News Articles
(Note: Here we collect the articles which give us a thinking. We hope you should also read them and think over as we do. However, the views expressed in the articles are not necessarily the same as ours.)
Japan Urged to Redeem Vandalism and Plunder of Cultural Treasures of Korea
Pyongyang, August 2 (KCNA) -- The Japanese imperialists' vandalism and plunder of valuable cultural treasures of Korea were serious international crimes as those crimes were a challenge to human civilization, says Rodong Sinmun Saturday in a signed article.
Not a few facts about the plunder and vandalism of historic relics and cultural treasures committed by foreign aggressor forces have been disclosed so far but what the Japanese imperialists perpetrated in this respect in Korea put those crimes into the shade.
The article cites the following facts to prove this:
The Japanese imperialists' looting of cultural treasures of Korea started long before their occupation of Korea. This is clearly evidenced by "an ordinance" called the "method of collecting treasures" promulgated by the Japanese imperialists in 1894.
Japan looted cultural treasures of Korea in an undisguised manner after its occupation of Korea. Already right after their occupation of Korea the Japanese imperialists let a group led by Sekino, well-known for exploring historical remains and relics, to conduct comprehensive expert-level investigation into the national relics in the whole territory of Korea for as long as ten years and worked out a total of 15 volumes of "Lists of Korea's Historical Remains" before publishing them.
Basing himself on these lists, Hirobumi Ito, first resident-general of the Japanese imperialists in Korea, issued an order on making survey and collecting cultural relics of Korea. This kicked off an undisguised plunder of national heritages of Korea.
The Japanese imperialists instructed Terauchi, the first governor-general, to promulgate the "ordinance on preservation of historical remains and relics" and barbarously looted heritages of Korea in such a terror-ridden atmosphere that they sealed off the scenes before carrying out their looting operations with the mobilization of power of the "Government-General" and the army and police.
Their plunder was not confined to this. The Japanese imperialists dug up or destroyed at random historical remains in Mt. Taesong and in areas along the banks of the River Taedong in Pyongyang and old tombs in Kaesong, Seoul and in different other places of Korea and plundered the country of a number of its valuable cultural relics under the pretext of building railways, harbors, roads and military installments to make them properties of individual Japanese or state properties of Japan.
The Japanese imperialist aggressors vandalized or plundered all national classics belonging to Korea.
Japan still keeps those cultural relics it looted from Korea without making any repentance or apology for them but shelves the issue without giving any assurances or making any promise to return them although the old century is replaced by the new one, the article notes, urging the Japanese government to redeem the criminal acts of vandalizing or looting cultural relics of Korea at an early date.
Development of Movement for National Reunification Called for
Pyongyang, June 17 (KCNA) -- To develop the movement for national reunification presents itself as an urgent task for the Koreans out in the drive to open up the new era of independent reunification, peace and prosperity of the country at present.
Rodong Sinmun Tuesday says this in a signed article.
The country's reunification, the common interests of the nation, can be achieved only when all Koreans join efforts in their struggle in firm unity, the article notes, and goes on: The development of the above-said movement is urgently required by the June 15 era of reunification.
The June 15 era of reunification is the era guided by the idea of "By our nation itself" in which Koreans promote national reconciliation, unity and cooperation and the above-said idea serves as a powerful mental weapon propelling the advance of the June 15 era of reunification.
The idea of "By our nation itself" reflects the profound love for the Korean nation, transparent confidence in its might and the steadfast will to achieve unity, reunification and prosperity of the nation by its concerted efforts.
But traitor Lee Myung Bak of south Korea is hell-bent on sycophancy and subservience to outsiders while working hard to stamp out the idea of "By our nation itself" soon after he took office.
If this situation is allowed to go on, it is impossible to expect any prospect of independent reunification, peace and prosperity, much less consolidating and developing the achievements made by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation in the era of independent reunification.
The development of the movement for national reunification is the unanimous desire of the nation and the call of the reality.
It is none other than the Korean nation who calls for independent reunification, peace and prosperity and it is only the Koreans that are capable of achieving them.
All Koreans from all walks of life in the north and the south and abroad should achieve solidarity and alliance and conduct joint actions irrespective of ideology, political view and religious belief and develop the movement for national reunification nationwide.
Only when the Koreans intensify the movement for reunification by their concerted efforts can they foil any anti-reunification moves of the Lee group keen on sycophancy toward the U.S. and confrontation with the DPRK.
Rodong Sinmun on U.S. Goal to Step up Arms Sale to south Korea
Pyongyang, May 13 (KCNA) -- A "bill on improved military cooperation" between the U.S. and south Korea, a bill calling for raising the status of south Korea in buying American weapons, was brought up for discussion at U.S. Congress in February. In its wake the House Foreign Relations Committee recently passed a "bill" on raising the above-said status of south Korea to that of NATO.
The U.S. move to step up the sale of its weapons to south Korea in real earnest is a revelation of its invariable hostile policy towards the DPRK and a dangerous military move to mount a surprise preemptive attack on the DPRK. Rodong Sinmun Tuesday says this in a signed commentary.
It is the scenario of the U.S. to neutralize the military operation capability of the DPRK through a surprise preemptive attack on it in contingency and conclude through blitz tactics the second Korean war with the involvement of U.S. reinforcements including task force from Japan, the Pacific including Guam and Hawaii and the U.S. mainland and the troops in south Korea and south Korean armed forces, the commentary notes, and goes on:
The U.S. proposed massive sale of its weapons to south Korea is aimed at tightening the "strategic alliance" with south Korea.
The U.S. and south Korea are linked with each other by the "mutual defense treaty."
If this "mutual defense treaty" is reinforced by a new "strategic alliance," it will help further tighten the "military alliance" targeted against the DPRK.
The tightened "strategic alliance" with south Korea much touted by the U.S. is a dangerous military nexus aimed at "strangling" the DPRK by force through reviving the already bankrupt "cooperation system."
The U.S. intends to intensify military activities after amassing latest military hardware in south Korea and lay a foundation for a new military bloc by drawing south Korean warmongers into it.
South Korea is now turning into a source of a new war, nuclear war and the situation on the Korean Peninsula is getting extremely tense due to the U.S. moves for bolstering combat forces.
North Korea expels South's officials from factory zone
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Thursday expelled South Koreans from a joint factory park north of the border in retaliation for the new government's tough tone towards Pyongyang, a move Seoul warned could chill once warming ties.
The predawn expulsion of the officials at the Kaesong industrial site, once hailed as a model of economic cooperation, is one of the most aggressive moves in years by the destitute North against its wealthy neighbor that supplies it with aid.
Presidential Blue House Spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said after an emergency meeting that the North's measure "was a very regrettable incident that could damage progress of economic cooperation between the South and the North".
President Lee Myung-bak's government, in office barely a month, has pushed the touchy North to clean up its human rights record, repatriate its citizens held by the communist state and make progress on nuclear disarmament.
Spokesman Lee said North Korea needs to be more predictable in its dealing with the South, adding his government did not want the situation to deteriorate.
Park Young-ho, an expert on the North at the South's Korea Institute for National Unification, said: "You can see this move as North Korea trying to train the new South Korean government and put pressure on it."
He added Pyongyang was also looking to stir up conflict in the South over how to treat its prickly neighbor.
The North's official media has yet to report that Lee has become president, the first conservative in the job after a decade of left-of-centre leaders who handed over billions of dollars in aid to try to win over the reclusive state and maintain stability on the peninsula.
UPSETTING RELATIONS
North Korea's KCNA news agency this month quoted an official as warning that conservative elements in Seoul were upsetting relations by "letting loose malignant vituperation, slandering and defiling even the regime and system in the DPRK (North Korea)."
A Unification Ministry official said the North had told 11 South Korean officials on Monday they would have to leave the site, finally forcing them out before dawn on Thursday.
