Dear friends and participants,
Please receive our warm greetings from Korean Committee for Solidarity with the World People (KCSWP)! We also send our warm greetings to all the members of the ILPS IPF who contributed their sincere efforts to organize this meeting during such a difficult time. It is a pity that the KCSWP cannot participate in this meaningful meeting, but we send our written speech to the meeting.
This time we would like to mention the U.S.’s hostile policy toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)
KCSWP expresses its expectation that you would have the correct understanding of the U.S.’s hostile policy towards the DPRK and raise voices of international solidarity in the struggle for realizing international justice.
Deep-rooted U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK dates back decades.
After World War II, the U.S. designated the DPRK as an “arch enemy” on the pretext that the latter had a different ideology and system and puts an obstacle to its strategy for holding hegemony over the whole world. Since then, it has persistently pursued its hostile policy towards the DPRK.
Since the DPRK emerged as a sovereign state in the international arena, the U.S. never recognized the DPRK’s sovereignty and left no stone unturned in stifling it.
Korea was liberated from the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists with the defeat of Japan in August 1945.
The U.S. landed its troops in South Korea and occupied it by force on September 8th, 1945, on the pretext of disarming the vanquished Japanese troops. It ignited aggressive war to remove the fresh-founded DPRK in its cradle, thus forcing miserable misfortune on the Korean people.
After the Korean War (1950-1953), the US intentionally pursued protraction in a state of armistice, systematically abrogating paragraphs of the Korean Armistice Agreement.
Article IV, Paragraph 60 of the Korean Armistice Agreement specifies that within three months since the agreement came into effect, both sides should hold a political conference of a higher level to settle the question of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea and so on.
However, the U.S., on the 8th of August, 1945, just after they had concluded the Armistice Agreement, adopted the “Mutual Defense Treaty” with South Korea, thus creating artificial difficulties in the course of peaceful settlement of the Korean issue.
The U.S. intentionally broke off the Geneva conference for peaceful settlement of the Korean issue in June, 1954 and refused to accept a large number of peaceful proposals and initiatives put forth by the DPRK including proposal for concluding a peace agreement between the DPRK and the U.S. (1970s), proposal for convening 3-party talk with south Korea presence in the DPRK-US talk (1980s), proposal for establishment of new peace-keeping system (1990s) and proposal for declaring the end of the war (2000s), etc.
The U.S., until now since it started to stage the joint military exercise, “Focus Lens”, with south Korea against the DPRK in 1954, has been persistently waging various nuclear war exercises targeted the DPRK merely changing their names into Focus Retina, Freedom Bolt, Team Sprit, Ulji Focus Lens, Integration of the US Reinforcement, Key Resolve, Foal Eagle, Ulji Freedom Guardian and Alliance 19-1.
The U.S. hostile moves towards the DPRK went on without cease.
In early 1950s the U.S. declared the DPRK as “an enemy state threatening its security” and severed all economic relations with it. Since the U.S. put into force the Trade Agreement Act, law imposing a ten-fold tariff on the DPRK’s trading partners, it has imposed sanctions on the DPRK for more than a half century.
The US has imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on the DPRK with all sorts of laws including Trading with the Enemy Act, Export Administration Act, Foreign Assistance Act, Export-Import Bank Act, while forcing its followers including the south Korean authorities not to enter on economic cooperation with the DPRK.
Cooperation and exchange between the north and south of Korea was activated under the ideal of by our nation itself in the 2000s. Then the U.S. blocked cooperation works in every way, spinning out sophism that “if south Korean authorities offers cooperation to the DPRK and move ahead of the U.S., can US-south Korea cooperation be created?”, “when some of 386 computers are connected to each other, can they be solely used for a military purpose”, “as a chemical fertilizer could be used for production of conventional explosives, its verification should be followed.”
U.S. put the DPRK on the list of tariff area as enemy state and froze funds of the DPRK in other countries. Not content with this, it disturbed and maneuvered so that the DPRK couldn’t do trade transactions with other countries and enter into the foreign markets.
Finding a fault with the DPRK over its self-defensive measures for building of nuclear deterrent to cope with ever-growing nuclear threat of the U.S. as a provocation, the U.S. instigated the UN to disturb regular trade dealings of the DPRK from 2006 at the time when the DPRK carried out an underground nuclear test, till today.
In addition, the U.S. spared no fund and investment in espionages and moves for ideological and cultural infiltration, and in undermining from its interior aimed at overthrowing the DPRK system.
In order to drive the inter-Korean confrontation to extreme situation in south Korea, the U.S. set up anti-DPRK plot organizations including “Civil Alliance for Human Rights in north Korea” and “Network for Democracy in north Korea ” in a big way and has poured a great deal of funds in these organizations.
Reportedly, the fund, which the U.S. Department of State provided to the anti-DPRK plot organizations in south Korea annually from 2009, has reached to twenty million-odd USD as it was given to the public.
The U.S.’s hostile policy towards the DPRK that perpetrated unprecedented political isolation and economic blockade, military pressures and anti-DPRK smear campaign, and attempted to inflict even a nuclear holocaust, clearly shows how stubborn and extreme policy it is.
