U.S. Talks "Peace," Blocks Food to N.Korea id RAA22067; Thu, 25 Sep 1997 17:17:29 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the October 2, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- EDITORIAL: U.S. TALKS "PEACE," BLOCKS FOOD TO N. KOREA The Clinton administration has made it clear it is not interested in bringing peace to the Korean peninsula. It just wants the capitulation of People's Korea. Clinton has taken steps to sabotage the chance to finally sign a peace treaty ending the Korean war. That's the only conclusion one can make from the reports that his administration will not resume preparatory talks until Pyongyang drops what are very reasonable and understandable demands. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has asked for food aid to avert a famine brought about by two years of floods followed by a year of drought. And the DPRK has insisted that the peace talks take up the withdrawal of the 37,000 U.S. troops still in south Korea. U.S. officials promise to take a hard line against these just demands. With lies out of official Washington muddying the waters, it might help clear things up to review some of the history of the U.S. in Korea. Following the U.S. war with Japan in 1945, only the U.S. occupation of the south stopped the popular guerrilla army led by Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers Party from liberating the entire peninsula. During the 1950-1953 Korean War, U.S. bombers destroyed every building in the north more than one story high. Despite this massive destruction, the Pentagon was held to a stalemate--really a defeat--that was a harbinger of the collapse two decades later in Vietnam. An armistice ended the fighting at the demilitarized zone, the 38th Parallel, where two hostile armies faced each other. The U.S. troops have remained in south Korea, holding nearly annual "exercises" with the puppet south Korea military to constantly threaten the north and keep the DPRK on a costly military alert. The U.S. military brass brought U.S. atomic weapons into Korea. When in the late 1970s President Jimmy Carter said he would remove U.S. troops, the Pentagon rebelled. The troop withdrawal never happened. By 1980 the U.S. generals in Korea gave the go-ahead to the south Korean armed forces to smash a popular rebellion in the city of Kwangju. Now 37,000 U.S. troops and all their weapons--including those made of depleted uranium--still remain in Korea. And the U.S. State Department has the nerve to call the DPRK representatives unreasonable for demanding this be a point in the peace-talk agenda. Regarding food, the United Nations has recognized the DPRK's need for emergency food aid and the ability of the Pyongyang government to get that food aid to the areas that need it most. But the U.S. with the collusion of Japanese imperialism has done everything to prevent that food aid from arriving where it is needed. Washington sees the food shortages in north Korea as an opportunity to extort concessions from Pyongyang in the peace talks--if not a complete capitulation. It is up to the working-class movement worldwide, and especially in the United States, to expose the lies out of Washington and to demand immediate food aid for Korea and the removal of U.S. troops from the peninsula as the first steps toward a just peace in northeast Asia. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytas-09.25.97-17:17:31-25911