Book review: Glyn Ford – Talking to North Korea: Ending the Nuclear Standoff

This article first appeared in the Morning Star on 28 November 2018.

Glyn Ford’s latest book, ’Talking to North Korea’, is that rarest of things: a helpful, sensible, balanced, interesting and informative book about North Korea.

Ford is a former Labour MEP and expert in international relations. He has visited Pyongyang over a hundred times, toured the entire country, and met with government officials at the highest level. He is therefore uniquely well placed to explain and contextualise North Korean politics, and to give pragmatic and thoughtful suggestions as to how to move the peace process forward.

The book does an excellent job of presenting Korean history and politics to a western audience that has become used to thinking of North Korea as dangerous, unpredictable and unhinged. Describing the decades of vicious Japanese colonial rule in the first half of the twentieth century, closely followed by a genocidal war waged by the US, Ford explains how these experiences created a profound sense of insecurity and distrust among the Korean people, particularly north of the 38th parallel, where the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been treated by the imperialist powers as an enemy state ever since its formation in 1948.

To this day, too few people are aware of the extremity of the violence enacted against the Korean people during the war of 1950-53. Ford gives a brief – but chilling – overview: “The US carpet-bombed and more or less levelled the North… More bombs were dropped on the North than on Germany in World War II… Many of the bombs contained napalm, used here as a weapon of mass destruction for the first time: the liquid petroleum jelly stuck like glue and burnt its victims alive. Oceans of petrol were poured over the civilian population, incinerating them in the tens of thousands.”

Also little known is that, in the decades following the end of the Korean War, the DPRK achieved remarkable economic successes. “Annual economic growth rates of 20 per cent or more throughout the 1950s and early 1960s made the North one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.” While the key economic and social questions remained unsolved in the South, the DPRK was able to expropriate Japanese colonial properties, enact a far-reaching land reform, introduce universal free education, achieve 100% literacy and bring in a comprehensive welfare system providing housing, health care, education, employment, maternity benefits, and pensions. For a people that had suffered the depths of poverty, and who had been denied educational opportunities, these were unprecedented advances.

The author takes a refreshingly balanced look at the DPRK’s nuclear weapons programme, which he describes as “an entirely rational response to the situation in which it finds itself.” That situation is characterised by the ever-present threat of US-imposed ‘fire and fury’, along with ongoing economic problems. Ford points out that, as long as North Korea feels vulnerable to a US-led regime change operation, it can’t be expected to de-prioritise its military deterrent; however, maintaining a massive standing army with conventional weapons was draining its economy, already suffering in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, ageing infrastructure and ever-tightening sanctions. “Once it has its own nuclear deterrent, … resources and labour can then be shifted out of the military and into the civilian economy. Weapons of mass destruction are a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for kick-starting the North’s economy.”

Ford puts forward a realistic and sensible proposal for breaking the diplomatic deadlock over the DPRK’s nuclear weapons programme, based on engagement, respect and dialogue. Specifically he makes it clear that the DPRK will not give up its nuclear programme without cast-iron guarantees over its security and the normalisation of relations between it and the US. These conditions should be met, along with the lifting of sanctions and a commitment to helping resolve North Korea’s energy needs (perhaps via the light-water reactors that were meant to be supplied under the US-DPRK Agreed Framework of 1994). If the blanket of hostility were to be lifted, the DPRK’s leadership would certainly respond in kind with a transparent process of denuclearisation.

’Talking to North Korea’ is essential reading, a worthy successor to Selig Harrison’s similar but now slightly dated ‘Korean Endgame’.

What’s driving the peace process in Korea?

This article first appeared on Telesur English on 15 June 2018.


This week witnessed a historic step towards lasting peace in Korea. For the first time in history, the heads of state of the US and North Korea met face to face. The meeting appears to have laid the ground for ongoing top-level talks, and US president Donald Trump has announced that the joint war games conducted by the US and South Korea are on hold.

Given that just a few months ago, Trump was threatening nuclear war against the DPRK and referring to its leader Kim Jong-un as “rocket man”, these developments are breathtaking and extremely welcome.

But what changed? Has the Trump administration decided to abandon US imperialism and engage usefully with an increasingly multipolar world? Have some of the most sinister and vicious ‘hawks’ in Washington, like John Bolton (National Security Advisor) and Mike Pompeo (Secretary of State), unexpectedly led a volte-face in foreign policy?

