The following statement by the International Bolshevik Tendency was originally
published in December 2010.
On 23 November [2010] artillery from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(DPRK—aka North Korea) fired 130 shells on Yeonpyeong, a small island in disputed
waters close to the North Korean coast that is the site of a South Korean military base.
The bombardment killed four people on the base—two South Korean marines and two
construction workers. Ominous threats and the outpouring of feigned indignation about
“unprovoked” attacks on civilians emanating from the South Korean government
and its backers in the imperialist “international community” were predictable
enough. Yet some of the Western media acknowledged that the shelling had been preceded by
a warning to the South Korean military to suspend its “live fire” exercise in
territorial waters claimed by the DPRK:
“For a start, Yeonpyeong is not exactly a ‘South Korean
island’, but a military base used by South Korean forces. It is located about seven
miles away from the North’s ground territory, on a disputed ‘northern limit
line’ unilaterally drawn by US-led UN forces after the Korean war. As the South has
admitted, the North’s warning, and then attack, was preceded by their artillery
drills in the maritime area around the island. In other words, the provocation was
provoked.”
—www.guardian.co.uk, 30 November 2010
The hysterical and bellicose reaction to North Korea’s response is part of an
ongoing pattern of imperialist attempts to bully and isolate Pyongyang and to exert
pressure on its Chinese patron. We are not particularly interested in who fired
first—for Marxists, the essential issue is the necessity to defend the social gains
represented by the overturn of capitalist property in North Korea (and China) against any
attempt, whether foreign or domestic, to undermine or overthrow them. We militarily defend
North Korea against imperialism despite the anti-working class character of the
bureaucratized Stalinist caste headed by Kim Jong-il. To open the road to genuinely
socialist development in North Korea and China, it is necessary to carry out a proletarian
political revolution to oust the ruling bureaucracies whose repeated attempts to
conciliate imperialism threaten the collectivized property system over which they preside.
The recent exchange of fire involving the Yeonpyeong military base occurred at the
outset of the Hoguk—an annual provocation in which, under the rubric of
“safeguarding the nation,” some 70,000 South Korean troops, supported by the
U.S. military, rehearse a coordinated attack on North Korea. This exercise is one of a
series of military expressions of the enmity of the capitalist world for the DPRK—a
sentiment which has not abated since the Korean War, when Chinese military intervention
prevented a U.S.-led imperialist coalition under the flag of the United Nations from
restoring capitalism throughout the Korean peninsula. For 60 years North Korea has been
under continuous military and economic pressure from world imperialism.
The unconditional defense of North Korea against capitalist restoration—a
development which would represent an important milestone in the drive for social
counterrevolution in China—requires revolutionaries to demand the complete
and immediate removal of all U.S. troops and military bases from Korea. It also
includes the defense of the DRPK’s right to develop an effective nuclear deterrent
to the very real danger of imperialist attack. On 28 November, in an interview with
CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican Senator John McCain ominously
expressed the sentiment of a significant section of the American bourgeoisie when he
stated that “it’s time we talked about regime change” in North Korea.
Despite the rhetorical militancy of the Pyongyang bureaucracy, it has long promoted
dangerous illusions in the possibility of a “peaceful” reunification of Korea.
Such talk is intended to appeal to nationalist elements in South Korea who resent the
continuing American military presence in their country. Many South Korean leftists are
attracted to such nationalist sentiments, but the goal of finding common ground with an
anti-American “patriotic” wing of the capitalist class can only retard the
development of class consciousness.
The economic situation in the DPRK is increasingly desperate, as the tightening
imperialist embargo has blocked many critical inputs for industry, and crop failures have
resulted in widespread malnutrition. The counterrevolution in the Soviet Union led by
Boris Yeltsin in 1991 deprived North Korea of its principle source of aid and most
powerful strategic ally. Today the DPRK’s survival depends on support from the
treacherous Chinese bureaucracy, which has voted for U.S.-proposed sanctions in the UN
Security Council on several occasions in recent years.
The defense of the North Korean deformed workers’ state is an issue of vital
importance to the entire international workers’ movement. For as Leon Trotsky, the
great Russian revolutionary, observed: “It is the duty of revolutionists to defend
every conquest of the working class even though it may be distorted by the pressure of
hostile forces. Those who cannot defend old positions will never conquer new ones”
(In Defense of Marxism).
What is necessary in Korea is the creation of an internationalist workers’ party
committed to the revolutionary reunification of the entire Korean peninsula. This
requires a struggle to carry out a social revolution in the South to uproot
capitalist property and a political revolution in the North to shatter the grip of
the Kim dynasty and the brittle caste it heads. Only by establishing working-class rule
throughout Korea, in the framework of a Socialist Federation of East Asia (including China
and Japan), can the people of the region be freed from the threat of hunger, poverty and
war.