"The North cited Unification Minister Kim Ha-joong's comments that without the resolution of the nuclear problem, there won't be any expansion of the Kaesong project," the official said.
Some 23,000 North Koreans work in nearly 70 South Korean factories at the park, about 70 km (45 miles) northwest of Seoul, producing clothing, shoes, watches and other goods for salaries a fraction of those in the South.
On Wednesday in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said that major powers were losing patience with Pyongyang's failure to produce a full accounting of its nuclear weapons program as required under a 2005 deal.
The North, which battles chronic food shortages, had asked previous governments to supply it with massive amounts of rice and fertilizer but has yet to ask Lee's government.
Analysts said the North was still working out how to respond to Lee's demand that aid be linked to progress on humanitarian and nuclear issues.
North and South Korea on Thursday started without incident separate talks about energy and economic aid promised to the North in return for its pledge to eventually end operations at its ageing nuclear plant that produces weapons-grade plutonium.
U.S. Accused of Standing against Treaty Banning Arms Race in Space
Pyongyang, February 25 (KCNA) -- Recently China and Russia presented a draft international treaty banning the arms race in the space to the Geneva Disarmament Conference. Various countries of the world are expressing support and sympathy with it but the U.S. remains adamant in opposing it.
Rodong Sinmun Monday observes this in a signed commentary.
It cites facts to prove that by coming out against this proposed treaty the U.S. seeks a criminal aim to realize its ambition for dominating the world at any cost by accelerating the space militarization.
It is the U.S. invariable strategy to hold military supremacy in the space, it says, and goes on:
The U.S. has long regarded the space militarization as a means for realizing its ambition for dominating the world while persisting in the moves for it.
The U.S. is apt to accuse other countries of their activities in the space. This is aimed at containing their peaceful development and use of the space and securing a strategic edge in the space in a bid to use this for carrying out its strategy for world domination.
The "missile threat" from the DPRK and Iran much touted by the U.S. is nothing but a subterfuge for pushing ahead with the space militarization.
It is preposterous and a typical example of partiality and double standards for the U.S. to paint any countries' activities for space development as a "missile test," though it is for a peaceful purpose, while conniving at some other countries' activities for space development to serve a military purpose.
Space can never become anyone's monopoly.
It is intolerable that the precious scientific and technological achievements and social wealth created by humankind are used for putting down and dominating other countries and nations through high-handed military actions and producing means of aggression and war threatening the existence and peace of humankind, instead of using them for the mankind's welfare and development of civilization.
The U.S. would be well advised to abandon its attempt to violate other countries' right to peaceful development of space while spreading its unreasonable and nonsensical assertions.
All Koreans Called upon to Remain True to June 15 Joint Declaration
Pyongyang, January 11 (KCNA) -- All Koreans are called upon to firmly uphold and thoroughly implement the June 15 joint declaration by their concerted efforts because herein lies a sure guarantee for successfully accomplishing the cause of independent reunification.
Rodong Sinmun Friday says this in a by-lined article.
It goes on: The course of implementing the joint declaration precisely means the one of adhering to the principle of independence in the movement for reunification. This principle means an attitude and stand which calls for firmly maintaining independence in the overall movement for reunification and settling all issues with overriding importance attached to the will and interest of the nation.
All members of the nation are not observers but directly responsible for the settlement of the reunification issue.
Nobody can replace the Korean nation in settling the reunification issue related to its destiny. Being a driving force for national reunification, all Koreans should turn out as one in the struggle to implement the joint declaration and play the role as a master.
If members of the nation behave against their principle, yielding to the pressure of foreign forces though they are required to take joint actions, they will not be able to protect the interests of the nation but allow themselves to support the foreign forces in their aggression against fellow countrymen.
The reunification movement of the Korean nation still assumes complicated and arduous nature as it has to advance amidst fierce confrontation with the forces at home and abroad standing in its way.
The times have changed and history has advanced far but there still remain the leftovers of the era of confrontation to block national concord and the reunification movement.
Failure of Koreans to remain vigilant against this would help the anti-reunification forces bring the achievements made in the movement for independent reunification to naught.
All Koreans should come out to counter the anti-reunification offensive under the uplifted banner of the June 15 joint declaration, urges the article.
KCNA Blasts U.S. Conservative Hard-liners' Moves to Deter DPRK-U.S. Relations
Pyongyang, December 5 (KCNA) -- U.S. conservative hard-liners are going reckless in their moves to bring the DPRK-U.S. relations back to those of acute confrontation.
Shortly ago, the Wall Street Journal called on the Bush administration to stick to the DPRK policy it pursued in its early days, asserting that the administration's drastic switchover in its policy toward the DPRK would adversely affect the U.S.-Japan alliance.
Earlier, Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the UN, in his autobiography blustered that it was good that Japan linked the "abduction issue" with the nuclear issue, while seriously provoking the DPRK. He, when addressing representatives of anti-DPRK plot-breeding organizations in Japan, went the lengths of crying out for building up opinion among Congressmen and others that the DPRK should not be de-listed as a "sponsor of terrorism" with ease.
There is a sign of echoing this voice at U.S. Congress, too.
This is an unpardonable challenge to the unanimous desire of the international community for peace and stability in Northeast Asia as it is a manifestation of extreme hostility toward the DPRK and Cold War-minded view on confrontation which call for isolating and stifling the DPRK, invariably considering it as an enemy.
As already clarified, the DPRK's access to nukes despite manifold difficulties was to cope with the U.S. continued hostile policy toward the DPRK and threat posed by it.
It is, therefore, an absolute pre-condition for the DPRK's abandonment of its nuclear program for the U.S. to drop its hostile policy toward the DPRK. The DPRK can never abandon its nuclear program unless the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy toward the DPRK.
The U.S. conservative hard-liners might know well how the DPRK reacted to the Bush administration's unilateral demand for the abandonment of the nuclear program.
However, they are clinging to a trite method to maintain Cold War on the Korean Peninsula in a bid to fish in troubled waters.
What they seek is to rattle the DPRK's nerves without let-up in a bid to make it pull out of the denuclearization process and shift the responsibility for it on to the DPRK.
Their calculation is that this would provide favorable conditions for justifying its neo Cold War strategy aimed at escalating international tension under the pretext of "preventing the spread of WMD" and for such guys as Bolton to return to the administration. No wonder, U.S. media reported that the conservative hard-liners led by Cheney within the Bush administration are watching for a chance to rise again.
We don't care whether the U.S. conservative hard-liners support the pragmatic policy towards the DPRK or stoke hysteria of confrontation and whether they put the U.S.-Japan alliance above denuclearization or not.
We are not serious about the U.S. improving its relations with the DPRK because even its move to bring those relations back to what was before would do the latter nothing bad.
All Koreans Called upon to Attach Importance to Nation
Pyongyang, October 22 (KCNA) -- The stand of giving importance to the Korean nation should be firmly adhered to by all Koreans in the present grand march for the reunification of the country.
Rodong Sinmun Monday says this in a signed article.
It goes on: To attach importance to the nation is a basic stand for independently carving out its destiny, and it is an important task reflecting the law-governed requirements for national development and the common thoughts and sentiments and mental state of the members of the nation.
Attaching importance to the nation guarantees peace and reunification of the three thousand ri land of Korea and the prosperity of the nation. Reunification is for the prosperity of the nation and both peace on this land and inter-Korean cooperation are aimed at achieving national prosperity.
Whoever opts for cooperating with foreign forces, depending on them while turning his back on his compatriots and disregarding the driving force of the nation, is bound to be forsaken by it and fated to face a stern judgement of history.
Nothing is more foolish act than trying to settle the issue of the destiny of the nation by depending on the aggressive and hegemonic foreign forces, which brought sufferings resulting from division and disasters of war to the Korean nation and are still keen to impose disasters of a nuclear war upon it, and putting them above the nation.
