U.S. Destroyed Civilian Facilities During Korean War

U.S. bombing of Hanchon, DPRK with napalm on May 10, 1951. July 2013 represents the 60th anniversary of the armstice., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

U.S. Destroys Civilian Facilities in Korean War

Pyongyang, July 25 (KCNA) -- In the period of the Korean War (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953), the U.S. imperialists destroyed almost all industrial establishments, health and welfare facilities and historical relics in the territory of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Their destroying activities reached the height when they were forced to make a retreat from temporarily occupied areas.

In August 1952, the commander of the U.S. forces in the Far East issued an order to eliminate 78 cities in the DPRK and announced a "strike plan" for its implementation.

Accordingly, hundreds of U.S. airplanes bombed the Suphung, Jangjingang, Pujongang and Hochongang hydraulic power stations.

The bombing left a number of industrial establishments destroyed and hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland ravaged, reducing to ashes more than 600 000 dwelling houses, 5 000 schools, 1 000 hospitals and clinics, 260 theatres and cinemas and thousands of cultural and welfare buildings.

The invaders destroyed or took away thousands of pieces of cultural relics and remains.

They used the three tombs of Kangso, national heritages, as storehouses and dropped a bomb on the old tomb of Anak in Hwanghae Province.

The U.S. airplanes raided the Pohyon Temple in Mt. Myohyang, burning away more than 1 000 pieces of historical relics, including the Complete Collection of the Buddhist Scriptures of Koryo (918-1392).
An investigation group of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers said in its report that the U.S. actions were criminal in their planning, beginning and practice.


Int'l Meeting Denounces GIs' Atrocities during Korean War

Pyongyang, July 25 (KCNA) -- An international meeting denouncing GIs' atrocities committed in the Korean War took place in Pamnamu-gol (chestnut valley) of Wonam-ri, Sinchon County of South Hwanghae Province on Thursday.

Present at the meeting were delegations of foreign friendship and solidarity organizations and international bodies and foreign delegates and guests.

Attending it were Kim Jin Bom, vice-chairman of the Democratic Lawyers Association of Korea and vice-chairman of the Korean Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, officials concerned and people in Sinchon County.

Prior to the meeting the participants laid bouquets before the grave of 400 mothers and the grave of 102 children before paying silent tribute to those killed.

Speeches were made by former Attorney General of the U.S. Ramsey Clark, President of the Women's International Democratic Federation Marcia de Campos Pereira, the head of the delegation of Turkey-Korea Friendship Association and Kim Jin Bom.

They said that massacres of civilians by GIs during the Korean War laid bare the true colors of the U.S. styling itself "champion of peace and human rights".

They strongly urged the U.S. to stop at once the hostile moves and nuclear war moves against the DPRK and refrain from acts of obstructing the reunification of Korea and disturbing peace and stability.

An appeal in the name of the participants to the world progressives who love justice and peace was read out at the meeting.

It called for dynamically launching worldwide actions for forcing the U.S. to make an apology and compensate for all the crimes and atrocities it committed against the Korean people including massacres of civilians.

It also called for conducting diverse activities demanding the dismantlement of the "UN Command" and withdrawal of its troops from south Korea and an early conclusion of a peace treaty with the DPRK.


U.S. Blamed for Persisting in State of War on Korean Peninsula

Pyongyang, July 25 (KCNA) -- For the past six decades after the war, the U.S. imperialists have worked hard to provoke a new war against the DPRK in wanton violation of the Armistice Agreement (AA) to retrieve its shameful defeat in the Korean War.

At around 22:20 on July 27, 1953, in less than half an hour after the AA took effect, the U.S. fired several machine gun bullets into the DPRK side.

The Panmunjom incident on August 18, 1976, the case of opening fire into guards of the DPRK side on November 23, 1984 and other provocative acts have been committed one after another in the joint security area.

In less than a decade after the signing of the AA, military airplanes of the U.S. imperialist aggression troops intruded into the sky above the DPRK 693 times with the number of planes mobilized for the mission totaling 1 390.

EC-121 and other spy planes were shot down or seized but far from drawing a lesson from them, the U.S. continuously flied SR-71 high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance plane, escalating provocation.

