Friday, May 29, 2009

DPRK News Update: End Double Standards; US War Maneuvers; WW Editorial; Short Range Missile Tested

End to Unreasonable Double Standards Policy Called for

Pyongyang, May 28 (KCNA) -- The double standards policy of the imperialists which was denied by history should be terminated as early as possible, urges Rodong Sinmun Thursday in a signed article.

The UN Security Council took issue with the DPRK's legitimate satellite launch for peaceful purposes and adopted even the "presidential statement" after playing into the hands of hostile forces in disregard of international justice and impartiality, thereby tarnishing the image of the UN and leaving such an indelible blot on its history as bringing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula to collapse, the article notes, and goes on:

The application of the double standards is an expression of extremely arbitrary practice and is nothing helpful to the development of international relations and the world situation.

If the double standards policy is allowed, it will not only make the international relations unfair and complicated but will divide the world into the countries dominating other countries and the countries being dominated and make it impossible to fairly settle international issues.

The imperialists are putting pressure on the anti-imperialist independent countries standing in the way of realizing their ambition for domination while handling international issues and those countries of strategic importance and isolating them internationally, whereas they are conniving at and patronizing their allies or those countries meekly obeying them though they pose some problems.

A particular mention should be made of the fact that the U.S. is interpreting and handling issues in its favor by applying double standards in the international arena and pressurizing other countries to meet its demands.

It is putting pressure upon those countries acting contrary to its interests in a bid to attain its sinister aim by way of applying this standard when it deems favorable to it and that standard when it thinks unfavorable to it.

Citing the facts to prove that the U.S. double standards policy finds a vivid manifestation in various international issues including the nuclear issue, human rights issue and issue of terrorism, the article continues:

Only when a new fair international order is established, is it possible to destroy the old international order of domination and subjugation and an order for world domination based on the jungle law, create free and peaceful environment, soundly develop the international relations and realize democratization of the international community and global independence. Only by doing so is it possible to remove the double standards and strictly adhere to the principle of equality and impartiality in the international relations and put an end to interference in the internal affairs of other countries and nations and highhanded and arbitrary practices.

Impartiality is the life and soul of the world body and a basic principle governing its activities. If the world body allows the double standards policy in disregard of impartiality, it will mean losing the life and soul as the world body.


U.S. and S. Korean War Maneuvers Targeted against DPRK Flayed

Pyongyang, May 28 (KCNA) -- The U.S. military was reported recently to have declared that it would deploy two squadrons of "F-22A Raptor" in Okinawa and Guam for four month-long operations. The warmongers staged even an escape drill of non-combatants allegedly to cope with "contingency" by mobilizing the U.S. air force present in south Korea and Japan and the puppet air force.

Papers Thursday observe in their signed commentaries that this is an undisguised military threat and premeditated preparations for a war against the DPRK.

Rodong Sinmun says: The U.S. military is contemplating bringing the above-said fighters to those areas again less than a month since they flew back to the mainland after being deployed in the Asia-Pacific region early this year. This is a revelation of its dangerous scenario to kick off an attack on the DPRK any moment by keeping means for preemptive nuclear attack in the areas close to the Korean Peninsula under the pretext of "unstable situation".

The above-said drill of non-combatants is a dangerous development that can be seen only on the eve of a war. It bears a close resemblance to the situation in the 1950s of the last century when the U.S. evacuated families of its servicemen in south Korea to Japan in secret before its start of the Korean war.

The danger of a war on the Korean Peninsula is further increasing than ever before due to the Lee Myung Bak group of south Korea zealously following the U.S. scenario for a war of aggression against the DPRK.

It is the fixed will of the army and the people of the DPRK to wipe out the warmongers with a barrage of fire of the Songun army. The Songun army of the DPRK shows no mercy to the peace wreckers and the war provocateurs.

Minju Joson warns the U.S. and the south Korean warmongers to behave themselves, clearly understanding the will of the powerful revolutionary forces of Mt. Paektu to wipe out the enemies as they never make an empty talk.


EDITORIAL

Korea’s defense & U.S. belligerence

Anyone in the United States who pays attention to the corporate news media must think that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea just violated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Right?

Except that no such treaty exists.

Some 180 countries have signed it, but only 148 have ratified it. According to the Web site of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, “All 44 States specifically listed in the Treaty—those with nuclear technology capabilities at the time of the final Treaty negotiations in 1996—must sign and ratify before the CTBT can enter into force.” (http://www.ctbto.org)

Nine out of those 44 nuclear states have not ratified the treaty, despite having signed it some 13 years ago. Therefore, the treaty is not and has never been in force.

