Trump takes centre stage

Two weeks still to go to Inauguration Day but Donald Trump’s already been grabbing the headlines urging Canadians to join the United States and threatening to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, which he says is now under Chinese control. While few take his pantomime threats seriously it’s amusing to see venal British and European politicians, so used to licking the boots of Uncle Sam, on the receiving end of American abuse for a change.
They turned a blind eye to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They egged on the proxy war against Russia and crippling sanctions on China. Now they’re recoiling in horror at The Donald mouthing off against his own allies. Now they know that “Making America Great Again” can only happen at their expense.
The Trump team are already talking about resuming the dialogue with Democratic Korea and floating proposals to end the Ukraine war which go some way to meeting the legitimate demands of the Russian Federation. We can only hope that this will lead to serious negotiations to normalise US relations with the DPR Korea and end the war in eastern Europe. 
Trump says he’ll end the war in Ukraine at a stroke when he’s back at the helm. But we’ve heard it all before over Korea. Though he promised much when he was last in the White House he still remained a prisoner of the most aggressive elements of the American ruling class. What Trump says and what he can or actually does do is another matter altogether. 

Meanwhile...

...Elon Musk, the South African born tech tycoon said to be the richest man in the world, has clearly got some time on his hands. Not content with the prospect of a key role in the new Trump administration, he’s now calling on Nigel Farage to stand down as leader of the Reform Party and scheming to get rid of Keir Starmer before the next general election. 
Musk is often called a “kingmaker” in the bourgeois media of the United States: possibly by some unaware of the tragic fate of the first man to bear that mantle – Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, who was killed in 1471 during the feudal struggle for the throne known as the War of the Roses. 
Musk is much like George Soros, another immensely rich American, who used his money to finance anti-communist movements in eastern Europe in the 1980s and prop up the venal pro-NATO regimes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European people’s democracies in 1991. Soros, a supporter of the American Democrats, poses as a philanthropist. Musk, who likes to be thought of as a “libertarian”, is a Trump Republican. But their common underlying philosophy is simply that of end days capitalism and inherited wealth.
Now Musk can say and do what he likes in the United States – he became an American citizen in 2002 – but poking his nose into our affairs is totally unacceptable. 

Early days for Joe Biden

THE LABOUR movement in the USA largely backed the Democrat drive to dump Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election, and their leaders welcomed the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in January. Getting rid of Trump was, of course, a victory for American workers.
    The march of the most reactionary and racist elements of the US ruling class and the degenerates they mobilised to build the Trump movement has been stopped – at least for the time being – by the mass movement that grew from the Black Lives Matter movements and the rage on the street at the Trump government’s indifferent response to the coronavirus plague that is sweeping through the USA.
    Reversing Trump’s immigration laws and re-joining the Paris agreement on climate change may have won the praise of the environmentalist lobby, but on the left, few seriously expect much from the new administration apart from the usual platitudes that the Democrats dish out to keep their blue-collar voters sweet.
    The new US administration is naturally focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic that has already claimed some 480,000 American lives whilst the stimulus plan seeks to revive the country’s ailing economy. Whilst there are some very modest concessions to the working class, Republican Senators, with Democratic support, have stalled the proposed plan to double the minimum wage – which now looks likely to be replaced with staged increases over the next four years.
    On the world stage, Joe Biden clearly wants to continue where his predecessor, Barack Obama, left off. His first task is to restore US imperialism’s hold over its European NATO allies to restore US hegemony throughout the capitalist world and lead a global imperialist front to confront Russia and People’s China.
    Although talk about “regime change” is no longer fashionable in Washington, the Americans haven’t abandoned the dreams of world domination that they once called the “new world order” or “globalisation”.
    The US-led economic blockade of Cuba and Democratic Korea continues, and new sanctions are applied to Russia and China. American dollars prop up puppets in Ukraine and the Caucasus and the reactionary separatist movements in China.
    In the Middle East, Biden tells the Palestinians that he supports a “two state” solution and that the USA is ready to resume aid that Trump cut to their “autonomous” government in the West Bank. He tells Iran he wants to revive the Iran nuclear deal that Trump tore up in 2018.
    But Biden wants the Iranians to agree to new terms and conditions before lifting sanctions on the Islamic Republic and tells the Palestinians that he will not reverse Donald Trump’s contentious US embassy move to Jerusalem.
    Biden’s team no longer call for the outright overthrow of President Assad’s popular front government in Syria – Russian intervention put a stop to that nonsense a few years ago. Now they seek to partition the country through a bogus “federal” plan that would legitimise the US occupation of the Kurdish region in eastern Syria.
    They’ve changed tack on Yemen. Trump backed the disastrous Saudi intervention in the civil war. Now Biden says he’s going to end all US support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales. But he’s only doing this because the Saudi intervention has backfired, bringing death and destruction to Saudi Arabia that threatens the House of Saud and the vast oil industry that serves US imperialism.
It is indeed ‘business as usual’ in Washington these days.