In order to firmly maintain the stand of giving importance to the nation it is necessary to decisively reject outside forces' domination and interference and abide by the principle of national independence. It is essential to protect the security and interests of the nation and strictly abide by the principles of giving priority to the nation and defending it, not caving in to the unreasonable pressure and threat and blackmail of the foreign forces who have blatantly interfered in the issues of inter-Korean relations and reunification.
The Koreans in the north and the south and abroad should invariably remain true to the spirit of "By our nation itself", the idea of independence common to the nation and the banner of the June 15 era of reunification, and fully embody it, concludes the article.
-------------------------
Full Play to Korean Nation-First Spirit Called for
Pyongyang, October 22 (KCNA) -- The Korean nation-first spirit serves as a patriotic banner encouraging all the Koreans in their struggle to achieve independent reunification, says Rodong Sinmun Monday in a signed article.
The Korean nation-first spirit serves as a mental source enabling the Koreans to preserve and glorify independence of the nation. It is also a motive force for preserving the advantageous national identity and giving full play to it, the article says, and goes on:
The June 15 era of reunification has opened and the dawn is breaking for national reunification now. It is high time all the Koreans fully displayed the spirit of national independence, valuing dignity of the country and the nation as life and soul.
Reflected in the Korean nation-first spirit is the history of the Korean nation and the will of the Koreans to fully display the dignity and might of the nation by carrying forward the patriotic tradition.
The Korean nation-first spirit has served as a patriotic banner contributing to carving out the destiny of the nation. This is because the Korean nation is a proud nation blessed by the illustrious leaders generation after generation.
The day when the Korean nation will grow rich and powerful will break soon if all the Koreans achieve unity and reunification, holding Kim Jong Il in high esteem as the lodestar of national reunification.
Espionage Acts of Foreign Intelligence Service Disclosed
Pyongyang, September 5 (KCNA) -- Espionage acts of a foreign intelligence service were disclosed and smashed some time ago in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The state security organ of the DPRK arrested the spies absorbed to the foreign intelligence service and intelligence agent who commanded them and seized their intelligence apparatuses.
As brought to light during the investigation into the case and the statements of the arrested spies, the foreign intelligence service absorbed some unsound people out of the visitors of the DPRK to third countries by the method of money and girls, threat and blackmail and turned them into its paid spies in an attempt to spy on important military objects and strategic key-points related with the supreme interests of the DPRK.
Their duty was to take photographs of an important military object in an area and confirm the spot co-ordinates and collect concrete data on the object with the help of the GPS after they received it. Their duty was also to obtain original texts of documents of the DPRK including the state and military secrets and the ideological tendencies of the people and, at the same time, to create illusion about the "free world" among senior officials and lure them out to third countries if possible.
After it infiltrated the hired spies into the DPRK, the foreign intelligence service sent an intelligence agent to the DPRK under the guise of a trader to command their activities on the spot. He carried with him a digital camera battery to which the GPS was attached.
He met the spies in secrecy and received results of their activities. And then, he handed over the GPS to them. As the headquarters of the intelligence service dictated, the agent gave to them a directive on collecting the secret on the object as early as possible.
He went to the area surrounding the military object under the pretext of the "spot survey" and directly commanded the activities of the spies.
The counter-intelligence officers of the DPRK who sharply watched every movement of the enemy arrested the spies and intelligence agent on a spot when they handed over the GPS and the collected data with each other.
According to the judgment of experts, the intelligence apparatus consists of up-to-date highly efficient GPS processor, Flash and contact plate antenna branded with SONY. In connection with the case, a press conference was held at the People's Palace of Culture in Pyongyang on September 5.
An officer of the Ministry of State Security of the DPRK, to begin with, informed the reporters of the content of the case and a video-tape showing the written pledge of a spy hired to the foreign intelligence service, scenes showing him committing crimes and others.
Then reporters raised at the conference questions regarding the forms and methods of the ever-intensified anti-DPRK psychological war-fare of the enemy, dealing of the arrested criminals and others.
Defence of Peace, Vital Task of Korean Nation
Pyongyang, August 10 (KCNA) -- Defending peace on the Korean Peninsula is a vital task for the peace and prosperity of the entire Korean nation and the reunification of the country, declares Rodong Sinmun in a signed article Friday.
It goes on: Preventing a war and defending peace arise as vital tasks of all Koreans with greater urgency today when the danger of a new war is growing daily on the Korean Peninsula due to the outside forces' moves to provoke a war against the DPRK which have reached a dangerous phase.
The U.S. hardliners are these days massively reinforcing aggression forces including means of nuclear strikes in and around south Korea, bringing forward the robber-like demand that the DPRK should scrap its "nuclear program" first, and they are pushing ahead with the restructuring of the U.S. combat force system in south Korea to cope with "a contingency" on the Korean Peninsula, thereby aggravating the situation.
Some time ago, the U.S. announced that it would stage again in south Korea the "Ulji Focus Lens" joint military exercise, a large-scale war game against the DPRK.
The U.S. is creating the danger of war while escalating military confrontation and tensions on the peninsula against the desire of the Koreans and the trend of the times. This situation urges the Koreans to hold as high as ever the banner of defense of peace. The Korean nation would suffer the nuclear holocaust imposed by the outside forces and its existence itself would be put in a danger, should it fail to frustrate the moves of the outsiders and their followers for a war of aggression.
To thwart aggression and war moves and defend peace is a nationwide fighting task vital to the life and security of the Korean nation which experienced war disasters in the last century and has lived under a constant danger of war for over half a century and is facing a danger of war still today.
It is impossible to successfully promote inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation and the development of the movement for independent reunification without defending peace.
Vigorous Struggle for Independent Reunification Called for
Pyongyang, July 4 (KCNA) -- We will as ever make all possible efforts to bring earlier the glorious day when a reunified great prosperous powerful Korea has been built by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation under the banner of the June 15 joint declaration, remaining true to the great Songun politics. A spokesman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said this in a statement released on July 3 to mark the 35th publication anniversary of the July 4 joint statement.
The three principles of national reunification--independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity--clarified in the July 4 joint statement take the highest and most brilliant position in the exploits performed by President Kim Il Sung in leading the cause of national reunification, the statement said, and continued:
With the publication of the joint statement, the Koreans came to have a common milestone whereby to join their hands in the way of national reconciliation, unity and reunification and actively turn out in the nationwide movement for reunification.
The President's last instructions for national reunification have been successfully put into practice by Kim Jong Il.
Kim Jong Il provided the historic Pyongyang summit and the June 15 North-South Joint Declaration in June 2000, 55 years after the division of the nation, thus opening up a new era of independent reunification. It is a great event of epoch-making significance in the Korean nation's history of reunification movement.
The June 15 joint declaration, the core of which is the idea of "By our nation itself", is a declaration of independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity fully reflecting the three principles of national reunification set forth by the President, and it is the milestone for national reunification in the new century.
All Koreans should positively defend and support the historic June 15 joint declaration, a charter for national reconciliation and unity and a great platform for independent reunification, and more vigorously turn out in the struggle to implement it to the letter. The entire Korean nation, including the authorities, political parties, organizations and people from all walks of life in the north and the south of Korea, should fulfill its mission and responsibility to meet the sacred call of the times.
The great Songun politics serves as the lifeline for shaping out the destiny of the Korean nation and as a treasured sword for national reunification. The independent reunification, peace and prosperity of the country are guaranteed by the great Songun politics.
All Koreans should more actively support and uphold the great Songun politics, pride and glory of the nation, whose validity and vitality have been clearly proven in practice. We express the belief and expectation that our fellow countrymen in the south and overseas will turn out in the sacred struggle to bravely smash the moves of outside forces and their followers against the June 15 joint declaration and reunification, fully display the spirit of the July 4 joint statement and glorify the June 15 era of independent reunification.