Needless to say, nothing could be further from the truth. In every corner of the earth, the Trump administration has been making it all too clear that ‘Make America Great Again’ is, at its heart, an arch-neocon project. In April, the US carried out missile strikes against the Syrian state for the first time. In May, Trump announced that the US would exit the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and reintroduce sanctions against Iran. Sanctions against Venezuela have been ramped up, and its recent presidential election declared ‘illegitimate’. The steps towards bilateral normalisation between the US and Cuba are being reversed. In an outrageous attack on the national rights of the Palestinians, the US has moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Trump has fired the opening salvoes in a trade war with China. The US has bolstered its support for the breakaway Chinese province of Taiwan, and for the brutal and reactionary Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The globally hegemonic leopard has not changed its spots. To locate the key variables driving change, we must shift our gaze eastward.

One very important change is the stance of the South Korean (ROK) government. President Moon Jae-in came to power last year on the basis of a campaign promising, among other things, a serious bid to improve relations with the DPRK. Moon, a former student activist and human rights lawyer, represents the most progressive wing of mainstream South Korean politics (admittedly this is not saying much) and was mentored by Kim Dae-jung, author of the ‘Sunshine Policy’, which aimed to build understanding and de-escalate tensions with the DPRK.

While essentially pro-US, Moon is on record as saying that “South Korea should adopt diplomacy in which it can discuss a US request and say no to the Americans”. This is consistent with the wishes of the vast majority of the South Korean population, for whom the country’s status as a semi-colony of the US is a source of profound shame – Camp Humphreys, just 40 miles south of Seoul, is “the largest power projection platform in the Pacific”, and is the largest US overseas base; meanwhile the US maintains wartime operational control of the South Korean armed forces. Incidentally, another important Moon policy is to take back wartime operational control.

Moon also opposed the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and is in favour of improving relations with China. The China issue is critical. Throughout its history, the ROK has been heavily reliant on the US, both militarily and economically. South Korea was given preferential treatment in terms of technology transfer and foreign investment specifically so that its population wouldn’t be too attracted by socialism (most people are unaware that the DPRK was economically more advanced than the ROK until the early 1980s, and that the ROK only really started on the path of economic growth on the back of massive aid and preferential market access due to its military role supporting US genocide in Vietnam).

These days, however, the regional economic landscape has changed beyond recognition. China is now South Korea’s number one trade partner by a long way – ROK-China trade is double that between the ROK and the US, for both imports and exports – and it doesn’t take a genius to predict that this trend will deepen as China continues to grow. This economic shift lays the foundations for a political shift, as the South Korean ruling class’s dependence on the US starts to wane. It also gives China a certain amount of leverage. China is a longstanding ally of the DPRK; it wants to see denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula; it wants and needs a peaceful regional environment; it wants to limit the US military threat against it (and hence it is resolutely opposed to THAAD and would very much like to see the removal of 30,000 US troops from Korea); it also wants to ensure that Japan doesn’t develop a nuclear arsenal. All of this means that China is pushing hard for an improvement in relations between the DPRK and ROK, and between the DRPK and the US.

Meanwhile, the North Korean leadership has in recent months outwitted the US in the diplomatic realm, showing itself to be serious in its pursuit of peace. US vice president Mike Pence went to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang (ROK) with the specific intent of impeding any North Korean charm offensive, but he was uniquely unsuccessful: North Korean politicians, athletes and even cheerleaders acquitted themselves brilliantly and won widespread respect. This was soon followed up by two face-to-face meetings between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, as well as two meetings between Kim Jong-un and Chinese president Xi Jinping. Thus a path to progress has been opened up over the last few months by the leaderships in North Korea, South Korea and China, specifically excluding the US until the East Asian neighbours could present a united front.

The ground has now been laid for a historic advance, although it will no doubt be a rocky and winding road.

Jimmy Carter wrote last year that the North Koreans have been very consistent in their requests of the US: ”What the officials have always demanded is direct talks with the United States, leading to a permanent peace treaty to replace the still-prevailing 1953 cease-fire that has failed to end the Korean conflict. They want an end to sanctions, a guarantee that there will be no military attack on a peaceful North Korea, and eventual normal relations between their country and the international community.”

The people of the world – and especially the US – should add their voices to these entirely reasonable demands. The Korean people on both sides of the 38th parallel desire and deserve peace, stability and reunification.

Book review: TJ Coles – Fire and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks Nuclear War in Asia

A slightly modified version of this article first appeared in the Morning Star on 15 February 2018.


Clairview Books RRP £10.99

This short book by British academic TJ Coles will perhaps not receive as much attention as another recently-released text that shares its name. It is, nonetheless, an important and insightful book, providing an alternative viewpoint on the escalating crisis over Korea, and promoting an urgent message of peace.

The primary aim of the book is to dismantle the idea that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a serious danger to regional and global stability; that it’s an aggressive nuclear state that deserves to be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen”, such has been threatened by the president of the United States.

