– N. Ribar –
In recent days, the U.S. imperialists have been ramping up their aggression against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The news bulletins from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on July 10 and 11, 2022, reveal two press statements by Kim Yo Jong, the vice department director of the CC of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). These statements start with the facts that the U.S. has encroached upon the territorial integrity of the DPRK waters for military reconnaissance twice in recent days, with the use of spying aircraft. The Republic of Korea (ROK) and the U.S. have both maintained that it was a “routine” and “peaceful” air mission, but facts reveal they penetrated 20-40 km into the Military Demarcation Line of DPRK waters.
“We will not,” writes Kim Yo Jong, “take a direct counteraction against the U.S. forces’ acts of espionage outside the economic water zone of the DPRK side, but I repeatedly warn upon authorization that we will react with clear and resolute actions when they intrude into the economic water zone of the DPRK side beyond the military demarcation line in sea waters again.”
This stand of the Koreans in defence of their national independence and sovereignty is to be applauded. While the entire imperialist world howls “the boy who cried wolf” over the alleged aggressions of the DPRK against the ROK and, in fact, the whole world, it is the DPRK which is teaching the world a lesson in restraint and correct tactics. While not threatening to engulf the world in flames, as the imperialists do regularly, the DPRK takes a firm stance of warning. The imperialists should make no mistake because the Koreans have the means to defend themselves — it is not like in 1950 when they could rampage and bomb whichever Korean city they liked under the auspices of “protecting the south” and “UN forces.” The Korean people today have built a tremendous self-defence capacity as part and parcel of their firm Juche-Songun ideological basis.
“If the U.S. has not yet realized what danger is directly coming to it in disregard of the DPRK’s warning,” the statement of June 10 concludes, “the DPRK is not to blame for it. Moreover, if it suffers even a disaster, it will be a natural outcome of its acts.”
If the imperialists embark on a reckless “campaign to the north,” as they did so many decades ago, their plans would be foiled just as they were then, but in fact much quicker. If they would like to wage a war of annihilation, then that is what they will get. The DPRK never threatens other peoples’ security, even the people of the U.S., a country which is completely hostile to it. It states clearly and openly that the danger which the imperialists are bringing to the world will only expedite their total collapse in the face of the struggles of the peoples.
Today the imperialists, first of all the U.S. imperialists, are not particularly forward-thinking people. They do not differentiate between a tactical, strategic and ultimate aim. They have only one aim — the making of superprofits. If this cannot be satisfied, then whatever is standing in the way must be destroyed. This is brinksmanship and “Might Makes Right” dictate wrapped up in allegedly objective and universal rules governing international relations. For example, all of their deeds are wrapped in the phraseology of a “rules-based international order.” Of course, we do not deny that this international order is based on rules — but on the sole rule that what the imperialists do is fine and what the peoples are striving for is wrong, no matter how many crimes are committed in the name of the former.
In what world is encroaching on another sovereign nation’s territory an act of a peace-loving state? Not in ours, and by laying claims on international law established on the basis of Soviet jurists’ postwar conceptions, law which opposes everything the U.S. is doing on the world of scale, the people are giving rise to their own definitions of what is peace-loving and what is warmongering.