Minju Joson on U.S. Policy toward Japan
Pyongyang, May 29 (KCNA) -- A U.S.-Japan security consultative meeting was held in Washington between late April and early May with the attendance of defence and foreign ministers of the two countries.
At the meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates told Japanese Minister of Defence Kyuma that if the DPRK launches ballistic missiles towards the U.S., they should be intercepted with Japan's missile defence system. The U.S. ambassador to Japan, too, who was present there, strongly hinted to the Japanese side that the U.S.-Japan alliance may get worse if Japan doesn't intercept such missiles.
Commenting on this fact, Minju Joson says in a signed commentary today: The U.S. seemed at the meeting to ask for Japan's help for fear of possible "missile attack" of the DPRK on it. But lurking behind it was a sinister intention of the U.S. to incite Japan to the exercise of the "right of collective self-defence".
It is a strategic calculation of the U.S. that it should make an effective use of Japan's military potentials and geographical advantage in order to attain the military supremacy over East Asia, contain the influence of big powers situated in this region and establish the exclusive domination over the Asia-Pacific region.
If the time comes when Japan fairly exercises its "right of collective self-defence" as demanded by the U.S., it would be very dangerous developments in view of peace and security in Asia and the rest of the world.
Japan's exercise of the "right of collective self-defence" precisely means its reinvasion. It is as clear as noonday that Japan, free in military action by dint of exercise of the "right", will not hesitate to unleash a war of aggression on Asia for its strategic interests and vested rights as it did in the past.
It is not hard to guess that the U.S. will be no exception of the targets of Japan's attack, if the temperament of the latter, who would act like a puppy knowing no fear of a tiger when it feels stronger, is taken into consideration.
The irresponsible behavior of the U.S. inciting Japan to the militaristic overseas expansion is as good as a crime of wrecking global peace and security.
The U.S. should ponder over the grave consequences to be entailed by Japan's moves for militarization and overseas expansion and drop its wrong policy towards Japan at an earliest possible date.
Japan Denounced for Disturbing 6-Party Talks
Pyongyang, April 19 (KCNA) -- Japan, making much ado about the "abduction issue" which does not deserve a passing note, has no job to do at the 6-party talks, declares a Rodong Sinmun analyst Thursday, adding:
If the talks get rid of such filibuster as Japan, a favorable atmosphere for the talks will be created and the implementation of the agreement will run on oiled wheels.
Noting that Japan is persistently bringing forward quite an irrelevant issue which has nothing to do with the 6-party talks, the analyst goes on:
This is because it has a sinister intention to obstruct the implementation of the February 13 agreement and, furthermore, derail the 6-party talks at any cost.
It is Japan's approach to the dialogue and real intention to lay obstacles in the way of the 6-party talks and curb the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. By doing so, the Japanese reactionaries seek to invent a pretext for the nuclear armament of Japan and gratify their ambition for the building of a military power and overseas aggression. For this very purpose Japan obstinately denies its past crimes including the issue of the "comfort women" forcibly recruited for the imperial Japanese army and tries to bury them in the limbo of historic oblivion.
It is entirely attributable to the unreasonable and shameless obstructions of Japan that the implementation of the February 13 agreement has come up against a snag and the 6-party talks fail to make a progress. Japan is the very one which is forcing the talks to mark time and even back down, not making progress.
If Japan keeps distorting and denying its past crimes and hindering the progress of the talks, kicking up dust over an issue which has nothing to do with the talks, it will put itself to a greater shame on the international scene and may be driven out of the talks in the long run.
U.S. and S. Korean Warlike Forces Urged to Give up Projected RSOI and Foal Eagle
Pyongyang, March 9 (KCNA) -- The south Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command on March 7 announced a plan to stage RSOI and the Foal Eagle joint military exercises from March 25 to 31, according to military sources.
The above-said exercises will reportedly draw 6,000 reinforcements and the U.S. forces in south Korea, at least 29,000 U.S. troops in all, and involve the task force of super large nuclear-powered carrier Ronald Reagan, Stealth fighter bombers and other war hardware of the U.S. imperialist aggression forces and the south Korean forces.
The projected saber-rattling is reckless war maneuvers aimed at massively hurling U.S. troops and latest military hardware into south Korea in case of "contingency" on the Korean Peninsula in a bid to preempt an attack on the DPRK.
The large-scale military exercises to be staged by the U.S. and the south Korean warlike forces against the DPRK despite the repeated warnings issued by the DPRK and the unanimous censure and condemnation of the public at home and abroad are a very serious military provocation to vitiate the atmosphere of the on-going dialogue and deteriorate the inter-Korean relations and push the situation on the peninsula to the brink of a war.
This clearly proves that "dialogue" and 'improvement of relations" much touted by the U.S. and the south Korean authorities are nothing but sophism aimed to deceive the public opinion at home and abroad and that they pursue confrontation and war only. The reality goes to clearly prove once again that the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean warlike forces are chiefly to blame for bringing the tense situation on the peninsula closer to the brink of a war. It also testifies to the fact that they are harassers of peace and security on the peninsula and the chieftain of a war as they cause the dark clouds of a nuclear war to gather over this land.
It is the mettle of Songun Korea and the will of the servicepersons and people of the DPRK to respond to force in kind and retaliate against any provocation with merciless counter-blows.
The U.S. and the south Korean warlike forces should unconditionally cancel their plan to stage the extremely dangerous DPRK-targeted war exercises, pondering over the ensuing grave consequences.
Did the U.S. Want a Korean War? -Lee Hwal-woong
Mr.Lee Hwal-woong, a community leader for reunification movement, delivered a speech on Korea's Reunification at the International Conference on Process and Han which was held on Feb.2, 2007 at Claremont Graduate University under the sponsorship of Korea Project, Center for Process Studies. Mr.Chun Soontae was a panelist in this session. This is the full text of Mr.Lee's speech.[Editor's note]
1. Preface
At 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, June 25, 1950, North Korea launched a full-scale military offensive against South Korea, triggering the outbreak of the Korean War. As South Korea appeared unable to halt North¡¯s advance, the U.S., together with other fifteen UN member nations, quickly came to the rescue of the South. Six months later, when the North Korean army was overwhelmed and totally beaten by the UN forces, China sent its troops to help the North. The hostilities lasted for three years and one month until an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.
There are quite a number of different accounts on the casualties of the Korean War. According to Patrick Brogan, who quotes the UN Command in his book ¡®World Conflicts¡¯, the Korean War causalities are as follows:
- United States: 37,904 dead, including 12,939 missing in action, presumed dead; 101, 368 wounded.
- Other United Nations contingents: 4,521 dead, among them 537 British and 312 Canadians.
- South Korea: 103,248 killed; 159,727 wounded.
- The US high command calculated that North Korea lost 316,579 killed and China 422,612. It also calculated that 2 million civilians, north and south, were killed or injured.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon revised in 2000 the U.S. death toll from previous figures of 54,246 to 36,940.
The Encyclopedia Britannica estimated that about 33% of houses and 43% of industrial facilities were destroyed throughout North and South Korea. Of course, the destruction in the North was much severer than in the South as it was ¡®reduced to a stone age¡¯ by the bombing operations of the U.S. Air Force.
Even today, more than half century later, South Koreans are very grateful to the quick and decisive actions of the U.S. which had saved them from possible subjugation to communist rule.
2. North¡¯s Invasion and South¡¯s Defeat were Foreseen
Before the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korea was also eager to attack the North for a forceful reunification of the divided homeland. For that purpose, the South Korean government had been asking the U.S. for more military assistance. Had they received enough military aid from the U.S., the Korean War would have broken out even before June 25, 1950 by South Korean army¡¯s advance to the north, believing in an easy victory ahead.
