(The following article is from the June 16-30,  2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)

Central Executive Committee, Young Communist League of Canada

Canadian youth and students should be quick to reject and denounce the warmongering stance taken by the Harper Conservative government with regards to the crisis forming between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and South Korea since the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan naval vessel.

     In a statement released on May 24th, Harper announced the government's intention to impose harsh sanctions, to support South Korea in a "decisive response," which did not rule out military action. The statement also condemned the DPRK for "egregious violation of international law," and "blatant disregard for international law," statements are darkly ironic coming from a Prime Minister and a government implicated in war crimes and torture in Afghanistan.

     Harper's hypocrisy becomes further evident when considering the attack by apartheid Israel against the Freedom Flotilla which left several dead and dozens more wounded. The attack on the Flotilla, a group of unarmed boats bringing desperately needed humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, has incited no condemnation from the Conservative government. While quick to condemn supposed attacks and violations of international law by the DPRK, Harper is unwilling to criticize violations by Israel against the Palestinian people or their supporters.

     Little evidence exists to implicate the DPRK in the sinking of the Cheonan. In fact South Korean sources, including the Defense Ministry, have made statements that no North Korean vessels in the area at the time of the attack. Despite this, the South Korean regime, backed by Washington, have presented the case as open and shut with the DPRK implicated in the crime.

     The current Korean crisis is part and parcel of the cold war waged by US imperialism, South Korean ruling class, and their allies against the DPRK since the armistice which "ended" the Korean War in 1953. The demonization of the DPRK as part of an "Axis of Evil," and as a "threat," is ludicrous when placed beside the reality of the DPRK, a poor country struggling for survival against hostility and economic sabotage by the US and its allies. The goal of this campaign is to achieve the total collapse of the socio-economic system in place in the DPRK and the reunification of Korean on a capitalist basis under US hegemony. It is also interesting to note that fortunes are to be made in arms contracts by keeping tensions high in the region, and that these tensions provide the only excuse for the presence of thousands of US troops in the region including in South Korea and Japan.

     Harper's slavish parroting of Washington's warmongering threatens to entangle Canada in a new military conflagration on the Korean peninsula. Such a conflagration would be an imperialist war for the benefit of multinational corporations and arms dealers which could cost innumerable lives.

     The Canadian working class, youth and students, must categorically reject Canadian involvement in aggression towards the DPRK as they rejected Canadian involvement in the invasion of Iraq. What is needed is an independent and made-in-Canada foreign policy based on peace, disarmament, friendship, and sovereignty. It's time to run the war mongering Harper Tories out of office and to fight for a new future for youth which is not based on imperialist war and plunder.