Stephen Cho

The world is in turmoil over a domino effect that began with Donal Trump. God’s “first shock” is conceptual, but Trump’s “first shock” is real. Like falling dominoes, it is delivering successive shocks across the world.

The United States’ National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025 can be summed up in one phrase: a “Western Hemisphere-fortification strategy,” choosing\and concentrating on the western hemisphere. In that sense, it can also be called a “gradual Eastern Hemisphere-abandonment strategy.”

As a result, the imperialist camp is weakening while the anti-imperialist camp is strengthening, accelerating the full-scale escalation of World War 3. A powerful wind of strategic change is sweeping across the global balance of forces.

1. Tactical Cooperation by the Anti-imperialist Camp That Accelerate the Fragmentation of the Imperialist Camp

Trump represents the US chauvinist forces. Because of the United States’ standing in the world, the Trump faction also represents chauvinist political forces worldwide. In explaining the contradictions within the imperialist camp, the confrontational framework between so-called “globalists”\and so-called “chauvinists” is particularly useful for analyzing the current political situation.

Within the traditional political spectrum, globalists are primarily based on right-wing social democracy, while chauvinists are centered on conservative forces. This is one of the grounds on which globalists criticize chauvinists as fascists. However, globalists too are chauvinists in a broader sense. The neo-Nazis in Ukraine\and the Zionists in Israel, operating in proxy wars under the direction of globalists, are quintessential political chauvinists―fascists. Those who wage fascist wars by putting chauvinists at the forefront cannot themselves be free of chauvinism. Contrary to their name, globalists are the representative chauvinists\and fascists of the present era. They have even, through cunning maneuvers, manipulated the social-democratic left into becoming a “Zionist left.” The social-democratic right\and globalists are making use of the opportunistic nature of the social-democratic left.

At present, the mainstream of chauvinist\and conservative forces opposes intervention in the war in Ukraine\and shows a relatively pro-Russia tendency. In the United States, the conservative forces of Republican Party not only lack a fascist tradition, but have even pushed out the neoconservatives who represented the military–industrial complex. The fact that the Republican Party appeals to the founding ideals of the United States, which include a spirit of independence, cannot be ignored.

Representative fascist policies include war against foreign states\and persecution of foreign peoples. The former constitutes the highest level, while the latter represents the lowest level. Unlike during World War 2, in the current conditions of World War 3, the former is carried out by globalists centered on the social democratic right, while the latter is associated with chauvinists centered on conservative forces. While globalists are waging brutal wars against foreign states by putting neo-Nazis forward in Ukraine\and Israeli Zionists in West Asia, chauvinists have not yet reached the level, within their own country, of persecuting foreign peoples by confining them to places like “Auschwitz”\and brutally killing them. In short, the representative fascists of today are not chauvinists, but globalists. Even when the persecution of foreign peoples becomes the focus of the news coverage, one must never overlook the fact that the forces that carry out\and drive a world war are globalists.

Meanwhile, chauvinists do not oppose war in principle; rather, they avoid\and refrainrom wars they do not desire. The reasons are that war results in the deaths of their own soldiers, entails enormous financial losses,\and is judged to be difficult to win. If a war could be won\and the scale of damage were\limited, then—as history has demonstrated—they would readily consent to the war at any time. Chauvinists are themselves a component of the imperialist camp.

For this reason, communist forces\and other anti-imperialist forces cannot take these chauvinists as a driving force for anti-war peace movements\or anti-imperialist, independent movements. In other words, neither a strategic united front nor even a tactical joint front can be formed with them. Unlike during World War 2, the forces that communist forces take as targets for tactical joint fronts are\limited to those of the social-democratic left. Since today the social-democratic right is the core of the globalists, it cannot serve as an object of a tactical joint front.

Anti-imperialist forces including the communist forces can’t form a tactical joint front with chauvinist\and conservative forces, but they can engage in tactical cooperation with them. Tactical cooperation differsrom the tactical joint front formed during World War 2 through agreements reached when representatives of the socialist Soviet\union met with representatives of the imperialist United States\and Britain. Just as a strategic united front differsrom a tactical joint front, so too does a tactical joint front differrom tactical cooperation.

Tactical cooperation, in the sense of acting in step tactically, refers to a situation in which anti-imperialist forces\and conservative chauvinists, for the purpose of isolating\and striking more forcefully at their common enemy—the globalists—each direct the spearhead of their attacks toward the globalists, while restraining mutual attacks between the two forces. Through this tactical measure, communist\and anti-imperialist forces can maximize the contradictions between globalists\and chauvinists within the imperialist camp. Put simply, It leads our side to unite twofold while the enemy side is split in two, thereby producing an effect that is, arithmetically speaking, quadrupled.

If one were to seek a comparable example of tactical cooperation in the experience of World War 2, one could point to Stalin’s conclusion of the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact\and the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with Germany\and Japan respectively. The form of these arrangements as “treaties” is ultimately not essential, as they were in fact abrogated through the treacherous actions of Germany\and Japan. What mattered was that these tactical measures proved effective in redirecting Germany’s main direction of attack toward Western Europe\and another imperialist power, Britain,\and Japan’s main direction of attack toward Southeast Asia\and another imperialist power, the United States. As a result, the imperialist camp was fragmented\and weakened, while the socialist Soviet\union avoided a two-front assaultrom both the west\and the east, gained time to strengthen its capacities,\and turned this respite into a decisive opportunity to alter the course of the war. For reference, today there is no need to conclude agreements similar to past tactical treaties in\order to pursue tactical cooperation. Making mutual agreement a precondition belongs not to tactical cooperation, but to a tactical joint front.

Tactical cooperation is the measure currently being employed in practice by Russia, China,\and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea against the United States. Since the war in Ukraine, these principal anti-imperialist states have consistently designated the globalists within the imperialist camp as their main target of attack, while engaging in tactical cooperation with the chauvinists. Just as, during World War 2, communist\and anti-fascist forces worldwide understood\and took note of the Soviet\union’s tactical joint front\and tactical treaties, so today communist\and anti-imperialist forces around the world must also pay close attention to the tactical cooperation measures being undertaken by the three anti-imperialist states.

2. The Intensification of Contradictions within the Imperialist Camp

Since the emergence of the Trump administration, conflicts between globalists\and chauvinists have intensified by the day. These conflicts are serious enough to spill beyond the economic\and political spheres into military clashes in the form of civil wars\and territorial disputes. The contradictions between globalists\and chauvinists are deepening across multiple dimensions.

First, upon taking office, the Trump administration immediately launched an unprecedented “tariff war.” Its primary targets were its “allied nations,” whose ruling forces are, for the most part, globalists\and right-wing social democrats. At The Hague NATO summit in June 2025, the Trump administration pressured European\union member states to raise their defense spending to as much as 5 percent of GDP. This amounted to a bombshell declaration that the United States no longer intends to remain actively engaged in NATO. By attaching the modifier “gradual,” the Trump administration’s intention—essentially to disengagerom the war in Ukraine\androm NATO activities—was clearly conveyed to the European\union\and NATO.

By contrast, Trump maintained a consistently cordial atmosphere in his August meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska\and in his October meeting with Xi Jinping in the ‘Republic of Korea (ROK).’ This dual\and contradictory posture—quarreling intensely with allies within the imperialist camp while instead seeking friendly relations with rival states of the anti-imperialist camp—clearly illustrates the political position\and pragmatic judgment of the Trump faction\and US chauvinists within the imperialist camp. This pattern of the Trump administration remained consistent throughout both its first\and second term. For the Trump faction\and US chauvinists, the primary enemy—the main threat to their very existence—is the globalists.

In the United States, chauvinists refer to globalists as the “deep state”\and regard them as the primary target for liquidation. The antagonistic contradiction between US chauvinists\and globalists has not changed even oncerom the Trump’s first-term inaugural address to the present second term\and has continued to worsen.

After declaring at the Washington NATO Summit in July 2024 that the political preparations for the “Pacificization of NATO” had been completed,\and while its military preparations were being carried forward through joint military exercises such as “Freedom Edge,” “RIMPAC,”\and “Ulchi Freedom Shield”rom June to August of that year, on July 13, a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear. At the time, globalists were openly inciting calls for Trump’s removal. Although the assassination attempt on Trump ended in failure, the assassination attempt on “Little Trump,” Charlie Kirk, in September 2025, did not fail.

The film “Civil War,” produced by globalists, depicts a president who attempts to secure a third term—clearly modeled on Trump—only to be shot dead in the White House amid a civil war. As can be seenrom Putin’s experience, there is more than one method by which a third term can be carried through constitutionally. At present, Trump appears prepared, if circumstances demand it, to declare martial law. That the contradiction between chauvinists\and globalists within the United States is escalating toward civil war is now a widely known fact, to the extent that it is reported even in mainstream media.

The killings of Renee Good\and Alex Pretti that occurred in Minneapolis respectively on January 7\and January 24, 2026, are provoking mass public outrage surpassing that of the death of George Floyd on May 20, 2025. It would not be surprising for Barack Obama to step forward\and incite anti-government protests. Obama is universally known as one of the principal leaders of globalists. Trump has always pointed to Obama as the power behind Joe Biden.

The so called “Epstein list” was raised by chauvinists as a weapon to attach globalists. The recent controversy unfolding in the manner of “the pot calling the kettle black” ultimately serves only to intensify the deadly conflict between these two forces.

The contradiction between the United States\and the European\union is deepening further as a result of Washington’s Western Hemisphere centered strategy. The Western Hemisphere consists of the Americas plus Greenland. Strictly speaking, the Western Hemisphere also includes Iceland,\and encompasses everything west of the vertical line running through the Greenwich Observatory in Britain. The territorial ambitions of the United States will never stop at Greenland.

At present, the Trump administration has, in Central\and South America, abducted the president of Venezuela, which constitutes a “linchpin”,\and plundered its oil, while in the north it is concentrating on bringing Greenland under US ownership\and on turning Canada into the 51st state of the United States. It is no coincidence that immediately after carrying out “Absolute Resolve Operation” on January 3, the Trump administration revealed its desire to possess Greenland,\and then went on to threaten that if the Canadian government were to conclude an agreement with China, it would impose 100 percent tariffs.

Among these issues, the Greenland question in particular is severely provoking the European\union. As Trump himself has suggested, if a military option were taken\and an armed clash were to occur with the European\union, the collective-defense nature of NATO would make the dissolution of NATO unavoidable. As is well known, the dissolution of NATO would signify an irreversible split\and a catastrophic collapse within the imperialist camp. If the imperialist camp were to become this divided\and weakened, it would be absolutely impossible for it to wage a world war against the anti-imperialist camp. In an already-begun world war, the defeat of the imperialist camp would then become as clear as day.

Precisely because the danger is so great, the United States\and the European\union reached a temporary stopgap agreement at the Davos Forum. This is because the United States, which is militarily threatening Iran, needs to put its conflicts with the EU on hold. Merely in exchange for the rhetoric of excluding military options, the United States’ military\and economic dominance over Greenland has grown even stronger. Seizing Greenland has been a long-held ambition of US imperialism\and is the most significant achievement that Trump’s forces\and the Republican Party can showcase to win the November midterm elections. The level of mutual distrust between the United States\and the EU has already crossed the point of no return. The EU is well aware of the consequences that the dispute with the United States over Greenland will lead to. This is one of the reasons why the EU is seriously considering a NATO without the United States.

3. The Unity\and Strengthening of the Anti-Imperialist Camp\and the Accelerated Full-Scale Escalation of World War 3

If the Greenland issue intensified contradictions between the United States\and the European\union, the Venezuela issue has heightened the contradictions between US imperialism\and the anti-imperialist camp. The former contributes to the division within the imperialist camp, while the latter contributes to the unity of the anti-imperialist camp.

The Trump administration claims that its abduction of Venezuela’s legitimate President Nicolás Maduro is “law enforcement,” but everyone except the Trump faction recognizes that it is a blatant violation of the UN Charter\and international law. In response, the Trump administration has gone as far as to withdrawrom UN agencies\and even openly proposing complete withdrawalrom the UN itself, along with the creation of an “another UN.” This indicates that the Venezuela issue is also amplifying contradictions within the imperialist camp. In fact, other heads of imperialist states, including France’s Emmanuel Macron, have publicly denounced Trump’s abduction of Maduro.

