Defend socialist Korea!

On Dec. 13, the Korean Central News Agency, an official voice of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, reported that a high-ranking member of the government, Jang Song Thaek, had been tried and executed for having “perpetrated anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts in a bid to overthrow the leadership of our party and state and the socialist system.”

The trial of Jang by a special military tribunal came after the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held an expanded meeting and then issued a report to the nation.

The important thing to remember when reading the U.S. capitalist media’s interpretation of these grave events is that none of it is objective or well-intended. Every word is calculated to undermine and slander the DPRK, with the objective of bringing down the government, the Workers’ Party and  the socialist system.

For 65 years, U.S. imperialists have failed in their efforts to destroy the socialist government in the northern half of the Korean peninsula.

Washington carried out a horrific war of aggression in the 1950s, followed ever since by unremitting military threats and sanctions meant to strangle the economy and promote divisions that would open the door to counterrevolution. Their failure shows the enduring strength of the Korean people’s allegiance to their revolution and their leaders, who have refused to knuckle under to imperialism.

Over these long decades of struggle, the Workers’ Party has chosen leaders committed to the path carved out by Kim Il Sung, the Korean revolution’s great political theorist, organizer, guerrilla fighter and military commander.

At this critical time, the obligation of all progressives, especially in the United States, is to recognize and respect the sovereign right of the Korean people to control their own destiny and maintain their social system. This means exposing and rejecting any attempts by imperialism to intervene in the situation, whether by military, economic or diplomatic means. It also means rejecting the slanders concocted by the capitalist media against Kim Jong Un and other leaders of the DPRK.

The working class everywhere, including in the U.S., is already paying the price of imperialism’s counterrevolutionary successes in Europe and Asia, which have opened up vast areas of the globe to super-exploitation by the profit-hungry transnational corporations.

Workers World affirms its solidarity with Comrade Kim Jong Un. As First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, he bears on his shoulders the responsibility for defending the DPRK and guarding against all efforts, both external and internal, to subvert the revolutionary gains won through the sacrifices of many generations of brave Korean resistance fighters.