Korean queen , Queen Min was murdered  in 1895  and King Kojong was poisoned by the Japanese in 1919

  Ellinson goes even further and expounds the following eulogy to the Japanese imperialists in Korea

"  Modernisation followed. Korea’s Japanese rulers built roads, railways, seaports and established new industries, discriminating against Koreans racially, but providing them with modern education.

In fact Japan enforced a most barbaric , reactionary and medieval rule over Korea , treating the Korean people as slaves rather than providing them with 'education' .

 The human, material and mental damage done by the Japanese imperialists to the Korean people during the colonial rule is so bad as to be virtually unspeakable .More than 1 million Koreans were killed, at last 8.4 million young and middle-aged Koreans were drafted to do slavery labor and hurled into shambles of wars of aggression and 200 000 Korean women were forced into horrible sexual slavery.

  The Japanese also plundered and looted  tons of rice and other materials including gold and treasures from Korea. It is prettifying Japanese imperialism to say that it modernised Korea . Surely the "Morning Star " must realise that there is no such thing as progressive and modernising imperialism ?

  Distortion of the role of the Anti-Japanese People's Guerrilla Army 

Ellinson  says that  the great leader President KIM IL SUNG was just one resistance leader and  downgrades and distorts  the role played by the Korean people ,led by President Kim Il Sung, in liberating Korea themselves and ascribes Korea's liberation to the Soviet army. However USSR only declared war on Japan on the 8th of August 1945 some 7 days before Korea was liberated(the USSR had previously concluded a neutrality pact with Japan in 1941).The Korean People's Revolutionary Army had fought the Japanese imperialists since 1932 . It had fought hundreds battles such as Pochonbo , Musan and Taehongdan. During the final phases of the operation to liberate Korea in August 1945 units of the KPRA and local People's Armed Corps liberated towns such as Rajin.There were spontaneous uprisings in Korea of workers and peasants.

    President KIM IL SUNG had first lit the torch of liberation and independence when he formed the Down-With-Imperialism Union in 1926 and later the Korean Revolutionary Army , the first armed organisation of Korean revolutionaries ,1930 . In April 1932 the Anti-Japanese People's Guerilla Army was founded ,later this became the Korean People's Revolutionary Army in(KPRA) 1934. A mass-based united front organisation , the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland (ARF)was founded in  May 1936 . In turn the Korean National Liberation Union , a basic level or grassroots body of the ARF was formed in the Korean homeland .
   President KIM IL SUNG had to fight Chinese big power national chauvinists who tried to deny the right of Koreans in China to fight independently for national liberation.
  The KPRA make active preparations for Korea's liberation and intensified the  armed struggle in 1944 and 1945 . On the 9th of August 1945 President KIM IL SUNG urged the KPRA to go over to 
a general offensive and for units operating behind enemy lines to launch attacks against the Japanese imperialists .
  Thus Korea's liberation was not a gift of the USSR and China but the fruit of the Juche-orientated
revolutionary armed struggle waged by Korean communists under the leadership of President
KIM IL SUNG!
      
US imperialism and the Korean  War
To his credit Ellinson does expose the reactionary and horrendous role of the US imperialists in
south Korea . The US imperialists dissolved the people's committees in south Korea  and banned
the Communist Party .
  However , Ellinson appears to accept the narrative that the US imperialists withdraw from south Korea in 1948.  This is a serious mistake as in  fact the US imperialists had created a puppet regime in south Korea to serve both as an instrument of colonial rule and also as a tool of aggression to attack the northern half of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea .
   Because of the struggle and Korean people for the simultaneous withdrawal of US and Soviet forces from Korea, the US imperialists using a number of tricks and subterfuges to stay on in south Korea. On the 24th of August 1948 the US imperialists concluded the  Transitional Temporary Status of Forces Agreement on Military Affairs and Security" with the south Korean puppets .On July 1, 1949, the US government concluded the "Agreement on the Presence of the US Military Advisory
 Group in Korea" with the Syngman Rhee puppet government. Basically the US took control of the
south Korean puppet armed forces and had a large number of so-called military advisors in south Korea who supervised the south Korean puppet armed forces .

   Ellinson following Cumings basically ducks out out of saying that the US imperialists started the Korean War .However there is ample evidence of this . First of all, Truman's envoy John Foster Dulles visited south Korea a week before the outbreak of war on the 25th of June 1950. Dulles even visited frontline areas on the 18th of June. It cannot be a coincidence that war started a week later.
Secondly, numerous documents captured by the Korean People's Army when it liberated Seoul on
the 28th June 1950, prove that the US imperialist instigated the south Korean puppets to start the war . Thirdly , in the early hours of the 25th of June before the war started  , 650 American women and children were evacuated from south Korea . Fourthly , US writer and journalist John Gunther wrote that he was in Toyko in June 1950 and a US officer said "A big story has just broken. The south Koreans have attacked the north.’  The evidence is overwhelmingly but the "Morning Star " shys away from naming the US imperialists are the author and provoker of the Korean war!.
Conclusion
The "Morning Star " has tried to improve its coverage of Korean issues but has fallen desperately short of this goal by heavy reliance on bourgeois liberal sources. The "Star " would be well advised to take note of the late Nye Bevan who once said that people who stand in the middle of the road can
be knocked down by traffic approaching from both directions !

Dermot Hudson
Chairman Juche Idea Study Group of England
President Association for the Study of Songun Politics UK
Official Delegate Korean Friendship Association UK