Trump forces regard Venezuela as a country that must be firmly seized under the strategy of the ‘fortification of the Western Hemisphere.’ While abducting President Nicolás Maduro, whose commitment to the ideologies\and principles of anti-imperialist independence\and people’s democracy is steadfast, Trump is focusing on controlling Venezuela’s crude oil reserves—the largest reserve in the world—to achieve the goal of lowering oil prices, a key task for winning the November midterm elections.

The Rodriguez government, which succeeded the Maduro government, is faced with the difficult task of defending national sovereignty while simultaneously conducting negotiations with the United States. A situation similar to the experiences of China\and Vietnam following the collapse of the Soviet\union\and Eastern Europe is recurring in Venezuela today. Balancing principles\and flexibility is always a crucial yet difficult task. Now, more than ever, international solidarity in support of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution is of paramount importance.

The fact that the United States is controlling not only Venezuelan crude oil but also Iranian crude oil constitutes the most serious threat to China, whose largest oil imports comerom Iran. If the United States can control the oil of these two countries\and manipulate international oil prices, this would also deal a significant blow to Russia. For this reason, it is only natural that China maintains an unusually high level of vigilance regarding United States-\and Israel-led attempts at a “color revolution” in Iran\and supports Iran more strongly than ever. Since the operation “Absolute Resolve” was carried out after the appearance of a US nuclear carrier strike group in the Caribbean, the deployment of a US nuclear carrier strike group to the waters near Iran in the Indian Ocean is, without a doubt, a highly perilous military adventure.

Iran is a military power, distinctrom both Venezuela\and Syria. As a missile power, Iran can, at any moment, devastate US bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates,\and eastern Saudi Arabia in an instant using various missiles\and drones. In retaliation for the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020, Iran struck US military bases in Iraq. Similarly, when the United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, Iran retaliated by targeting US bases in Qatar with missiles. Israel now lacks sufficient missiles to maintain high-, medium-,\and low-altitude defense systems,\and the United States, with its constrained production capacity, cannot replenish the missiles.

In other words, a ballistic missile strike by Iran could instantly pulverize US military bases in West Asia (the Middle East)\and Israel. In the process, even Saudi Arabia’s largest oil facilities in the Eastern Province, including Aramco, could catch fire. This is why countries such as Saudi Arabia have declared that they will not cooperate with any US attack on Iran. Nevertheless, a US nuclear carrier strike group has entered the waters near Iran,\and US naval forces are gathering one after another. The world has recently witnessed what kind of attack Venezuela suffered after US naval forces gathered in the Caribbean at the end of last year. Iran is now maintaining the highest level of vigilance\and is prepared even for a ‘regional war.’

If the United States eventually dares to launch a war against Iran, it will expand into a conflict involving not only West Asia but also its allies—a world war. World War 3, which began with the war in Ukraine in February 2022, will escalate into a full-scale war through an all-out war in Iran. This is a scenario that the Trump administration\and US chauvinists, fully aware of the enormous human\and financial consequences of war, do not desire. While we must prepare for the worst-case scenario of war, the full-scale outbreak of World War 3 is more likely to occur in East Asia than in West Asia.

Given that the United States has decided to focus on the Western Hemisphere in response to the power shifts of the multipolar era—branding this policy as the “Trump Corollary”\and “Neo-Monroeism (Donroeism)”\and releasing the National Defense Strategy (NDS) 2026 following the NSS 2025—it is rational for China\and the DPRK to interpret this policy shift as a “New Acheson Line.” In other words, it is understood that the United States, fearing a full-scale war with nuclear missile superpowers like China\and the DPRK, has effectively abandoned Taiwan\and the ‘Republic of Korea’\and retreatedrom the “First Island Chain” to the “Second Island Chain.” Consequently, analyses are increasing that the “Territorial Integrity”—the long-cherished aspiration of China\and the DPRK—is now imminent.

In fact, as a response to the US military pressure on Venezuela\and its attempted “Color Revolution” in Iran, China urgently conducted a three-day encirclement exercise around Taiwanrom December 29 to 31, 2025, like a final rehearsal. There are also unconfirmed reports that the Chinese leadership convened a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee immediately after the January 3 incident to impose financial, oil,\and logistical sanctions against the United States.

Immediately after the Venezuela incident broke out, the DPRK carried out a test launch of the “Hwasong-11Ma” new-type hypersonic missile on January 4. It is reported that this missile will be equipped on nuclear-powered submarines in the future. Russia, in light of these various events, also took action on January 8 by striking Europe’s largest gas storage facility, located in Western Ukraine, with the “Oreshnik” hypersonic missile.

It is by no means a coincidence that the DPRK\and Russia launched hypersonic missiles—the weapons most feared by the United States, the EU,\and NATO. If World War 3 were to escalate in full-scale, the DPRK\and Russia could easily suppress their opponents using these formidable hypersonic missiles even without tactical nuclear weapons. The same applies to China. Naturally, if the war situation becomes unfavorable, they could also equip these missiles with tactical nuclear warheads. The “selection\and focus” content outlined in the NSS 2025\and NDS 2026 should be interpreted as the result of the Trump administration’s serious deliberation on these realities.

US imperialism’s abduction of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela\and its attempted “Color Revolution” in Iran are extraordinarily accelerating the awakening\and solidarity of not only anti-imperialist nations\and forces in Latin America but also the anti-imperialist camp on a global scale.

Just as the fascists in 1936 drew arrows of aggressionrom Spain toward France, Western Europe,\and Eastern Europe, the imperialism of 2026 is mapping out its direction of attackrom Venezuela toward Cuba, Central America,\and South America. Identifying Cuba as the next target after Venezuela in Central America, the United States is suffocating the Cuban economy by thoroughly blockading oil import linesrom Venezuela\and Russia. Just as the International Brigades shouted the slogan “¡No Pasarán!” in Spain, we must do the same in Venezuela today. If Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution collapses, a domino effect of counter-revolution—a turbulent surge of the “Blue Tide”—will sweep across Central\and South America.

If China\and the DPRK in East Asia quit the policy of “Strategic Patience”\and decide to carry out the wars in Taiwan\and the ‘ROK’, it will inevitably force a shift in the “Strategic Patience” policies of Russia\and Iran. The full-scale outbreak of World War 3 is highly likely to begin in the East Asian theater, which will completely transform the landscape of local\and regional wars on a global scale. In West Asia, the “Axis of Resistance” will expand,\and it will be Israel—not Iran—that suffers a decisive blow; menawhile, a domino effect of revolution will sweep across Latin America, bringing a “Red Tide” that surpasses the “Pink Tide.”

Following its predetermined conclusion, the United States will respond by intervening moderately in the Eastern Hemisphere while gradually retreating, yet it will struggle desperately to maintain its hegemony in the Western Hemisphere at all costs. While the United States may describe this as an “orderly retreat,” but in reality, US troops deployed around the world will be reduced to prisoners of the anti-imperialist forces resulting in a total catastrophe for the United States. The United States will attempt to save at least the Western Hemisphere as outlined in NSS 2025, but it will be unable to reverse the already tilted tide. In the end, justice will prevail; by the final blow of the anti-imperialist camp, Latin America will become the graveyard of US imperialism.

Trump does not truly understand what he has committed. Since he still believes the United States is a superpower\and is obsessed with arrogance, committing acts of violence, how could any rational thinking be possible for him? Even now, the only way for Trump\and his forces to prolong their political lives is to first stop intervening in the affairs of the Eastern Hemisphere—specifically, by withdrawing the US military bases scattered across the Eastern Hemisphere\and permanently expelling aircraft carrier strike groups, which are nothing more than prey for hypersonic missiles,rom the region.

Furthermore, they must realize as soon as possible how foolish\and reckless the plan to seize control of Mexico\and other Latin American nations is—a strategy based on the fortification of the Western Hemisphere that runs counter to the era of anti-imperialist independence\and people’s democracy.\and they must immediately cease all military provocations\and economic plunder. Otherwise, the US chauvinists will ultimately be denounced as just “another Deep State”\and will follow in the footsteps of the perishing Globalists toward destruction.

The Trump forces\and the US chauvinists must see the prevailing trend correctly\and immediately stop their reckless behavior of acting as an “international gangster,” going beyond the role of an “international police.” As history\and reality prove, the masters of this world are the people. Any action that turns the people of the United States\and the rest of humanity into enemies will only return as a boomerang that strikes one’s own neck. The end of the domino effect that began with the Trump administration is a world\where the people become the true masters—it is revolution.

[source minzokilbo]

【Magazine】Foreign Trade of the DPRK No.3, 2025

President Donald J. Trump, cc: Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Choi Ji-yoon 최지윤 who fled Pyongyang in 1951 at age 14

Hannah Yoon - hannahyoon.com

Since 2017, U.S. citizens have been prohibitedrom traveling to North Korea. The Trump administration enacted the ban after the death of U.S. college student Otto Warmbier. While his death was a tragedy, the travel restriction has caused more harm than good by preventing Korean Americansrom visiting their family members, hindering humanitarian aid\organizationsrom delivering critical assistance,\and stopping civil society groups\and individuals, including peace activists,rom engaging in meaningful cultural\and educational exchanges that foster trust\and understanding\and create important openings for diplomacy. Despite his campaign promise “to reunite Korean Americans separatedrom loved ones in North Korea for decades,” President Biden renewed the State Department’s travel ban on North Korea every year while in office.

Now the Trump administration has extended the travel ban until August 2026. While U.S. citizens can still use their passports to visit some countries with travel restrictions, such as Cuba\and Iran, no U.S. passport is valid for travel to North Korea. Instead, U.S. citizens must apply for a totally separate “special validation passport.” The State Department has unfettered discretion as to whether it grants this passport,\and does so only in exceedingly exceptional circumstances. This has prolonged the most heartbreaking legacy of the unresolved Korean War — more than seven decades of separated Korean families.

We call on President Trump to end this cruel policy\and to allow U.S. citizens to once again travel freely to North Korea!

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To: President Donald J. Trump, cc: Secretary of State Marco Rubio

From: [Your Name]

We, the undersigned, call on President Trump to end the travel ban prohibiting U.S. passport holdersrom traveling to North Korea.

Since 2017, this unnecessary\and overly restrictive policy has prevented Korean Americansrom returning to their hometowns\and visiting their loved ones in North Korea,\and time is running out for many of them. The travel ban has also hindered humanitarian workersrom delivering urgently needed assistance,\and many othersrom engaging in meaningful educational\and cultural exchanges. These people-to-people exchanges are crucial to fostering trust\and understanding between two nations technically at war for more than 70 years. Ending the travel ban would also be a good-faith action\and signal that the United States wants to engage in diplomacy toward peace — which would benefit both Americans\and Koreans.

We call on President Trump to end this cruel policy\and to allow U.S. citizens to once again travel freely to North Korea!

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/lift-the-travel-ban-to-north-korea?source=direct_link&;

​[Source Actionnetwork.org]

The Nato imperialist alliance can be defeated if we build the worldwide Axis of Resistance!

Recognising that the ultimate cause of all the wars currently raging around the globe is imperialist monopoly-capitalism, the global economic system of domination\and superexploitation, we, the parties\and organisations of the World Anti-imperialist Platform, note the following:

- That during the last two years of Nato’s war against Russia via fascist proxies in Ukraine, many

weaknesses have been exposed in the imperialist camp.

- That nine months of imperialist war (a Nato war in all but name) against the people of the middle east

via zionist proxies in Palestine have only served to exacerbate these weaknesses\and expose them

further.

- That the war in Ukraine first exposed the economic weakness of the Nato imperialists, who tried to

destroy Russia’s economy with a sanctions war\and ended up by strengthening Russia’s economy\and

further damaging their own.

- That as a result, the economic crisis that the imperialist countries were trying to escape, has only been

exacerbated, with energy prices\and inflation rocketing, European industry becoming unviable,\and the

cost of living for\ordinary workers climbing steeply.

- That the war in Palestine has further exposed this weakness, revealing that despite almost unlimited

subsidies to the settler-colonial entity, its backers in the west are no longer able to keep the zionist

economy afloat.

- That the war in Ukraine has also exposed the military weakness of the imperialist countries, which

have for so long held out the threat of overwhelming force to compel the submission of those in the

oppressed\and developing world. In Ukraine today, despite Nato having spent a decade creating huge

and multiple lines of fortification in preparation for a confrontation with Russia,\and despite having

built up the Ukrainian army into what was essentially Nato’s largest fighting force, the western alliance

is being decisively beaten.