South Korea, therefore, was totally unprepared for North¡¯s surprise attack. Was the North Korean attack on the South also a surprise to the U.S.? So the U.S. admitted after the outbreak of the war. However, there is a plenty of information that proves otherwise. According to my own research, a civil war in Korea was widely anticipated even before the establishment of the two ideologically and politically antagonistic regimes in Korea in 1948 and the defeat of South Korea in the face of a North Korean attack was fully foreseen by many observers.
For example, both Lt. General John R. Hodge, Commander of U.S. Forces in Korea, and Joseph E. Jacob, Hodge¡¯s political advisor, in May and September 1947 respectively, reported that the withdrawal of Russian and U.S. forces from Korea would eventually lead to North¡¯s invasion of the South or an anarchy and considerable bloodshed. Admiral William D. Leahy, American liaison officer in Pyongyang also reported in 1948 that North Korea could conquer the entire peninsula if the U.S. failed to create a strong government in the South.
In early 1948, a State Department paper and a final State-Army-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Committee (SANACC) report recognized a threat of military invasion from the North in case a separate and independent South Korea is created.
Moreover, the United Nation¡¯s Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) concluded in February 1948 that the separate election in South Korea would harden the division and open the way to a bloody civil war.
In October 1948, that is after the establishments of the two separate Governments in Korea, Muccio, American Ambassador in Seoul, expecting an invasion from the North in the spring of 1949, warned the Secretary of State Marshall that ¡°confronted with invasion from the North, the ROK¡¯s chances for survival were not great.
A Republican minority report in July 1949 claimed that the administration had withdrawn American forces from South Korea, although it admitted that the ROK would not survive a major North Korean attack.
President Truman in July 1949, in submitting Mutual Defense Appropriation Program to Congress admitted that South Korea confronted a serious threat of invasion from the North.
The UNCOK in August 1949 reported to the U.N. that in the absence of a Soviet-American agreement, Korea probably would experience a ¡®barbarous civil war¡¯.
During the autumn of 1949, Washington freely admitted that South Korea could not defend itself against a massive military assault from the North.
At Secretary of State Acheson¡¯s assertion and at the recommendation of the Political Committee, the U.N. General Assembly on October 21, 1949 adopted a resolution to widen the missions of UNCOK to observe conditions and report any developments which might lead to or otherwise involve military conflicts. In February 1950, U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie dispatched eight experts to Korea to observe and report on any circumstances pointing to an outbreak of war.
Many experts agreed that around May and June 1950, administration officials definitely were aware of the danger of an imminent invasion from North Korea.
3. Protection of South was Urged
There were some arguments in favor of the protection of South Korea against the possible invasion from the North.
In September 1948, Under Secretary of State Lovett urged that the U.S. should not abandon South Korea although it would place a heavy strain on the American economy.
Truman and his major advisors in 1949 increasingly came to view South Korea as not just a bulwark against further Soviet expansionism but also the test case of containment in Asia.
Around December 1948, Communist success in China convinced many American leaders that the U.S. had to postpone disengagement from Korea indefinitely. Max Bishop, Chief of the Division of Northeast Asian Affairs, opposed early withdrawal because it might contribute to the expansion of a hostile communist politico-military power system in Northeast Asia.
In January 1949, Muccio recommended to the State Department that the U.S. delay disengagement for ¡®several monthos¡¯ until it was certain an invasion from the North would not follow its departure.
In June 1949, Acheson testified before a House committee that the U.S. could not abandon South Korea because it ¡®stands as symbol of hope for the rest of Asia¡¯.
Muccio implored Washington to send ¡®high performance aircraft¡¯ to ROK when Moscow announced that it would provide North Korea with an air force.
Immediately after the Acheson speech in January 1950 that excluded South Korea from the American defense perimeter in Northeast Asia and the subsequent defeat of a Korean aid bill at the Congress, Butterworth, Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, gave assurance to South Korean Ambassador Chang Myon that the U.S. would not forget its commitment to South Korea¡¯s survival.
4. South¡¯s Desire to Invade North was Suppressed
Meanwhile, with the inauguration of the government in 1948, South Korean leaders led by President Rhee openly began belligerent statements for the forceful reunification of the peninsula. In December 1948, for example, Foreign Minister Chang Tak-Samg, calling North Korea a ¡®lost territory¡¯, declared that the ROK planned to recover it ¡®at the earliest possible moment regardless of means and cost¡¯.
In February 1949, South Korean officials, in their conversations with Royall, Secretary of Army, and Wedemeyer, Director of Planning and Operation, who were on fact-finding mission in Seoul, stressed the importance of military power for the protection of the ROK and the eventual achievement of reunification. President Rhee insisted that only superior military power would achieve Korean reunification.
American officials, however, in NSC-8/2 of March 23, 1949, wanted to eliminate any potential for South Korea to attempt forcible reunification, thereby igniting a major war. The NSC paper also emphasized that American military withdrawal should in no way imply any lessening of the administration¡¯s interest in the ROK¡¯s future survival.
In March 1949, South Korean Ambassador Chang Myon sent a memorandum to Acheson to outline the mission of a President Rhee¡¯s special envoy Cho Byong-Ok. The memorandum, among others, asked for more military aid to achieve the goal of reunification.
In April 1949, President Rhee told to Muccio that the ROK needed airplanes and combat ships in order to achieve the national goal of reunification,. He further stated that North Koreans hated communist rulers and even the army would revolt when he gave the signal.
In August 1949, General Roberts of KMAG reported that the South Korean army had established a salient in the north of the dividing line thereby causing the recent border incidents.
In September 1949, the ROK requested the U.S. for tanks, heavy artillery and more ammunition. General Roberts, however, disapproved it stating that it would not safeguard ROK¡¯s security but instead would ¡®encourage an invasion of the North by the South Korean army.
In his letter to Rhee dated October 10, 1949, Dr. Robert T. Oliver, Rhee¡¯s personal representative in the U.S., mentioned ¡¦that ¡®On the question of attacking northward, it is very evident¡¦ that any such attack now, or even to talk about such attack, is to lose American official and public support and will weaken our position among other nations. .. The strong feeling in American official and public circle is that we should continue to lean way over backward to avoid any semblance of aggression, and make sure the blame for what happened is upon Russia. I can fully concur in your disgust. But to approach Truman or any other high officials now to suggest and attack across the 38th parallel would, I believe, be disastrous¡¯.
According to some experts, only two-thirds of the South Korean army of about 100,000 troops were armed with mostly unserviceable equipments and their replacement parts were in short supply on the eve of the Korean war because the U.S. had purposely limited the stock of ammunition.
5. Withdraw from or Abandon South Korea
Even before the establishment of the government of South Korea, some important U.S. officials were in favor of withdrawing from or abandoning South Korea. In May 1947, for example, General Hodge favored for a quicker withdrawal with minimum of bad effects. In September 1947, JCS reported that from the standpoint of military security, the U.S. had little strategic interest in maintaining present troops and bases in Korea. On November 7, 1947, Secretary of State Marshall stated: ¡®since the territory of Korea is not of decisive strategic importance to the U.S., our main task is to extricate ourselves without too great a loss of prestige¡¯.
In August 1948, Under Secretary of Army Draper stated: ¡®Since the State Department did not consider it sufficiently important to generate interest in South Korea¡¯s survival, it would be foolish to leave a substantial military investment in an area destined for Soviet domination¡¯.
In January 1949, even General Mac Arthur recommended to NSC for an American withdrawal from Korea no later than May 10, 1949. Emphatically opposing the idea of military protection of Korea, he stated that the longer the U.S. remains in Korea the greater the risk of being enforced to withdraw under pressure.
In March 1949, General Mac Arthur told British journalist G. Ward Price that the line of defense for the U.S. in the Pacific excluded both ROK and Taiwan.
On January 12, 1950, Acheson, in a speech to the National Press Club remarked that the American defensive perimeter runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus. He emphasized that other Asian nations needed to help themselves; and specifically mentioning South Korea, he stated that there existed a very good chance for successful resistance to communist expansion and it did not require an express pledge of American military protection.
