The recent visit by President Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang and the signing of a mutual defence pact between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Russian Federation provoked a storm of indignation in the imperialist media that looked a lot like panic.
The sight of the leader of the country with the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world, a legacy of the socialist USSR, and a country which has successfully defied the plots and provocations of US imperialism since 1945 coming together in a formal alliance must cause even the most wooden headed of the imperialists to wonder if their strategies might not be backfiring.
Imperialist policy backfiring spectacularly
By forcing the severing of connections between the Russian Federation and the west at all levels – economic, political, cultural and diplomatic – not only have the imperialists weakened the comprador forces inside Russia but they have ultimately ensured that their decades-long attempt to isolate the DPRK have now collapsed.
Increasingly, all over the world, the countries that the imperialists have tried to isolate via hysterical propaganda and extreme sanctions are coming together to beat the sanctions and create an ever-expanding anti-imperialist bloc. In the process, the Russian leadership in particular is increasingly leaning into and celebrating the achievements and legacy of its Soviet socialist past.
On the eve of President Putin’s arrival in Pyongyang, DPRK newspaper Rodong Sinmun carried an article penned by the Russian leader in which he made repeated references to the heroic past and shared struggle of the Korean national-liberation fighters and their allies in the Soviet Red Army.
“In August 1945, Soviet soldiers, fighting shoulder to shoulder with Korean patriots, defeated the Kwantung army, liberated the Korean peninsula from colonisers, and opened the way for the Korean people to develop independently.” (Vladimir Putin highlights ‘traditions of friendship and cooperation’ with DPRK)
Korea’s long history of anti-imperialist and socialist struggle
Korea had been subjected to an incredibly oppressive colonial occupation by the Japanese militarists for over 40 years by the time the Japanese were forced to surrender in 1945. The northern half of the Korean peninsula was liberated by the Korean people’s army, led by the great communist liberation fighter and founding DPRK president Comrade Kim Il Sung, in alliance with the Red Army.
As the socialist forces liberated the north, the land south of the 38th parallel was occupied by US imperialism. Although they came ostensibly as ‘liberators’, the imperialists immediately put the disarmed Japanese forces back to work as police and paramilitary forces against the communist partisans and installed a puppet government of Korean comprador bourgeois, many of whom had collaborated with the Japanese. These same pro-imperialist compradors make up the south Korean ruling clique today.
Even before the formal outbreak of war with the north in 1950, the USA and its reactionary puppet regime under the dictatorial rule of Syngman Rhee had engaged in many anticommunist pogroms with a degree of brutality that matched anything carried out by the Japanese occupiers.
The many and terrible crimes of the puppet regime and its US backers in Korea have been swept under the rug by the imperialists, whose media seldom mention the Korean war or the many anticommunist pogroms they oversaw there. Information about the USA’s bloody occupation of the south has been jettisoned in favour of a flood of propaganda whose sole purpose has been to demonise the liberated DPRK, its socialist system, its revolutionary leaders and its brave and independent people.
The crimes of the Syngman Rhee regime were so vast though that even a 2005 investigation by the south Korean puppet regime had to admit that many massacres of workers and peasants had been carried out during the US military administration directed by General John Hodge in the late 1940s, including during the Daegu Autumn uprising of 1946.
War on Korea – a blow aimed at the entire socialist camp
The attempt by US imperialism to crush socialism in Korea resulted in a war that lasted for three years from 1950-53. This genocidal assault resulted in the deaths of at least four million Koreans (some estimates are higher still) as the imperialists did their best to annihilate the DPRK by destroying all of its cities, industry and agriculture.
Indeed, US General McArthur, who oversaw military operations in Korea, bragged that Pyongyang would not rise again for a thousand years after every building higher than a single storey had been destroyed by US bombers.
It is a testament not only to the tremendous fighting spirit of the Korean people and their staunch leadership but also to the heroic acts of internationalism by the Chinese volunteer army and the Soviet air force that the DPRK was able to fight the combined forces of 14 countries, led by the USA under a UN banner, to a standstill.
Chairman Mao Zedong recognised that the war being launched against Korea was aimed also at China, which had only just emerged victorious from its own revolutionary struggle. Indeed, the People’s Republic of China was founded on 1 October 1949, just one year before Mao issued his call for volunteers to join the fight in Korea.