- That the war in Palestine has further exposed this weakness. Despite its backing by Nato bombers\and

aircraft carriers,\and despite being re-equipped daily with arms suppliesrom the west, the zionists are

being decisively beaten on every front of the war: in Gaza by the Palestinian resistance, in northern

Palestine\and the Golan Heights by Hezbollah, in the Red Sea by Ansarullah\and across occupied

Palestine by a combination of regional resistance forces, including those based in heroic Yemen\and

in occupied Iraq.

- That the death\and destruction that the zionists have wrought so mercilessly on innocent Palestinian

civilians, on their homes, schools, workplaces\and hospitals, have achieved nothing militarily – today

there is no area of the Gaza Strip that is safe for Israeli\or US soldiers.

- That both these wars have highlighted an extremely significant shift: that the west has lost its

technological dominance,\and with it the ability to enforce its will over the people of the planet.

- That the war in Ukraine has also exposed the systematic dishonesty of the imperialist camp. Unable to

win outright military victories, the imperialists have been using their global dominance of corporate

and social media to spin headlines\and build narratives about the war that are pure Hollywood, with

no real basis in reality.

- That during this process, the imperialists have been extremely careless with Ukrainian lives,

unconcerned with the hundreds of thousands of men who have been sent to their deaths for no military

purpose whatsoever. Thus, the absolute inhumanity of imperialism has been highlighted once again.

- That this duplicity\and inhumanity has been most glaringly laid bare in Palestine,\where real-time

footage of the ongoing Gaza genocide has been giving the lie to the assertions of western journalists

and politicians almost as soon as they are uttered.

- That while making statements about the need for peace\and negotiations, western leaders have been

shown to be sending unlimited supplies of arms\and finance to the zionist genocidaires. Meanwhile

regular massacres of civilians\and the systematic targeting of schools, universities\and hospitals hardly

get a mention in western media,\or are blatantly misrepresented. The genocide perpetrators are

routinely sympathised with\and presented as ‘democratic’ forces engaged in ‘self-defence’, while those

resisting oppression continue to be dehumanised\and described as ‘terrorists’.

- That this duplicity extends to the diplomatic sphere,\and that countries in the oppressed world are

increasingly coming to the conclusion that the imperialists cannot be negotiated with; that their

treaties are not worth the paper they are written on. That neither the Sunshine protocols signed up to

by the DPRK, nor the Oslo process signed up to by the Palestinians, nor the Minsk process signed up

to by the Russians were ever sincerely aimed at finding genuine\or peaceful solutions but were simply

a mechanism for tying the hands of one side while the imperialists themselves created ‘facts on the

ground’\and prepared for a renewal of military aggression.

- That as a result, many countries are coming to the realisation that there is simply no way to remain

saferom imperialist hostility while also remaining sovereign. This is the reason for the everaccelerating

rate at which the anti-imperialist countries are now strengthening their bilateral\and

multilateral relationships – a most welcome development for the oppressed people everywhere.

- That despite all their differences in ideology\and outlook, the anti-imperialist camp today is stronger

than it has been since the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. In economic\and technological terms, it is

stronger than it has ever been, while imperialism is weaker than it has ever been. Truly the balance of

forces are reaching a decisive tipping point in history.

- That the wars in Ukraine\and Palestine have also exposed the bankrupt\and rotten state of much of

what still calls itself the ‘communist’ movement. The war has provided us with a perfect litmus with

which to find out who is a genuine revolutionary\and who has become merely a tame ‘oppositionist’;

who retains fidelity to anti-imperialism in practise\and who merely hides behind plausible phrases as

a cover for their rotten, opportunist actions in support of imperialism.

- That genuine anti-imperialists have a duty to do everything possible to bring home to workers all the

lessons outlined above. We must help workers see that just as they have been lied to about Palestine

and zionism, so they have been lied to about Russia\and Ukrainian fascism, about China, the DPRK

and Iran.\and we must use this understanding to mobilise the masses everywhere to take an active

part in this, the most decisive struggle of our era – the struggle to destroy once\and for all the

imperialist global system.

- That failure in its wars in Europe\and west Asia will not hold the imperialists backrom their war drive,

but rather impel them on, desperate to save themselves\and their system by any means necessary. It

is in this light that we must understand the spread of Nato across the globe, the attempt to create an

east Asian wing of Nato with which to confront China\and the DPRK,\and the building up of proxy armies

by Nato on the continent of Latin America.

We therefore commit to the following:

1. That we will do everything in our power to help workers\and oppressed peoples understand that

we have a side in this war; that it is in every working person’s interest for Russia to defeat Nato,

and for Palestine\and the wider middle-eastern resistance to defeat zionism\and kick imperialism

out of the middle east; that these huge blows at our common enemy can only help accelerate the

shifting of class forces in the world\and create better conditions for the struggle against imperialist

domination\and exploitation everywhere else.

2. That we will do everything in our power to popularise the demand for a campaign of active noncooperation

with every aspect of the imperialist war machines, including proxy forces. We will work

to help workers realise that they have the power to compel their governments to withdraw support

for the illegal, aggressive warmongering of the zionist\and Nato extermination machines,\and to

help them\organise to use that power.

3. That we will do everything in our power to debunk the propaganda\and expose the war preparations

of the imperialists in relation to China\and the DPRK; to help working people understand that no

matter who fires the first shot, any war that breaks out in east Asia will have been provoked by

imperialist aggression; that therefore the masses must be on the side of China\and the DPRK\and

must work actively for their victory just as in every other theatre of war\where imperialism\and its

proxies are fighting to maintain\or impose their hegemony.

4. That we will do everything in our power to bring to the attention of the masses the essential inability

of the imperialist system to live in peace, highlighting the rapid\and aggressive expansion of Nato

across the world – in particular into east Asia\and Latin America –\and explaining that the

imperialists hope to recoverrom their economic crisis through means of warfare\and are

desperately searching for fresh troops to throw into the battlefield.

5. That we will work to spread awareness of the historical opportunity that is opening up to humanity,

and the duty we have of rising to the times; that we will inject the working masses with optimism

about their prospects for success\and the bright future awaiting them on the other side of victory.

Imperialism is in a deep crisis,\and its combined forces are weaker than at any time in their history.

Meanwhile, the combined forces of anti-imperialist resistance are stronger than they have ever been.

People everywhere are crying out for the chance to break the chains of imperialist enslavement,

impoverishment\and perpetual war; they are crying out for the chance to develop along a human-centred

and ultimately socialist path, freerom exploitation of all kinds.

The times are changing. All over the world, the balance of forces is shifting\and a revolutionary current is building.

Now is the time to redouble our efforts in building up the Axis of Resistance in every corner of the earth.

Disband Nato!

Death to imperialism!

No cooperation with imperialist war!

Victory to the resistance!

Alexander Tuboltsev ㅣSource: Al Mayadeen English

The Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership is very important for relations between Russia\and the DPRK\and significant for the development of a new, multipolar world\order.  

On June 19, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin paid a state visit to the DPRK. In Pyongyang, the Russian leader met with the President of the State Affairs of the DPRK\and the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea Kim Jong Un. The attention of the world's largest media was riveted to the negotiations between the heads of the two countries,\and for a good reason, as the 11-hour negotiations ended with the signing of the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

This treaty is very important for relations between Russia\and the DPRK\and significant for the development of a new, multipolar world\order.

In political science, there is such a method as diachronic analysis. This is the division of the development process of any phenomenon\or event into separate time stages\and their comparison with each other. Such analysis allows for a comprehensive examination of the evolution of certain political events.

This method of analysis can be applied to a step-by-step examination of the history of relations between Russia\and the DPRK. Understanding the nature of historical development is very important for understanding the current geopolitical situation.

Since the 1930s, the partisan units of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army waged a brave fight against the militaristic Japanese Empire, which occupied the territory of the Korean Peninsula. At the time, the future leader of the DPRK Kim Il Sung commanded the troops of Korean patriots\and fighters for national freedom, in particular during the famous Battle of Pochonbo in June 1937. The Soviet\union supported the Korean partisans in their courageous national liberation war.

In August 1945, Soviet soldiers\and Korean patriots jointly participated in operations to liberate the Korean Peninsularom the troops of militaristic Japan. In particular, the 88th Rifle Brigade of the Red Army included units formedrom Korean partisans.

Perhaps the best illustration of the first stage of development of diplomatic relations between the USSR\and the DPRK is the telegram of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin dated October 12, 1948, sent to the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the DPRK Kim Il Sung in response to his letter. In the telegram, Stalin formulated the basic principles of bilateral relations.

1. Establishment\and development of diplomatic\and economic relations between the USSR\and the DPRK

2. Firm support by the Soviet\union for the efforts of the DPRK government for national revival\and democratic development of Korea.

The foundation for a strong interstate friendship was laid then. These were fraternal relations between two nations that fought together on the battlefield against the militaristic Japanese Empire.

Already in the 1950s, when the people of the DPRK bravely defended themselvesrom American aggression, the Soviet\union provided assistance to Pyongyang in the heroic struggle for sovereignty.

Further relations between the USSR\and the DPRK were also built on the basis of a constructive\and time-tested partnership, which was confirmed in 1961 by the bilateral Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation,\and Mutual Assistance. Later, the USSR\and the DPRK actively cooperated in the political\and economic spheres, as well as in matters of international relations. Both the Soviet\union\and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea actively supported national liberation\and anti-colonial movements in Africa in the 20th century.

What conclusion can be drawnrom this brief excursion into the history of relations between the Soviet\union\and the DPRK? It was not just interstate interaction. It was a real friendship between two fraternal countries\and close neighbors.

The Russian Federation, as the legal successor to the USSR, has maintained friendly relations with the DPRK. Both Moscow\and Pyongyang are striving to develop them. This is also evidenced by the Treaty signed on June 19, 2024. Its points are very significant\and arouse great interest because this is a real positive breakthrough for military, diplomatic,\and economic cooperation between two neighbors.

One of the key points of the Treaty is Article 4. It states that if one of the parties is attacked, the other will immediately provide assistance. This means that we can talk about a formed defensive alliance between Russia\and the DPRK.

We can see how NATO is increasing its military presence in Eastern Europe (in Poland\and the Baltic countries), aggressively approaching the borders of Russia. At the same time, the United States is expanding its military activity in the Asia-Pacific region (including the South China Sea, the south of the Korean Peninsula,\and Oceania). A striking example of such actions can be the regular large-scale American military exercises near the borders of the DPRK.

The old system of international security has been destroyed,\and it was Western imperialism that destroyed it (which has existed for many centuries under various, including pseudo-democratic, forms). NATO invasions of Iraq, Libya,\and Afghanistan, the bombing of Yugoslavia, French neocolonialism in the Sahel\and New Caledonia, American support for the barbaric "Israeli" attacks on the Gaza Strip, US\and its satellite sanctions against Russia, Cuba, the DPRK, Iran, Venezuela... the examples listed are enough to understand the main thing: the system of American hegemony\and unipolar dictatorship does not bring stability\and security to the peoples of the world. This system brings only chaos\and new armed conflicts.

It is therefore not surprising that countries with an independent position are beginning to gradually build a new, more just system of international security. The new treaty between Russia\and the DPRK pays much attention to the desire of the two countries to create a multipolar world\order.\and the values ​​of justice, mutual respect,\and civilizational cooperation will form the basis of this new\order. It will be a system based on dialogue, not hegemony.

The treaty signed in Pyongyang is an extremely important milestone for the development of multipolarity in the Asian region\and throughout Eurasia. The movement toward multipolarity in this part of the globe is supported not only by Russia\and the DPRK but also by China, Laos, Vietnam,\and others.

The decline of American imperialism is a gradual\and inevitable process. The Western exploitative system, which\originated during the colonial expansion of the European monarchies of the late Middle Ages, is doomed to disappear. I am confident that the historic meeting between Vladimir Putin\and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang is an important step toward international liberationrom the destructive American unipolar despotism.

【Al mayadeen】

June 24, 2024

​As Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea on June 19, 2024, anti-liberal Russian Philosopher Alexander Dugin wrote an analysis praising the idea of Juche, which is the state ideology of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), stating that Russia needs to develop its own "Russian Juche."

