Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum
World War 1 was an inter-imperialist war, World War 2 was an anti-fascist war, and World War 3 is an anti-imperialist war. Both World War 1 and 2 were provoked by imperialism, originated from its political and economic crises, and ended up intensifying those crises. Likewise, World War 3, also ignited by imperialism and born out of its ongoing crisis, is bound to deepen it even further.
The storm of World War 3, unleashed by imperialism, is sweeping from Eastern Europe through West Asia (the Middle East) to East Asia and the Western Pacific. Along with Eastern Europe and West Asia, which are already engulfed in war, East Asia―where war is now imminent―constitutes one of the three major theatres of World War 3.
The war in Ukraine, orchestrated by imperialism through the Maidan coup in 2014 and escalated with Russia’s special military operation in February 2022, and the war in West Asia, initiated by imperialism in 1948 and reignited by the war in Palestine in October 2023, were both planned and driven by imperialism and its fascist puppets.
World War 1 led to the emergence of the first socialist state in human history, and World War 2 expanded the socialist camp and anti-imperialist front on a global scale. Frightened by the consequences of World War 2, the imperialist camp devised the “Cold War” strategy and put it into practice through the Korean War, using the “Republic of Korea (ROK),” established as an anti-communist outpost, as its spearhead.
The division of Korea began in 1945 with the arrival of US imperialist forces as an occupying army in the southern part of Korea. This contradiction deepened with the civil war within South Korea in 1948 and with more than 2,600 invasions and localized wars against the DPRK initiated by the “ROK” army in 1949, eventually exploding into the Korean War in 1950. The Korean War was instigated by imperialism, arose from the political and economic crises of imperialism, and concluded with the intensification of those very crises.
The war in Ukraine is an anti-imperialist, anti-fascist war―one of liberation and prevention; the war in West Asia is an anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, and liberation war; and the war in the “ROK” is an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, and subjugation war. In essence, an anti-Zionist war is an anti-fascist war, and a war of subjugation of the “ROK” regime is a war of liberation of its people. The common feature of the wars in Ukraine, West Asia, and the “ROK” is that they are all anti-imperialist, anti-fascist wars, and the fundamental nature of an anti-imperialist, anti-fascist war is an anti-imperialist war.
Fascism, along with social democracy, is a mode of class domination by monopoly capital, while imperialism is the external expression of the monopoly capitalist system. Before the outbreak of World War 2, Nazi Germany’s mode of rule shifted from social democracy to fascism, and the early stages of World War 2 were characterized as an inter-imperialist war, as both fascist Germany and social-democratic Britain were imperialist states. However, after fascist Germany invaded the socialist Soviet Union, the war transformed into an anti-fascist war with the formation of an anti-fascist front between the socialist Soviet Union and the imperialist powers of Britain and the United States.
Today, since the fascist forces in Ukraine, Israel, and the “ROK” serve as lackeys for imperialism, while appearing at the phenomenal level, the wars are waged by fascist forces; however, in essence, these wars are orchestrated by imperialism. The resistance of the oppressed and exploited peoples against the Zelensky regime in Ukraine, the Netanyahu regime in Israel, and the Yoon Suk-yeol regime in the “ROK” are, in their phenomenal form, anti-fascist wars, but in essence, anti-imperialist wars.
The reason why not only Eastern Europe but also Western Europe is tense over the war in Ukraine is because it is orchestrated, led, and supported by NATO, the imperialist aggressor force. The war in Palestine, from the very outset, immediately expanded into a regional war encompassing the whole of West Asia. Similarly, once a war in the “ROK” breaks out, it will immediately escalate into a war over Taiwan, further expanding into a broader East Asian war with Japan and the Philippines involved, and eventually into a Western Pacific war with the participation of Australia and others.
