Since the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea announced an early April satellite launch, the United States and Japan have carried out a nonstop campaign to demonize and isolate the Asian nation.
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Following the launch of the rocket, the U.S. and Japanese governments publicly and privately worked to punish North Korea. The government in Pyongyang insisted that it had an equal right to advance its scientific, technological and military capabilities and condemned the effort by Japan and the United States to use the satellite launch as a pretext for more hostile acts toward North Korea.
The United Nations released a “presidential statement”—considered stronger than a more usual press release—condemning the DPRK’s launch. On April 24, a U.N. sanctions committee imposed sanctions on three North Korean companies—alleging the launch violated the U.N. charter and outer-space laws.
The DPRK government has taken a strong position defending the DPRK’s sovereign right to use outer space for communications purposes. The government issued a clear response to the U.N. presidential statement, accusing the United Nations of being a stooge for U.S. imperialism.
DPRK pulls out of six-party talks
The statement also articulated the DPRK’s response to the imperialists’ threats and demonization campaign. The DPRK pulled out of the six-party talks on nuclear development and moved towards restoring nuclear facilities partially disabled as part of the talks. These steps are necessary given the aggression of the United States and Japan.
Japan created a near war hysteria in advance of the satellite launch. Afterward it extended previous economic sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Both the United States and Japan demanded that the U.N. Security Council take actions against Korea.
Russia and China, operating in their own interests, have to some extent mitigated the harsh measures demanded by the United States and Japan. Neither, however, offered a principled defense of North Korea’s equal right to develop technologies that are considered “normal” and “legal” by its adversaries.
On April 3, the United States launched its third military communications satellite this year. The communications satellite is intended to support U.S. wars, occupations and interventions in not just Iraq and Afghanistan but countries around the world. Showing the fraudulent character of the United Nations, the much-vaunted “world organization” issued no presidential statements nor imposed any sanctions against the United States for its April 3 satellite launch.
The United States and Japan both have histories of colonial domination and bloody military interventions against the Korean people, in the north and south of the peninsula.
Japan occupied Korea starting in the early 1900s. The Japanese military occupation terrorized and exploited the Korean people—forcing millions into coerced labor and using 200,000 women as sexual slaves.
Likewise, the United States waged a brutal war in Korea from 1950 to 1953 that has never ended. The peninsula—really one country—is split in two with thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea. This has allowed the United States to determine the policy of the South Korean government and prevented any meaningful reunification of the country. Ten million families have loved ones separated by the artificial division of the country.
Given this historical context, the Japanese and U.S. response to the DPRK satellite launch can be seen for what it really is: arrogant, imperialist grandstanding that seeks to enforce U.S. and Japanese imperialist domination.
