Monday 1 July 2024

Speech of Dr Dermot Hudson to the Online Anti-US meeting 25.06.2024

 Today is the Day of Struggle against US imperialism in People’s Korea, the land of Juche . As we speak, anti-US rallies are taking place in Pyongyang and other cities and provinces of the DPRK  . It is also the start of the month of solidarity with the Korean people which runs from the 25th of June to the 27th of July . The 25th of June is the day that the Fatherland Liberation War started in 1950 and the 27th of July 1953  is when the US knelt down and signed the Korean Armistice Agreement .


Stepping up solidarity with the Korean people is part of the struggle against the global empire of US imperialism .



It was 74 years ago today that  the US imperialists provoked the Fatherland Liberation War which is referred to by the mainstream media as the  Korean War , although it was not a war between Koreans but between a small country , the DPRK , and the American empire. Indeed it was a war against Korea , against the Korean people .


  It is not the purpose of my speech to give a blow by blow account of the Fatherland Liberation War from start to finish , this may be the topic of another meeting . Nor it to examine the cause of the war and the issue of who started it . 


Although the mainstream media and history textbooks in Britain , the US and other countries try to blame the DPRK for this war,  it is pretty self-evident that the war was provoked by the south Korean puppets and the US imperialists . After all, at the time the population of south Korea was double the size of the DPRK so it would make no sense for the DPRK to start a war against south Korea .Moreover it is a simple fact that you cannot invade your own country .


For those interested in reading in depth about who was to blame for the war and how it started . I would recommend people read the excellent ‘ The US imperialists Started the Korean War ‘ and “ DISTORTION OF US PROVOCATION OF KOREAN WAR’  . However for those of you who doubt this I will just tell you a story told to me by an old teacher of mine . On June 26th 1950 he was taking a party of children from his school around the offices of the ‘Daily Herald ‘ ( a long defunct ‘socialist ‘ daily newspaper ) when they started the visit the ticker tape coming out said ‘ south Korea attacks north  Korea’ ‘ but when they were finishing the visit this had been changed to ‘north Korea attacks south Korea’ . It just shows you even then how the media manufactures the news ! . I would also point  out that John Foster Dulles , US envoy , was in south Korea 7 days before the war broke out . If the US did not provoke the war what was he doing there ?


The US threw into the war unprecedented numbers of troops and amounts of materials , including  troops from 15 of their satellite countries including to our eternal shame those from Britain .Prescription charges were introduced by the government to pay for the cost of sending British troops which showed that the aggressive war against the Korean people was paralleled by reactionary policies at home.One of the regiments that the British government  sent to Korea was the notorious Royal Ulster Rifles which later became the hated 'Ulster Defence Regiment'  which carried out atrocities against the nationalist people of northern Ireland

  


In fact 73 million tons of war materials were used by the US in the war .The war raged on until July 27th 1953 when the US kneeled down and 

signed the Armistice Agreement.



The US imperialists, the ringleader of world imperialism and international reactionaries, provoked a war in Korea on the 25th of June 1950 by instigating their south Korean puppets to attack the young Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The US imperialists were hungry for profits and conquest. The US imperialists fought an unjust aggressive war against the Korean people. The US imperialists launched a war of conquest against the DPRK , a war to destroy the Juche-based people's democratic system in the DPRK as well as to destroy socialism in Asia and the world.

  

  President KIM IL SUNG summed up the Fatherland Liberation War as follows


The Fatherland Liberation War waged by our people was a fierce ,anti-imperialist , anti-US struggle against the allied forces of world reaction headed by US imperialism and a bitter class struggle against the enemies of the people

 

 The war was a struggle against US imperialism  and the allied forces of world which unfortunately included the British Labour government but significantly fascist , reactionary and feudal regimes such as Apartheid South Africa, Colombia of the death squads, fascist Greece , Haile Selaissie's Ethiopia .Surely it was not a coincidence It was no coincidence that George Lincoln Rockwell the founder and leader of the American Nazi Party served as a lieutenant commander in the US imperialist forces during the war!


 It was also a class struggle against the capitalists and landlords in south Korea and former capitalists and landlords within the DPRK who wanted to restore  the capitalist system


The Fatherland Liberation War of the Korean people proved to be a fiery crucible of the Songun idea and the Juche idea of self-reliance.

The barbarity of the US imperialists during the war was beyond human description.At least 1.2 million people were killed  by the US 35,383 people were murdered by the US at Sinchon -ri and 1,050 people at Susan-ri (one third of the population of the area), just to give a few examples.

I myself have visited the Sinchon museum 5 times , 3 times to the old museum and the new expanded and modernized museum twice . I have met survivors of the massacre by US troops and also participated in an international rally at Sinchon in 2013 . In 2017 I actually made a speech at Sinchon in which I pointed out that “Sinchon stands testimony to the cruelty, decadence and depravity of US imperialism. The atrocities of the US imperialists exceeded those of the Hitler Nazis”



The US imperialists tried to exterminate the Korean people by carrying out the war that they long planned .

A British conscript Julian Tunstall who served in the 1st battalion of the Middlesex Regiment of the British Army during the Fatherland Liberation War in his book “ I fought in Korea “ exposed the true nature of the war waged by the US imperialists against the Korean people ,he wrote that “.Officers gave such orders as 'Shoot everything in White ' and 'Take no prisoners ' . Since 'everything in white includes  virtually every Korean civilian ,it is not surprising that  the greatest number of casualties  in the war were civilians..

I will regret that I went to Korea to fight the people'


The war exposed the barbarity and decadence of US imperialism . As President KIM IL SUNG said ‘Engels once called the British army the most brutal army. During the Second World War, the German fascist army surpassed the barbarism of the British army. No human brain could ever imagine more diabolic and terrible cruelty than those done by the Hitler gangsters at that time. But in Korea, the Americans have far exceeded the Hitlerites!


At the time powerful solidarity movements were waged in support of the Korean people .. In the UK  the Communist Party of Great Britain and “Daily Worker “ opposed the war , as did some Labour MPs to their credit,for example the famous Welsh MP S O Davies who was actually expelled from the Labour party for opposing the Korean war .. Even in the US there were protests against the war. In the oppressed colonial countries the revolutionary peoples intensified their anti-imperialist struggles. In particular the revolutionary forces of Malaya and Thailand stepped up their armed struggle.



Today US troops continue to occupy the southern part of Korea and threaten the DPRK . The aggressive and predatory nature of the US hostile policy towards the DPRK remains even after 74 years .

 

We hope that this meeting and our picket of the US embassy on the 29th of June , in a few days time will make a meaningful contribution to the month of solidarity with the Korean people.


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