North Korea plans to strengthen economy

The people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are celebrating the New Year with greater confidence and optimism.

After years of extreme threats from Washington, which reached a crescendo when President George W. Bush implied a U.S. invasion was possible by naming North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, an “axis of evil,” the Koreans last year showed the world that they possess a deterrent to aggression, a true nuclear shield. Their scientific and technological development has reached the stage where they possess nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

When the DPRK made this earthshaking announcement, the chorus of denunciations around the capitalist world was intense. How dare this former colony join the exclusive “nuclear club”? That club is for the imperialists and their loyal subjects, not for a country that from its inception has declared its intention to build a socialist society.

Koreans know what war is and they don’t want another one. They lost some 3 million people during the U.S. invasion and war of 1950-53. There is not one Korean family that was not harmed by the war, in which U.S. bombers leveled every building above one story in the North.

For over 50 years, Washington has shown a particularly pathological hatred for the Koreans, who never lost their will to resist foreign domination, even when ringed by U.S. nuclear-armed submarines, missiles and planes.

In the extremely difficult period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. made every effort to starve the DPRK of energy and food, hoping to drag it down as well. At the same time, the north experienced an unprecedented drought followed by devastating storms. In this same period, Kim Il Sung, the remarkable fighter who had led their anti-colonial resistance and then become president of a truly independent Korea, died.

In those literally dark days, when the inhabitants of this cold, far northern country had to conserve energy by not turning on lights, not heating their homes and not using elevators in their high-rise apartments, a decision had to be made on where to concentrate their resources.

If the DPRK were to survive as an independent, sovereign country in control of its own economic system, it had to have the means to resist U.S. nuclear threats. Under the leadership of Kim Jong Il, the new leader, the decision was made to follow a policy called Songun, which means “army first.” Everyone would tighten their belts in order to build Korea’s military defense.

While Washington was increasingly preoccupied with its failed attempt to recolonize Iraq, the DPRK went ahead and built up its defenses, made all the more necessary by the absolute refusal of the U.S. to normalize relations on the Korean peninsula. To this day, there has been no formal end to the Korean War and no peace treaty.

It was a hard time. But the people and leadership of the DPRK were determined never to be in a defenseless position, no matter how much sacrifice that took.

Now the Koreans are reaping the rewards of this decision. They feel more secure than before, and can now turn to the domestic economy. “Last year was a year filled with pride, a year in which an epoch-making phase was opened for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation,” said a joint New Year’s editorial of the DPRK’s three leading newspapers.

The people of the DPRK look to this joint editorial each New Year to lay out the perspective for the months ahead.

“The present reality, in which all conditions for leaping higher and faster have been created, demands that we step up the revolutionary advance more vigorously to achieve the high objectives of the building of a great, prosperous and powerful socialist nation,” the statement says further down.

“The main task in the present general march is to direct primary effort to rapidly improving the standard of the people’s living and, at the same time, to step up technological updating to put our economy on a modern footing and display its potentials to the full.”

The DPRK has already achieved an enormous technological breakthrough with its nuclear program. Now it wants to concentrate on building up its heavy and light industry and agriculture.

If any country can be said to have pulled itself up by the bootstraps, it is the DPRK.

E-mail: dgriswold@workers.org