Workers World wrote:A forum sponsored by Workers World Party in New York on March 29 took up the serious danger of another war on the Korean peninsula. Guest speaker Juyeon “JC” Rhee, of the Korean-American group Nodutdol, and Deirdre Griswold, Secretariat member of Workers World Party and editor of Workers World newspaper, have both been to north and south Korea. Below are excerpts from their talks.

WW forum says ‘U.S. hands off Korea!'

...Ever since the Korean war ended in 1953, the U.S. has tried to strangle the DPRK economically. Nevertheless, it was able to rebuild very quickly — the standard of living in the north surpassed that in the south by the 1970s. It has only been since the destruction of the USSR and the rightward turn in People's China that U.S. efforts to cripple the economy through sanctions and military pressures have cut deep...

...In the media the north Korean leaders are always portrayed as the menace, the evil, and the people as very helpless — suffering, starving. You see these images of goose-stepping soldiers only, and not of a people who are determined — as workers, as mothers, as soldiers — to build this strong nation. This portrayal of an evil, powerful leadership and a helpless people, with no self-will, invites what? It invites third-party intervention. The powerful U.S. then comes in as a rescuer. This kind of juxtaposition justifies and invites an intervention. This is really racism, no?...

...Korea has never invaded the U.S. But the U.S. sent 5.7 million troops to Korea during the war, and for three years the U.S. Air Force destroyed everything it could in the north, dropping more bombs than were dropped in Europe in all of World War II...
...So it is ludicrous to say, as all the corporate media here do, that the DPRK is irrational when it strengthens its defenses and warns against a U.S. attack. No country in the world is more justified in having a nuclear deterrent and a strong defense than the DPRK.