“In order to support the Korean people’s war of liberation and to resist the attacks of US imperialism and its running dogs, thereby safeguarding the interests of the people of Korea, China and all the other countries in the east, I herewith order the Chinese People’s Volunteers to march speedily to Korea and join the Korean comrades in fighting the aggressors and winning a glorious victory.” (Order by Mao Zedong to the Chinese People’s Volunteers, 8 October 1950)
Had the Chinese done nothing, the US imperialists could well have gained a vital strategic position against both the USSR and the PRC. Over one million Chinese, many of them veterans of the revolutionary war and the war against the Japanese, went to aid the Koreans. This assistance was decisive in turning the tide of the war and forcing US imperialism into retreat and eventually to the signing of the armistice of 1953.
Alongside the open military assistance of the PRC came at least 5,000 pilots from the USSR, who provided the DPRK with much needed air support and stopped the USA from maintaining its total domination of the skies. This hidden air war between the USSR the USA went unacknowledged for decades, but many Soviet pilots were later decorated for their heroism.
The DPRK also received military and technical assistance from the people’s democracies in eastern Europe as well as from Mongolia. Kim Il Sung hailed these acts of solidarity in a radio broadcast to the Korean people in 1950:
“The Korean people are not alone in their struggle for the freedom and independence of the country. All the officers and men of the People’s Army, guerrillas behind enemy lines and all the Korean people should understand that their struggle in the great cause is actively supported and aided by the peoples of the Soviet Union, Chinese People’s Republic and other people’s democracies and has the unanimous sympathy of all progressive mankind.” (Let us defend every inch of our motherland at the cost of our blood, radio address to the Korean people by Kim Il Sung, 11 October 1950)
The rapid rebuilding of the DPRK after the war ended was also assisted by the Soviet Union, and the economic partnership between the two countries endured up until the final counter-revolution that destroyed the USSR in 1991.
Workers Party of Korea’s guiding strategy of self-reliance
When considering how the DPRK was able to survive the collapse of its major trading partner, we must mention that while the economic ties it had with the USSR and China were very important, striving for all-round development and self-sufficiency has always been stressed by the leadership of people’s Korea. As Kim Il Sung observed in 1967:
“Each country should produce the essentials and those products which are in great demand, and obtain, through trade with foreign countries, those things for which there is little demand, or which are in short supply, or which cannot be produced at home, on the principle of meeting each other’s needs.” (Political Programme of the Government of the DPRK, 16 December 1967)
Thus the DPRK from its earliest days strove to maintain as independent an economic base as possible. Nevertheless, the disappearance of its major trading partners in the USSR and the European socialist bloc’s Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) resulted in an extremely difficult period known in the DPRK as the “Arduous march”. The fact that the DPRK was able to come through this period was partially owing its leaders’ previous insistence on striving for development and self-reliance in as many economic areas as possible.
The stories of mass famine in the DPRK that have been run in the imperialist press are, of course, the usual combination of wild exaggerations and outright lies. However, it is widely acknowledged that a very difficult period had to be endured by the people of north Korea during the 1990s and it is a great tribute to the strength of the Korean revolution and the strong bonds between the masses and the Workers Party of Korea that the revolution in the DPRK has survived this ordeal.
Ultimate failure of imperialist attempts to isolate, starve and disarm the country
Until very recently, it must be frankly stated that the position of both the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China was mistaken when it came to relations with the DPRK. In attempting to maintain good relations with US imperialism, both governments allowed harsh economic sanctions to be applied against the DPRK via the United Nations security council.
The US imperialists forced these measures through in an attempt to push the DPRK into giving up its nuclear weapons programme, but this programme was only developed in the first place after the USA had proved unwilling to engage in serious negotiations towards a lasting and just peace.
In the 1990s, it was agreed that the DPRK would give up its attempt to develop nuclear weapons in return for US assistance in developing a civilian nuclear energy programme. The promised assistance under the so-called ‘Agreed framework’ never came, however, and it became clear that the imperialists were not interested in living peacefully alongside the DPRK but only in seeing its socialist system destroyed and incorporating its territory into the southern puppet state.
The Koreans were thus fully justified in defying the USA’s diktat and developing nuclear weapons. Indeed, the possession of such weapons has proven to be one of the few ways in which US aggression can be deterred – a lesson that has been well learned by all those who aspire to true independence.
