Corvette 'Cheonan' Incident
Denounce Attempts to Provide a Pretext for Further Aggression on the Korean Peninsula
The Marxist-Leninist
http://www.cpcml.ca/On March 26, 2010, the 1,200-ton south Korean corvette, Cheonan, sank near Baek-Ryong Island in the Yellow Sea. It was part of naval formation participating in joint south Korea-U.S. war games that are part of ongoing hostile activity against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Baek-Ryong island is less than 16 km from the DPRK coast and more than 160 km from the south Korean mainland. The Cheonan carried 104 personnel, of which 58 were rescued. The ship was armed with Boeing missiles, four heavy calibre guns, torpedoes, and depth charges. The two halves of the sunken ship were later recovered using a giant floating crane.
In the intervening two months, U.S. puppet President Lee Myung Bak of south Korea has attributed blame to the DPRK and then attempted to bolster this unfounded accusation with a crescendo of fabrications, hysteria and hostility towards the DPRK including the threat of waging war.
Despite all efforts by the DPRK to calm the situation and ensure that it does not escalate, the U.S. through its puppet south Korean authorities is determined to use sinking of the Cheonan as a pretext to wage war on the DPRK. On May 20, the south Korean authorities released a spurious report attributing the sinking of the Cheonan to a torpedo fired by a DPRK submarine. With this fabrication in place as justification, the Lee government on Monday, May 24 proceeded to formally announce a series of unjust and hostile measures against the DPRK. These included a ban on the passage of DPRK's ships through waters of the south side, a "stop to trade and exchange between the south and the north" and the exercise of "the right to self-defense," i.e., the waging of an aggressive war against the DPRK. The Lee regime said would refer the case to the UN Security Council, while self-righteously demanding the DPRK accept responsibility and issue an apology. The Lee regime also announced that south Korean anti-communist psychological warfare operations against the DPRK , suspended six years ago, would restart along the Demilitarized Zone.
Far from being put on the defensive, the DPRK, through the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) issued a statement on May 25 that from now on it will put into force "resolute measures to totally freeze inter-Korean relations, totally abrogate the agreement on non-aggression between the north and south and completely halt inter-Korean cooperation." In other words, the treachery and sabotage of the Lee government as a tool of the U.S. imperialists is such that there is no possibility for the DPRK to hold a sincere dialogue with it on any matter, where time and again it has turned instruments of peace and reunification into their opposite. Consequently, the CPRK announced that the following diplomatic and economic measures will be taken as a first phase to defend the DPRK's sovereignty and dignity:
1. All relations with the puppet authorities will be severed.
2. There will be neither dialogue nor contact between the authorities during Lee Myung Bak's tenure of office. [His term ends in 2013 -- TML Ed. note]
3. The work of the Panmunjom Red Cross liaison representatives will be completely suspended.
4. All communication links between the north and the south will be cut off.
5. The Consultative Office for North-South Economic Cooperation in the Kaesong Industrial Zone will be frozen and dismantled and all the personnel concerned of the south side will be expelled without delay.
6. We will start all-out counterattack against the puppet group's "psychological warfare against the north."
7. The passage of south Korean ships and airliners through the territorial waters and air of our side will be totally banned.
8. All the issues arising in the inter-Korean relations will be handled under a wartime law.
TML gives its unequivocal support to the DPRK and the measures it is undertaking to ensure that peace and justice prevail on the Korean peninsula. TML has full confidence that through the DPRK's steadfast and principled stand, it is the U.S. imperialists and its puppets in south Korea who will be isolated as the warmongers and criminals against world peace that they are. In that vein, TML also denounces the insidious role of the Canadian government first in sending experts to participate in the spurious investigation and then the May 24 announcement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Canada is implementing sanctions against the DPRK. It must not pass! Hands off Korea! TML calls on everyone to go all out to ensure that the working class and people are informed about the truth about Korea, including the criminal role of the U.S. there.
A statement from a DPRK Foreign Ministry spokesperson denouncing U.S. and south Korean attempts to demonize the DPRK harkens to the ongoing tragedy of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, stating: "The U.S., however, should know that it is not so easy to pull the wool over the eyes of the world's people.
"They vividly remember the upbeat and 'persuasive' U.S. Secretary of State Powell reading top secret information about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for 70 minutes at the meeting of the UN Security Council held in February 2003. It was with such an unprecedented lie that the U.S. justified an armed invasion of Iraq and it is still not free from its disgraceful fallout. Should the U.S. tell another lie on the Korean Peninsula and let its running dogs strain the situation, they will have to pay a price incomparably dearer than what it has for the Iraqi war."
TML calls on all peace- and justice-loving people to denounce the attempts to use the Cheonan sinking to split the Korean people and provide a pretext for further aggression on the Korean Peninsula.
The U.S. imperialists and their allies in south Korea have a long history of staging provocative actions while obfuscating their role as the aggressor in order to provide a pretext for further aggression, as in the case of the beginning of the Korean War itself, which lead to the present division of the peninsula. Since that time, south Korean forces together with the U.S. military have systematically held war exercises and transgressed DPRK airspace and naval boundaries, including innumerable acts of espionage by air and sea.
For 61 years since its founding, the DPRK has waged an unflinching struggle against the U.S. military occupation of south Korea, U.S. imperialist threats, and U.S. nuclear blackmail, defended peace on the Korean peninsula, advanced their nation-building project of national reunification, free from outside interference. This latest attempt to distort facts and demonize the DPRK shows that the U.S. today is as active as ever in pursuing its efforts to conquer the whole of the Korean peninsula so as to dominate all of Asia. In the face of this intransigence, far from being the aggressor, it is the DPRK which continues to demand that the U.S. sign a peace treaty with it to end the Korean War and so as to put an end to such dangerous activities. TML calls on the people to support the just proposal of the government of the DPRK for a peace treaty to be signed between the U.S. and the DPRK to end the Korean War and to de-escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula, to normalize relations between the U.S. and the DPRK and contribute to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula as a contribution to peace in East Asia and the world.
Hands Off Korea!
U.S. Troops Out of Korea!
All Out to Support the Peaceful, Independent Re-Unification of Korea!