The government that seems to protest the most when a country like the DPRK conducts tests sits in Washington. But guess what? The U.S. Senate has not ratified the treaty. In fact, it is Washington’s refusal that is the main obstacle to the CTBT treaty taking effect.

The U.S. tested the world’s first atomic bombs in 1945 and almost immediately dropped two of them on Japanese cities, killing 220,000 people on the spot and leaving another 200,000 so poisoned by radiation that they died soon after. From that time until it signed the treaty in 1996, the U.S. had tested 1,032 nuclear weapons.

That is more nuke tests than have been carried out by all the rest of the countries in the world combined, right up to the present.

So how can the world have any confidence in a nuclear test ban treaty if the country that has tested such a hugely disproportionate number of weapons won’t ratify it?

The DPRK has successfully conducted two underground tests of nuclear devices, one in 2006 and another on May 25. It has not dropped any bombs on anyone. In fact, its troops have never fought anywhere except in Korea, and then it was to expel foreign invaders.

The DPRK’s determination to devote substantial resources to building a nuclear deterrent reflects Korea’s tragic history. First invaded and annexed by colonial Japan, then occupied by U.S. troops at the end of World War II, Korea suffered enormously from the rise of imperialism in the 20th century.

The U.S. created a puppet military dictatorship in the south, which in 1948 declared itself the Republic of Korea. It was only then that the revolutionary forces, who had liberated the northern part of Korea from Japan’s iron grip, responded by declaring the establishment of the DPRK, not as a permanent state that would ratify the division of Korea, but as a recognition of reality. The goal of the DPRK, and of the Korean people as a whole, has always been to reunite the country. Within two years, however, the DPRK was fighting a new war against imperialist invaders—this time hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops.

Several million Koreans, civilians and soldiers, were killed in the 1950-53 war. Some 53,000 U.S. soldiers died. Though the war ended in a ceasefire with the two sides roughly where they had been at the start, the U.S. occupiers of southern Korea refused to sign a peace treaty with the DPRK. And that’s where things have stood ever since, with between 30,000 and 40,000 U.S. troops occupying the south at any one time.

Many countries—first among them the United States—have declared they had to have nuclear weapons for self-defense. None has a stronger claim to a nuclear deterrent than the DPRK, which for more than half a century has faced the constant threat of new aggression from the world’s most heavily armed imperialist superpower.

If Washington were sincere about wanting to move toward a nuclear-free world, it would start by signing a peace treaty with the DPRK, ratifying the CTBT and removing its occupation troops from Korea.
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Kim Jong Il's Feats Lauded

Pyongyang, May 28 (KCNA) -- A joint seminar took place in Mexico on May 20 on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the start of General Secretary Kim Jong Il's work at the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and the 14th anniversary of the publication of his work "Giving Priority to Ideological Work Is Essential for Accomplishing Socialism".

Ramon Jimenez Lopez, president of the Mexican Committee for the Study of Kimilsungism, said at the seminar that over the past 45 years Kim Jong Il has developed the WPK into the party of President Kim Il Sung, its founder, the invincible party always emerging victorious and the strong mass party in which the single-minded unity is achieved, thus performing the immortal exploits to be recorded in history forever.

He stressed that Kim Jong Il's works serve as the powerful ideological and theoretical weapon in the building of the WPK and its activities and as the precious guidelines indicating the ways of struggle of the world progressive political parties and people aspiring after socialism.

Kim Jong Il is a great statesman and a prominent leader and a peerlessly brilliant commander as he has firmly defended the sovereignty of the country and the dignity of the nation, foiling challenges and offensive of the U.S. and its followers under the banner of the Juche idea, founded by Kim Il Sung, and Songun, he said.

Noting that the WPK under the veteran and experienced leadership of Kim Jong Il is leading the global socialist cause to victory, he expressed belief that the WPK and the Korean people would surely open the gate to a great prosperous and powerful nation in 2012 marking the centenary of the birth of Kim Il Sung under the wise guidance of Kim Jong Il.

Juan Campos Vega, chairman of the Mexican Institute for the Study of the Juche Idea, and other speakers explained in depth the originality and vitality of the Juche idea and the Songun politics and the advantages of the Korean-style socialist system in which the Juche idea has been successfully applied and expressed full support and solidarity with the WPK and the Korean people in the struggle to build a thriving nation and achieve national reunification.