The ball is in the US’ court in terms of promoting denuclearisation and de-escalation, as the DPRK has stated many times that it would be willing to end its nuclear programme in exchange for diplomatic recognition by the US, an end to sanctions, and a guarantee against regime change operations. In a world where Iraq, Libya or Yugoslavia can be “taken out” by NATO, such demands are not unreasonable. Coles catalogues the numerous attempts made by the North Korean government to conduct substantive negotiations with the US and South Korea, only to have its efforts frustrated by successive White House regimes.

Coles makes it clear that it is the US, not the DPRK, that is the serious threat to peace. He notes: “Western media very conveniently hide the fact that, 1) the US refuses to adopt a no-first-use policy when it comes to nuclear weapons and, 2) China, Russia and North Korea each have a general no-first-use policy.”

The DPRK has invaded and bombed not a single country, unlike the US, which has invaded and bombed dozens of countries. On top of that, the US maintains a permanent threat of nuclear annihilation, for example using B52 nuclear-enabled bombers in joint military exercises with South Korea. Its deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) ‘missile defence’ system is highly dangerous and provocative, and is aimed not only (or indeed primarily) at preventing North Korean aggression but at containing and threatening China. The THAAD system, much like Reagan’s ’Star Wars’, seeks to render other countries’ nuclear weapons redundant, thereby expanding possibilities for the US to engage in nuclear blackmail.

The take-home message is that we must demand an end to US warmongering and bullying; expose the attempts to paint the DPRK as a threat to regional stability; and support multilateral negotiations towards a lasting peace.

The book isn’t without its flaws. Without any real analysis of the subject, Coles writes off the DPRK’s political system as ‘despicable’. The DPRK’s form of socialism is certainly quirky, and its leadership makes mistakes, but it’s important for the western left not to universalise its own idiosyncratic culture and take an arrogant attitude towards those that don’t follow it. The DPRK’s vision of socialism incorporates elements of Korean nationalism and Neo-Confucianism that, while not Marxist, bridge the gap between strongly entrenched traditions and modern socialist ideas. Much the same could be said about Latin American liberation theology and its combination of socialist ideology with Christian teaching. When assessing a political culture, we should be careful to avoid subtly bolstering imperialist cultural hegemony.

Another criticism is that the book is not terribly well organised, moving unpredictably from well-sourced and properly-referenced sections to bold, unsubstantiated statements.

Defects aside, ‘Fire and Fury’ is an important book that deserves to be read by all those that wish to see peace in the Korean Peninsula. Good books to read alongside it include Selig Harrison’s ‘Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and US Disengagement’ and Tim Beal’s ‘North Korea: The Struggle Against American Power’.

Can a new Korean War be averted?

This is a slightly edited version of an article that appeared on RT Op-Edge on 23 April 2017.


In recent days, the US administration has been recklessly issuing threats against North Korea, escalating tensions and creating a potentially catastrophic situation in East Asia.

Ridiculously, many people in the west are worried about the situation not because of Trump’s insane militarism but that of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Such thinking is irrational and ahistorical, and is rooted largely in mass media deception and good old-fashioned yellow-peril racism. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has invaded and bombed not a single country. The United States of America on the other hand has invaded and bombed dozens of countries – including Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Grenada, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and, yes, Korea.

The war waged by the US and its allies against North Korea from 1950-53 was nothing short of genocidal. All major cities were destroyed. At least 20% of the population was killed. Only through extraordinary heroism and creative genius – along with the selfless support of China and the USSR – did the country survive. Since then, the North Korean people have lived every single day under the threat of nuclear annihilation. As Bruce Cumings, the leading western academic expert on the DPRK, puts it:

North Korea is the only country in the world to have been systematically blackmailed by US nuclear weapons going back to the 1950s, when hundreds of nukes were installed in South Korea… Why on earth would Pyongyang not seek a nuclear deterrent? But this crucial background doesn’t enter mainstream American discourse. History doesn’t matter, until it does – when it rears up and smacks you in the face.

The DPRK’s leadership never tires of pointing out that it doesn’t actually want to be a nuclear state; its demand is for denuclearisation of the whole Korean peninsula. However, given the nuclear threat that it lives with, it is by no means unreasonable for it to develop a deterrent.

What about talks? The DPRK has consistently said it is willing to engage in negotiations, as long as these don’t take place in a context of bullying and threats. China has worked hard over the years to facilitate such talks. It is precisely the US that has made bilateral or multilateral talks impossible, by including an unreasonable and hypocritical precondition that the DPRK abandon its weapons programme.