70 years of Victory

Leader Kim Jong Un

By Andy Brooks

THE KOREAN people will soon be celebrating the 70^th anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea and throughout the world communists will join them at events to mark the foundation of the party that has led the Korean revolution to victory after victory in the decades that followed.

The Workers Party of Korea has led the Korean revolution, performing tremendous feats in socialist construction, defeating US imperialism, beating the US-led economic blockade and overcoming natural disasters to become a nuclear power and a modern socialist society that serves the people throughout their lives. The revolutionary struggle was led by great leader Kim Il Sung and dear leader Kim Jong Il. Today leader Kim Jong Un follows their footsteps at the helm of the Party that is leading the drive to build a thriving socialist republic.

The Workers’ Party of Korea was founded on 10th October 1945 but the struggle began in the dark days of 1910 when the Japanese army marched into Korea, deposed the feudal ruler and the peninsula became a colony of Japan.

There was always resistance but it was drowned in blood. But the 1917 Great October Russian Revolution had an enormous impact on the Korean people, inspiring a new uprising in 1919. The Japanese occupation forces responded with predictable fury, driving the patriotic forces underground. And while the workers and peasants looked to the Soviet Union for help and inspiration, the bourgeois nationalists hoped that the other Pacific power, the United States, would come to their aid.

At that time the communist movement in Korea was small and bitterly divided into warring sects. Groups sent emissaries abroad to try to get recognition from the Communist International. All claimed to be the authentic voice of Korean communism while furiously denouncing their rivals. All attempts to set up a united communist party quickly collapsed.

But a new generation of communists was emerging from the patriotic youth and students of the country who wanted to drive the Japanese out and build a new tomorrow for the Korean people. Kim Il Sung was one of them.

Kim Il Sung was an outstanding communist leader and thinker who will always be remembered by working people all over the world. His name will forever be remembered as the founder of the modern Korean communist movement that began amongst the patriotic youth of Korea when he was a student in the 1920s.

Kim Il Sung saw the hopelessness of the sectarians, flunkeyists, dogmatists and factionalists who called themselves communists in the 1920s. So he decided to form a communist movement from the youth and the grass-roots of the villages and factories.

When Kim Il Sung formed the Down with Imperialism Union at the age of 14 in 1926 no one, least of all the Japanese imperialists, could have dreamt that within 20 years Korea would be free. This was a movement that captured the imagination of all Korea’s progressive youth, which soon grew into the bigger Anti-Imperialist Youth League. From this organisation came many of the pioneers of the underground Young Communist League of Korea, directing student strikes and joining in the campaign to boycott Japanese goods.

The divisions amongst the existing Korean communists had left them isolated from the masses. Kim Il Sung strongly denounced their acts, of trying to rely on outside forces and striving for the recognition of others, as a disgrace to the Korean nation.

He stressed that a revolutionary movement was not something to carry on with the approval of others but a work to be done out of one’s own conviction. Problems should be solved by oneself, he said, and only when the struggle was waged well would others recognise it.

From student leader Kim Il Sung became the guerrilla leader; the “Young General” who took up the gun to drive the Japanese colonialists out of the country. When Kim Il Sung gathered a small band of heroes to form the first guerrilla units to take on the might of the Japanese Army no one could have imagined that this would become the People’s Army that brought the American imperialists to their knees begging for an armistice in 1953.

Comrade Kim Il Sung led the Korean masses to victory against the brutal Japanese colonialists in 1945. He took up the gun again to defend their freedom when US imperialism and its lackeys invaded the north in 1950. The Americans were fought to a standstill and forced to sign a humiliating armistice in 1953. Though the American terror bombers had left north Korea in ruins, the masses rallied round the call of the Workers’ Party of Korea to rebuild their shattered country and lead the drive for a modern, independent socialist republic in the free part of the Korean peninsula.

In the north the WPK led the drive to build a new life for all the working people of the DPRK. In American-occupied south Korea the WPK led the popular forces in their struggle against US imperialism and their local lackeys and pawns.

In the decades that followed Kim Il Sung worked tirelessly for the peaceful reunification of Korea while creatively applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete problems of Korean society emerging from feudalism and colonial slavery in the 20th century. Kim Il Sung’s philosophical works, based on the revolutionary experience of the Korean communist movement and generations of struggle, steered the WPK as it marched forward to build a new way of life for the Korean people.

When the Korean War ended the WPK led the campaign for reconstruction. Industry was restored and expanded. Illiteracy was conquered, unemployment abolished and a comprehensive educational system established. The people began to enjoy free housing and medical treatment. By 1970 north Korea had become a socialist industrialised republic, an achievement that has made it a powerful beacon for socialism in Asia.

Unlike British communist leaders in the past, and indeed many others in Europe and beyond, Kim Il Sung stressed that Marxism-Leninism goes far beyond simple economic formulas and the Soviet “model”.

Kim Il Sung not only grasped Marxism-Leninism but he applied it to the concrete conditions of the Korean people. He knew that once the masses realised their own strength they would become unstoppable. He knew that serving the people was the be-all and end-all for the Korean communists and for the Workers’ Party of Korea that he launched in 1945. He developed Korean-style socialism into the Juché idea – which elevates the philosophical principles of Marxism-Leninism as well as its economic theories – and focuses on the development of each individual worker, who can only be truly free as part of the collective will of the masses.