In Korean, Juche (주체) means "sovereignty," "self-sufficiency." Dugin explained that Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, gave to Juche a meaning close to the ancient Korean indigenous cult of Cheongdogyo,[1] in which the "spiritual sovereignty" of the Korean community precedes the perceptions of the outside world. "In essence, it is about total civil sovereignty\and self-sufficiency," Dugin wrote. Furthermore, in Juche ethics, "low worship" is defined as when a person takes as a model something external to his people/nation (민족),\and to his culture. When "low worship" happens, it means that the person betrayed the "spiritual sovereignty of his soul"\and ceases to be a human being.

Hence, the Juche idea, promoting sovereignty, rejects Western hegemony, the collective West (which includes South Korea), capitalism,\and Western liberalism, setting the basis for a multipolar world, in which the Western-led unipolarity is defeated\and the "end of history" predicted by Francis Fukuyama is not consolidated.[2]

Dugin added that two countries in particular, North Korea\and Iran (which, as Dugin stated, "has proclaimed the primacy of the traditional values of the Shia religion\and Iranian culture over Western liberalism"), have resolutely embarked on the path of total struggle against Western domination\and defense of their sovereignty. According to the anti-liberal Russian philosopher, Russia also needs to shape its own ideology that should be its own "Russian\orthodox version of the wonderful doctrine of Juche," that is, a doctrinal formulation of Russia's civil identity\and self-sufficiency vis-à-vis the West.

Tower of the Juche idea in Pyongyang

Following are Dugin's articles on the Juche idea:

Dugin: "Civilization Is Juche"

In an article published on his Telegram account\and on Geopolitika.ru, Dugin mentioned the need for Russia to develop the Russian Juche:[3] "North Korea is a beautiful thing. Interestingly, the Korean word 'Juche' (주체) is a deeply philosophical term\and means 'subject'\or even the Heideggerian Dasein.[4] It has everything else included in it: independence, freedom, civil sovereignty.

"The history of Korea\and particularly its northern regions (the ancient Joseon under the divine Tangun) is a history of absolutely heavenly pride. Korea was able to stand up to the great China\and effectively resist repeated invasion attempts by the mighty Japan (it only succeeded in the southern regions,\where Koreans are softer\and weaker than in the north).

"That said, Korea has taken a lotrom China: writing, culture, Confucianism, Taoism\and the Chinese reinterpretation of a refined\and sophisticated Buddhism. While recognizing the greatness of Catai [a historical name for China], Korea has always maintained its unshakeable\and inviolable core,\and that is Juche.

"Only an ignorant\or despicable liberal, a slave of the West, can mock the 'Juche'.

"We need the same ideology i.e. the Russian Juche, the reign of the Russian Subject, the strength\and power of the Russian Dasein.

"Putin is going to Korea: it looks like the big is going to the small but proud. This is not condescension, but a dialogue between subjects.

"The Juche is moving towards the Juche.

"We can make an excellent point, because it should have been so long ago. Russia, if it is a subject, i.e. if it is Juche, should behave like this\and it does not matter whether we consider ourselves a Western civilization\or not. If it were the West, it would have to be the true, Byzantine,\orthodox, catechontic [from the Greek word katékhon] West.[5] Although it is better to consider ourselves simply Continent-Russia, Russian civilization.

"Civilization is first of all having the center in oneself, relying only on one's own strength\and mind. Civilization is a sovereign subject, over which there is only Heaven, no authority except that of it. That is why civilization is Juche."

Dugin: "The Juche Doctrine Radically Rejects Capitalism\and Western Hegemony"

Back in September 2023, when Putin\and Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Russia's Far East, Dugin wrote an article, titled "The Greatness of Juche, Rogue States\and Greater Humanity," explaining concept of the DPRK's Juche idea:[6] "Russia's rapprochement with the DPRK is a wonderful initiative. It was the meetings\and negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin\and Kim Jong-un, the hereditary head of the DPRK belonging to the sunny Kim dynasty, that caused a stir at the WEF [World Economic Forum]. The West commented: stop this rapprochement at all costs, ban any movement of Russia\and North Korea towards each other.

"But now, after a year\and a half of dramatic SMO [Special military operation], we can really only count on the help of those who have resolutely embarked on the path of total struggle against Western domination, who seriously defend their sovereignty\and rely on their sovereign worldview.\and these are today, first\and foremost, North Korea\and Iran.\and also Belarus, but we are one with them.

"It is no coincidence that they are all labelled 'rogue states' by Washington. Those who directly challenge the globalist liberals are immediately marginalized\and demonized. This is war\and its laws.

"For a long time, the Russian elite has remained under the complete control of the West – first of all mentally, culturally, ideologically. Hence the arrogant\and ironic attitude towards North Korea\and the ideas of Juche (which in Korean just means 'sovereignty', 'self-sufficiency', i.e. its Dasein). The same applies to Iran, which has proclaimed the primacy of the traditional values of the Shia religion\and Iranian culture over Western liberalism. Here too, civil sovereignty is at the center. The situation is the same with regard to Belarus, completely independent of the West,\and its true permanent leader. Lukashenko is the guarantor of his people's freedom\and independence,\and therefore an 'enemy of the West'.

"In general, the ideology of Juche (주체) is very interesting\and\original. This concept is not new, but is takenrom Korean Confucianism. The ancient meaning of the expression 'Juche' is 'a thing seenrom the side of the subject'. It is a direct analogue of the 'content of the intentional act' in Brentano-Husserl's phenomenology. It is not the thing that exists, but our representation of it. This is also close to Berkeley's thesis esse percipere est, but Kim Il Sung, the legendary founder of the new Korea, gave it a meaning close to the ancient Korean indigenous cult of Cheongdogyo,\where it is interpreted in the sense of the spiritual sovereignty of the Korean community preceding the perceptions of the outside world. That is, it is ethno-phenomenology, the notion of an intentional sacred act whose structures are predetermined by the specificity of the Korean mentality reflected in the things of the outside world. In essence, it is about total civil sovereignty\and self-sufficiency. Furthermore, the project of building an ideal Korean society, freerom the dark side of existence, which is overcome by synchronising the mental efforts of all Koreans, plays an important role in the Cheonggyo cult. The sovereignty in question is first\and foremost the sovereignty of the soul (Maeum is 마음 in Korean).

"The Juche doctrine simultaneously implies the total rejection of individual anthropology\and the triumph of holism (the Aristotelian thesis that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). The people are equated with a spiritual army (the doctrine of 'sungun', 선군).

"What is most frightening in Juche ethics is 'low worship'. This is the most important term, it means that a person takes as a model something external to his people (민족), to his culture. He betrays the spiritual sovereignty of his soul\and ceases to be a human being.

"The Juche doctrine radically rejects capitalism\and Western hegemony, despises comfort\and is ruthless against corruption.

"It was common to ridicule the ideas of Juche at the end of the Soviet period, when the liberal dissident intelligentsia itself had fallen into pure 'low cultism'. The result was obvious: the country, social justice, industry, independence\and dignity were lost. In other words, the Soviet intelligentsia simply joined the Western demonization of the ideological opponent, betraying its own community\and identity.

"Alas, this attitude towards the DPRK has continued even under Putin. As for Juche's homeland, we have continued to behave in a manner that 'kowtows' to the West. This is why we condemned North Korea's nuclear programme in the UN Security Council in 2016-2017. Over our heads. Once again, we followed the West\and the West was already preparing for war against us.

"Now, however, we have begun to correct ourselves. Putin's meeting with Kim Jong-un at the Vladivostok Economic Forum, Defense Minister Shoigu's earlier visit to Pyongyang,\and Lavrov's announcement of a large-scale rapprochement\and political-military partnership between Russia\and the DPRK are important signs that we are working on our mistakes.

"Let us be sober: those who reject Western hegemony are (for the West\and its vassals) a 'rogue state'. Those who serve it – even the openly Nazi terrorist regime in Ukraine – are 'democracy'\and 'human rights'.

"Today's Russia is also a 'rogue state' in the eyes of the West,\and the pro-Western (still 'low-life') elite in Russia agrees with this, but the decolonization of Russia\and the imperative of sovereignty require us to put an end to this. We need our own Russian\orthodox version of the wonderful doctrine of Juche, that is, a doctrinal formulation of our civil identity\and self-sufficiency. Yes, we are open to friends, but we live in our own world, built according to the laws of Russian intentionality. We are sovereign subjects of history, not puppets under external control.

"The West\and its claims to truth must ultimately be radically rejected.

"Like the heroic Juche people\and the wise\and steadfast Iranians. Like the gentle\and courageous Belarusians, true to their identity. The West must be denied the right to be a universal subject. It must be turned into an object of study. Like a butterfly\or a mushroom. Who a butterfly\or a mushroom considers a 'rogue state' is very curious, but of course it is not the highest form of knowledge\or a universal law. It is just an opinion.

"The West is a region, one of many provinces in the Great Humanity. There are other regions\and provinces in the Great Humanity.\and they have their own opinions on who is a 'rogue state'\and who is not. Whether it is ridiculous\and backward to be a supporter of Juche\or the Shia doctrine of wilayat-i faqih\or whether, on the contrary, it is honorable\and noble. Whether it is right to support the father of the Belarusian people\or whether it is old-fashioned. The decision is not only up to the collective West, but to Great Humanity,\and here opinions may differ widely. So it is with everything, with LGBT,\and gender politics,\and migration,\and human rights,\and capitalism,\and private property,\and civil society,\and AI.

"We need a profound decolonization of our consciousness.

"We need our own sovereign worldview. We have rebelled against Western domination, but in many ways we are still a colony. A mental colony.

"We should not hesitate to learnrom those who have already travelled a great distance along the heroic path of this rebellion.

"Kim Jong-un, welcome.

"The Far East will now be a land of freedom."

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[1] Britannica.com/topic/Chondogyo

[2] After the fall of the Soviet\union, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote the book "The End of History\and the Last Man," predicting that liberal democracy will prevail as a permanent\order. Fukuyama translated the "end of history" as the "end of the ideological evolution of mankind\and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." Dugin opines that the "end of history" has not yet materialized, since the competition with the West is not over.

[3] Geopolitika.ru/en/article/russian-juche, June 19, 2024.

[4] At the Moscow's Conference on Multipolarity in 2023, Spanish academic Francisco Javier De Lara explained the concept of "Dasein" as follows: "It was introduced by Heidegger\and is defined as the capacity of being for destruction, development\and manifestation in people\and their communities. What does it mean? It means that each nation is endowed with unique features that deriverom its natural cultural environment – this is how a society is shaped." Geopolitika.ru/en/article/dasein-and-multipolarity, April 29, 2023. See also: "Alexander Dugin\and the existential analytic of Russian Dasein," by Michael Millerman, February 20, 2022.

[5] The media outlet Katehon, affiliated to Dugin, explained: "Our idea is to create an alternative point of view, an alternative identity, which we are calling Katehon, Continentalism\or Eurasia. We can spin it as being left, right, secular\or religious. We can associate it with Germany\or Russia... Europe is a battleground: On one side it is Katehon\and on the other is the antichrist." Katehon.com/en/1310-europe-on-the-eve-of-the-civil-war.html. According to Dugin, Russia as the Katechon has as a mission to rescue the worldrom the Antichrist. See also: Criticallegalthinking.com/2018/07/03/carl-schmitt-katechon/

[6] Geopolitika.ru/en/article/greatness-juche-rogue-states-and-greater-humanity, September 9, 2023.

By Dr. Hyun Hwan Kim(Director of the Institute for the Study of Juche Idea In USA)

President Kim Il-sung was born on April 15, 1912, at Mangyongdae in Pyongyang, North Korea. The birth of President Kim Il-sung marked the beginning of a new era in human history, dividing it into pre-\and post-Juche Era."

Juche Idea establisher by President Kim Il-sung provides a guiding principle for humanity, outlining how we should live. It aims to realize the intrinsic human attribute of independence by presenting a guiding philosophy for how humanity should live. It emphasizes freedomrom any constraints\and dependencies, living autonomously as masters of both the world\and our destinies. President Kim Il-sung elucidated that the purpose\and fulfillment of human life lie in realizing\and advancing this attribute of independence, which is the essence of social beings. For him the process of realizing the independence of the people\and advancing their independence is, in essence, the course of history.

President Kim Il-sung regarded the people as the heaven. He always lived among the people, dedicating his entire life for the happiness of the people. Reflecting on his life fills one with boundless reverence, owing to his deep love for the people. His greatness lies in esteeming the people as highly as the heaven, immersing himself among them,\and sacrificing his life for their sake. It is within this idea of esteeming the people as highly as the heaven that the Juche Idea was born.