North Korea fires short-range missile; may take more action

Fri May 29, 2009 9:35am EDT
By Lee Jin-woo

YEONPYEONG, South Korea (Reuters) - North Korea test-fired another short-range missile off its east coast on Friday and said it would take more "self-defense measures" if the U.N. Security Council punished it for this week's nuclear test.

South Korea said an increasingly aggressive North may be preparing fresh moves after Chinese fishing boats were spotted leaving a disputed sea border on the west coast.

South Korea and the United States have raised the military alert level in the region after the isolated state followed Monday's nuclear test with missile launches and a threat of war.

Regional powers are waiting to see what the North might do next. Many speculate it may opt for a naval skirmish in disputed waters off the west coast, which should be getting crowded as the lucrative crab fishing season starts.

In New York, the United States and Japan circulated a draft U.N. Security Council resolution to key members, condemning Pyongyang's second nuclear test and demanding strict enforcement of sanctions after the North's first atomic test in October 2006.

North Korea, in its first response to threatened sanctions, said it would take "self-defense measures" if it was punished.

It gave no details other than to say such a move would nullify the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War. It has previously said that truce was already dead.

Yonhap quoted an unnamed government source as saying the North fired the short-range rocket from its Musudan-ri missile base around dusk, making it the fifth to be launched since the nuclear test. Most of the missiles are believed to have a range of around 130 km (80 miles).

The escalating tension had little further impact on financial markets in Seoul, hit earlier in the week by the nuclear test. Traders said while North Korea's belligerent tone was unsettling, it was, without military confrontation, not enough yet to significantly frighten off investors.

The two Koreas have fought two deadly naval skirmishes on their disputed maritime border in the past 10 years and the North has warned another could happen soon.

"Our forces are watching these movements (by Chinese fishing boats) with the view that they could be signs that indicate the possibility of North Korea's aggression," Defense Ministry spokesman Won tae-jae said.

The 1999 and 2002 clashes were in June, the peak of the three-month crab season when fishing fleets jockey for the best spots near the contested maritime border.

"Now that there's talk of ... an all-out war, we fishermen are worried," said 48-year-old Yeonpyeong island fisherman Kim Jae-sik. "Nowadays when we go out, we know we are facing dangers."

The island is off the west coast in waters the North claims but the South has occupied since the Korean War.

ALERT LEVEL RAISED

The joint command for the 28,500 U.S. troops supporting South Korea's 670,000 soldiers has raised its alert a notch to signify a serious threat from North Korea. That is the highest threat level since the North's other nuclear test in 2006.

It calls for stepped up surveillance but not an increase in maneuvers by troops who face a million-strong North Korean military, most massed near the heavily fortified border.

North Korea's increasingly angry provocations unnerve other countries, but many analysts said a major aim is domestic -- strengthening leader Kim Jong-il's steely grip on power.

They say that after a reported stroke last year, the 67-year-old may well feel a need to use his powers more extravagantly to help prepare for a successor -- possibly one of his sons -- to take over the world's first communist dynasty.

Some also point out Kim has long used the threat of invasion by a hostile United States to justify spending the impoverished state's meager resources on a military that keeps him in power, rather than on the rest of the population of 23 million.

That situation means his government will not give up the goal of owning nuclear weapons, analysts say.

"The more North Korea resembles a third-rate South Korea on the economic front, the more the Kim Jong-il regime must justify its existence through a combination of radical nationalist rhetoric and victories on the military and nuclear front," Brian Myers, an expert on the North's ideology at the South's Dongseo University, wrote in an International Herald Tribune article.

In a draft resolution obtained by Reuters, the Security Council "condemns in the strongest terms" the North's test.

It calls for enforcement of sanctions imposed after Pyongyang's 2006 nuclear test, which included a limited trade and arms embargo that had been widely ignored. A vote could come as early as next week, diplomats said.

A U.S. State Department delegation, including special envoy on North Korea Stephen Bosworth, was planning to visit Japan, China, Russia and South Korea. All are members of now frozen six-party negotiations to persuade the North to give up efforts to build a nuclear arsenal.

But it may be difficult to win support from China, North Korea's dominant trading partner and the nearest it has to a major ally, for much tougher sanctions.

(Additional reporting by Rhee So-eui, Jack Kim and Jung Heejung in Seoul; Chris Buckley in Beijing; Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Jonathan Thatcher; Editing by Dean Yates)

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