Kim Il Sung, the great leader of the Korean revolution, died in 1994 but his work lives on in the Workers’ Party of Korea. His successor, Kim Jong Il, told the Korean people and the world that they could “expect no change from him” and with Kim Jong Il at the helm, natural disasters were overcome, diplomatic isolation was broken and the intrigues of US imperialism have been exposed.

The Korean revolution is an inspiration to all communists and freedom-fighters throughout the world. The Korean people, determined to preserve their independence and socialist system, have closed ranks around the Workers’ Party of Korea and the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the face of new threats from American imperialism.

The achievements of Democratic Korea today are based on the sacrifices of generations of Koreans in the past and the tireless work of the leadership of the Workers Party of Korea that follows in the footsteps of the great revolutionary leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

Now First Secretary Kim Jong Un is following the footsteps of those who came before him in striving to peacefully re-unify the Korean peninsula so brutally partitioned by US imperialism, strengthen the armed forces that are the ultimate guarantee of the independence and freedom of the people of Democratic Korea and ensure the health, education and well-being of every citizen in the DPRK. Still under constant threat from US imperialism and its lackeys it is even more important than ever to support the DPR Korea.

South Korea: A nuclear industry riddled with corruption

By Neil Harris

THE SOUTH Korean nuclear industry had been hoping to take advantage of Japan’s continuing problems following the disaster at Fukushima. It planned to win orders to build up to 80 reactors around the world in the next decade, using its experience running south Korea’s 23 nuclear plants as an advertisement for its expertise.

As part of its campaign, the state owned Korea Electric Power Corporation opened a new London office and is actively seeking contracts to build and operate the next generation of British nuclear reactors including Anglesey, Oldbury in Gloucestershire and Sellafield.

Unfortunately south Korea’s reactors may not look quite as attractive as the country had hoped after a year of scandals which have rocked its secretive nuclear industry. A number of those reactors have had to be shut down during the swelteringly hot Korean summer, causing electricity shortages, a ban on air conditioning and a series of arrests.

It all started in May 2012, when five senior officials of the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company were charged and later jailed for covering up a dramatic power loss at the Kori-1 reactor, which potentially put the plant in danger of a meltdown.

In November 2012 a whistle-blower revealed that over 5,000 components used in five separate reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant did not have proper safety certificates and that eight suppliers had faked 60 warranties for the parts. As a result two of the reactors had to be shut down for vital components to be replaced, just in time for the peak winter demand for electricity. Arrests of engineers and suppliers followed, together with government assurances that the parts weren’t significant and that everything was under control.

It didn’t take long for those assurances to unravel; in May 2013 another whistle-blower broke cover to reveal that two nuclear reactors were using emergency control cabling that was authorised with forged safety certificates. According to World Nuclear News on 13/8/13, the resulting investigation found that safety-related control cabling with falsified documentation had been installed at four of KHNP's reactors: “Shin Kori units One and Two and Shin Wolsong units One and Two. KHNP was ordered to stop operations at Shin Kori Two and Shin Wolsong One, while Shin Kori One has remained out of operation following scheduled maintenance. In addition, the newly-constructed Shin Wolsong Two, which is awaiting approval to start commercial operation, has been prevented from starting up.”

The four units will not be allowed to operate until the cabling has been replaced – not an easy job in a radioactive environment and expected to take about four months.

The investigations that followed showed that illegal components have been installed in 14 of south Korea’s 23 nuclear power plants and there are still some 120,000 test certificates to be checked for forgeries.

In all 30 suppliers have been raided and prosecutors have opened inquiries into the testing companies for faking safety test results when parts failed, while the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co itself is now being investigated for its role in both scandals.

But the south Korean puppet government has always controlled the nuclear industry and has previously extended it protection from investigations into corruption due to its potential as a source for nuclear materials for military purposes. This is currently by the US government following the south’s last attempt to develop a nuclear bomb.

Meanwhile a freezing cold winter has been followed by a long hot summer and the minister for trade, industry and energy Yoon Sang Jick was forced to urge the public to cut electricity consumption: "We are in a very desperate situation, where we cannot overcome this crisis without all your active support."

Air-conditioning in all government and public office buildings has been turned off and the power companies have been trying to juggle supply and demand to avoid power cuts: "The country's maximum electricity demand is expected to hover above 80,000 MWe a week and far exceeding its generation capacity of 77,400 MWe." He added: "We may have to carry out a rolling blackout ... if a single power plant goes out of operation.”  

What the scandals have revealed is a nuclear industry that, until 2011, was allowed to design, build and manage its nuclear plants at the same time as regulating itself. It promoted itself as having the potential to save the south Korean economy from the worldwide downturn but keeping the reactors on stream and turning in profits required forged safety certificates and bribed officials.

Despite this, the government is going to expand its nuclear power building programme at home adding 16 reactors by 2030, while expanding its export of plants around the world.