President Kim Il-sung expressed his idea towards the people as follows:

“Esteeming the people as highly as the heaven – this was my belief\and guiding principle. I believe in the principle of the people as the masters of revolution\and construction,\and the Juche principle of relying on their strength. This is my most revered political faith, which has guided me to dedicate my entire life for the people."

In the idea of esteeming the people as highly as the heaven, President Kim Il-sung discovered the truth of the Juche Idea. At the young age of 18, in June 1930, during a public meeting of leaders of anti-Japanese youth\organizations held in Karuizawa, China, he elucidated the principles of the Juche Idea\and declared the self-reliant line of the Korean revolution. This marked the historic event of the founding of the Juche Idea\and the birth of the revolutionary line of self-reliance. At the Karuizawa meeting, President Kim delivered his famous speech titled "The Course of the Korean Revolution." In this speech, the profound essence of the new guiding idea, fundamentally distinctrom past ideologies\and theories of revolution, was articulated. President Kim emphasized the following points in this historic speech,

"I acknowledge the firm stance\and attitude that the Korean people are the masters of the Korean revolution\and that the revolution must be carried out according to the specific conditions of Korea by the strength of the Korean people themselves.”

This perspective\and attitude, holding high awareness of the Korean people as the masters of the Korean revolution\and performing the revolution according to the concrete conditions of Korea by their own strength, is fundamentally distinctrom preceding progressive theories of revolution. It represents a worldview\and attitude centered on the people."

President Kim's Juche Idea, which was formed on the basis of trust in the Korean nation\and the Korean people since his youth, departedrom the traditional mindset that viewed the people as ignorant\and backward subjects of enlightenment. Instead, he saw the people as the teachers, the masters of revolution,\and the fundamental driving force behind the revolution.

"Enter into the midst of the people!” This slogan became the guiding principle that permeated President Kim's entire life. He truly embodied the qualities\and mindset of the people, seeing them as the teachers, the masters of revolution,\and the primary driving force behind it. President Kim emphasized that as a leader, he entered into the midst of the people, directly engaging with their upbringing, breath, gaze, expressions, speech, gestures,\and body language, learning muchrom them through his own eyes, ears,\and hands.

He emphasized that within the people lie philosophy, literature,\and political economy. President Kim believed that entering into the midst of the people is like taking a tonic, while not doing so is like ingesting poison. He summed up his philosophy of life with the following words:"

"I began revolutionary activities by entering into the midst of the people,\and even today, I continue the revolution by entering into their midst. Furthermore, I sum up my life by entering into the midst of the people."

 Today, the Party\and government of North Korea, guided by the reverence shown by President Kim Il-sung\and Chairman Kim Jong-il towards the people as highly as the heaven, dedicate themselves to fulfilling all endeavors for the benefit of the people, strictly upholding\and realizing the people's autonomous demands\and interests. They prioritize the demands\and interests of the people, making them the cornerstone of party policies\and state affairs,\and presenting the happiness\and harmony of the people as the absolute criterion for evaluating the strength of the nation. In North Korea, all manner of societal maladies\and tendencies, including feudalism, bureaucracy,\and corrupt practices, are regarded as obstacles to the realization of people-centered politics,\and they are uprooted to thoroughly protect\and advocate for the rights of the people.

 Secretary Kim Jong-un has emphasized the following,

“Aligning all party\and state affairs with dedicated service to the people is a fundamental requirement of people-centered politics.”

Secretary Kim Jong-un emphasized that the people are the roots of the party\and the state,\and the existence\and development of the party\and the state are determined by the well-being\and happiness of the people. He stressed that the party, the government,\and the economy\and culture all exist for the sake of the people, aiming to provide them with civilized\and happy lives. Secretary Kim Jong-un, with a noble worldview that believes there is nothing more to desire even if one becomes as insignificant as a grain of sand scattered on the ground for the sake of the people,\and with a determination that endures any suffering for the sake of the people, continues to tread the path of 'serving the people' tirelessly. He elucidated that the politics of North Korea should be resolutely people-centered, serving the people's interests\and needs at all times."

Thus, the Juche Idea established by President Kim Il-sung has been inherited\and developed into the spirit of 'people-first' politics by Secretary Kim Jong-un. In Korea, there is nothing more valuable than the people, the fundamental essence of the country,\and there is no sacred principle higher than the demands\and interests of the people. This resolute subjective perspective is being realized in North Korea.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which has practiced the idea of Juche, has named April 15, 1912, the birthdate of President Kim Il Sung, as the "Day of the Sun"\and began using the "Juche calendar," designating 1912 as the first year of Juche. As you may know, the Dangun Era (Dangi) is a system of dating that startsrom the founding of Gojoseon in Pyongyang by our ancestor, Dangun Wanggeom, in 2333 BC. Therefore, this year, 2024, corresponds to the Dangi year 4357 (2024 + 2333). The Gregorian calendar (AD) is a dating system used in Western culture, which marks this year as AD 2024. The abbreviation AD stands for Anno Domini, which means "in the year of the Lord" in Latin, referring to the year of Jesus Christ's birth. BC, on the other hand, stands for Before Christ, indicating years before the birth of Christ.

To make the "Juche calendar" more understandable to foreigners, the year of President Kim Il Sung's birth, 1912, is taken as the starting point. Following this, the years are designated as AJ (Anno Juche, meaning "in the year of Juche") for years after Juche\and BJ (Before Juche) for years before Juche. Therefore, this year, 2024, corresponds to the Juche calendar as the 113th year of Juche (2024 - 1912 + 1),\or AJ 113. The year of the annexation of Korea by Japan, 1910, would be designated as BJ 2 (1912 - 1910) in the Juche calendar.

With the people-centered idea of Juche, the brave Korean people pioneered the "Juche era," truly striving to construct a world of genuine independence, equality,\and peaceful justice on Earth. In an unsettling\and chaotic era dominated by imperialist forces of aggression\and exploitation, the North Korean people, in\order to safeguard their independence\and socialism,\and to uphold the sacred principles of revolution, fought against the enemies of humanity, giving unimaginable sacrifices of blood\and sweat. Representing justice most clearly in the world\and steadfastly defending the independence of the people, the North Korean people have long overwhelmed\and punished the imperialist forces of aggression\and plunder, transforming the world's misguided political landscape. North Korea has rectified the unfair international\order created by imperialism\and the misguided behaviors that have acquiesced to it, leading the struggle to construct a genuine human society, a just society\where the independence\and equality of all countries\and peoples are guaranteed, based on trust\and mutual respect,\and\where cooperation among nations is fostered.

In the future, not only the North Korean people but also dedicated struggles of peoplerom all corners of the world will propel humanity forward vigorously on the path of independence\and socialism. Humanity will march forward to establish a true era of independence, the era of Juche, on this Earth through relentless struggles. Before long, humanity will widely adopt the Juche calendar (AJ, BJ) instead of the Gregorian calendar (AD, BC). That day is not far off.

President Kim Il Sung, founding father of socialist Korea, was born in April 1912\and the Korean people’s first genuine armed group was also founded in April 1932.

And the President was awarded the title of DPRK Generalissimo for his exploits for the country\and people in April 1992.

In April 1993, the great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il was elected chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission in accordance with the unanimous will of all the Korean people\and in April 2012, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un was elected first chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission.

As seen above, April is a special month of many significant days for the Korean people.

Among the days is the historic one when Kim Jong Un was elected first secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea.

He was elected first secretary of the WPK at its Fourth Conference on April 11 2012.

From the day the Party could develop into the one firmly carrying forward its character\and nature\and successfully fulfil the key tasks for strengthening itself as a whole in the new era.

At the beginning of the new century of the Juche era, Kim Jong Un set forth the programme of modelling the whole Party on Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism, thus firmly establishing the political\and ideological backbone for preserving its revolutionary character forever. He then said it is the only justification for its existence\and its best index\and eternal nature that it is a party of the people.

He further developed the WPK into a powerful political General Staff by improving all aspects of its work in a fresh way as required by the new era.

The five-point Party-building line in the new era constitutes an eternal Party-building programme which indicates the path for developing the WPK into a promising party\and a powerful ideological\and theoretical weapon which provided a sure guarantee for victoriously accelerating the building of socialism\and communism by remarkably enhancing its leadership role.

Kim Jong Un turned the WPK into a people's party with its root taken deep among the masses of the people, a genuine motherly party, by dint of the people-first politics.

All his thoughts\and activities begin with the word people.

Therefore, the WPK\and the DPRK government initiate in succession\and unconditionally carry out the projects to fulfil the cherished desire for the people in spite of extreme difficulties.

Under the wise leadership of the WPK, magnificent streets, socialist ideal villages, many factories conducive to improving the people’s living standards\and cultural\and leisure activity centres have sprung up in the DPRK.

The Kangdong Greenhouse Complex, which was recently completed\and inaugurated, is the epitome of Kim Jong Un’s love for the people\and devoted service for them.

By becoming the initiator, operator\and owner of the construction of the complex, he clearly indicated the scheme\and ways to complete the project in the shortest possible period, rangingrom the\selection of the site to the formation of construction force\and the supply of materials,\and led the construction step by step.

He examined more than 300 mock-ups, including the master plan for the construction of the complex\and its bird’s-eye-view design,\and over 3 280 technical designs.

The Korean people celebrate every year the historic day when he was elected first secretary of the WPK as they know that the Korean revolution for realizing the independence of the masses of the people has always advanced successfully since the day.

 

March 27, 2024

Food prices are soaring in the world market\and many countries are now facing severe famine, which constitutes a serious problem for the international community.

Last year, rice price hit a record high in 15 years in the international market.\and the World Food Programme said in its report in May last year that about 345 million people in 82 countries are suffering serious food shortage.

It is an undeniable fact that more frequent extreme weather conditions\and the steady decrease of agricultural land due to various factors exert an adverse impact on food production.   

But a more important contributor to the worsening food crisis is the despicable conduct of the US\and the West which abuse food problem as a weapon for securing profits\and maintaining hegemony.

It has been disclosed that most of the grains carried out of Eastern Europe for humanitarian need in recent years fell into the hands of Western countries. Only five percent of them were delivered to the poor countries. Of them, the share for Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan\and the like that are suffering the most serious starvation reportedly accounts for only three percent.  

It is none other than the Western businesses specializing in making fabulous profits with resale of food that massively shipped grains into their countries. It suggests that they bought a large quantity of grains for speculation in food.

A Western official asserted that whether the grains were supplied to the poor countries\or not has no meaning because the fact that that much grains are in the market helps lower the food prices. It is a preposterous sophistry.  

Now, American food transaction businesses including Archer Daniels Midland\and Du Pont have most of world food transactions in the grains market in their hands\and play tricks to rake in enormous profits, causing a sharp rise in food prices worldwide\and creating imbalance between the supply\and consumption of food.

The huge rise in food prices in the world farm produce market in 2009 was also manipulated by the American financial businesses. At that time, the US giant investment banks Goldman Sachs\and Morgan Stanley won the contract on transactions of over 40 million tons of maize at the Chicago Chamber of Commerce\and made excessive profits by manipulating prices of agricultural products.  Accounting for 99% of the total food transactions at the chamber of commerce, it was literally an act of monopolization. In 2010, too, American conglomerates like Rogers caused fluctuations in food prices by signing contracts for dealing in farm produce competitively. Such examples are by no means uncommon.

The US’ tricks to hold sway over the transactions of food are not only aimed at seeking profits.

The American high-ranking politicians argue that the man who controls oil can control all countries\and he who controls food can control all people\and that food is a kind of weapon\and it can bring many countries under the US control. 

Their arguments clearly prove what the ultimate aim of the US aggravating food crisis is.

The US provokes disputes\and armed conflicts in several countries\and regions of the world to hinder food production\and trade\and worsen starvation\and checks the balanced food supply in the world by taking a variety of measures including economic blockade in a bid to use food as a weapon for realizing its hegemonic ambition. It is the same old trick of the imperialists that they abuse food crisis to realize their ambition for domination.   

Russia criticized Western countries for destroying the world food security by resorting to every method such as speculations in the markets\and a Chinese media outlet asserted that the sanctions\and protectionist policy of the US\and the West are the main cause of the great confusion in the world food supply chains\and the skyrocketing food prices.

