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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
14 October 2006
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. 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 38th 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. 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 doing 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. 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. 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) 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 destruction 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 against 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 the 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 weapons, to strengthen
the anti-imperialist movement of the people, to advance the movement for the complete
prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons and to attain a just and lasting peace
in the world.###
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