Spy activities by the U.S. were notably evidenced by the intrusion by armed spy ships Pueblo on January 23, 1968 and I-2 on June 5, 1970.

The fabrication of the illegal and bogus "northern limit line" was an intentional violation of the AA.

Acts of wantonly violating the AA in the sky, land and sea of Korea have reached hundreds of thousands which resulted in hundreds of sessions of the military armistice committee for the past six decades.

The weapons which the U.S. deployed in south Korea for just one year after the war were 240 M-26 tanks, 6 400 rocket launchers, more than 800 artillery pieces with various calibers, nearly 200 operational planes, 1 365 machine guns and tens of thousands of rifles. These are only figures that were revealed.

In June 1956 the U.S. forcibly expelled the inspection group of the Neutral Nations Supervision Committee from south Korea and declared in June 1957 its unilateral annulment of paragraph 13 d of AA which banned the introduction of operational planes, armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition from outside Korea.

The U.S. introduction and deployment of nuclear weapons in south Korea have steadily increased with their number exceeding more than 1 000 in the 1970s and reaching over 1 720 in the 1980s, making south Korea a region with the densest deployment of nuclear weapons in the world.
At the 14th annual security consultative meeting in March 1982, the U.S. made it official to offer a nuclear umbrella to south Korea.

Early in the 21st century, it adopted it as its policy in its "nuclear posture review" to mount a preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK.
In 2003 the U.S. invested 11 billion U.S. dollars under its new arms buildup plan to further strengthen its aggression troops present in south Korea.

Under this plan, it deployed huge attack weapons in south Korea and beefed up cutting-edge preemptive attack weapons in recent years.

The illegal introduction of war means increased the scope of puppet south Korean army from 16 divisions at the time of the signing of the AA to 31 divisions two years after the signing. The U.S. handed over destroyers, fighters and huge other attack weapons to south Korea, bolstering the combat capacities of naval and air forces.

The U.S. is still arming the puppet south Korean army with American-made weapons.
Point 60 of paragraph 4 of the AA provides that all the foreign forces shall be withdrawn from Korea and the Korean issue be settled in a peaceful way.

But the U.S. instigated the puppet south Korean forces on August 8, 1953 to scrap it by forming the "mutual defence pact" which stipulated the permanent presence of the U.S. forces in south Korea.

At the time of a meeting of foreign ministers of relevant countries for the peaceful coordination of the Korean issue which was convened in Geneva in April 1954, the U.S. asserted that an election under the U.N supervision shall be organized all over Korea and the U.S. forces shall not pull out of Korea until a unified Korean government is set up. When this assertion was rebuffed, the U.S. scuttled the discussion of the Korean issue itself in June 1954.

After the adoption of a resolution on dismantling the "UN Command" for the lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula at the 30th UN General Assembly Session in November 1975 the U.S. has become all the more undisguised in its attempt to keep its forces in south Korea on a permanent basis through the fabrication of the U.S.-south Korea "Combined Forces Command".

Early in March 2006 it crafted a plan on enhancing the role of the countries that participated in the Korean war and allowing their participation in the detailed activities as well as in the working out of the emergency and operational plans in a bid to expand and reorganize the already defunct "UN Command" into a permanent multi-national combined armed forces organization.

The U.S. imperialist aggression forces' anti-DPRK nuclear war exercises which started with the codename of Focus Lens in 1954 have been followed by Ulji Focus Lens in 1976 and continued under codename of Ulji Freedom Guardian from 2008.

Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises originated from Focus Retina staged by the U.S. and puppet south Korea at the end of the 1960s. In 1971 they continued with codename of Freedom Bolt and changed its codename to Team Spirit from 1976 till it lasted in 1993. Later the codenames changed to Reception, Staging, Onward Movement and Integration, Foal Eagle, Key Resolve and Foal Eagle again.

The number of other DPRK-targeted war exercises and military drills staged in south Korea totaled over 18 000, when counting only those made public.

It is due to such acts of the U.S. that the original meaning of armistice has disappeared from the Korean Peninsula in the true sense of words and the evil cycle of escalation of tension and war crisis has repeated.