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Vol. 82/No. 11 March 19, 2018
(front page)
Washington, Pyongyang move toward nuclear talks
BY SETH GALINSKY
“The North Korean side clearly stated its willingness to denuclearize,”
South Korean government officials said after meeting with Kim Jong Un,
central leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, March 6.
“It made it clear that it would have no reason to keep nuclear weapons
if the military threat to the North was eliminated and its security
guaranteed.”
The talks increase the possibility of direct negotiations between
Washington and the government of the DPRK.
Chung Eui-yong, national security adviser to South Korean President Moon
Jae-in, and Suh Hoon, director of the National Intelligence Service,
both of whom met with Kim, are expected to fly to Washington this week
to discuss the talks with the White House.
President Donald Trump is determined to push North Korea back and avoid
war. He seeks to be known as a “peace president,” using draconian
economic sanctions and the threat of Washington’s military superiority
to do so. He had insisted that Washington would only join talks if the
DPRK government agreed they would lead to ending its nuclear weapons
program.
“I think they are sincere,” Trump said about the North Korean March 6
offer. He said it was “because of the sanctions and what we’re doing in
respect to North Korea.” He thanked “the great help we’ve been given
from China.”
At the same time, the U.S. government has no intention of easing its
“maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea.
Washington is pushing to get other governments to join in tightening
draconian economic sanctions against the people of North Korea. At U.S.
urging, the U.N. Security Council approved a new round of sanctions at
the end of December.
U.S. sanctions hit workers hardest
Washington has worked hard to get Beijing to join in the sanctions, as
China accounts for 90 percent of North Korean trade. And the Chinese
rulers have responded, say three Wall Street Journal reporters who
recently traveled to Hunchun, China, near the North Korean border. Six
months ago “hundreds of vehicles queued up on the Chinese side each
morning, bearing food, building materials and consumer goods bound for
North Korea, to return later with North Korean exports of seafood,
garments and coal,” they wrote. “Not any more.”
“There were more than a dozen garment factories like ours in Rason and
thousands of people in the seafood industry,” a Chinese capitalist who
had to shut down his garment shop in the North Korean port city told
them. “Now, none of those people have jobs.”
U.N. sanctions banning other governments from employing North Korean
citizens are also having an impact. Superexploited North Korean workers
in Poland, the United Arab Emirates and other countries are filling
trains as they return to Pyongyang through China.
Washington and its imperialist allies hope their squeeze and the
resulting steep cuts in hard currency, fuel, spare parts and raw
material to North Korea will cause severe food shortages.
On Feb. 23 President Trump announced new sanctions targeting 28 ships
registered in China and seven other countries, allegedly used by North
Korea to transfer coal — North Korea’s main export — and oil on the high
seas, evading sanctions.
Decades of U.S. assaults on Korea
Washington is the most powerful nuclear power in the world and is the
only government that has ever used nuclear weapons, when it incinerated
large parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, during the second
imperialist World War.
Washington, the chief victor in that war, occupied south Korea with the
collusion of the Stalinist regime in Moscow, dividing the country in
two. The U.S. rulers then moved to take over the whole country. During
the 1950-53 Korean War, U.S. imperialism carpet-bombed the cities in the
North. With the aid of Chinese troops, the North Korean people fought
Washington to a draw.
To this day, Washington refuses to sign a formal peace treaty ending the
war, which killed more than 4 million people, including 2 million
civilians. Washington has 28,500 U.S. troops stationed permanently in
the South.
As part of the steps that led to the March 6 meeting, the two Korean
governments fielded a joint team in the Winter Olympics and Washington
agreed to postpone the annual joint South Korean-U.S. military exercises
that had been scheduled during the games. Washington and Seoul say they
will mount the provocative maneuvers after the Paralympics, which end
March 25.
Chung said Kim Jong Un told the South Korean representatives that “he
could understand why” the joint military exercises would resume in
April, but expects them to be “readjusted” in the future.
Signaling its wish for an agreement, Pyongyang has not conducted any
nuclear tests since Sept. 3 and says it will not do so as long as
momentum toward talks proceed.
Thousands cheered the joint South-North Korean women’s hockey team at
the Winter Olympics, a reflection of the longstanding desire by many in
Korea for reunification of the country. But after more than 70 years of
division and the development of two sharply different social systems,
reunification can’t simply be proclaimed.
There are only two examples of reunification of similarly divided
nations in recent history. Capitalist West Germany absorbed the deformed
workers state in East Germany in 1990, after the implosion of the
Stalinist regime there, and extended capitalist social relations
throughout the reunified country.
North and South Vietnam were reunited in 1975 following a powerful fight
for national liberation and wars that lasted nearly three decades. The
Vietnamese fighters first defeated the French imperialists and then
forced the withdrawal of U.S. military forces in the South, dealing a
stunning blow to U.S. imperialism and leading to reunification of the
country.
There are no developments of these sorts taking place in Korea today.
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