https://themilitant.com/2018/09/29/washington-pyongyang-press-talks-on-nuclear-arms/
Washington, Pyongyang press talks on nuclear arms
By Seth Galinsky
Vol. 82/No. 37
October 8, 2018
U.S. airstrikes leveled most of North Korea and much of the South during
1950-53 war, including Seoul, above. Despite destruction, Koreans fought
U.S. imperialism to a stalemate, its first ever military defeat. War
ended 65 years ago, but Washington refuses to sign a peace treaty.U.S.
airstrikes leveled most of North Korea and much of the South during
1950-53 war, including Seoul, above. Despite destruction, Koreans fought
U.S. imperialism to a stalemate, its first ever military defeat. War
ended 65 years ago, but Washington refuses to sign a peace treaty.
Efforts by the rulers in Washington and leaders in North Korea to reach
an agreement on “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula moved forward
during a three-day summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang Sept. 18-20. President
Donald Trump responded to that progress Sept. 24, saying he and Kim
would meet again “quite soon.”
Kim wants “a second summit with President Trump to happen at the
earliest convenience in order to speed up the denuclearization process,”
Moon said.
Moon and Kim agreed to create a no-fly zone along their border,
including on its Yellow Sea maritime boundary; remove 11 front-line
guard posts; and end live artillery drills within 3 miles of the
demilitarized zone.
Their “September Pyongyang Declaration” reaffirmed that “the Korean
Peninsula must be turned into a land of peace free from nuclear weapons
and nuclear threats, and that substantial progress toward this end must
be made in a prompt manner.”
The government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea offered to
permanently dismantle its missile testing site and launch platform in
the northwestern town of Tongchang-ri, and to allow outside experts to
observe. The site was used to test-fire intercontinental ballistic
missiles last year that had the capacity to reach the U.S.
Kim added that Pyongyang would permanently dismantle its Yongbyon
nuclear complex, its main site for production of nuclear weapons, if
Washington “takes corresponding measures” in the “spirit” of the
agreement Kim and Trump reached in Singapore in June. According to Moon,
the “measure” the North Koreans want is a U.S. declaration officially
ending the 1950-53 Korean War.
Declaring the war finally over would not mean the withdrawal of the
28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the South, Moon said, but would be a
meaningful symbolic step.
After the summit ended, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert
said that all three governments have a “shared understanding” that U.S.
and International Atomic Energy inspectors will be involved in the
shutdown of the Yongbyon complex.
North and South are ‘one people’
While in Pyongyang, Moon spoke to a crowd of 150,000 people, saying, “We
have lived together for 5,000 years and apart for 70. We must live
together as one people.”
The U.S. government — with the agreement of Moscow — trampled on the
Korean people’s national sovereignty and divided Korea into North and
South in 1945, after the defeat of Tokyo in the second imperialist World
War. In the North, working people carried out a deep-going agrarian
reform, expropriated the landlords and capitalists, and carried out
other social measures in their interests. But in the South the U.S.
military put in place the Syngman Rhee dictatorship that brutally put
down protests by workers and farmers.
Millions were killed during the Korean War, which broke out in 1950. In
a shock to the U.S. rulers, Korean workers and farmers, with the help of
Chinese volunteers, fought the U.S.-led invasion army to a stalemate,
dealing U.S. imperialism its first ever military defeat.
But while Washington was forced to agree to an armistice, it refused to
sign a peace treaty to formally end the war. Until 1991 the U.S.
government openly kept tactical nuclear weapons on South Korean
territory. U.S. nuclear-armed submarines continue to prowl the Pacific
to this day.
Kim and Moon also agreed to hold more reunification meetings for
families that have been divided for over 70 years since the peninsula
was split in two. They also agreed to pave the way for video family
meetings. Currently there is not even mail service between North and South.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said that he has invited North Korean
Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho to meet in New York during the opening
sessions of the United Nations General Assembly. Referring to the
proposals coming out of the North-South summit, Pompeo said, “On the
basis of these important commitments, the United States is prepared to
engage immediately in negotiations to transform U.S.-DPRK relations.”
The editors of the Washington Post, like much of the rest of the liberal
capitalist media that see all questions through the prism of their
furious “resistance” to the Trump presidency, tried to downplay
developments in Korea. Despite “some significant steps to reduce
tensions and the risk of war,” they wrote Sept. 22, the latest moves
offer “no real progress in the matter of most import to the United
States: the dismantlement of North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.”
“We demand the U.S. government sign a peace treaty and make permanent
the halt to the provocative annual war games it has carried out with
Seoul,” Róger Calero, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of
New York, said the same day. “Reaching an agreement with the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea on a Korea free of nuclear weapons is in the
interest of all working people, there and around the world.”
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