Any reasonable person wants to see a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and to avoid a nuclear war. The key first step towards this is for the US to drop its preconditions to negotiations, and to lessen its aggressive stance – at least by reciprocating the North Korean assurance of nuclear no first use. Negotiations will need to cover a number of tough issues, including the removal of US troops from South Korea, removing the nuclear threat against North Korea, steps towards national reunification. Resolution on these issues feels out of reach after so many decades of mistrust, but as Selig Harrison writes in his authoritative book Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement, “if the United States agrees to play the role of an honest broker and to remove what North Korea regards as threatening aspects of its conventional force presence, in return for missile limitations, Pyongyang would be more likely than it is at present to give up its nuclear weapons option and to permit a meaningful inspection regime.”

Under international law, countries have the right to independence and sovereignty; to choose their own path, even if that path doesn’t correspond with the needs of US economic, political, cultural and ideological domination. Do you want the DPRK to be less of a siege state; to devote more resources to social welfare and less to military development? Fine. The key to that is taking away the constant threat of war, nuclear annihilation and regime change.

North Korea is full of normal human beings who want to enjoy their lives, live in peace, raise their children, learn, love, socialise, dance, sing, and so on. They don’t have the same ideology as modern westerners, but frankly that’s not an entirely bad thing. And in many respects the DPRK is surprisingly successful. Bruce Cumings writes in his book North Korea: Another Country:

An internal CIA study almost grudgingly acknowledged various achievements of this regime: compassionate care for children in general and war orphans in particular; “radical change” in the position of women; genuinely free housing, free health care, and preventive medicine; and infant mortality and life expectancy rates comparable to the most advanced countries.

Life expectancy at birth is 70.4 years. Hospital bed density (number of hospital beds per 1,000 of the population) is 13.2 – quadruple that of the United Kingdom. The entire population has access to improved drinking water. The literacy rate is 100%. Think these statistics come from the DPRK’s ministry of propaganda? They’re from the CIA World Factbook. Most developing countries would be very happy to achieve such figures.

Bombing the Korean people would be reckless and unjustifiable; all sides must work to avoid war. The international community has almost unanimously condemned the DPRK’s nuclear missile tests as an unacceptable provocation. However, there should also be recognition of the US’ double standards. As General Charles Horner, former commander of the US Space Command says: “It’s kind of hard for us to say to North Korea, ‘You are terrible people, you are developing a nuclear weapon,’ when the United States has thousands of them.” (cited in Harrison, op cit)

It’s time to stop the escalation of tensions and for all sides to sit down at the negotiating table.

Interview: Understanding and Defending North Korea

What follows is an extensive interview with Yongho Thae, Minister of the Embassy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in London, conducted by Carlos Martinez. The interview took place at the DPRK embassy in London in October 2013. Topics covered include the DPRK’s nuclear programme, the nature of the DPRK’s political system, the DPRK’s place in a changing global political landscape, tourism, Syria, and Latin America. Given that the DPRK is considered by the imperialist states as ‘enemy number one’, it is essential for anti-imperialists to make an effort to understand and defend it.


The western media narrative claims that DPR Korea’s nuclear programme is a major threat to world peace. Why does the DPRK have nuclear weapons?

When the western press comments on the nuclear programme of the DPRK, it never talks about the core reasons behind that programme; it is only interested in justifying US bullying; it wants people to be blind to the underlying logic of our position. Our policy is simple and easy to understand: we need a nuclear deterrent.

Before I go into this issue, I’d like to clarify that it is still the DPRK’s policy to denuclearise the Korean peninsula. It has always been our policy to get our country out of the threat of nuclear war. In order to reach that aim, there was no choice but to develop our own nuclear capacity.

After the Second World War, the US was the only country in the world that had nuclear weapons. In order to further their strategy of global domination, they decided to use an atomic bomb against Japan. The facts show that there was no need for the US to use such a weapon in that situation. In Europe, in May 1945, Hitler was defeated and the war ended. In the Pacific, the tide had turned totally against Japanese imperialism. It was obvious that the Soviet army would take part in the war against Japan, and Japan was losing the war with the US. It was just a matter of time before the Japanese war effort collapsed. Japan could not win against the combined forces of the Soviet Union, Europe, China and the US, so they were looking for a way out. There was absolutely no need for the US to use nuclear weapons. Inside the US establishment, there were fierce arguments as to whether these weapons should be used. The people of the world didn’t understand about the destructive power of nuclear weapons – only US leaders knew. They wanted the world to find out about how mighty these weapons were, so that the world would be forced to go along with US policy. In order to achieve this aim, they didn’t take into account how many lives would be lost. To them, the lives of ordinary Japanese people are like the lives of dogs, of animals. They would kill as many as possible in support of their geopolitical aims.

