Our party’s central committee has decided to establish a Korea solidarity and propaganda group to better expose and oppose the drive to war in the Korean peninsula.
Using the name ‘Hands off Korea’ intentionally sets aside any emphasis on one or other side of the imperialist-imposed dividing line on the Korean peninsula. This reinforces the overarching truth that “Korea is One”, while also recognising that the struggle for liberation and sovereignty is being waged on both sides of the US-imposed border – albeit under radically differing economic and social conditions.
Indeed, Korea remains a global flashpoint, unresolved since the 1953 armistice, in which the US imperialists stare down the barrel of their gun at the defiant and heroic liberated socialist nation in the north, while maintaining a vice-like grip of economic slavery and political servitude on their vassal in the south.
‘Hands off Korea’ aims to:
– Bring a clear understanding of the situation in Korea to a wider public, both north (in the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea) and south (in the so-called ‘Republic of Korea’) in a way that resonates with British workers. A main propaganda tool of imperialism is to depict with florid and often bizarre propaganda the Koreans who live in the DPRK, and by extension all Koreans, as beings entirely ‘other’ and inherently different from workers in Britain. This racist lie is intended to foster a smug, but baseless, feeling of superiority in western workers.
– Explain the historical context behind the situation we see today, which is characterised by liberated north and occupied south, helping British workers understand that their interests are better served by a strong and united Korea on the world stage, liberated in its entirety.
– Expose the deluge of propaganda lies. This means calmly and systematically addressing the barrage of insane and contradictory propaganda heaped on workers in the west regarding the DPRK. This barrage aims to hide the historic crimes of the Nato imperialists in Korea, to hide their ongoing aggression against the DPRK, and to hide the condition of abject servitude of workers and peasants in the enslaved capitalist south.
Western anti-DPRK propaganda has several main themes, characterising the DPRK leaders as ‘evil cartoon villains’ and its economy as a ‘basket case’ in a constant state of collapse – and yet somehow (despite these handicaps) presenting an existential threat to life on earth for all humanity. We must expose this pernicious and pervasive propaganda in a way that exposes the role of our own imperialist ruling class and the bloodthirsty aggression of Nato imperialism, while also bringing to light the positive reality of life in the socialist north.
The bourgeoisie uses this falsified, twisted image of the DPRK to convince the working class that however awful capitalism is, socialism is worse – authoritarian and undemocratic, and above all impractical and inefficient. To counter this, we aim to highlight the impressive achievements of socialist Korea, in the face of imperialism’s strenuous programme of intimidation, sabotage and sanctions, to give the lie to all those who are inclined to believe that the proletariat is unfit to rule.
This will also mean exposing the lie of the southern ‘utopia’: how and why this image of the ROK has been manufactured, and the reality that it hides – a life of hyperexploitation; the abandonment of the elderly, mothers and young people; physical occupation by US military forces; and the near total control of the south’s political, military and economic affairs by US imperialism.
– Connect the struggles of the Korean people with our own. The real achievements of the DPRK should be linked directly to British workers’ demands, and the contrast between the north Koreans’ rising living standards and our own precipitously declining ones should be vividly made.
Our immediate programme for workers in Britain, reaffirmed at our tenth congress in the resolution ‘The poverty crisis and our demands’, have already been achieved on the whole by the workers of People’s Korea – and this despite its small size, its geographic constraints (having been separated from the majority of its territory and people in the occupied south), the devastation wrought on it by the 1950-53 imperialist war of aggression, and the ceaseless assaults via genocidal sanctions and military provocations that have deliberately aimed at frustrating all progress and development.
If and when the imperialists succeed in reigniting the Korean war, we need to play our part in helping the proletarians of Britain and the wider world understand that they must take the side of the DPRK and the progressive pro-unification forces of the south!
*****
You can find the Hands off Korea channel on Telegram. Contributions to this work are most welcome and can be forwarded to Joshua via joshua@cpgb-ml.org.