Early in May 1950, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Connally observed in an interview that ¡®whenever the Soviet Union takes a notion she can just overrun Korea just like she will probably overrun Formosa when she gets ready to do it¡¯. Since the fall of the ROK was inevitable and Korea was ¡®not absolutely essential¡¯, he believed the United States should prepare to abandon the peninsula.
6. U.S. Contingency Plan Prepared
It is, however, quite amazing to learn that as early as June 27, 1949, Truman¡¯s advisors and the Army Department prepared a memorandum containing detailed American alternatives in the face of an open assault across the 38th parallel. The following is a gist of the memorandum:
1) Three immediate course of possible actions in Korea
a) encourage South Korea for peaceful reunification through negotiations with the North
b) organize a Korean underground task force to operate in the North
c) periodic visits of American warships to South Korea
2) Other options available in case of open invasion from the North
a) North Korea would not attack South without Soviet and Chinese support
b) If the U.S. chose not to counter North¡¯s all out invasion, the ROK would be destroyed and the peninsula communized
c) The U.S., therefore, would have to take following actions in the event of an invasion:
i) evacuate all American citizens and military advisors from Korea
ii) refer the matter to the UN and request an emergency session of the Security Council (to make it ¡®international¡¯ and to avoid ¡®the onus of U.S. unilateral responsibility and action)
iii) dismiss undertaking a ¡®police action¡¯ with the U.S. sanction
iv) ¡®police action¡¯, however, is recommended only as a last resort alone and only with ¡®complete cooperation and full participation by other members¡¯
v) China might come to North¡¯s help and ¡®lead to a long and costly involvement of U.S. forces in an undeclared war¡¯
7. Actual U.S. Responses to North¡¯s Invasion
On the evening of June 24, 1950 (early morning of June 25 in Korea), press reports of the North Korean invasion arrived in Washington. Responding to a request for confirmation, Muccio cabled that ¡®it would appear from the nature of the attack ¡¦ that it constitutes an all-out offensive against the ROK.¡¯ The report was promptly relayed to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk and to Secretary of Army Pace, Jr.
Rusk then notified Acheson, who was not in the capital over the weekend. The Secretary of State approved without hesitation Rusk¡¯s recommendation that the State Department begin to formulate a United Nations resolution dealing with the ¡®breach of peace¡¯ in Korea for consideration at an emergency session of the Security Council.
The same evening, Acheson telephoned to Truman, who was at his home in Independence. Acheson told Truman that he had requested an emergency session of the UN Security Council, at which he hoped to secure condemnation of the attack. Truman at once agreed with Acheson that the U.S. should provide help to South Korea only in conjunction with the UN. Truman also decided not to return to Washington immediately because he did not want to alarm people.
Before dawn on June 30 (Washington time), the JCS received Mac Arthur¡¯s report on his inspection of the battlefield situation in Korea. Without decisive action, Mac Arthur predicted, North Korea probably would conquer the entire peninsula. ¡®The only assurance for the holding of the present line, and the ability to regain later the lost ground, is through the introduction of U.S. ground combat forces into the Korean battle area.¡¯ Mac Arthur recommended immediate authorization for the dispatch of one regimental combat team to the front line and the introduction of two additional divisions as soon as practicable for use in a counteroffensive. A more limited American military operation, he warned, would be either ¡®needlessly costly in life, money, and prestige¡¯ or ¡®doomed to failure¡¯.
8. Did the U.S. Want a Korean War?
There are assertions that the unprovoked North Korean attack on the South had made American leaders to suddenly realize that it was not simply aimed at the goal of reunification but also intended to be the first step in the Soviet quest for world conquest and, within a few days, that realization led the administration to give up the restraint policy as advocated by Acheson in his Press Club speech and further to adopt a new strategy to meet the Soviet challenge for world domination.
These assertions, however, cannot plausibly answer the following questions:
1) Why the U.S. did not fully share with the South Korean government the intelligence reports on North Korea¡¯s military build-up in general and on the imminence of their attack in particular?
2) Why the U.S. did not provide the South with sufficient military equipments to defend itself against the North Korean assault, knowing that the South would not withstand the North¡¯s military strength?
3) Why the U.S. did not let the Soviet leaders know through appropriate channels that the U.S. intention was firm to defend the South against North¡¯s invasion?
As we have already looked into, the U.S. had even prepared a contingency plan to defend the South from the North Korean attack. Yet, the U.S. did not do anything in advance to prevent the war from happening. Instead, the U.S. gave a false signal to the world that it would not go to the rescue of the South even it the North attacked the South.
I don¡¯t have any physical evidence to prove that the U.S. had induced North Korea to attack the South. But, in my judgment, the U.S. perhaps did not do anything in advance to prevent the Korean War from happening because it actually wanted a Korean War to happen for the sake of U.S. national interests.
At the time, the Soviet influence was rapidly spreading in Europe and Asia. Truman and U.S. leaders thought it would be necessary to increase military expenditures in order to contain further communist expansion in the world. In the wake of war victory, however, American populace was eager to enjoy the pleasure of peace to the fullest extent. They were not seriously concerned about Soviet advances in other parts of the world. Under such circumstances, it was impossible for the administration and the Congress to take appropriate measures to strengthen military power of the country. They thought it would be ideal for turning around the general sentiment of American populace in favor of a firmer stance against communist expansion, if at some place in the world a communist initiated military crisis suddenly broke out.
Against such background, it would have been quite natural for the American leaders to look with keen interest at the situation in the divided Korean peninsula where each side was determined to attack the other. As it was considered most advisable that a crisis should occur with communist initiatives, Washington on several occasions adroitly implied that it would not come to the help of South Korea if and when a civil war broke out, while strenuously suppressing Seoul¡¯s desire for more armament. American leaders also thought that the South should initially be helplessly defeated by the North¡¯s assault, in order to justify and dramatize the effect of American participation in the Korean civil war and further to instigate strong anti-communistic sentiment among American populace
As the U.S. had anticipated, North Korea launched an all-out attack on the South; and as it had prepared in its contingency plan, the U.S. referred the matter to the UN which branded North¡¯s action as an act of aggression and authorized the U.S. to lead allied military operation and to repel North Korea from the South.
At this juncture, it may be recalled with interest that Dr. Oliver in his letter of October 10, 1949 told President Rhee that ¡®The strong feeling in American official and public circles is that we should continue to lean way over backward to avoid any semblance of aggression and make sure the blame for what happened is upon Russia.¡±
In fact, in October 1953, that is three months after the armistice was signed, Acheson quite indicatively disclosed in his comments that ¡®Korea moved a great many things from the realm of theory into the realm of actuality and urgency¡¯. He also confessed that ¡®the Korean war was in part an opportunity to adopt openly a policy urgently recommended in private for some months previously.¡¯
Finally, I would like to end my presentation by quoting what Albert Einstein told Dr. Channing Liem, a Princeton scholar who later became South Korean Ambassador to the U.N.: ¡®Great powers do not act on the basis of facts only but manufacture the facts to serve their purposes and force their will on smaller nations.¡¯[Source: MinjokTongSin 2007-02-02]
Ushering in Heyday of Cause of Independent Reunification Urged
Pyongyang, January 4 (KCNA) -- Rodong Sinmun Thursday calls for adding brilliance to the June 15 era of reunification by forcefully accelerating the march toward independent reunification this year. The author of the article says: "Add brilliance to the June 15 reunification era by attaching importance to the nation, maintaining peace and achieving unity!" This is the slogan which the whole nation should uphold this year. It clearly indicates the fighting tasks the Korean nation should carry out in the new year.
"By our nation itself", the spirit of the June 15 era of reunification, is the most steadfast idea of attaching importance to the nation. The Korean nation should regard it as the strict rule to develop the inter-Korean relations and the reunification movement according to the idea of "By our nation itself".