Reality clearly reveals that the root cause of worsening food crisis is neither natural disasters nor environmental destruction, but the unlimited greed\and high-handedness of the US\and the Western forces.

【THE PYONGYANG TIMES】

FAO/Stefanie Glinski - A mother giving sorghum porridge to her children. A growing number of children in South Sudan’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal\and Warrap have only one meal per day. ( UN NEWS)

March 5 marks the 78th anniversary of the promulgation of the Law on Agrarian Reform.

Peasants made up the overwhelming majority of the population in Korea when it was liberated.

But before liberation, they had to live as farmhands  for generations as they did not have even a patch of land of their own,\and though they toiled on farms, they were compelled to starve their children for lack of grains. As a result, a large number of people left their home villages for remote foreign lands in search of livelihood.

It was a centuries-old desire of the Korean peasants to do farming on their own land to their heart’s content.

Making land reform was imperative to fulfil their desire.

Only then could the peasants be freedrom the exploitation\and subordination of feudal land ownership\and inspired to turn out in the building of a new Korea, the backward rural economy be developed\and the development of the national economy as a whole be promoted.

Consequently, solving the land problem arose as the most urgent task for liberated Korea at that time.

Though he was busy building a new country after liberation, General Kim Il Sung listened to all the simple opinions of peasants to complete every clause of the Law on Agrarian Reform.

He finally promulgated the law on March 5 1946.

The agrarian reform in Korea was a great event which enabled the peasants to become eternal owners of land\and rooted out the feudal relations of land ownership, the source of exploitation\and oppression.

Thanks to General Kim Il Sung, they became masters of land, the countryside\and the country\and worked hard to increase crop yields.

As a result, they reaped a bumper harvest in the first year after liberation with a great change being brought about in their life.

For the Korean people, land was not simply the soil to plant crops\or tread on, but the cradle of happy life,\and every handful of earth meant their treasure.

They headed for Pyongyang with oxcarts loaded with the rice bags to be donated to the country out of patriotism in the days of nation building, continued to farm the land to send grains to the combatants of the Korean People’s Army in the front during the grim Fatherland Liberation War\and successfully carried out the tasks of agricultural cooperativization for the socialist transformation of agriculture after the war.

During the Arduous March when the DPRK was undergoing hardship, small patches of paddy\and non-paddy fields were rezoned into standardized shapes\and sizes\and thus the land of the country was given a total facelift,\and gravity-fed waterways were built in different parts of the country under the guidance of Chairman Kim Jong Il.

Today, the Korean agricultural workers are ushering in another new era of development of the socialist countryside under the leadership of General Secretary Kim Jong Un.

According to the programme of the Workers' Party of Korea for rural development, distinctive\and wonderful modern houses have been built to suit the regional characteristics all across the countryside, agricultural production put on a scientific basis at a higher level\and a large number of farm machines produced every year\and sent to farms across the country to promote the comprehensive mechanization of agricultural work.

On March 5 2020, the 74th anniversary of the promulgation of the agrarian reform law, Kim Jong Un, president of the State Affairs of the DPRK, issued an\order to carry out the construction project of the Hwangju Kindung Waterway, with the result that the centuries-old desire of farmers in Hwangju Kindung Plain for water was fulfilled,\and last year witnessed the restoration of the irrigation system of the country.

All the agricultural workers of the DPRK are determined to bring earlier a better tomorrow\and a more prosperous future as they satisfy their age-old desires under the guidance of the great leader.

2024.03.05

(Pyongyang Times)

March 5 marks the 78th anniversary of the promulgation of the Law on Agrarian Reform,

 fulfilling peasants' centuries-old desires. 

The Ryuwon Footwear Factory is now engaged in the production of trainers for spring\and autumn to be supplied to new pupils of primary schools.

“The top priority policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea\and the DPRK is always the one for rising generations. Now, we put in special effort to improve the quality of footwear in\order to the tasks set forth at the Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the WPK which stressed again the need to increase the sense of responsibility in implementing the socialist policy for schoolchildren,” said Son Hyon Sok, chief engineer of the factory.

Son said that it is important in raising the quality of footwear to cut out their parts well.

Especially, it is more so for those for primary schoolchildren as they have various parts to suit their psychology.

The factory newly installed a CNC automatic cutting machine\and established the process for cutting parts on the basis of it.

Thus, the accuracy of the cut parts is being improved.

It is also important in raising the quality of products to restore the\original performance of all facilities so that they can fully display their performance.

This year the factory started production after perfecting equipment repair, for example, the restoration of the\original performance of the toe-part lasting machine, four-way press\and other hydraulic machines of the shoemaking line.

Needle workers pasted photos of their children\or siblings on their sewing machines\and devote all their sincerity to stitching footwear with the mind of making footwear for their own relatives.

 “We are striving to raise the qualitative level of footwear for schoolchildren to that of the first-class shoes by strictly meeting all technical requirements,” says Ri Man Song, head of the shoemaking workshop.

Meanwhile, the factory is putting efforts into developing new kinds of trainers.

It newly designed the shapes of the shoetree\and sole of trainers for men\and women\and introduced a CNC four-spindle processing machine to make footwear moulds at will\and trained skilled hands specializing in designing soles.

This year alone, the factory has developed dozens of kinds of trainers, which are very popular.

Among them are the trainers for young people which give them sense of lightness\and activity by heightening the contrast in colour at their outer rims\and soles to suit their psychology\and seasonal characters, those for adults which improved in terms of wear\and cold resistance of sole\and those for children whose outer rims are made of materials of various colours to suit their minds. All of them fully satisfy the demands of customers.

The factory also produces sports shoes for different sports like football, boxing, basketball, tennis, volleyball\and table tennis.

【THE PYONGYANG TIMES】

​Even though there had been several agreed peace-making statements of inter-Korean Summits, but none of those peaceful agreements has been implemented by the intervening control of the US in the Southern part. 

By the Armistice of July 27, 1953 the three-year hot war in Korea was stopped. Under the Ceasefire, the US-South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty was made on October 1, 1953. This treaty has been the legitimate reason for  the US military not to withdraw\and stayed in South over 70 years "to defend South Korearom threats of the North Korean"  

Since the election of new president Yoon Suk Yeol in 2022, the massive joint war games of the US\and S. Korea in the land, air\and sea have have heightened military tensions unprecedented measures. In this context the North Korea has decided  not to consider the S. Koran regime as a part of compatriot but hostile nation. 

This decision of North Korea has been misused as a "war-mongering" by most of the media in the US\and South Korea.

In such overwhelmingly smear-tactical\and manufactured misleading interpretation, Mr. Gregory Elich has featured a highly contextual\and objective interpretation of the changed stance of the North Korean Policy. 

Hope this article will enable us to understand the new position of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

                                                                                                                                                           --rom Rev. Yun's Face book.

Is a New Korean War in the Offing? 

FEBRUARY 5, 2024 

BY GREGORY ELICH FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Photograph Source: Cheongwadae / Blue House – KGOL Type 1 

In recent days, U.S. media have been proclaiming that North Korea plans to initiate military action against its neighbor to the south. An article by Robert L. Carlin\and Siegfried S. Hecker, neither previously prone to making wild assertions, created quite a splash\and set off a chain reaction of media fear-mongering. In Carlin’s\and Hecker’s assessment, “[W]e believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” They add that if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is convinced that engagement with the United States is not possible, then “his recent words\and actions point toward the prospects of a military solution using [his nuclear] arsenal.” [1]

U.S. officials have stated that while they do not see “an imminent risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim Jong Un “could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility.” [2] How do these sensationalist claims stack up against the evidence?

It is no secret that lately, the stance of the United States\and South Korea has hardened against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea). Since the centerpiece for suggesting that war may be on the horizon is Kim’s speech at the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, its content is worth examining in some detail. [3] What strikes one when reading the text is that mainstream media have taken quotes out of context\and ignored much of the content of Kim’s speech, creating an impression of unprovoked belligerence.

Also generally absentrom media reporting is the speech’s relationship to the backdrop of events since the far-right Yoon Suk Yeol became president of South Korea in May 2022. Yoon came into office determined to smash every vestige of the improved inter-Korean environment established during his predecessor’s term. Instead, Yoon prioritized making South Korea a subordinate partner in the Biden administration’s hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy.

To fully understand Kim Jong Un’s speech, one must also consider the nature of the Biden administration’s rapid military escalation in the Asia-Pacific. The United States conducts a virtually nonstop series of military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, practicing the bombing\and invasion of that nation. One South Korean analyst has counted 42 joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises conducted in 2023 alone, along with ten more involving Japan. [4] Those totals do not include exercises that the U.S.\and South Korea engaged in outside of Northeast Asia, such as Exercise Talisman Sabre in Australia\and Exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand. Moreover, U.S. actions on the Korean Peninsula must also be situated within the broader geopolitical framework of its hostility towards China.

Last year, in an act of overt intimidation, the United States conducted seven exercises with nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula. [5] Additional flights involved the B-1 bomber, which the U.S. Air Force says “can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision\and non-precision weapons.” [6] Through its actions, the United States sends far more provocative messages than anything that could be honestly construed in Kim’s speech. But then, we are led to see nothing amiss in such aggressive behaviorrom the United States. Nevertheless, the threat is real\and unmistakablerom the targeted nation’s perspective.

It also has not gone unnoticed in Pyongyang that U.S.\and South Korean military forces regularly conduct training exercises to practice assassinating Kim Jong Un\and other North Korean officials. [7] Just this month, U.S. Green Berets\and soldiersrom South Korea’s Special Warfare Command completed training focused on the targeted killing of North Korean individuals. [8] The Biden administration avers that it harbors no hostile intent toward the DPRK, but its actions say otherwise, loud\and clear.

North Korea, with a GDP that the United Nations ranks just behind that of Congo\and Laos, is considered such a danger that the U.S. must confront it with substantial military might. An inconvenient question that is never asked is why the DPRK is singled out for punishment\and threats when the other nuclear non-members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – each armed with ballistic missiles — are not. What distinguishes North Korearom India, Pakistan,\and Israel? How is it that North Korea is regarded as a threat to peace but not Israel, notwithstanding mounting evidence to the contrary? The essential distinction is that North Korea is the only one of the four that is not a U.S. ally; moreover, one which the U.S. wishes to retain the ability to bomb, whether\or not it ever exercises the option to do so.

It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of propaganda that the United States, with its record of multiple wars, bombings,\and drone assassinations in recent decades, can convince so many that the DPRK, which has done none of these things during the same period, is a danger to international peace\and stability. Yet, such towering hypocrisy goes largely unnoticed. It would appear that there is no principle involved in targeting only North Korea\and not the other nuclear-armed non-members of the NPT — unless outrage over a small nation following an independent path being able to defend itself can be regarded as a principle.

Predictably, Washington think tank analysts\and media commentators are throwing more heat than light on the subject of Kim’s pronouncements,\and they are always ready with a cliché at hand. Some, like Bruce W. Bennett of RAND Corporation, let their imagination run wild, conjuring bizarre absurdities. Bennett suggests that armed with more nuclear weapons in the years ahead, North Korea “could threaten one\or more U.S. cities with nuclear attack if the United States does not repeal its sanctions against North Korea.”\or perhaps, he suggests, the DPRK could threaten the U.S. with a\limited nuclear attack “unless it abandons its alliance with [South Korea]”\or “disengagerom Ukraine.” As for South Korea, Bennett warns that Kim might insist that it “pay him $100 billion per year\and permanently discontinue producing K-pop…” [9] This is what passes as expert analysis in Washington.

The military section of Kim’s speech was at root defensive, pointing out that North Korea’s “security environment has been steadily deteriorated”\and that if it wants to take “the road of independent development,” it must be fully prepared to defend itself. Kim quotes specific threats made by U.S.\and South Korean leaders to emphasize his awareness that his nation is in the crosshairs.

At one point in his speech, Kim suggested that the constitution could specify “the issue of completely occupying, subjugating\and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea, the formal name for South Korea]\and annex it…in case war breaks out…” He added, “There is no reason to opt for war,\and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality facing us, we will never try to avoid it.” Such a war, he warned, “will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea\and put an end to its existence”\and “inflict an unimaginably crushing calamity\and defeat upon the U.S.” Kim continues, “If the enemies ignite a war, our Republic will resolutely punish the enemies by mobilizing all its military forces including nuclear weapons.” Harsh language, indeed, intended to remind the war hawks in Washington\and Seoul not to imagine that their nations are invulnerable if they attack the DPRK. Note also the conditional phrasing, which tends to get downplayed in Western media.

