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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 82/No. 21 May 28, 2018
(front page)
Korea agreement would open the door to gains for working people
US rulers, NKorea take steps toward pact on weapons
Korean Central News Agency
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in
Pyongyang May 9. Talks were preparation for Kim meeting with President
Donald Trump June 12 in Singapore.
BY SETH GALINSKY
The U.S. and North Korean governments are on a course that could
conclude with a historic agreement eliminating nuclear weapons on the
Korean Peninsula, ending the U.S. economic war on North Korea,
eliminating U.S. and North Korean war threats there, and beginning
greater economic and social collaboration between the two Koreas. This
would be a victory for all working people.
A summit meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President
Donald Trump is now set for June 12 in Singapore. Plans for a summit
were first announced in early March. Since then Kim has traveled twice
to Beijing to discuss the talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, met
with South Korean President Moon Jae-in April 27, and then met with U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo May 9.
By joining in harsh U.S. and U.N. sanctions, China’s rulers have forced
the closing of factories and layoffs of thousands of workers in North
Korea over the last year. Some 90 percent of North Korea’s trade is with
China.
Kim flew to Dalian, China, for meetings with Xi May 7-8. Xi informed
Trump afterwards that Kim favored steps leading to denuclearization.
In early May the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
informed the U.N. that the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’
Party had decided it would no longer conduct intercontinental ballistic
missile launches.
The New York Times reported that President Trump requested the Pentagon
provide him options for reducing the number of U.S. troops in South
Korea, a report that has not been confirmed.
When Pompeo flew to Pyongyang and met with Kim, the Pyongyang Times
reported he was “warmly greeted.” Later that day the North Korean
government pardoned three U.S. citizens it had been holding prisoner on
charges of engaging in hostile activity. The three left North Korea with
Pompeo.
Trump personally greeted their plane when it arrived at Joint Base
Andrews in Maryland. Thanking Kim, Trump said, “I really think we have a
very good chance of doing something very meaningful.”
Then on May 12 — two days after President Trump announced the date and
place of the summit — Pyongyang invited journalists from the U.S., South
Korea, China, Russia and Britain to come watch as they permanently
dismantle the North’s nuclear testing site May 23–25.
Collaboration between two Koreas
An agreement between Washington and Pyongyang would benefit working
people in North Korea, who have born the brunt of the punishing
U.S.-U.N. sanctions.
According to press reports, when North Korean leader Kim met with South
Korean President Moon in late April, Moon said he would like to visit
Baekdu Mountain. Kim replied that he would be embarrassed to have Moon
travel through North Korea because “our transportation, honestly would
be uncomfortable.” He was referring to the North’s antiquated and
deteriorated railway system.
Moon gave Kim a blueprint for modernizing and building rail lines from
Seoul to Pyongyang and ultimately to the Chinese border, where it could
connect with Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railroad. The estimated $35 billion
price tag would be paid for by capitalist investors in South Korea and
China.
This would give Beijing an overland connection to South Korea, already
an important trading partner. It would help the working class in North
Korea break out of their isolation, opening the door to greater economic
development, as well as give a boost to the Korean people’s longstanding
desire for reunification.
Long history of resistance in Korea
The government of North Korea has stated before that it would end its
nuclear weapons program if the U.S. government would sign a peace treaty
to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War and pledge not to attack in the
future. More than 4 million people died in that war, including at least
2 million civilians, hundreds of thousands of Chinese and tens of
thousands of U.S. soldiers.
The war was a result of Washington’s division of Korea into North and
South, carried out with the collusion of Moscow, at the end of World War
II. It was imposed against the will of the Korean people, who had
resisted Japanese imperialism’s decadeslong occupation of the peninsula.
Instead of gaining independence they found themselves facing a
U.S.-installed dictatorship in the South.
U.S.-led invasion forces bombed and napalmed the North to the ground and
made it almost to the border with China before they were pushed back.
With the aid of Chinese volunteers, the Korean fighters fought the
U.S.-led forces to a stalemate at the 38th parallel, dealing U.S.
imperialism its first ever defeat. While the U.S. government agreed to
an armistice in 1953, it has refused to sign a peace treaty and still
has 28,500 troops in the South today.
Supporters of the North’s nuclear program argued that the DPRK needed
nuclear weapons as a deterrent to another U.S. attack. But having
nuclear weapons and threatening to send a “rain of fire” against South
Korea and others if attacked, undercuts the moral authority the Korean
people had won in the course of the war.
After months of accusing the president of being a warmonger, a racist
and a loose cannon, some “never-Trumpers” of both the Democratic and
Republican parties are discombobulated over the upcoming negotiations.
In a column in the April 25 New York Times, Nicholas Eberstadt, from the
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, calls the idea of a permanent
peace in Korea “delusional” and warns that Kim Jong Un is going to
bamboozle Trump.
While much of the discussion of the talks in the media focuses on
denuclearization, the talks include the massive array of North Korea’s
conventional missiles aimed at the South, along with Washington’s
formidable weaponry aimed at the North.
Denuclearization has special meaning for working people in Japan, who
vividly recall the horror of the U.S. rulers’ nuclear attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The U.S. ruling class backs Trump’s North Korea talks. His goal is to be
known as a “peace” president. Even the New York Times grudgingly
recognized this fact May 9, in an article headlined, “President Trump a
Nobel Laureate? It’s a Possibility.”
Related articles:
For a nuclear-free Korea, US troops, weapons out!
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