The attempt by the Russia and Chinese governments to appease imperialism are now openly acknowledged by the Russians to have been an utter failure. As President Putin noted in his article:
“The United States is going out of its way to impose on the world what it calls the ‘rules-based order’, which is essentially nothing more than a global neocolonial dictatorship relying on double standards. Nations that disagree with such an approach and pursue an independent policy face increasing external pressure. The US leadership views such a natural and legitimate aspiration for self-reliance and independence as a threat to its global dominance.”
Mr Putin also thanked the DPRK for its rock-solid support for the actions of Russia in the special military operation in Ukraine. Ultimately, it is the US-led aggression in Ukraine that has compelled the Russian government to learn hard lessons and reassess its relationships. It has not gone unnoticed in Moscow that Russia’s strongest allies and supporters over the last two years have been countries that are either socialist or consistently anti-imperialist.
The new partnership agreement is highly significant. By means of the promised expansion of trade between Russia and north Korea, the sanctions regime will effectively be rendered obsolete. As President Putin noted in his article:
“We see the force, dignity and courage with which the people of the DPRK fight for their freedom, sovereignty and national traditions, achieving tremendous results and genuine breakthroughs in strengthening their country in terms of defence, technology, science and industry.”
Indeed, the achievements of the DPRK in preserving and extending its very significant scientific advances through the difficult post-Soviet period are a real endorsement of its system of socialist economic planning. Even under conditions of extended siege, the country has continued to innovate in many fields. Now that this knowledge base can be put together with the still strong techno-scientific base of Russia, even greater achievements can be made.
Mutual defence pact strengthens the anti-imperialist bloc
As if all this were not worrying enough to the imperialists, there is one aspect of the treaty that has caused more consternation than any other in the west – its mutual defence commitment. This states the following:
“In case a direct threat of armed invasion is created against any one of the two sides, the two sides shall immediately operate the channel of bilateral negotiations for the purpose of adjusting their stands at the request of any one side and discussing feasible practical measures to ensure mutual assistance for removing the prevailing threat.”
Western uproar over this defence pact caused Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov dryly to observe that the agreement could not possibly cause problems for any third country unless it were planning on invading either the DPRK or Russia.
The treaty follows on the heels of recent comments by Putin regarding the supply of further long-range weaponry to the US’s puppet regime in Kiev and the apparent green light being given by the White House for such weapons to be used against targets inside the Russian mainland. As Putin has stated:
“Our adversaries, meanwhile, continue to supply the neo‑nazi Kiev regime with money, weapons and intelligence information, allow – and, effectively, encourage – the use of modern western weapons and equipment to deliver strikes on Russian territory, aiming at obviously civilian targets in most cases.”
President Putin has made clear on numerous occasions that if the US imperialists insist on escalating the conflict in this way, then Russia will respond. The new agreement with north Korea is one such response and there will no doubt be others.
Soon after signing the DPRK treaty, a Russian naval detachment docked in the Cuban capital Havana, sending a clear signal to the US regime that Russia’s alliance with Cuba is also going to be strengthened.
What the Russia-DPRK agreement has done is to break the decades-long siege imposed on north Korea by the USA and its satellites, at the same time sending the Russian Federation further down the path of siding decisively with socialist and anti-imperialist states and forces. This is a serious defeat for the comprador and anticommunist forces within Russia and opens up new possibilities for the development of socialism in the DPRK.
People’s Korea has made great strides in building socialism since 1953, both through its consistent fostering of deep connections with the masses and through its insistence on self-reliance as first outlined by founding president Kim Il Sung. The deepening alliance with the Russian Federation will consolidate and strengthen these gains by enabling the DPRK to access trade and development in areas where the Russians are strong, such as food and energy production.
As the southern puppet regime and its stunted economy continue to decay and decline under the dead hand of US imperialist occupation, the DPRK looks set to grow ever stronger as it both benefits from and contributes its considerable weight to building up the alliance of sovereign states of which Russia and China today form the backbone.
All socialist and progressive humanity is cheering at these signs of a strengthening and reinvigorated anti-imperialist camp, which today offers hope and assistance to the oppressed and exploited that a world without imperialist domination is not only possible but is actually in the process of being born.