In August 2023, the leaders of the US, Japan, and the “ROK” de facto established an “East Asian version of NATO” at Camp David in the USA. The “Pacificization of NATO” was politically finalized at the Washington NATO Summit in July 2024, and militarily consolidated through the “Freedom Edge,” “RIMPAC,” and “Ulchi Freedom Shield” exercises conducted from June to August 2024.
The root cause of the war in Ukraine, NATO’s “eastward expansion policy,” has extended from the North Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, leaping over the Indian Ocean, and reaching the Pacific. The “Axis” once formed by fascist Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War 2 is today being succeeded in World War 3 by a “New Axis,” composed of the fascist forces in Ukraine, Israel, and the “ROK,” under the manipulation of imperialism.
It was no coincidence that, under NATO’s operational plan, Zelensky’s fascist forces launched an offensive against Kursk in Russia in August 2024; that, with the support of US imperialism, Netanyahu’s Zionist forces carried out concentrated attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon in September; and that, under the manipulation of US imperialism, Yoon Suk-yeol’s fascist clique provoked localized warfare against the DPRK from September to November and staged a pro-US self-coup in December.
The Yoon Suk-yeol regime in the “ROK” formally nullified the military agreement signed with the DPRK in September 2018 by June 2024. In September, it intensified its provocations with concentrated artillery drills against the DPRK, precisely at the sites where the West Sea naval clashes of 1999 and 2002 had erupted. In October, it escalated further by launching successive drone attacks on Pyongyang. These extremely dangerous provocations continued through November. Had the DPRK abandoned its stance of “strategic patience” and retaliated, a local war—and even a full-scale war in the “ROK”—could have broken out.
Yoon Suk-yeol’s fascist clique initially attempted to declare emergency martial law in the “ROK” under the pretext of a local war. When this failed, they proceeded to declare a baseless “emergency martial law”—without any real “emergency”—on December 3. Thanks to the courageous resistance of the people in the “ROK,” the National Assembly’s resolution to lift martial law, and Yoon’s impeachment, the attempt at martial law was thwarted. Had it succeeded, a “bloody rampage” would have erupted, with 10,000 people massacred in just the first phase, according to the “Noh Sang-won Notebook,” which outlined the Yoon clique’s subsequent plans. This would have meant that the coup and insurrection would have immediately escalated into a full-scale civil war, and combined with the outbreak of a local war, would have developed into the war in the “ROK.”
Driven further into a corner by the National Assembly’s impeachment in December 2024 and the Constitutional Court’s dismissal ruling in April 2025, the insurrectionist, fascist, and reactionary clique—now decisively isolated and crumbling—sees civil war as its only remaining path to survival. As the history of the 1948 civil war, the 1949 local war, and the 1950 Korean War demonstrates, in the “ROK,” the combination of a civil war and a local war inevitably leads to a full-scale war in the “ROK.”
Had it not been for the DPRK’s stance of “strategic patience” and the people’s December Uprising, the war in the “ROK” would have broken out between September and November 2024, or at the latest by December, precisely following the original blueprint of imperialism. To reiterate, this would have immediately escalated into a war in East Asia and the Western Pacific, leading to the full-scale outbreak of World War 3.
The drive toward World War 3 by the imperialist warmongering forces is being disrupted by the counter-policies and setbacks pursued by the imperialist non-warmongering forces who have seized control of the US government. Amid the deepening military, political, and economic conflicts within the imperialist camp, the East Asian war—which would escalate World War 3 to full-scale confrontation—and the war in the “ROK,” its ignition point, are seen by the imperialist warmongers as the optimal means to suppress the retrogressive moves of the imperialist non-warmongering forces. For the imperialists desperate to ignite World War 3 and a war in East Asia, the war in the “ROK” has become not a matter of choice but an absolute necessity—their ultimate scheme.
After Trump’s victory in the presidential election, the imperialist warmongering forces orchestrated and supported the lifting of Ukraine’s long-range missile restrictions against Russia in November 2024, the coup in the “ROK,” and the collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria in December.
