Korea Peace Day and two anniversaries

Korea Peace Day - November 10th

This is an email I sent to my Congressional representatives for the ASCK's Korea Peace Day, since there was not an event in the Triangle. Since it was written to Congress people, including two very pro-Bush Republican senators, I toned down and didn't say that I would welcome a reunified and socialist Korea, or that I am more worried about the accidental (or intentional) launch of American and Russian ICBMs than about north Korean nuclear weapons.

Perhaps the world would actually be safer if nuclear weapons technology were not limited to the large powers. The DPRK signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its neighbors want a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula, so it would be a going against its obligations and international pressure for north Korea to develop a nuclear deterrent. It does have a case for pulling out of the Treaty legally though, by showing that the USA is threatening it with nuclear attack. But this would not have much support in the "world community." I just saw a headline online that the ROK expects to have an economic union of Korea by 2020 and earlier there was a headline that there would be a unified Olympic team. Our foreign policy is going against what is right and it is against the logic of events as well.

It is debatable whether the DPRK actually has a socialist economy (Alliance believes it does not and never did) and its leadership years ago replaced Marxism-Leninism with Juche, or self-reliance, and is pro-capitalist.

"The annual Korea Peace Day, started by the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (www.asck.org) was Thursday, November 10th. I did not hear of any Korea Peace Day events in the Triangle, so I am writing letters to yourself and our two Senators. You should support ending the state of war between north Korea and our country, and normalization. The US could easily solve its disagreements with north Korea by continuing with negotiations, honoring its commitment to supply peaceful nuclear technology to north Korea if they follow their agreements, and ending nuclear (and other) threats against Korea. By threats I mean the past deployment of nuclear weapons in south Korea, plans for their use, and inclusion of these weapons in military exercises, which is a threat against the North and in violation of the Armistice Agreement and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

According to scholar Bruce Cummings (in North Korea: Another Country, which I think is a very useful book), north Korea would give up its missile program, any nuclear weapons program, and even welcome the US presence on the Korean Peninsula in return for normalization. I am surprised the DPRK would trust us so much as to agree to this, but it also makes sense in light of some of its actions. In considering north Korea, you should keep in mind the massive destruction and racist brutality of the Korean War, the North’s isolation during the Cold War, and the nationalist nature of Korea, and especially of the DPRK. Even if this isn’t the case, and north Korean rhetoric notwithstanding, I don’t feel north Korea is a threat to the safety of myself or other American citizens so I would like to see the US work to end this situation. I think it is highly unlikely that north Korea would attack us with nuclear weapons first, and it would risk destruction if it sold the weapons to terrorists. North Korea has committed apparently criminal actions, such as kidnapping Japanese citizens, but dialogue is the way to resolve this situation. The 1994 Agreed Framework sounds like a good model and according to the ASCK it is debatable whether highly enriched uranium processing was a violation. Breach of the agreement then led to the current plutonium and nuclear weapons issue.

The DPRK and ROK are moving towards eventually peaceful reunification on their own terms. There are economic initiatives and I think it was recently it was announced that there would be one Korean Olympic team. We should support these efforts rather than sabotage them, and trade with north Korea would probably benefit us economically as well. Ending the Korean War would save taxpayer money and improve our standing in the world as well.

Korean and American human rights are best served by creating peace, instead of by provocation, such as including north Korea in the supposed “Axis of Evil” and trying to overthrow the DPRK on the pretext of human rights (which I assume is the purpose of the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004). According to an article in Covert Action Quaterly last yeat, the 2004 explosion in north Korea might have been a failed US attempt to kill Kim Jong Il, which I would condemn if it is true. I would oppose any attack on north Korea, including supposed precision strikes, and this would probably result in a second Korean War, with massive Korean and American casualties. The DPRK is also seemingly not such a militarily weak country as Iraq."

Anniversaries

November 7th was the 88th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. This was the formal birth of the first truly new economic and political system since the bourgeois gained power in the British, American, and French revolutions and the untold prehistoric revolutions (for example the birth of class society, slave economy, etc., which probably occurred gradually over time). The October Revolution in 1917 was the proletarian or socialist second step of the Russian Revolution, following the bourgeois phase which overthrew the Tsar and the remains of feudalism. Putin tried to divert attention from this working class anniversary by creating a new nationalistic holiday, which Russians apparently did not know the meaning of.

November 8th was the anniversary of the death of Molotov, best known as the USSR's foreign minister (I think that was his title) during World War II. He died November 8, 1986 at 12:55 p.m. if I remember correctly. The conversations recorded by Chuev and published in English in part are very useful. Molotov is a controversial figure for Marxist-Leninists though, because he cooperated with Khrushchev's revisionist group after Stalin's death. Was he a true revolutionary communist, or was he unconsciously or consciously for un-revolutionary and ultimately pro-capitalist policies, a revisionist? He was later expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as part of what I think was called the "Anti-Party Group."