Stephen Cho | Coordinator of the Korean International Forum
The most important feature of the “New Cold War” is the position and role of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) within the anti-imperialist camp. As the most thoroughly socialist country, the DPRK occupies a key position and plays a pivotal role in this alliance.
Of all the existing socialist states, the DPRK adheres to socialist principles most thoroughly. Its society implements socialist principles in all fields of politics, economy and culture, and is growing stronger and more robust. The DPRK is building a powerful socialist state with the complete victory of socialism as its strategic goal.
It is a historic miracle that the DPRK, which is not a big country, was able to win wars against the imperialist powers of Japan and the United States, to complete its socialist industrialization in 14 years under conditions of the most draconian economic blockade that has been imposed by the imperialists since the Korean War 70 years ago, and to go on to become one of the world’s handful of nuclear missile powers.
This is the result of the DPRK’s adherence to the principles of independence in politics, self-sufficiency in the economy, and self-reliance in defence, implementing the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism in the specific conditions of Korea. This also explains why the Workers Party of Korea (WPK), a revolutionary party of the working class, is the longest-ruling party in the world today.
The essence of the present world situation must be understood in the context of world war. As of April 2024, the flames of World War 3, entirely provoked by imperialism, are spreading rapidly from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and are travelling towards East Asia. The military actions of Russia, the Middle-Eastern resistance forces and Iran are all unavoidable and legitimate exercises of self-defence against the war provocations of imperialism and its proxies.
The war in Ukraine began with the Maidan coup d’état in 2014, intensified during the eight-year war in Donbass, and entered full swing in February 2022 with the launch of Russia’s “special military operation”. The war in the Middle East began its latest phase with the launch of Operation “al-Aqsa Flood” in October 2023, has been intensified by the actions of Hezbollah and Ansar Allah, and entered full swing with Iran’s Operation “True Promise” in April 2024. World War 3, which began with the launch of Russia’s special military operation and intensified with the latest outbreak of war in the Middle East, will enter full swing with the war in East Asia, which will be its climax.
The war in East Asia consists of the two wars that the imperialists are driving towards in South Korea and Taiwan. In their historic mutual-defence agreement of 1961, DPRK President Kim Il Sung and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai agreed that if one party was attacked by imperialism, the other would automatically come to their aid. President Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea in 2019 reaffirmed this pact.
Since then, China has actively resolved the Hong Kong issue and taken a firmer approach to the question of Taiwan separatism. For China, the Taiwan issue is a crucial one that must be resolved at all costs, since the imperialists would like to use it to trigger a chain of artificially created separatist movements in the country.
War in East Asia will be waged between socialist DPRK (North Korea), China and capitalist Russia (with its socialist heritage) on one side and the US and Japanese imperialists with their principal puppets in Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Taiwan on the other. As in the other theatres of war, it will be a war between the anti-imperialist camp and the camp of imperialism and its local proxies.
While the USA will mobilize all its Indo-Pacific forces for such a war, both the DPRK and China have indicated that they are ready to use tactical nuclear weapons if their enemy should launch a pre-emptive strike against them. With its short vertical length (evidenced by the proximity of the two capitals), its high concentration of advanced and conventional weapons, and its hosting of the largest US military base in the world, the Korean Peninsula is bound to become the main focal point of such a war.
In January this year, the DPRK’s leadership declared at the Supreme People’s Assembly that they have defined the “ROK”, which is “a group of outsiders’ top-class stooges”, as a “primary enemy state”, and if the “ROK” provokes a war of invasion, the DPRK has made plans to immediately subjugate the southern half of Korea, eliminating the “ROK clan”. To prove its words with actions, the DPRK has conducted intensive military exercises for an advance into the South, including hypersonic missile tests and state-of-the-art high-tech tank warfare in response to the “US-ROK” joint war exercises aimed at North Korea.
The DPRK’s weapons tests and exercises are being conducted in a thoroughly practical manner in a series of concentric circles centered on the North to reach South Korea, Japan, Guam, Hawaii and finally the US mainland itself.
The expected war in South Korea, which would be the second Korean War, would be an antifascist, anti-imperialist war and a war for the subjugation. It must be the decisive trigger for the South Korean revolution. War in Taiwan would be an anti-imperialist, liberation war and a war of Chinese national reunification.
Thus we can see that the coming wars in South Korea and Taiwan will decisively change the destiny of the peoples of South Korea and Taiwan. War in East Asia will be a trigger for a great turn not only in the region but in the whole world, just as the Battle of Stalingrad was in World War 2.
Both the DPRK and China are socialist countries, the DPRK being the most thoroughly socialist country without any condition like “Chinese characteristics”. Through its victory, the socialist DPRK will significantly influence not only the South Korean people’s revolutionary prospects but also the revolutionary future of the whole world in ideological and systemic ways.
The DPRK’s historical experience of constructing a powerful state with independent politics, a self-sufficient economy, and a self-reliant military while overcoming the “Arduous March”, during which it kept alive the principles of socialism during the most difficult conditions of the 1990s, is a precious asset of revolution for victory in the struggle against imperialism, fascism and reaction of all types. The process of a national-liberation democratic revolution in South Korea, a colonial semi-capitalist society, will infuse scientific conviction and revolutionary optimism into the oppressed and exploited people around the world, who are groaning under a deformed capitalist society which is completely subordinated to imperialist powers.
World War 3 will reach its height when the war spreads to East Asia. Its outcome will be decided by the overwhelming power of military force and united people, by the “all-people resistance” highlighted in the “January Speech” by Chairman Kim Jong Un. The possible expansion of the war into Eastern Europe and the fate of Zionist Israel will depend entirely on whether the imperialist camp persists in frantic maneuvers. The anti-imperialist camp would certainly prefer for World War 3 to end in East Asia, but if the imperialist camp continues with its provocations, the anti-imperialist will respond them with dealing a crushing blow against imperialists.
The strongest anti-imperialist force in history is now taking shape. Within it are united the world’s strongest nuclear and missile powers of the DPRK, China and Russia alongside the broad masses of the oppressed from around the world, including the majority of the world’s two billion Muslims. This force is simultaneously and continuously striking at the already collapsing imperialist world, causing its leaders to tremble in fear of catastrophic destruction.
Today’s great upheaval in world affairs will go forward to tomorrow’s great transition and to a great upsurge of the future impelled by the great unity of the anti-imperialist camp. Socialism is the only future for humanity, and the DPRK is a beacon of that socialist future. Imperialism may have won a temporary victory in the Cold War, but it will inevitably find itself the ultimate loser of the “New Cold War”.
The eventual defeat of imperialism, in its essence, means global independence heading to socialism.