The struggle to safeguard peace is a just patriotic struggle for defending the existence of the nation and its land of living. All the fellow countrymen should turn out as one man in the struggle to defend peace with death-defying will, staking the destiny of the cause of independent reunification and the security of the nation. All the Koreans in the north, the south and overseas should intensify the struggle to consolidate the achievements made in the patriotic movement for the great unity of the nation last year and boost the unity of the entire nation. This year, too, they should bring the atmosphere of national reconciliation and unity to a high tide and push it to independent reunification.
It is important to wage a relentless struggle against the south Korean conservative forces standing in the way of national unity. It is an entirely just and realistic patriotic initiative that the joint editorial put forward the three major tasks to attach importance to the nation, defend peace and achieve unity which the Korean nation should carry through in the new year. If these three tasks are fulfilled to the letter, a brighter prospect will spread in accomplishing the cause of peace and independent reunification this year.
All the Koreans should firmly defend and invariably implement the north-south joint declaration, whatever ordeals and difficulties they may face, thus adding shine to the June 15 era of reunification.
Japanese Reactionaries' Anti-Chongryon and Anti-DPRK Campaign Flayed
Pyongyang, November 20 (KCNA) -- The Korean people are bitterly denouncing the Japanese reactionaries for their reckless and frantic hostile policy against and suppression of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) and the Koreans in Japan with the nation's towering rage, declares Rodong Sinmun Monday. Commenting on this, an analyst of the paper declares:
The Japanese reactionaries have banned the entry of the DPRK ship "Mangyongbong-92" into Japanese ports, restricted the reentry permit for Koreans in Japan, cancelled the reduction and exemption of taxes on fixed assets of Chongryon and perpetrated arson, destruction, threat, violence and wild blast against Chongryon organizations and students of Korean schools in Japan in an unbroken chain. All these go to prove their indiscreet anti-Chongryon campaign.
Their anti-ethnic, inhuman crimes against Chongryon and Koreans in Japan vividly remind us of the atrocities of the Japanese imperialist brutes that imposed unbearable slavery and national humiliation upon the Korean people and whipped themselves into frenzy to exterminate the Korean nation once and for all during their colonial rule over Korea.
Their hostile acts and frenzied suppression of the bare-handed Chongryon and Koreans in Japan clearly show that they are barbarians ignorant of elementary international law, diplomatic usage and morality and a group of gangsters accustomed to terrorism and human rights abuses.
They should clearly know that any form of sanctions against and suppression of Chongryon and the Koreans in Japan are immediately unpardonable criminal acts of infringing upon the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK.
It is an unshakable stand and will of the Korean people to answer Japan's sanctions with tougher retaliation and strictly settle account with it with regard to all its crimes. The tighter the Japanese reactionaries cling to political repression and persecution to put down and harass Chongryon and the Koreans in Japan, the fiercer are the hatred and revengeful thought of the army and people of the DPRK against Japan, their sworn enemy.
They should stop at once their reckless suppression of Chongryon and the Koreans in Japan, deeply pondering over its catastrophic consequences, and drop their malicious hostile policy toward the DPRK.
Establishment of Fair International Political Order Called for
Pyongyang, September 5 (KCNA) -- It is necessary to put the earliest possible end to the present unfair international political order whereby human rights standards are applied to certain countries in a selective manner though they should be based on the principle of objectivity and universal value. For the present, the U.S. should be forced to roll back its unreasonable policy to use human rights as a pretext for interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and an important lever for realizing its wild ambition for world supremacy. Minju Joson Tuesday observes this in a signed commentary. It goes on:
Israel is neither censured nor held accountable for its military actions against innocent civilians because such countries as the U.S. styling itself a "human rights judge" are abusing the human rights issue for attaining their sinister political purposes.
The U.S. was behind the recent military operation of Israel. It not only supported Israel in its military actions but protected it from international criticism.
The U.S. can never escape from the responsibility for Israel's crimes against humanity as the U.S. and Israel were closely linked with each other politically over the Lebanese situation.
This hard fact had an impact on the stand of the U.S. and other Western countries and some international organizations.
It is hard reality today that human rights standards vary according to which countries the U.S. deals with.
Assaults on Korean Students in Japan Flailed
Pyongyang, July 24 (KCNA) -- We bitterly denounce with towering national resentment the criminal terrorism openly committed against Koreans in Japan, regarding it as a hostile provocation against the DPRK and the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) and an intolerable insult to the Korean nation, declares Rodong Sinmun Monday. Commenting on the threats and assaults committed in an unbroken chain against Korean students in Japan these days, the analyst says:
Such incidents that occurred in a few days of mid-July alone number more than 110.
The Japanese authorities are under international duty and legal and moral obligations to fully ensure and protect the democratic national rights and personal safety of the Koreans in Japan, victims to aggression and war policy, and their children, with a sense of responsibility. They can never evade this in any case. Nevertheless, national discrimination and violence against Koreans in Japan are committed without hesitation still today. We can never remain an onlooker to this.
The threats and assaults on Korean students committed without letup nowadays in Japan are not mere crimes of a few gangsters. They are crimes committed on the extension line of the Japanese reactionaries' moves to stage a comeback to Korea and under their hostile policy against the DPRK and Chongryon.
The DPRK has already warned the Japanese authorities that the encroachment upon the national rights and vital rights of the Koreans in Japan is immediately an infringement upon the sovereignty of the DPRK and made it plain that they will have to pay a dear price.
The Japanese authorities would be well advised to look straight into the seriousness of the matter and take an urgent measure to prevent the recurrence of hostile acts against Chongryon and the Koreans in Japan, concludes the commentary.
S. Korean "Government's" Unreasonable Measure Flailed
Pyongyang, June 16 (KCNA) -- The South Headquarters of the National Alliance for the Country's Reunification (Pomminryon) and the Reunification Solidarity in south Korea reportedly held a joint press conference in front of the building of the "Ministry of Unification" in Seoul on June 14 to denounce the "government" for having taken an unreasonable measure to bar delegates of overseas Koreans from participating in the June 15 grand festival for national reunification. Speakers including Kim Kyu Chol, chairman of the Seoul City Federation of Pomminryon, and Choe Un Min, chairman of the south Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, accused the "government" authorities of having refused to permit the participation of five delegates of overseas Koreans in the festival for the reconciliation and unity of the nation.
Asking what is obstructing the whole nation when it is eager to achieve reunification through its unity, they blasted the "government's" refusal to allow the above-said persons' participation in the events.
A press release issued at the conference recalled that the "government" has barred delegates of overseas Koreans from participating in the festival by invoking the "National Security Law", a leftover of the Cold War era. This is an unreasonable reckless anachronistic action, it charged.
It urged the "government" not to yield to the pressure of the conservative forces but immediately lift the label of an "enemy-benefiting organization" attached to Pomminryon.
----------------
S. Korean Security Authorities Denounced for Their Unreasonable
Pyongyang, June 16 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the North Side Committee for Implementation of June 15 Joint Declaration released a statement on Friday to denounce the south Korean security authorities for barring figures of the overseas Korean side from participating in the grand festival for national reunification to commemorate the 6th anniversary of the joint declaration in Kwangju, south Korea on the charge of "espionage," etc. Though six years have passed since the publication of the joint declaration, they prevented delegates of overseas Koreans from entering south Korea by invoking the fascist "National Security Law" dating back to the old era of confrontation, the statement said, adding:
This is an illegal action which can never be justified. If any overseas Korean should have been branded as a "spy" arbitrarily for the mere reason that he had got in touch with pro-reunification figures supporting the June 15 joint declaration in south Korea, then all figures participating in the Kwangju festival for reunification must have been equally charged with "espionage."
The south Korean fascist security authorities should know well that by perpetrating too anachronistic an action this time they made it impossible for them to escape the curse and denunciation of the whole Korean nation.
