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The DPRK is a people-centred socialist state.
Its people are the masters of the state and the society and everything serves them. Everybody leads a harmonious life, helping each other. Rev. Billy Graham, who was the US religious leader, noted that even God would be idle in this country. It is, therefore, not likely at all that there would be any classes or sections either interested in war or desirous of it.
Aspiration of the Korean people for peace can be said to be extraordinarily strong.
They were forced to suffer 40-year-long colonial slavery under the military occupation of Japan in the first half of the 20th century and the ravages of the three-year-long Korean war unleashed by the armed invasion of the United States in the early 1950s, the most bloody war after WWII. For over half a century since then, they have been constantly exposed to war and nuclear threat in acute military confrontation with the US. That is why they are well aware of how precious peace is and earnestly desirous of it.
Thoroughgoing peace-championing policy
"Independence, peace and friendship are the basic ideals of the foreign policy and the principles of the external activities of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea" this is an article stipulated in the DPRK Constitution, a plain example showing how much importance this country attaches to peace.
For 70 years since its founding on September 9, 1948, the DPRK has set peace on the Korean peninsula as an issue vital to all Koreans and a prerequisite for ensuring peace and security in Asia and the world, and consistently devoted its sincerity and efforts to its realization.
In April 1959, the DPRK government advanced a proposal of creating a peace zone free from nukes in Asia. In March 1981 the Workers' Party of Korea, together with the then Japan Socialist Party, made public a joint declaration on setting up a nuclear-free, peace zone in the northeast Asia. In June 1986 the DPRK government published a statement on establishing a nuclear-free, peace zone on the Korean peninsula, and early in 1992 it adopted an inter-Korean joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and put it into effect. In this way it has presented many peace proposals and done everything possible for realizing them.
It is also well known the DPRK has made sincere efforts to replace the Armistice Agreement of the Korean war with a peace treaty.
Sure guarantee of peace
The DPRK is called the bulwark of socialism, as not only its people exceptionally aspire for peace and its government strictly adheres to the peace-defending policy but it has provided itself with a sure guarantee of peace.
It is not too much to say that there is no other region where peace is seriously threatened on this globe than the Korean peninsula.
Regarding the Korean peninsula as a bridgehead of military importance in realizing its supremacy on Asia and the world, the US has posed constant threats to the DPRK for decades by deploying huge armed forces and nuclear weapons in and around south Korea. Still today these regions are witnessing such ceaseless moves of aggravating the situation there as the tightening of strategic military alliance between the US, Japan and south Korea, massive shipment of American-made latest military hardware, large-scale military exercises of the US and south Korea, and so on. The US and south Korea wage joint military exercises code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, another war rehearsal based on a simulated nuclear pre-emptive strike against the DPRK every year. It is not accidental that many people around the world regard the Korean peninsula as the primary hotspot on the earth.
This being the situation, what ensures peace on the Korean peninsula?
It is a truth proved by history that peace cannot be ensured by begging but by having a strong self-defence capacity which forces any enemy not to attack, that is, a reliable war deterrent. For this reason, the DPRK has directed everything to building up the national defence capacity. It has even provided itself with a nuclear deterrent in order to cope with the ever-increasing threats of nuclear pre-emptive attack by the US.
As a result, the DPRK is displaying its might as a military power no formidabel enemy dares to attack. Herein lies the main reason why the US dares not ignite a new war on the Korean peninsula though it considers the former a thorn in the flesh.
If the DPRK's military power had been weak to a slight degree, the Korean peninsula might have already been enveloped in the flames of a new war. And its neighbouring countries might have been embroiled willy-nilly in the war, consequently spreading it to the Asia-Pacific and other regions the world over.
The consecutive Afghan and Iraqi wars in the new century and their disastrous aftermaths have seized the international community with an apprehension about a possible outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula. Present reality, however, has brought home to the world people how strong the war deterrent of the DPRK is. [kk]
Prof. Dr. Songchit Plal
Juche Idea Study Organization of Thailand (JISOT)
Rajabhat Pranakhon University Bangkok Thailand