As anti-DPRK hostile policy by the U.S. and its vassal forces to stifle a whole country and a whole nation is the most persistent and harsh inhumane hostility towards a sovereign state, it runs counter to purposes and principles of the UN Charter which stipulate that is to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for principle of equal rights and self-determination of people and shall refrain from threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.
The law on crimes against peace and security of humanity enacted by the UN international law commission at its six session in 1954 stipulates in Paragraph 9 of Article 2 that an act of taking political and economic high-handed measures in pursuit of certain interest by forcing one’s intention to the other shall be considered a crime against peace and security of humanity.
London Treaty(1933) and resolution of the 29th UN General Assembly held in 1974 also stipulate that blockade-type sanctions against a sovereign state in peacetime shall be regarded as an aggressive and illegal act.
It is legitimate rights of the sovereign state for a country to decide on and carry out all issues related with national interest of the country at its own discretion, determination and on its own efforts without outside intervention. It also remains important matter which should be observed in the international relations without fail
But contrary to such international laws, the US illegally occupied south Korea and has desperately resorted to hostile policy towards the DPRK over the span of half a century till now.
Comrade Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs of the DPRK made a historic policy speech at the Seventh Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK. In the speech he said that as long as imperialism, whose inherent nature and means of existence is aggression and plunder, exists, the source of war cannot be rooted out, and antagonism and struggle between socialism, which aspires after independence and peace, and imperialism is unavoidable in the development of history. He said that this is a clearer demonstration of the independent determination of the government of the Republic and its will to defend the sovereignty and interests of the state.
He pointed out that our nuclear weapons are a means for containment and ultimate weapon that our Republic, which from the early days of its birth had been under the nuclear threat by the United States, the first country to use nuclear power in the world, possessed by waging an arduous and bloody struggle for scores of years so as to reliably defend its dignity and security and completely remove the danger of a nuclear war.
He mentioned that with an absurd sophistry that our nuclear weapons and our strengthening of the self-defence capability pose a serious threat to global peace and the security in the region, the United States is now obsessed with spreading a rumor in the international arena aimed at demonizing the government of our Republic; it is also tenaciously resorting to the harshest-ever sanctions and blockade and political and military offensive to bring us under its control psychologically and physically even by enlisting all its vassal forces.
He stressed that what the United States tries to achieve is not merely to remove our nuclear weapons; its final objective is to overthrow our government someday by inducing us to abandon the nuclear weapons and further give up our capability of exercising the right to self-defence or by making the capability inferior to its own.
He continued that through unheard-of sanctions and blockade, it is attempting to make us think about the cost of our option for the nuclear weapons and induce and incite complaint among our people about their Party and government by creating a harsh environment for us and by making the capability inferior to its own.
He stressed that it is the enemy’s misjudgment and miscalculation and let them impose sanctions for 100, nay 1000 days or even ten or 100 years, and it is not we that would give up the right to self-defence, on which the country’s right to existence and the security of the future of the state and people depend, so as to escape or make a detour even a moment around the difficulties we are experiencing now; we can never give up the nuclear weapons however harsh the circumstances are in the political and military situations the United States has created on the Korean peninsula and moreover as we have to contain the United States, our nuclear state enemy, in a far-sighted way.
Comrade Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs of the DPRK, said that the present international situation shows that the contradictions between justice and injustice and between the progressive and the reactionary, especially the power structure surrounding the Korean peninsula, have become obvious and the change from a unipolar world advocated by the US into a multipolar world is being accelerated significantly.
He said that our Republic will develop foreign relations proactively in line with the development trend of the current international situation and its position as a powerful independent country.
He pointed out that the field of external affairs should develop external relations in many-sided way as it further expands and develops friendly and cooperative relations with neighbouring countries and collaborates with all countries and nations opposing and rejecting the imperialists’ aggression and interference, domination and subordination and aspiring after independence and justice, regardless of differences in ideology and system.
It is a desire of humanity to live in a peaceful world free from aggression and war, and yet, peace does not come of its own accord simply because they are desirous of it; it is something that we can achieve and defend only when we are strong enough to contain the imperialist tyranny.
We strongly condemn the US’s hostile policy towards the DPRK which infringe upon sovereignty, rights to existence and development of the sovereign state and UN resolutions unreasonably adopted to suffocate the DPRK, and all forms of inhumane antagonistic maneuvers against the people of DPRK should immediately be stopped.
We wish successful meeting and expect that all of the participant in this meeting, with constant attention on the development of situation on the Korean peninsula, would take necessary measures to denounce U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and moves of sanctions and render support to the just cause of the Korean people.
We’d like to meet you in person soon enough after the COVID-19 epidemic stamped out as early as possible and share constructive opinions to safeguard the peace and security of the world.
In conclusion, I wish all of you successes in your work with good health in this pandemic health crisis and sincerely wish happiness in your families.
Thank you for your attention.
O Ryong Il
Secretary General, Korean Committee for Solidarity with the World People.