Even less attention is paid to more direct clarifying language, such as Kim’s statement that the DPRK’s military is for “legitimate self-defense”\and “not a means of preemptive attack for realizing unilateral reunification by force of arms.”\and: “Explicitly speaking, we will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us.”

It was entirely predictable that Western media would put the worst spin on Kim’s blunt language that mirrored earlier South Korean pronouncements. The month before Kim’s speech, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik warned, “North Korea has only two choices – peace\or destruction. If North Korea makes reckless actions that harm peace, only a hell of destruction awaits them.” [10] A few days later, Yoon\ordered his military to launch an “immediate\and overwhelming response” to any provocation by the DPRK. [11] Yoon\and South Korean military officials use the term ‘provocation’ so loosely as to encompass almost any action the DPRK takes that they do not like, including what is normal behavior for other nations –\or for South Korea itself, for that matter. South Korean\and North Korean rhetoric identifying each other as enemies\and destruction in the event of war differ in that the former preceded the latter. By ignoring the fact that North Korea is reacting to prior South Korean statements, mainstream media can portray Kim’s language as unprovoked.

Last December, Yoon heightened the risk of conflict when he visited an infantry division near the border\and gave them an\order: “In case of provocations, I ask you to immediately retaliate in response\and report it later.” [12] Vague in defining neither “provocation” nor the appropriate response level\and delegating to lower-level commanders to decide those questions, this formula potentially can transform a minor clash of arms into a conflict of wider impact.

Kim’s statements are presented in Western media as tantamount to a plan to start a war. Earlier statements of a similar nature by the Yoon administration that created an acrimonious atmosphere are rendered invisible\or uncontroversial. It is fair to say that given North Korea’s longstanding practice of responding in kind, Kim may have adopted more restrained phrasing without South Korean officials setting the tone.

Western media have raised concerns over Kim’s labeling of South Korea as a “principal enemy.” We are not reminded that nearly one year before, South Korea had re-designated the DPRK as “our enemy” in its Defense White Paper. [13]Under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, the defense paper\dropped the reference to North Korea as an enemy. [14]The general pattern has been for liberal presidents to shun that tag in the interests of inter-Korean relations\and for conservative presidents to embrace it as one element in their project to undo progress. Yoon himself frequently refers to North Korea as the enemy,\and his administration’s National Security Strategy document describes the Kill Chain system, which is designed to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea. [15] In omitting such details, cause\and effect are inverted, reinforcing the media-constructed\orientalist image of an irrational leader at the helm of the DPRK, prone to unpredictable statements\and rash acts.

Patience has run thin in Pyongyang, as Biden’s trilateral alliance with South Korea\and Japan, “buoyed with war fever,” as Kim put it, sharply escalates military tensions in the region. In a sharp reversal, North Korea has abandoned its longstanding policy of seeking improved inter-Korean relations\and working toward peaceful reunification. Any headway achieved in the past has quickly been undone in South Korea whenever the conservative party came to power. Still, Yoon has taken matters further than the norm, not only willfully dynamiting inter-Korean relations but also deliberately raising the risk of military conflict. Inter-Korean relations have reached such a nadir under Yoon that the DPRK sees no hope of progress in the current circumstances. The North Koreans are not wrong in that perception.

Sadly, in a clear signal of its exasperation with Yoon, North Korea demolished the Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang,\and all governmental bodies responsible for reunification planning\and projects were shut down. The latter steps are not inherently irreversible, however. But as long as Yoon remains in power, there is no conceivable possibility of progress on reunification. Yoon has slammed the door shut on inter-Korean relations.

One would never know itrom Western reports, but more than two-thirds of Kim’s speech focused on economic development. “The supreme task,” Kim announced, “is to stabilize\and improve the people’s living as early as possible.” Peace is an essential prerequisite for the realization of that goal. North Koreans are well aware of American\and South Korean military capabilities,\and a war would not only wipe out new economic projects but most of the existing infrastructure as well.

Immense damage has been done to the DPRK’s economy by sanctions designed to target the entire population\and inflict as much suffering as possible. [16] The period when North Korea closed its border with China in response to the COVID-19 pandemic added to economic challenges. Reversing direction is imperative. In his speech, Kim called for “a radical turn in the economic construction\and improvement of the people’s living standard”\and said that progress is being made “despite unprecedented trials.” Kim enumerated industrial, power, housing,\and other ongoing projects.

Kim admitted there have been internal challenges in economic development. “It is a reality that the Party\and the government yet fail to meet even the simple demand of the people in life…” In particular, regional\and urban-rural economic imbalances have plagued the North Korean economy for decades. “At present,” Kim continued, “there is a great disparity of living standards between the capital city\and provinces\and between towns\and the countryside.” Kim acknowledged that these issues have not been adequately addressed in the past, but it “is an immediate task” to do so now.

Kim took the occasion to officially unveil the launch of the Regional Development 20×10 Policy. This ambitious plan calls for substantially raising material\and cultural standards in twenty counties over the next ten years, including constructing regional industrial factories\and establishing advanced educational institutions. In particular, emphasis is to be given to scientific\and technological development. The aim is to even out regional imbalances\and to accelerate overall development.

None of this can be achieved if the U.S.\and South Korea are showering the DPRK with high explosives,\and the Regional 20×10 Policy makes nonsense of Western scaremongering that Kim has decided to go to war. As usual, though, when it comes to reporting on North Korea, assertion substitutes for evidence,\and we can expect Washington think tanks, U.S. media, military contractors,\and the Biden administration to capitalize on the manufactured image of a war-mad Kim Jong Un to accelerate the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, aimed against the DPRK\and the People’s Republic of China. For his part, Yoon can be expected to amplify military tensions on the Korean Peninsula\and sharpen his war on South Korean progressives. What is not in the cards is militarism abating in the foreseeable future.

Notes.

[1] Robert L. Carlin\and Siegfried S. Hecker, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War,” 38 North, January 11, 2024.

[2] Edward Wong\and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. is Watching North Korea for Signs of Lethal Military Action,” New York Times, January 25, 2024.

[3] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech at 10th Session of the 14th SPA,” KCNA, January 16, 2024.

[4] http://www.minplusnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=14494

[5] Chae Yun-hwan, “S. Korea, U.S. Stage Joint Air Drills with B-52H Bombers Over the Yellow Sea,” Yonhap, November 15, 2023.

[6] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104500/b-1b-lancer/

[7] Jeongmin Kim, “Drills on Assassinating Kim Jong Un Remain an ‘Option,’ ROK Defense Chief Says,” NK News, December 19, 2023.

[8] Lee Yu-jung\and Esther Chung, “Kim Jong-un Instructs North Korea’s Navy to Prepare for War,” JoongAng Ilbo, February 2, 2024.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJF7tbzwfY

Donald Kirk, “U.S. to Enrage Kim Jong Un with Assassination Dry Run,” Daily Beast, August 19, 2022.

[9] Bruce W. Bennett, “Is North Korea Really Getting Ready for a War Against America?” The National Interest, January 17, 2024.

[10] Chae Yun-hwan, “Defense Chief Warns N. Korea of ‘Hell of Destruction’ in Event of Reckless Acts,” Yonhap, December 13, 2023.

[11] “Yoon\orders Swift, Overwhelming Response to N. Korean Provocation,” KBS World, December 18, 2023.

[12] Kim Han-joo, “Yoon\orders Military to Retaliate First, Report Later in Case of Enemy Attacks,” Yonhap, December 28, 2023.

[13] Kwon Hyuk-chul, “S. Korea’s First Defense White Paper Under Yoon Defines N. Korea as ‘Enemy’”, Hankyoreh, February 17, 2023.

[14] Yosuke Onchi, “South Korea No Longer Calls Pyongyang ‘Enemy’ in Defense Paper,” Nikkei Asia, January 16, 2019.

[15] https://www.nknews.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Yoon-Suk-yeol-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-June-2023.pdf

Josh Smith, “South Korea Doubles Down on Risky ‘Kill Chain’ Plans to Counter North Korea Nuclear Threat,” Reuters, July 25, 2022.

[16] https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/trumps-war-on-the-north-korean-people/

https://gregoryelich.org/2017/10/04/punishing-a-nation-how-the-trump-administration-is-waging-a-merciless-economic-war-on-north-korea/

Gregory Elich is a Korea Policy Institute board member. He is a contributor to the collection, Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy (Haymarket Books, 2023). His website is https://gregoryelich.org  Follow him on Twitter at @GregoryElich.   

(Source: [Counter Punch])   

The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church issued a statement calling the U.S. to withdraw funding\and supportrom Israel.

Joe Biden's unchanging support of Israel during the ongoing genocide in Palestine, despite massive resistance, reflects the U.S. empire's commitment to protecting its imperialist interests in the Middle East.

In one of its finest moments, the African Methodist Episcopal Church recently issued a statement calling “on the United States Government to immediately withdraw all funding\and other supportrom Israel.” The statement goes on to accuse the U.S. of supporting “mass genocide,”\and it proclaims that “[t]he tools of empire, colonialism,\and domination will not solve the problems they created.”

As might be expected, the statement sent shock waves through Israel. The AME church is not alone in its public opposition to U.S. support for Zionist crimes. Many Black churches have drawn a line\and proclaimed that their collective conscience\and theology do not allow them to remain silent as the Biden Administration collaborates in the perpetration of crimes against humanity.

These developments are devastating to the Democratic Party, which is reeling stillrom the “Abandon Biden” campaign that rages in Dearborn, Michigan, a city with the largest Arab population in the country. Michigan is critical to electoral success,\and the plan to boycott Biden puts Democratic Party success in that state in serious jeopardy.

The massive opposition to Biden’s approach to Gaza begs the question of why he stubbornly refuses to in any way modify his support for Israel. There are perhaps many reasons, but his conduct is best explained by the U.S. empire’s confinement to a military box created over time by the masses of people in this country.

Unlike during the first half of the 20th Century, people have an appreciation for the realities of imperialist war. They harbor enduring resentment for the many young black, brown,\and white working class bodies that were returnedrom southeast Asia in military coffins. Since the end of the Vietnam War, the White House\and the Pentagon have understood that sending large numbers of U.S. youth into harm’s way when the sole objective is preservation\or expansion of the empire is not an option. The deployment of U.S. ground troops can only be accomplished with carefully crafted lies\and deception. Excuses such as U.S. nationals at risk in the targeted country;\or foreign governments that are complicit in terrorist plans to cause imminent harm to the U.S. are convenient reasons for intervention.

However, the development of a convincing lie is a heavy lift,\and the U.S. has found avoiding deployment of U.S. troops to be a far more appealing option. Most recently this has been accomplished through the use of drones\and other technology that makes remote-controlled killing\and destruction possible. But while it may ultimately become possible to wage full-scale wars with a robot army, right now the targeted attacks that are possible with drones are not always adequate when what is needed is a full-scale ground war. In these situations, the U.S. has resorted to the use of proxy military forces.

Proxy military forces have come in a variety of forms. When Ronald Reagan wanted to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government in the 1980s, the CIA armed\and directed rag-tag bands of Nicaraguan miscreants\and traitors who came to be known as “Contras.” During that period, the U.S. also teamed with South Africa’s apartheid regime to fund right-wing UNITA forces in the struggle for Angola. In more recent years, the U.S. has taken a more sophisticated approach to its proxy strategy by directing recognized standing armies of sovereign states. This has been done most effectively with U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) which masks imperial military projects with claims that U.S. military advisors are in Africa to assist with anti-terrorism campaigns\and to otherwise facilitate humanitarian aid to impoverished regions. Still, the U.S. is not above using cutthroats\and criminals to act on its behalf as it did when it backed the mob that murdered Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi.

In the end, there is no more valuable proxy than Israeli military forces. The so-called Middle East has been a contested region for years. During the Cold War, it was recognized as having great geo-political strategic value as well as vital, vast oil resources. This has not changed,\and consequently, imperialism has a rock solid commitment to locking down control of Palestine. However, this has not been easy because of the heroic, ongoing resistance to occupation by the Palestinian people. 

From the perspective of western imperialism, the massive destructive attack on Gaza has been necessary\and unavoidable, particularly given the increasing boldness of Hamas\and Gaza’s huge oil reserves. Purging Palestiniansrom Gaza is an ugly, dirty job,\and somebody has got to do it. But it won’t be the precious sons\and daughters of U.S. citizens. Israel exists precisely for moments such as these,\and the Israel Defense Forces are doing a perfect job.

