Part 7 - LA36 KB articles 1988 98 and cuttings 127 007

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The DPRK is some 70 per cent mountainous, and over the years the Korean people have built a vast network of underground tunnels across the whole country for self-defensive purposes. In the event of war, the Korean people can live, produce and resist in these tunnels, in the time-honoured people's war traditions of Korea, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - something worth reflecting on this week, when the itinerary for Prince Andrew's visit to Vietnam includes a trip to the famous tunnels of Cu Chi, near Ho Chi Minh City! The DPRK is perfectly correct, and within its rights, when it points out that it is the American threat that has led it to construct so many tunnels throughout the years and to concentrate much of its strategic industry and other facilities in such places. It stands to reason that if the US, with whom the DPRK is still technically at war, as the armistice agreement has not been replaced by a peace treaty, inspects the Kumchangri tunnel, it will no longer be of any use to the Koreans, who should therefore receive compensation to the tune of US$300 million in cash or kind. Furthermore, as the Koreans have noted, the experience of Iraq shows that, once a US demand for so-called 'inspection' is conceded, such demands will escalate, becoming never-ending and ever more intrusive, and thereby providing a series of ready-made pretexts for more overt acts of aggression and war. The main reason why the United States, vociferously backed, and sometimes instigated, by the right-wing government in Japan, harps so much on the question of north Korea's missile development is to provide a pretext for organising and rigging up its own Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) system in east Asia. Basically, this is an attempt to revive the 'Star Wars' programme of former President Reagan, only this time with a different ‘evil empire', and, in so doing, to create an Asian version of NATO, with its putative core members being the United States, Japan, south Korea, and Taiwan. It is important to grasp that, while the supposed threat posed by north Korean missiles is the most frequently cited pretext for the TMD project, in reality its main target is the People's Republic of China. As the world's largest, most powerful, and most influential socialist country, providing the indispensable global counterweight to US hegemony, China is viewed by the United States as its Number 1 strategic and long-term enemy. Moreover, the staggering economic achievements of People's China, over the last two decades in particular, have not only increased China's comprehensive national strength, they are increasingly the most telling refutation of bourgeois propaganda against socialism for hundreds of millions of poverty- stricken and down-trodden people, from Moscow to New Delhi, as well as further afield. Since the middle of the last century, the United States has seen the Korean peninsula as a dagger pointing at the heart of Asia that it would dearly love to get hold of and wield for its own purposes. And from the time of the establishment of the People's Republic of China, 50 years ago this coming October 1st, Korea has been seen, in particular, as a strategic bridgehead to China, not least to its heavily industrialised north-eastern heartland. One factor, therefore, in the United States' venomous and unrelenting hostility to north Korea is that it forms part and parcel of a larger game – that of the US-led attempt to contain, isolate, and ultimately dismember and destroy the People's Republic of China. This is the context for the continued series of disputes between China and the US, which, as of today, include, among other things, the trade balance between the two countries; the question of China's membership of the World Trade Organisation; alleged industrial espionage in the US and during satellite launches in China; human rights and the activities of a handful of anti-socialist 'dissidents'; differences over a range of international issues, including Iraq, Kosovo, Cambodia and Korea; the terrorist activities of Taliban-style reactionaries in Xinjiang and Tibet; China's political and strategic posture vis-à-vis its

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