So the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Later on the USSR developed nuclear weapons too. As time went on, the Soviet nuclear arsenal played the role of counterbalancing the possibility of US nuclear weapon usage. That is the main reason that the US couldn’t use these weapons in the second half of the 20th century. Later on the nuclear weapons club was expanded to include China, Britain and France. In terms of world peace as a whole, the enlargement of the nuclear club would intuitively be seen as a bad thing, but the reality was that the possession of nuclear weapons by China and the Soviet Union was able to check the use of nuclear weapons by anyone for any purposes. I think this is a fact we should admit.

As far as Korea is concerned, you know that Korea is just next door to Japan. Many Japanese lived in Korea, because Korea was a colony of Japan. Our media system at the time was run by Japanese. So when Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred, we heard about it and we understood very well the scale of this disaster. The Korean people understood very well how many people were killed in the space of just a minute. So the Korean people have a very direct experience of nuclear warfare from the beginning.

The Korean War started in 1950. The Americans thought they could easily win this war, because they had all the advanced conventional weapons and they mobilised 16 satellite countries. At this time China was only just liberated – the People’s Republic of China was just one year old. Meanwhile the Soviet Union was still recovering from the vast destruction of the Second World War. So, the US thought it could easily win the Korean War. However, they found out that their arrogance was misplaced. In fact, the Korean War was the first war that checked US ambitions.

The Korean People’s Army and the Chinese volunteers fought with incredible strength against the US. From the US point of view, this was a war against communism. But the communists had the full support of the people of these countries. Korea and China were rural countries, where the people were motivated by the idea of getting their own land. It is the Communist Party – the Workers’ Party of Korea – that distributed land equally to all farmers. So the WPK had the full support of the people, and the masses of the people took part in the Korean War. They knew the situation of their brothers and sisters in South Korea – dominated by landlords and US interests – and understood that if the DPRK lost the war, the rule of the landlords would be restored and the land reform reversed. So that is why the ordinary Korean people got involved. Everybody got involved and did not hesitate to make every sacrifice.

When he saw that the war was not going according to plan, Eisenhower asked his advisers: how can we win this war? The American generals suggested using the nuclear threat. The US felt that if they warned the population that they were going to drop a nuclear bomb, the people would flee from the front. Having witnessed the effects of nuclear warfare just five years previously, millions of people fled North Korea and went to the south. The result of this is that there are still 10 million separated families.

So you can see that the Korean people are the direct victims of nuclear bullying – us more so than anybody in the world. The nuclear issue is not an abstract one for us; it is something we have to take very seriously.

After the Korean War, the US never stopped its hostile policy towards Korea. Today they say that they cannot normalise relations with the DPRK because the DPRK has nuclear weapons. But in the 60s, 70s and 80s, we didn’t have nuclear weapons – did they normalise relations then? No. Rather, they continued trying to dominate the Korean peninsula with their own military force. It is the US that introduced nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. In the 70s, in order to check the influence of the Soviet Union, they deployed nuclear weapons in Europe and also in South Korea. The US never stopped threatening the DPRK with these weapons, which were just next to us, the other side of the demilitarised zone. Korea is a very small country, with a high population density. It is quite clear that if the US used its nuclear weapons, the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe would be unimaginable.

The DPRK government had to find a strategy to prevent the US from using these weapons against us. In the 1970s, there were discussions among the big powers as to how they could prevent nuclear war. What the big five counties agreed is that they would stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Only five countries would be allowed to have nuclear weapons; the others would not. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was born in 1970. The NPT clearly states that nuclear power states cannot use nuclear weapons for the purpose of threatening or endangering non-nuclear states. So the DPRK thought that if we joined the NPT, we would be able to get rid of the nuclear threat from the US. Therefore we joined. However, the US never withdrew its right of pre-emptive nuclear strike. They always said that, once US interests are threatened, they always have the right to use their nuclear weapons for pre-emptive purposes. So it’s quite obvious that the NPT cannot ensure our safety. On this basis, we decided to withdraw and to formulate a different strategy to protect ourselves.

The world situation changed again after 11 September 2001. After this, Bush said that if the US wants to protect its safety, then it must remove the ‘axis of evil’ countries from the earth. The three countries he listed as members of this ‘axis of evil’ were Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Bush said that, in order to remove these evils from the earth, the US would not hesitate even to use nuclear weapons. Events since then have proved that this was not a simply rhetorical threat – they have carried out this threat against Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now it comes to North Korea. There was DPRK Framework Agreement between the Clinton administration and the DPRK in 1994, but the Bush administration canceled this, saying that America should not negotiate with evil. The neo-cons said that ‘evil states’ should be removed by force. Having witnessed what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, we came to realise that we couldn’t put a stop to the threat from the US with conventional weapons alone. So we realised that we needed our own nuclear weapons in order to defend the DPRK and its people.