Biden will not\and cannot act in ways inconsistent with the imperial agenda, even if it costs him the election. However, that does not mean the resistance by Black churches, the Abandon Biden campaign\and other protests don’t have value. As the pressure continues to mount because the contradictions of Zionism become increasingly clear, the empire will be motivated to find another way to exert influence in the Middle East. At long last they may begin a slow-rolling divorcerom Israel in favor of currying favor with other forces\and governments in the region. It won’t mark the end of the struggle against imperialism, but it will mean the foe will change form, hopefully in ways that make it more vulnerable.

Mark P. Fancher is an attorney\and writer, who in this moment, is especially proud to be a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

From the perspective of western imperialism, the massive destructive attack on Gaza has been necessary\and unavoidable, particularly given the increasing boldness of Hamas\and Gaza’s huge oil reserves. Purging Palestiniansrom Gaza is an ugly, dirty job,\and somebody has got to do it. But it won’t be the precious sons\and daughters of U.S. citizens. Israel exists precisely for moments such as these,\and the Israel Defense Forces are doing a perfect job.

Biden will not\and cannot act in ways inconsistent with the imperial agenda, even if it costs him the election. However, that does not mean the resistance by Black churches, the Abandon Biden campaign\and other protests don’t have value. As the pressure continues to mount because the contradictions of Zionism become increasingly clear, the empire will be motivated to find another way to exert influence in the Middle East. At long last they may begin a slow-rolling divorcerom Israel in favor of currying favor with other forces\and governments in the region. It won’t mark the end of the struggle against imperialism, but it will mean the foe will change form, hopefully in ways that make it more vulnerable.

Mark P. Fancher is an attorney\and writer, who in this moment, is especially proud to be a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  

Children at the kindergarten are enjoying the milk served as part of their school lunch. 

Recently, on the [Voice of America] broadcast, they claim that human rights are being severely violated in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). While emphasizing it the photos shown on the broadcast are eitherrom the difficult time of the 90s\or seem manipulated. They are poorly presented,\and blurry. 

Having visited relatives in the DPRK multiple times\and directly witnessed the lives of people in rural areas, I have closely monitored the welfare system\and society in the DPRK with keen interest. I cannot help but be shocked by such false reports.

Just by examining the materials related to people's lives presented at the 9th plenary meeting of the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of the DPRK\and the 10th meeting of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly, one can see the popularity\and forward-looking nature of the DPRK's welfare system, along with how welfare benefits are evenly distributed to the entire population.

Therefore, I took another look at the efforts of the DPRK government\and people who are improving people's lives with the country's welfare system\and self-reliance.

The welfare standards in DPRK are the best in the world.

A mother giving birth to triplets\and being dischargedrom the hospital 

Until the end of 2022, DPRK's borders were closed due to the global COVID-19 emergency,\and although the health crisis has been resolved domestically, strict quarantine measures have constrained various sectors. In addition, all government agencies had to be thoroughly prepared to immediately implement a wartime system in case of a similar situation due to the constant threat of war,\and material preparations for the people's struggle had to be made without any gaps, enduring a blockaderom abroad.

Despite facing numerous challenges, DPRK has steadfastly implemented a range of progressive policies since its early days of establishment. These include providing free housing, free education, free childcare, free healthcare, comprehensive pre\and postnatal care, as well as welfare support for\orphans\and the elderly, including soldiers. These initiatives underscore the country's commitment to ensuring the well-being\and social support of its citizens, fostering a society that values the welfare of all its members.

In the DPRK, the joyous laughter of children is regarded as a symbol of the socialist system. There is substantial investment in the welfare of women\and children, with\orphans of patriots receiving education at world-class revolutionary academies. Across every city\and county, there are\orphanages, elementary schools,\and middle schools resembling palaces,\where\orphans grow up joyfully, regarding the Supreme Leaders as their father\and avoiding the sorrow of being parentless. Moreover, student palaces\and camping sites are constructed nationwide, enabling students to showcase their talents through extracurricular activities.

All students, including those in universities, receive school uniforms, textbooks, bags, shoes,\and stationery free of charge, with no concept of tuition fees.

Children in daycare centers\and kindergartens nationwide consume state-supplied milk every day throughout the year.

Women are given an 8-month maternity leave,\and there are childcare facilities in factories\and farms, allowing young mothers to entrust their children safely\and count the breastfeeding time as working hours. Women retire at the age of 55\and live on a pension thereafter.

At the 9th plenary meeting of the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of the DPRK, the urgent task of rapidly improving people's lives was highlighted. For projects aimed at enhancing people's lives, the emphasis was placed on the first\and second priorities, ensuring a bountiful harvest. The DPRK's welfare system is designed to enable the people to genuinely experience\and benefitrom it. In the DPRK, citizens do not worry about unemployment\or housing after marriage.

The people of the DPRK overwhelmingly support socialism, which sustains the world's best welfare system. They trust the party, which takes responsibility for the people's right to survival\and a better future, believing in the party's role as parents.

 Remarkable Economic Growth\and Improvement in People's Lives in 2023

Modern households are being expanded throughout rural areas nationwide 

In 2023, under the slogan "The Year of Great Transformation\and Transition for Comprehensive Development of New Socialism!", DPRK implemented massive reforms in 12 key sectors of the national economy, including agriculture, construction, steel, water infrastructure,\and natural transformation. The country's economy has entered a phase of growth,\and overall, people's lives have improved.

The construction of approximately 50,000 households in Pyongyang, over 20,000 households in the mine district,\and around 58,000 households in rural areas nationwide, as planned by the Central Committee, is nearly complete. It is anticipated that numerous household constructions planned for other cities\and counties will also be completed by the spring of this year.

A historic bumper crop was achieved in cereal production. Modern agricultural machinery produced at the Kumsung Tractor Factory was exhibited in an area equivalent to 50 football fields, marking the beginning of a full-fledged era of rural mechanization. Modern greenhouse farms, chicken farms,\and fish farms have been constructed throughout the country, enriching the people's dining tables.

Frequent exhibitions of industrial\and commercial products have taken place, resulting in an increase\and improvement in the quality of consumer goods. Additionally, with the construction of the Pyongyang City Nursery, the foundation for afforestation has been established, leading to the planting of over 100 million useful trees nationwide.

The supply of dairy products to children nationwide has begun, ensuring they receive milk every day throughout the year. Simultaneously, efforts in the education sector have been directed towards advancing the educational structure to a more advanced\and practical system, resulting in innovative qualitative changes in educational content, format,\and methods.

 Grand Plan for the Improvement of People's Lives in 2024

Strong Promotion of the 'Local Development 210 Policy' 

In his January New Year's speech, Chairman Kim Jong-un outlined several policies, including the 'Local Development 210 Policy,' aimed at addressing disparities between the capital\and provinces as well as regional imbalances. This policy, separaterom rural development, aims to construct modern local industrial factories in every county nationwide, surpassing the standard set by Kimhwa County. The goal is to initiate construction in 20 counties each year, completing the nationwide implementation within 10 years. Enthusiastically, people, especially those in local areas, welcome this policy, reminiscent of the excitement of farmers who received land during the land reform in 1946.

The completion of the Pyongyang Comprehensive Hospital is planned for this year, with additional plans to construct a modern comprehensive hospital in Gangwon Province. Furthermore, there are ongoing plans to build modern comprehensive hospitals in different provinces each year\and establish complete hospitals in cities\and counties. 

Groundwork for the construction of the Grand Canal connecting the East\and West Seas will be laid,\and reclamation projects will be actively pursued. 

The construction of modern rural houses will continue.

In the agricultural sector, the plan encompasses expanding the cultivation area for wheat, restructuring cereal production,\and initiating projects like the construction of wheat processing facilities, the expansion of mechanization in rural areas,\and the development of new crops. The focus also extends to the growth of livestock, fruit trees,\and handicraft crops. Additionally, plans are in place for the construction of modern poultry farms, akin to the Kwangcheon Chicken Factory, in Pyongyang\and other provinces.

There will be significant expansion in aquaculture\and fish farming.

The first priority will be to push for the improvement in the quality of consumer goods\and basic food items, producing products that satisfy the people. 

The emphasis will be on nurturing talents with global competitiveness through central educational institutions, aiming to reduce the gap in educational levels between urban\and rural areas by revitalizing local educational institutions, including rural schools. 

Kimhwa County Shines as an Exemplar of the 'Local Development 210 Policy'

The modern comprehensive food production base in Kimhwa County 

The county of Kimhwa, a small mountain village in Gangwon Province with 80% of its land covered by mountains, was among the most underdeveloped areas in terms of production\and living standards among the 200 cities\and counties nationwide. Over the past two years, Kimhwa County has managed to double its industrial production by independently constructing modern factories using local resources.

The modern comprehensive food production base in Kimhwa County yields a diverse array of products, rangingrom candies, snacks,\and bread to local specialties like sesame pepper paste, magnolia berry products, jujube syrup,\and high-quality soy sauce\and soybean paste. These products are consistently supplied to villages, towns,\and households across all generations.

The county actively participates in the mass production of a wide range of consumer goods, household items,\and paper products, including clothing items. Notably, the cultivation area for raw materials has expanded more than 2.5 times compared to the past, with several hundred hectares of paper tree forests established to ensure a sufficient supply of materials for soap\and paper production.

The products produced in Kimhwa County have garnered outstanding evaluations, not only within Gangwon Province but also on a national scale. By enhancing product packaging\and expanding the product rangerom 46 to 125, the county has evolved into a destination\where peoplerom across the country come to gain knowledge.

 The accomplishments of Kimhwa County provide a crucial foundation for narrowing the urban-rural divide, alleviating disparities between central\and local regions,\and fostering a prosperous\and civilized social development accessible to all. These achievements are rooted in practical experience.

DPRK is a Prepared Nation for Massive Transformation

Young People Venturing into Various Sectors of the People's Economy 

The entire nation is imbued with a steadfast determination to build an ideal socialist country through self-reliance\and unity. Numerous reports highlight the people's enthusiasm for learning\and participating in study sessions to implement party policies.

Young people are at the forefront of the great transformation. In January alone, more than 6,000 individuals expressed their eagerness to venture into challenging areas across the country to contribute to the implementation of party policies. The number of patriotic young individuals heading to work in mines\or frontline villages, potentially becoming their lifelong residences, is steadily increasing.

Through the People's Virtue Contest, individuals embodying virtues are recognized,\and heroes\and innovators are respected, fostering a social atmosphere of mutual assistance\and leadership. 

The socialist competition fervor is emphasized,\and through collective competition in various projects, workers' awareness\and sense of responsibility are elevated.

Individuals are resolutely striving to embody the essence of resilient revolutionaries, as evidenced by laborers who embark on the Baekdu Mountain expedition, embrace the guerrilla spirit,\and diligently cultivate their physical strength.

DPRK is a society\where people think scientifically\and solve problems through scientific thinking, emphasizing a policy that prioritizes science.

It is a society that promotes patriotic contributions\and backs initiatives like the Childcare Fund, Mutual Assistance Fund,\and Socialist Patriotism Fund.

The party disseminates its direction\and strong will through propaganda\and slogans, instilling confidence in the people regarding victory. The representative slogan for 2024 is 'Let's Unite with Patriotism!

 DPRK is a model of the Bright Future of Humanity

A laborer is dischargedrom the hospital after recoveringrom a life-threatening condition, 

thanks to the dedicated care of medical professionals 

In capitalist societies, with the United States as a representative, everyone must fend for themselves within a ruthless competition. It is a world\where, in the absence of money\or abilities, friends, siblings,\and even spouses might disregard each other. The United States has influenced many countries to adopt such brutal capitalism, promoting an individualistic\and decadent culture, with South Korea being a prominent example.

The United States often preaches about freedom\and human rights while presenting the loyalty\and dedication of the DPRK people to the world as human rights violations. Those who do not understand the spirit of the DPRK people speak of freedom, which is only for the privileged,\and human rights as a convenient excuse for attacking other countries. 

In the DPRK, human rights are institutionally guaranteed to ensure that everyone can live a fulfilling life as a contributing member of society without worrying about basic survival. People aspire to a society\where mutual trust\and love prevail,\and this vision is supported by the socialist system.

Kim Young-soon