An Oct. 9 Associated Press article on declassified documents demonstrates once again the militaristic and aggressive nature of the U.S. military and government towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Korean people.
 North Korean workers in the crosshairs of U.S. nuclear threat |
Some of the previously secret documents were released by the CIA, others were obtained by the private National Security Archive research group under the Freedom of Information Act, and still others were found in the National Archives and provided to AP by intelligence historian Matthew Aid. On this 60th anniversary year of the U.S. war of aggression against the people of Korea, the documents expose that for over half a century the U.S. military has prepared plans to attack the DPRK with nuclear weapons. This exposure lends support to the right of the DPRK to develop a nuclear arsenal in response.
The preparations for nuclear war against the DPRK began not long after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which signaled the end of World War II. The U.S. war against Korea began on June 25, 1950, and a ceasefire (armistice) was signed on July 27, 1953, though the war has never formally ended.
The documents reveal that the Pentagon made repeated contingency plans to drop massive quantities of nuclear bombs on North Korea as the war dragged on. Areas targeted included those bordering the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, both of which supported North Korea in its war to liberate the Korean Peninsula from U.S. occupation in the south.
The occupation came about as a result of the military and political division of the Korean nation after the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II. The U.S. Air Force even carried out trial drops of dummy nuclear weapons on the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, during the war. The AP article adds that in the late 1960s, nuclear-armed U.S. warplanes stood by in South Korea on 15-minute alert to bomb the north. Recently, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates affirmed that “all options are on the table,” the U.S. code phrase for its “right” to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against an adversary.
Today, the U.S. government hypocritically slams North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as being “provocative.” Six-country talks held between 2003 and 2009, involving Japan, Russia, the United States, France, South Korea and the DPRK, focused on ending North Korea’s nuclear program. The talks failed due to the belligerent response of the U.N. Security Council and U.S. after the DPRK launched a satellite in 2009 that the imperialists claimed was a test of a nuclear missile. At the behest of the United States, the U.N. then imposed additional sanctions on North Korea.
Later that year, the DPRK detonated a nuclear device underground, adding to its military means of deterrence of imperialist aggression and drawing further condemnation from the U.S. government.
In light of the long campaign of aggression by U.S. imperialism, the DPRK has the right of self-defense. The right to develop and use nuclear weapons in this context is a right that must be defended by revolutionaries, especially as the recently released documents lets the world see once again that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor with no respect for the rights of the oppressed.
