Sovereignty, independence and new international relations – key demands of our times
Speech to the Seminar on the occasion of the 76th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea organized by the European Regional Society for the Study of the Juche Idea, the International Institute of the Juche Idea and the Korean Association of Social Scientists, and hosted by Bulgarian friends of Korea.
Sofia, 9 September 2024.
Dear Comrades
I would like to first extend my gratitude to the European Regional Society for the Study of the Juche Idea, the International Institute of the Juche Idea and the Korean Association of Social Scientists, and especially to our Bulgarian comrades, for their kind invitation and careful arrangements for our work today.
It is appropriate to host this important seminar in Bulgaria, a country well known for its strong spirit of independence and long struggle against foreign aggression and occupation. This is also the land of Georgi Dimitrov, the courageous anti-fascist fighter and father of socialist Bulgaria. Through his leading role in the Communist International, and especially through his elaboration of the theory of the united front against fascism, Dimitrov played a crucial role in rallying the international working class, and the peoples of the world, to smash the axis powers of Germany, Japan and Italy, thereby opening up new vistas for sovereignty and independence, which are themselves the prerequisites for international relations of a new type – that is international relations based on independence, peace, equality and friendship, rather than the old system of domination, exploitation, aggression and war.
Sovereignty, independence and new international relations are the key themes of our seminar today. They are also key demands of our times and represent the main trend of the present epoch, despite the obstruction and last-ditch resistance of the imperialist and hegemonic forces.
Long ago, in elaborating the Juche Idea, the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung noted that, since the victory of the October Revolution in Russia, the world revolution made progress in varied and diverse forms. He further explained that the world revolution was constituted by the sum total of the revolution in each country, carried out by the people of the country concerned, in accordance with their own will and demand and with themselves as the master of revolution and construction.
The progress of history fully confirms the profound analysis made by Comrade Kim Il Sung. Countries such as Korea, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Venezuela have made the revolution and embarked on a socialist road imbued with their own national characteristics and sentiments. These countries also stand in the vanguard of the elaboration of a new type of international relations which has socialism at the core.
From the early part of the twentieth century, the struggle of the colonized and oppressed countries for national liberation and for the building of a new society surged forward, from the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916 to the March 1st Movement in Korea in 1919, and the May 4th Movement in China in the same year.
The 1945 victory over fascism, in which the socialist Soviet Union played the main and leading role, gave the most powerful impetus to the forces of national liberation around the world. Notably, the July 27, 1953 victory of the Korean people in their Fatherland Liberation War was the first defeat suffered by US imperialism, which had emerged as the ringleader of world reaction following the defeat of the axis powers. The Korean people’s victory thus greatly inspired the struggle against the old colonial powers but also that against the new global hegemon. In the immediate aftermath of the Korean people’s victory, the Vietnamese people won an epic victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the peoples of Cuba and Algeria began their ultimately successful revolutionary armed struggles for independence and liberation.
In 1955, Indonesia hosted the Afro-Asian Conference in the city of Bandung. This first major gathering of the new emerging forces led directly to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement. Despite many challenges and twists and turns, the Non-Aligned Movement, currently grouping some 120 countries, remains, in President Kim Il Sung’s words of 1986, “in essence, a movement against imperialism and for independence. It can only achieve its noble aims and realize its ideal through the struggle against imperialism and for independence.”
As President Kim Il Sung put it:
The noble mission which was undertaken by the non-aligned movement at the time of its inauguration was and always has been to destroy imperialism and colonialism, end domination and subjugation in whatever form, oppose aggression and intervention, preserve peace and security, exercise national sovereignty, and achieve the freedom of social and economic development. This represents the aspirations and desire of the peoples of all countries and all nations for independence and prosperity and for the building of a peaceful new world which is free from war.
Today, amidst changes unseen in a century, the international situation is developing more rapidly along the lines set out by President Kim Il Sung.
Firstly, the more that US imperialism nears its inevitable end, the more ferociously it lashes out in an attempt to forestall and prevent its doom. But the effect of this is only to highlight its strategic weakness, to isolate it further among the nations and peoples of the world, and to impel more forces to join the anti-imperialist struggle.
Not least, in the recent period, we have seen big countries, specifically the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, drawn into the anti-imperialist struggle in a way not seen for decades.
Secondly, and related to this, the increasing collective self-reliance of the Global South is steadily creating a new paradigm of democratized international relations, reflecting the interests of the global majority and progressively isolating imperialism.
Alongside, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 Plus China, ASEAN in south east Asia, the League of Arab States, the African Union, the Caribbean Community, CELAC, UNASUR and ALBA in Latin America, and many others, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS cooperation mechanism, now expanded to BRICS Plus, with nine members at present and around 40 other countries having expressed varying degrees of interest in joining, have China and Russia at their heart, and all these regional or global bodies enable the people of the world to engage in dialogue and address the key issues facing humanity, without the meddling and interference of US-led imperialism.
When the Russian Federation commenced its Special Military Operation to demilitarize and denazify the puppet regime in Ukraine, the imperialist powers imposed thousands of sanctions on Russia, something that had clearly been prepared well in advance. They received two shocks in return. Far from being weakened, the Russian economy was actually strengthened by being cut free from imperialist meddling. Secondly, very nearly unanimously, the countries of the Global South, having learned bitter lessons from imperialism’s wars of aggression in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere over recent decades, rejected and refused the anti-Russian policy of sanctions. Indeed, Russia’s standing in the Global South has reached and even surpassed the prestige it enjoyed in the days of the Soviet Union.
This profound shift was further deepened by the support of the major imperialist powers, led by the United States, for the Israeli Zionist regime’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people over the last ten months, in particular. So clear are the blatant hypocrisy and double standards embodied in their anti-Russian hysteria and their culpability in the genocide facing the Palestinian people, that this is now resonating beyond the ranks of the Global South. The increasing isolation of the United States can be seen in repeated votes in the United Nations, as well as in the recent recognition of the State of Palestine by such countries as Spain, Norway, Ireland and Slovenia. In other words, the unity forcibly imposed on the Global North by the United States in the wake of Russia’s Special Military Operation, and despite the repudiation and rejection of the Global South, has inevitably been shown to be transient and brittle, and it is the Global South that has the potential to unite still broader forces around itself.
Of course, not all such forces can be seen as resolute or reliable. But as President Kim Il Sung explained in 1968:
True, there may be various categories of people among those who oppose imperialism. Some may be active against imperialism, others may vacillate in the anti-imperialist struggle, and still others may join in the anti-imperialist struggle reluctantly under the pressure from their own people and the peoples of the world. But, whatever their motives, it is necessary to enlist all these forces except the henchmen of imperialism in the anti-US joint struggle. If more forces, though inconsistent and unsteady, are drawn into the anti-US joint struggle to isolate US imperialism to the largest possible extent and deal blows to it by joint action, that will be a good thing and by no means a bad thing. Those who avoid the anti-imperialist struggle should be induced to turn out in the struggle against imperialism and those who are passive encouraged to be positive in the anti-imperialist struggle. To split the anti-US united front or reject the anti-US joint action will only bring a serious consequence of weakening the anti-imperialist, anti-US struggle.
This remains a key, and completely correct, guideline for the struggle for sovereignty, independence and new international relations today. The policy of independence against imperialism consistently put forward by President Kim Il Sung, and further enriched, applied and developed by the great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il and the Respected Supreme Leader Comrade Kim Jong Un in accordance with the changing and developing situation, has ensured that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the world’s most independent country, has never made even the slightest concession to imperialism on questions of principle. It is therefore shining a light illuminating the path that humanity must follow towards a free and independent new world.
Thank you for your attention.