Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum
February 25, 2024
On 15 January 2024, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) made a historic declaration. At the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) on this day, the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, Kim Jong Un, declared that his country would subjugate “the Republic of Korea” (ROK) in case of emergency. Here are the important points of Chairman Kim Jong Un’s speech regarding the situation in Korea.
First, Chairman Kim Jong Un stated: “The frequent remarks made by the U.S. authorities about the ‘end of our regime’, vast nuclear strategic assets constantly stationed in the peripheral area of the DPRK, ceaseless war exercises with its followers staged on the largest scale, the military nexus between Japan and the Republic of Korea boosted at the instigation of the U.S., etc. are seriously threatening the security of our state moment by moment.” And he stressed: “It is our Party’s strategic plan to defend the country and greet a great revolutionary event through all-people resistance.”
The provocateurs of war in today’s world are always imperialism and its puppets. Chairman Kim Jong Un’s speech points to the fact that all armies and people will unite to defend the fatherland and bring about a great revolutionary event if war breaks out as a result of provocative maneuvers aimed at invading North Korea. This great revolutionary event will necessarily involve subjugating the whole territory of the South.
Chairman Kim Jong Un went on to call “the ROK” “a group of outsiders’ top-class stooges”, defining it as an “enemy state”, a “belligerent state” and a “foreign country”. He expressed the DPRK’s readiness to “completely occupy, subjugate and reclaim the ROK and annex it as a part of the territory of our Republic” in case of the outbreak of war on the peninsula.
Here, “the ROK” becomes both an “enemy state” and “a group of outsiders’ top-class stooges”. This is not a logical contradiction, but a dialectical one: it is both “the ROK” and an enemy state, but it is also “the ROK clan” and puppets. Thus we can see that the DPRK still essentially maintains a one-state policy. In other words, it internally upholds its existing policy that the DPRK is the only state on the Korean peninsula and is prepared to subjugate the ROK as an enemy state in the event of war.
Chairman Kim Jong Un also pointed out: “It is necessary to delete such expressions in the constitution as ‘northern half’ and ‘independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity’.” “We have dismantled all the organizations we established as solidarity bodies for peaceful reunification.” And further: “We should also completely remove the eye-sore ‘Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification’ standing at the southern gateway to the capital city of Pyongyang.”
These are tactical measures valid only until such a time as subjugation has been achieved. In fact, they outline a peaceful process: subjugation will inevitably lead to the establishment of a military government in the South, ruled by the Korean People’s Army. When revolutionary forces in the South have matured enough and a civil government is established through democratic elections, this people’s democratic government and the socialist government of the North will build a unified federal state.
In other words, these measures, which seem to deny “peaceful reunification”, are temporary tactical measures to remove the obstacles to reunification, in force only until “an enemy country” and “a group of stooges” called “the ROK” has ceased to exist. Once a people’s democratic government has come into power, then, and only then, can meaningful reunification in an atmosphere of peace and security―ie, federal reunification―be achieved. The policy of peacefully building a unified federal state is still the strategic goal of the DPRK.
To this end, Chairman Kim Jong Un has made it clear that the military force of the North is “not a means of preemptive attack for realizing unilateral ‘reunification by force of arms’”. In other words, the DPRK has no intention of reunifying the country by force―ie, of actively pursuing forceful reunification. If reunification doesn’t take place by force, then it will be a peaceful reunification by means of a federal system.
Chairman Kim Jong Un went on to stress: “The war will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence. And it will inflict an unimaginably crushing defeat upon the U.S.”
Thus he showed that the DPRK has different approaches to “the ROK” and to the USA. Chairman Kim Jong Un has made it clear that if war breaks out as a result of provocations against the DPRK, “the ROK” itself will “be destroyed” while the USA will suffer a significant blow, “a crushing defeat”. This suggests that the DPRK sees the possibility that the USA might not intervene in a “war in the ROK”.
The USA today is following a military doctrine of proxy warfare against its peer competitors―as has been made clear by the way it is prosecuting its wars in Ukraine and Palestine. The same is likely to be true of a possible “war in the ROK”. If the USA were to engage in a direct war with the DPRK, rather than in a proxy war via the stooge “ROK” forces, it would risk the DPRK’s nuclear attack on the US mainland, which could escalate into mutually assured destruction (MAD) and the annihilation of humanity.
With this “declaration of subjugation” by the DPRK, a possible war in South Korea during this decade, a “war in the ROK”, would take on the character of an antifascist and anti-imperialist war, a war of subjugation, an internal war. This compares with the Korean War of the 1950s, which was an anti-imperialist and antifascist war, a national-liberation war, and a war for the reunification of the Fatherland. The essence of anti-imperialism, antifascism, and liberation will remain unchanged, but the DPRK’s temporary acceptance of a two-state policy has made a difference.
Once the lower of the two stages of the democratization of South Korea―namely anti-fascist democratization―has been achieved via non-peaceful means of subjugation, then the higher stage, people’s democratization, can be achieved peacefully. The process of making South Korea independent of the USA that must happen in between these two stages could be achieved via peaceful or non-peaceful means, depending on the USA’s reaction.
Under conditions where antifascist democratiza-tion and anti-US independence have already been achieved, the process of establishing a unified federal government between the people’s democratic regime in the South and the socialist regime in the North can only be pursued by peaceful means.
The main points of the speech at 14th SPA of the DPRK in January were already contained in the report on 9th Enlarged Plenum of 8th WPK central committee in December. At the party central committee at the end of last year and at the SPA at the beginning of this year, General Secretary of the WPK and Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, Kim Jong Un, has inherited the ideas and strategies of the revolution and reunification of his predecessors, President Kim Il Sung and Chairman of the National Defence Commission Kim Jong Il, innovating upon them in order to adapt them to today’s situation and resolve the long-standing problems of the Korean peninsula. These problems have existed for 78 years since the division of the country by the US imperialists in 1945, and the DPRK has made it clear that it is now prepared to use bold methods of subjugation―to fight a “war in the ROK”―in case of emergency.
This concept of a war of subjugation to oust the imperialist proxy regime in the South has opened a decisive period for the South Korean revolution.
With the DPRK’s willingness to subjugate the South, the likelihood of a “war in the ROK” has increased. Moreover, the likelihood of war in Taiwan, which is bound to break out at the same time, has also increased. And as the likelihood of war breaking out in East Asia increases, the possibility of war spreading across Eastern Europe is increasing likewise.
Currently, the flames of World War 3 are spreading from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and look likely to ignite in East Asia, too. But once the flames of war have ignited East Asia, World War 3 will be in full swing and the “New Cold War” antagonism facing the anti-imperialist and imperialist camps alike will become clear. Human history will arrive at a great new turning point.
We can expect this great new turn in human history to prove a great new turn for world revolution.
