KOREAN PEOPLE AND DPRK HAVE THE RIGHT
TO DEFEND THEIR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee
International League of Peoples" Struggle


The Korean people and the Democratic People"s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have
all the right to defend their national sovereignty and independence, to
develop the means to protect themselves, to pursue economic development and
seek the peaceful reunification of Korea against the hostile policy of US
imperialism and its rabid followers.

It should never be forgotten that Japan colonized the Korean people.젨 Then
the US subjected them to massacres in the aftermath of World War II and during
the full-scale US war of aggression in 1950-53.?It exacted the death toll of
more than 4 million Koreans in its failed attempt to control the entirety of
the Korean peninsula.

While keeping Korea divided into North and South along the 38 th parallel, the
US chiefly has used all kinds of methods to contain and subvert the DPRK.
These include military encirclement, economic blockade, climate manipulation,
espionage and intrusive surveillance, plans and threats of nuclear bombing and
countless provocative acts.

The Korean people and the DPRK have therefore a great cause for rejoicing over
the successful testing of its nuclear weapon capabilities.?They regard these
as means of self-defense against the relentless threats of the US and its
cohorts in the Asia-Pacific region.젨 In this regard, the people of the world
congratulate the Korean people for the upgrading of their defensive
capabilities.

More than ever the US and its cohorts cannot trifle with and bully the Korean
people and the DPRK because these are now armed with nuclear weapons. The US
and the UK were able to pummel Iraq with bombs for more than 12 years and to
launch a full scale war of aggression in 2003 because they knew that Iraq had
no nuclear weapons even as they drummed up the lie that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction and had links with al Qaeda.

The US and all its allies and puppets are all agog and hysterical about the
underground nuclear bomb test by the DPRK because for the first time after a
long time here is one country that is asserting its national independence,
refusing to kowtow to the US and self-reliantly doing젨 nuclear research and
developing nuclear weapons capability. Even now, the US tries to belittle the
DPRK"s nuclear test?and its obvious ability to produce a nuclear warhead for
its ballistic missile.젨 But it cannot conceal its fright by trying to agitate
other states against the DPRK and at the same time indicating that it?is
deterred from unleashing?a military attack.

The states priorly possessing nuclear weapons slap their own faces when they
lambast the DPRK for developing its own nuclear weapons.젨 Among the prior
possessors of nuclear weapons, the US is the most hypocritical in berating the
DPRK and?demanding sanctions under Chapter 7 of?the UN Charter. It was the
first to produce the atom bomb and drop it on the civilian populations of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It had a monopoly of nuclear weapons until the Soviet
Union broke this.?Until now, it has the largest array of nuclear weapons
(5,000 strategic warheads, more than 1,000 operational tactical weapons and
approximately 3,000 reserve and tactical warheads)젨 and the most powerful
systems of delivery.?It wants to maintain primacy in nuclear weapons and
unceasingly boasts of the privilege of?preemptive strike.

It is hypocritical for any prior possessor of nuclear weapons to abuse the
DPRK for having nuclear weapons and to obscure the fact that the US has long
based nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction젨 in South Korea,
Japan and Taiwan and on aircraft carriers in the vicinity of?DPRK.?It is
hypocritical for the US and other states to be indignant over the DPRK"s
possession of nuclear weapons even as they are silent over the fact that
Israel has long held nuclear weapons?and?as they gloss over the fact?that
India and Pakistan have?produced nuclear weapons and have openly rattled them
against젨 each other since 1998.

Now that the Korean people and the DPRK have manifested their nuclear weapons
capabilities, the US and its nuclear partners have no choice but to accept the
fact that the DPRK has nuclear weapons and to consider that they have lesser
ability than before to bully DPRK and that they better reduce their arrogance
and become more reasonable?in any dialogue to guarantee nonaggression against
the DPRK, to remove US nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in South
Korea and in the vicinity, to stop the longrunning military and economic
blockade and let the Korean people to peacefully reunify their fatherland.

The failure of the US to dialogue fairly and fruitfully with the젨 DPRK before
its nuclear bomb test exposes the overweening arrogance and aggressive
character of US imperialism in general as well as its self-defeating US
overconcentration and overextension in Iraq and thereabouts in particular.

We hope that the now given fact of DPRK"s possession of nuclear weapons will
help to reinforce the national sovereignty and independence of the Korean
people and the DPRK, to weaken US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region, to
counter the US primacy in nuclear.

14 October 2006