In additional to the direct nuclear threat, I must point out that there is also the issue of the ‘nuclear umbrella’. The US extends its nuclear umbrella to its friends, such as Japan, South Korea and the Nato countries. But Russia and China aren’t willing to open up a nuclear umbrella to other countries, because they are afraid of the response from the US. We realised that no country will protect us from US nuclear weapons, and therefore we came to understand that we must develop our own.

We can say now that the choice to develop our own nuclear deterrent force was a correct decision. What happened to Libya? When Gaddafi wanted to improve Libya’s relations with the US and UK, the imperialists said that in order to attract international investment he would have to give up his weapons programmes. Gaddafi even said that he would visit the DPRK to convince us to give up our nuclear programme. But once Libya dismantled all its nuclear programmes and this was confirmed by western intelligence, the west changed its tune. This led to a situation where Gaddafi could not protect Libya’s sovereignty; he could not even protect his own life. This is an important historical lesson.

The DPRK wants to protect its security. We ask the US to give up its hostile policy; to give up its military threat; to normalise relations with the DPRK; to replace the armistice treaty with a peace treaty. Only when the American military threat against the DPRK is removed; only when peace-guaranteeing mechanisms are established on the Korean peninsula; only then can we talk of giving up our nuclear weapons. In other words, the US should take the issue seriously; it should take a positive approach to solve this matter.

We are proud that, even though there is a huge US military presence in the Korean peninsula and in northeast Asia, so far we have been very successful in preventing another war on the Korean peninsula. The US war machine never stops. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria… every day, hundreds of innocent people are dying because of imperialist policy led by the US. But after the Korean War finished in 1953, the DPRK has been able to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula, and we think this is a great achievement.

Were you hopeful that, with the election of Barack Obama, the US position on Korea would improve?

Well, Obama’s policy is different from that of Bush and the conservatives. Instead of solving these problems directly, he is moving to a position of ‘strategic neglect’. Obama wants to keep the issue as it is rather than taking real steps to improve the situation. The current administration says that there are too many pending issues for the US to solve.

There have been some interesting visits to the DPRK recently, for example by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and by Dennis Rodman, the basketball star. Do these perhaps – even in a very small way – indicate that there are some people within US ruling circles that are interested in improving relations with the DPRK?

It’s very difficult to say whether those visits will have a positive influence. What the DPRK wants to do is to deliver a message to the American people that the DPRK is always willing to address and solve problems; that the DPRK wants to improve its relations with the US; that the DPRK does not consider the US as its permanent enemy. We hope that these visits of prominent US citizens will help to convey this message.

Do any of the other imperialist powers – for example Britain, France, Australia – have a more constructive position in relation to the DPRK, or do they follow the US lead?

There is a bit of a different approach. For instance, the US government has never extended diplomatic recognition to the DPRK as a sovereign state, whereas US allies such as Britain and Australia do accept our existence; these countries support a policy of engagement with the DPRK.

Does the US still maintain nuclear weapons in South Korea?

That is really hard to say, because US nuclear weapons are more sophisticated and modernised compared with the 70s and 80s. They have more nuclear submarines. They have weapons that are smaller and more difficult to detect. So it is difficult to say if there are nuclear weapons permanently stationed in South Korea. But it is very obvious that US nuclear weapons visit South Korea on a regular basis. Just recently, the US engaged in joint military exercises with Japan and South Korea. For those exercises, the US aircraft carrier George Washington entered the South Korean harbour of Busan for three days. What kind of planes are carried on the George Washington? Fighters and bombers that can easily drop nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

In March this year, the US introduced B52 bombers on the Korean peninsula for military exercises, simulating nuclear bombing raids on North Korea.

The US policy is to neither deny nor confirm whether they have nuclear weapons on South Korea. But the fact is that they can introduce these weapons and launch a strike at any time, so whether these weapons are actually there on the ground right now is not so relevant.

You’ve lived here in London for some time and presumably have some idea about how British people think about North Korea. The stereotype is that it’s an ‘undemocratic’ country where people don’t have the right to vote; where people don’t have any freedom of speech; they don’t have the right to criticise the government; they don’t have the right to participate in the running of the country. Is that a fair characterisation?

I think the general impression the British people have is shaped by the bourgeois media. What I can say is that those people who have done more serious investigation, especially those who have visited the DPRK and have seen our achievements with their own eyes, have a totally different impression of my country.