The above-said action convinced the Koreans that south Korea is not suitable for hosting such nation-wide festival for reunification in the future as long as there remains in force the "NSL," a leftover of the past fascist dictatorship.
All the pro-reunification patriotic forces at home and abroad who support the June 15 joint declaration should firmly unite to more vigorously struggle against the south Korean fascist security authorities who persist in such treacherous anti-reunification acts to dampen the ardent desire of the nation for reunification even in the June 15 era by keeping the anti-reunification "NSL".
Rodong Sinmun Censures Theory of "Multiracial Society"
Pyongyang, April 27 (KCNA) -A strange farce to hamstring the essential characters of the Korean nation and seek for "multiracial society" is now being held in south Korea. In this regard Rodong Sinmun today runs a signed commentary, which censures the farce as an unpardonable bid to negate the homogeneity of the nation, make south Korea multiracial and Americanize it. To deny the peculiarity and advantages of the homogeneous nation now that dominationism and colonialism are posing a threat to the destiny of weak nations is a treacherous act of weakening the spirit of the nation, the commentary says, and goes on:
The south Korean pro-American traitorous forces advocating the theory of "multiracial society" are riffraffs who have not an iota of national soul, to say nothing of the elementary understanding of the view on the nation and social and historic development.
If the homogeneity of the nation is not kept, the nation and the destiny of individuals cannot be defended from the U.S. dominationist moves and the attempt of the Japanese reactionaries for invasion of Korea, which is revealed in their claim to Tok Islet, cannot be checked.
The theory of "multiracial society" is a poison and anti-reunification logic aimed to emasculate the basic idea in the era of independent reunification. The anti-national logic is advocated in south Korea, contrary to the aspiration of the fellow countrymen. This is ascribable to the criminal attempt of the pro-American elements including the Grand National Party to make the north and the south different in lineages, block the June 15 era of reunification and seek the permanent division of the nation and the manipulation of the U.S. behind the scene.
The commentary calls upon the people from all walks of life in south Korea to decisively reject the anti-national moves of the sycophantic traitorous forces to tarnish the lineage of the Korean nation and obliterate it, bereft of the Juche character and national character.
DPRK FM. Spokesman Urges Japan to Stop Suppression of Chongryon
Pyongyang, March 28 (KCNA) -- The Japanese authorities mobilized dozens of the Osaka Prefectural riot police force on Mar. 23 to search six places including the Osaka Prefectural Association of Koreans in Commerce in Japan, shops run by Koreans and their dwelling houses on the initiative of the public security department of the Tokyo Police Agency. On top of this, the Japanese authorities retracted the measure to exempt the Central Hall, the hall of Tokyo Metropolitan headquarters and the press hall of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) from municipal property tax and impounded them. And they intensified financial pressure to disorganize Chongryon, scheming to totally withdraw the measure for exempting all facilities related to Chongryon across the country from municipal property tax of local autonomous bodies under the pretext of "strict application of the existing law".
A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry in a statement Tuesday warned that the DPRK will certainly take full stock of the suppression of Chongryon and Korean residents in Japan that has systematically been perpetrated under the direct manipulation of the Japanese government and strongly counter it. The Japanese government is legally and morally obliged to ensure Chongryon's activities and protect the living of Koreans in Japan from the historical viewpoint, the spokesman said, and continued:
The Japanese prime minister repeatedly clarified his stand to friendly treat the Koreans in Japan so as not to discriminate them when adopting the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration and on other occasions. The Japanese government, too, reaffirmed this at the talks on the normalization of relations between the DPRK and Japan held in Beijing early in February.
However, Japan, a so-called constitutional state, perpetrated fascist suppression of Chongryon and Korean residents in Japan in a gangster-like way by setting state power in motion while deliberately linking the already settled "abduction issue" to Chongryon. It also tries to put pressure upon the DPRK. This is really mean and ridiculous act. Chongryon is a legitimate overseas Koreans' organization of the DPRK which defends all the democratic national rights of Koreans in Japan and it plays the role of a diplomatic mission which promotes friendship with the Japanese people, given that there is no diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The suppression of such dignified organization and Koreans in Japan cannot be construed otherwise than a wanton violation of the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration and an unpardonable infringement upon the sovereignty of the DPRK. The Japanese authorities can never evade their responsibility for the serious consequences to be entailed by their sinister acts.
Spokesman for DPRK Foreign Ministry Dismisses U.S. Row about "Drug Trafficking
Pyongyang, March 7 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK Tuesday gave the following answer to the question raised by KCNA in connection with the fact that the U.S. again slandered the DPRK as a "drug dealer" recently: The U.S. Department of State asserted in its recent "International Narcotics Control and Strategy Report" that the DPRK is involved in "illegal deal in drug" and others. In the annual report the United States admitted that there was no "drug dealing case" linked with the DPRK in 2005 but fabricated misinformation to pull up it again. This clearly shows to what base moves the U.S. resorts in its bid to pressurize and do harm to the DPRK.
The U.S. is internationally censured for being the biggest dealer in drug in the world and a cesspool of drug-related crimes. It is ridiculous of this country to impertinently talk about drug trafficking in various countries every year.
The socialist system in the DPRK guided by the man-centered Juche idea strictly bans by law not only the use and deal in drug which makes people mentally crippled but its production.
We will take more thorough-going preventive measures including those for the enforcement of the law on narcotics control so that drug trafficking rife in such countries as the U.S. and other drug-related crimes may not find their way to our society under any circumstances.
Koreas to March Together at Opening of Turin Games
It's not the first time for them to make it side-by-side, but this time they extended the remarkable move to the Winter Olympics where athletes from both Koreas will march in the opening ceremony.
Representatives from the two Koreas will march together at the opening ceremony of the Turin Winter Olympics, which will begin on Friday, Kim Jung-kil, president of the Korean Olympic Committee, announced on Tuesday in Turin, Italy.
Under the banner ``Corea," the teams will march under one flag at the Stadio Olimpico. South Korean women's speed skater, Lee Bo-ra, will carry the unification flag along with a North Korean men's figure skater, Han Jong-in.
Starting with the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics, the two Koreas have made six joint entrances at openings of international sports events, including the 2002 Pusan Asian Games and the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics.
A total 83 athletes and officials from the South and North are participating in the Winter Olympics _ 69 from the South in nine categories and 14 from the North in two. South Korea won two gold and two silver medals at the 2002 games in Salt Lake City, while North Korea hasn' t competed at a Winter Olympics since the 1998 edition in Nagano, Japan.
IOC president Jacques Rogge welcomed the action, describing it as ``a very important, symbolic gesture."¡¯
``We are working with the national Olympic committees not only to have a joint march but to have a joint team in the future," he said.
It is highly likely that his comment will be realized soon, as the Koreas are also promoting the formation of a combined team for the Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, later this year, and also for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Art, Truth and Politics by Harold Pinter
{Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture was pre-recorded, and shown on video December 7, 2005, in B?rssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.}
In 1958 I wrote the following:
'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'
I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?
Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavor. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realizing that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.
Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.
The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'
In each case I had no further information.
In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.
'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.
I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.
In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.
'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.
It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.
So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.
But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.
Political theater presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonizing has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.
In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.
Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.
Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.
But as they died, she must die too.
Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.
The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.
But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favored method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.
The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.
I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.
The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health center, a cultural center. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health center, the cultural center They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'
Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.
Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.
Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidized by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'
Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.
As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.
I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'
The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.
The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilized. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.
The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighboring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.
I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.
Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.
The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.
But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'
It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.
The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favor. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.
The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.
Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets! *
Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.
I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.
The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honorable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.
The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.
I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.
'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'
A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.
I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.
Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?
Who was the dead body?
Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?
Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?
Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?
What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?
Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body
When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.
* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by Nathaniel Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape, London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.