The US imperialists, together with the fascist forces of the “ROK,” dramatically escalated their joint war exercises to invade the DPRK: from 132 exercises over a 20-year period (2003–2022) to 123 exercises in the single year of 2023, and then to 134 exercises in 2024. Entering 2025, the number of exercises has once again reached an all-time high. Not only has the number of exercises increased, but their character has shifted markedly toward nuclear war rehearsals. These drills have intensified into multi-domain operations that now include air, land, sea, underwater, space, and cyber domains, with Japan increasingly joining alongside the US and the “ROK.” The “Freedom Shield” exercise conducted by the US and the “ROK” in March 2025, aimed at invading the DPRK, was effectively a nuclear war drill conducted across multiple domains and sought to evolve into a trilateral exercise including Japan.
Beginning in 2023, when the US imperialist warmongering forces took direct command of war exercises aimed at invading the DPRK, preparations for the coup by the fascist forces in the “ROK” also accelerated in parallel. As mounting evidence of US imperialist orchestration surfaced, the insurrectionist, fascist, and reactionary forces in the “ROK” consolidated, and the ringleader of the insurrection, Yoon Suk-yeol, was illegally released through a fraudulent court ruling, all orchestrated once again by US imperialism.
If another reactionary riot like the unprecedented “January 19 court riot” occurs, compounded by shocking incidents like bloody clashes, shootings, or terrorist attacks, the “ROK” government will immediately declare security martial law. This would signify the transformation of the insurrection into a civil war, inevitably leading to the provocation of a local war and its escalation into a full-scale war in the “ROK.” In the early presidential election scheduled for June 3, the overwhelming victory of the reformist candidate Lee Jae-myung is virtually assured. Following his election, the insurrectionist, fascist, and reactionary clique is expected to suffer fatal blows through inevitable legal procedures, including a special investigation into the insurrection. There is no doubt that the final desperate convulsions of the insurrectionist, fascist, and reactionary forces will unfold, and it is a reasonable prediction that the imperialist warmongers’ war drills against the DPRK and the fascist clique’s civil war maneuvers against the people of the “ROK” will converge through the provocation of a local war, ultimately escalating into a full-scale war in the “ROK.”
For the communist forces, it is fundamental to formulate revolutionary strategy grounded in a scientific analysis of the objective situation. The key focus of scientific analysis lies in grasping the schemes of the target of revolution, while the key focus of formulating revolutionary strategy lies in discerning the scheme of the revolutionary forces. The essence of strategy and tactics, as an all-encompassing system of aim, methods, and means, fundamentally resides in the aim.
On the Korean Peninsula, the eve of war is the eve of revolution. World War 1 accelerated the Russian Revolution, and World War 2 expanded this revolution to a global scale.
In May 2025, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory of the anti-fascist forces in World War 2, we express scientific confidence that the anti-imperialist forces will certainly triumph in World War 3. The victory of the anti-imperialist forces, which hold an overwhelming superiority in terms of cause, capacity, and operations, has already been demonstrated through the practical struggles of recent years. While there have been retreats in some tactical theatres, they continue to advance and achieve victories in the major strategic theatres.
The historical experience of forming the anti-fascist front, which led to victory in World War 2, is today being inherited and developed into the formation of an anti-imperialist front. It is a natural consequence that the revisionist and opportunist nature of the erroneous and absurd arguments—particularly those based on the “Imperialist Pyramid” theory of the Communist Party of Greece—which deny this truth, clearly proven through practice, are being exposed and condemned across the world.
Since its founding in Paris, France, in October 2022, the World Anti-Imperialist Platform has continuously held international anti-imperialist conferences across Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and has actively waged the anti-imperialist struggle. The Platform will ceaselessly innovate itself and advance on its glorious path of strengthening the anti-imperialist front and spearheading the anti-imperialist struggle without deviation.
The final victory of the peoples of the world, united and fighting under the banner of anti-imperialism, is a matter of justice and of inevitability.