Stop war threats against North Korea

Following is a statement issued by Workers World Party on Oct. 9.

Washington created the crisis; Washington must end It

Respect Korean sovereignty--Sign a peace treaty now!

The present crisis arises directly out of the implacable hostility of the U.S. imperialist government to the socialist government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The DPRK has been trying for over 50 years to get Washington to end its threats and provocations, normalize relations and sign a peace treaty ending the Korean War. During that war, which ended in 1953 with a cease-fire, U.S.-led forces killed 4 million Koreans and leveled the North with saturation bombing.

Instead of moving toward peace and responding to the DPRK's numerous proposals for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, the Bush administration has branded the DPRK as part of an “axis of evil,” has put it on a “terrorist” list and targeted it for “regime change.” The DPRK is encircled by a naval armada of U.S. guided missile destroyers, bomber and fighter squadrons, nuclear weapons and 30,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. The Pentagon has repeatedly carried out menacing military maneuvers directed at the DPRK.

Washington has not only refused to guarantee the safety of the DPRK but has reserved the right to launch a "preemptive strike" against it and, in its Nuclear Posture Review of 2002, declared its right to use nuclear weapons against the DPRK.

The North Korean government has been branded "unpredictable" and therefore "dangerous" by the propagandists for war in the capitalist media. This is nonsense. Given all the unrelenting U.S. military threats--plus the fact that the U.S. government has only recently overthrown the government of Iraq by unilateral, unprovoked military force--the DPRK's efforts to develop an effective deterrent against military, and possibly nuclear, attack are entirely predictable, totally defensible and a matter of national survival.

Washington has created the present crisis. The people of the United States and the world must demand that Washington end the crisis by abandoning its threats and provocations, dropping its demand for sanctions, and sitting down and negotiating the normalization of relations with the DPRK, including the signing of a peace treaty to end the more than 50 years of U.S. imperialist aggression in the region.

Workers World Party
55 West 17th Street,
New York, NY 10011
212-627-2994

For immediate release. Contact: Deirdre Griswold