Pyongyang skylineThe number of British tourists has been increasing in recent years – this year alone it will be almost 500. There are nine British travel agencies who operate tours of the DPRK. Visas are never denied for tourists. I have met with some British tourists who had just returned from the DPRK, and they were so surprised to see how different it is from their impressions that they had picked up in the media. They didn’t know that the DPRK is a socialist country where there is free education, where there is free medical care, where people’s health is fully guaranteed, where there is free housing. They didn’t know all these good aspects of North Korea. Most of them, before they visit my country, imagine that our streets are full of malnourished people, that there is no decent transportation, that everyone looks sad, that there is no real cultural life, etc. But when they get to Korea they see that it is entirely different. For example, public transportation is almost free – you pay a little money but compared with what you pay in Britain or the US it is basically free. They couldn’t believe that Pyongyang city is full of big apartments and houses, built and given to the people free of charge. They were also surprised that there were so many schools, much better equipped than British state schools. They found out that North Korean children are generally at a much higher educational level than their British counterparts; that the vast majority of North Korean children enjoy free after-school activities, learning piano, violin and so on. They found out that there was no begging in the streets, no drug problems. They found out that they could leave their hotels at any time of night and go out in the streets without fearing for their safety, since there are no problems of robberies and gangs.

So they were shocked, and they asked me why the British media is so negative all the time about the DPRK and never mentions its positive aspects. My answer is that the media wants to depict the DPRK as an evil, as a type of hell, because they want to tell the British public that there is no alternative to capitalism, to imperialism. They want people to believe there is only one economic and political system; therefore it is against their interests to say anything positive about the socialist system.

So if people in this country want to visit North Korea, it’s easy to do so?

Yes. There are many well-known companies such as Regent Holidays, Voyagers, Koryo Tours and others that organise group tours. Because the media depicts the DPRK so badly, the number of people interested in visiting is actually getting bigger and bigger.

If you go on a tour, would you typically visit only Pyongyang?

Pyongyang schoolNo, you can visit any place you like. There are more and more options emerging all the time. For example, many tourists want to visit for just one day, so they can do a one-day trip via the border with China. Another trip we have started is a train trip, with trains going from China to Korea. Also now there is an air trip, with outdated passenger aeroplanes (typically made in the USSR in the 50s or 60s), which are quite fashionable with many tourists. Now a New Zealand company is organising a motorcycle tour of the whole Korean peninsula. One can find such tours available on the internet.

These tours have increased a lot over the last 3-4 years, as we have much more of the supporting infrastructure now, so the tourist industry is more open and diverse. We feel that it helps us to establish stronger cultural relations with other countries.

Each socialist country has had its own way of organising popular democracy and participation, for example the Soviets in the USSR, and the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Cuba – structures that allow people to manage the affairs of their workplaces and localities, solving their basic problems and electing people to higher bodies at regional and national levels. Is there something along these lines in North Korea?

Of course. We operate democracy at every level of our party and government. As you know, the major party of government is the Workers’ Party of Korea. This party is a mass party with a membership of millions, and is organised along democratic centralist lines. If someone in a given party structure (a cell) is not working according to the party line that has been discussed and agreed upon, then there would be a criticism by other party members and that member is given a chance to correct his behaviour. At each level of the party we use this system of criticism, self-criticism and accountability in order to maintain efficient and correct work.

We have a Supreme People’s Assembly, which could be considered the equivalent of the British parliament. Under this Supreme People’s Assembly, there are assemblies at province, city and county levels. The members are all elected, and these bodies meet frequently. They are responsible for taking important decisions, in a normal democratic way. For example, given a limited budget, they might have to take a vote as to whether to spend money on building a new kindergarten, or improving a hospital, and so on. In this way, broad masses of people are involved in the process of managing society. If the bodies don’t function correctly, there are mechanisms for people to criticise them and to appeal against bad decisions and negative work. For example, if water sanitation in a particular village needs to be improved, then local people can go to the council to protest. If their protest is taken into account and the situation is improved, that is good. If not, people can appeal higher up – to the city or province level – to make sure that the council is representing them properly.

Is the WPK the only political party in North Korea?

There are many parties and mass organisations besides the WPK, such as the Catholic Party and the Social Democratic Party. We do not consider that we have ‘ruling’ and ‘opposition’ parties – the parties are all on friendly terms and cooperate in developing our society. These other parties all participate in the people’s assemblies – as long as they get enough votes. They are even represented in the Supreme People’s Assembly.

People have a prejudice against our country that decisions are only made at the top by only one person, but how is this even possible? Running a country is a complicated process that needs the energy and creativity of many people.

I’m interested to understand how has DPRK been able to survive the last two decades, in such a difficult global political context. The Soviet Union – the biggest socialist country – collapsed; the people’s democracies in Eastern Europe no longer exist. How is it that, in a hostile international environment, the DPRK has been able to keep going?

Arirang mass gamesThe past two decades have been the most difficult period for us. We suddenly lost our major trading partners, out of nowhere, with no warning. This had a major impact on our economy. And with the disappearance of the USSR, the US moved to a policy of intensification, believing that our days were numbered. The US intensified its economic blockade and its military threat. They stopped all financial transactions between the DPRK and the rest of the world. The US controls the flow of foreign currency: if they say that any bank will be the target of sanctions if it does business with the DPRK, then obviously that bank has to go along with them. The US issued such an ultimatum to all companies: if they do business with North Korea, they will be subject to sanctions by the US. This is still in place. The US government thought that if they cut economic relations between the DPRK and the rest of the world, we would have to submit to them. The only reason that we have been able to survive is the single-hearted unity of the people. The people united firmly around the leadership. We worked extremely hard to solve our problems by ourselves.

If the UK one day suddenly lost its markets in the US and Europe, would it survive? If all financial transactions are stopped, how can a country survive? And yet we did survive.

Is the global situation more favourable now for North Korea and for other countries that are pursuing an independent path?

Yes. The past two decades were very difficult: not only did we have to survive economically but we also had to frustrate US military intentions; therefore we had to put a lot of investment and focus on strengthening our army, building weapons and developing our nuclear capability. Now that we have nuclear weapons, we can reduce our military investment, because even a small nuclear arsenal can play a deterrent role. We are in a position where we can make the US hesitate to attack us. Therefore we can focus more on people’s welfare now.

Do you think that the relative economic decline of the US and Western Europe will help Korea?

We have to wait and see. It is true that US economic power is declining, but precisely because of this, the US is trying to consolidate its political and military power. At the moment, this is reflected in the ‘pivot to Asia’, which is really about China. The importance of the Korean peninsula is therefore increasing, due to its proximity to China and Russia. The Korean peninsula is sort of a pivot point from which the US thinks it can exercise control over the big powers.

The war in Syria has been a key issue in world politics over the last 2-3 years. The DRPK continues to be a supporter of, and friend to, Syria. What is the basis for this relationship?

Mural celebrating DPRK-Syria friendshipIn the past, our late president Kim Il Sung had very comradely relations with President Hafez al-Assad. Both leaders shared the viewpoint that they should fight against imperialist policy. Syria was always a strong supporter of Palestinian self-determination, and was an important pillar against US and Israeli policy in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the DPRK was an important pillar against US policy in the Korean peninsula. So both countries share the same policy in relation to struggling against imperialist policy worldwide. This is the basis for the solidarity between the two countries.

Historically, Syria was not our only friend in the Middle East: we were very close with Nasser’s Egypt and with Yasser Arafat and the PLO – these leaders and countries shared the same philosophy of independence and development. This shared philosophy still exists between Syria and North Korea.

Under the pretext of introducing human rights and democracy in the Middle East, the US and its partners are creating chaos. Their so-called ‘Arab Spring’ policy has created a situation where hundreds of innocent people are killed every day. People are fighting each other in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, everywhere. This is a reflection of US divide and rule policy. Israel – the most important regional partner of the US – is a small country, whereas the Arab world is quite big; so the US and Israel are afraid of the unity of the Arab world. How can they break this unity? They try to create hatred among the different political organisations, among different religious groups, among different countries. Once this hatred is created, they encourage people to fight each other. This is the “freedom” they have brought: the freedom for people to kill each other. This is the strategy for guaranteeing the security of Israel.

It is essential that the Arab people understand the policy of divide and rule. This policy has been used for hundreds of years by the British Empire, the Americans and other imperialist empires. People have to unite in order to protect their children.

Over the past 10-15 years, there have been some important changes in South and Central America, the region historically considered as the US ‘backyard’. There are now progressive governments not only in Cuba, but also in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Do you think this is a promising development?

I think so, yes. The people of South America are more conscious than ever before. Previously, Latin America was dominated by US imperialism, with most governments – many of them brutal military dictatorships – directly supported by the US. But these states didn’t improve the lives of the ordinary people. So now people have come to understand that they must break the relationship of dependency with the US. They have decided to take up their own destinies. Just look at Venezuela: Venezuela has been an oil-rich country for a long time, but only once Chávez got into power was the oil wealth distributed so that ordinary people could benefit.

The DPRK has positive relations with Latin American countries. We have now opened our embassy in Brazil. We have good relations with Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela; Cuba of course. Chávez wanted to visit North Korea, but in the end his health didn’t allow it. But he always promoted good relations between Venezuela and North Korea. He is certainly very much missed.