June 15 South-North Joint Declaration and consequent changes

All the Koreans at home and abroad were accelerating the sacred great march towards the national unity and reunification under the banner of President Kim Il Sung’s three charters for national reunification And leader Kim Jong Il’s five-point policy of great national unity, when between June 13 and 15, Juche 89 (2000) Pyongyang witnessed a historic meeting between DPRK National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong Il and south Korean President Kim Dae-jung and ensuing inter-Korean summit talks.

On June 15 was made public the five-articled South-North Joint Declaration that highlights a series of principled matters in improving the south-north relations and reunifying Korea.

The Pyongyang meeting, the first of its kind since the territorial division, held when a new century was around the corner and the consequent adoption of the declaration that r4eflects the aspiration and desire of the 70 million Koreans, served as a historic opportunity to reaffirm the three principles of national reunification elucidated in the July 4 South-north joint statement and bringing about a turning point in promoting the inter-Korean reconciliation, unity, exchange and cooperation, and thereby in hastening the Korea’s reunification as a whole; it was also a momentous event that demonstrated the Koreans’ firm will to accomplish the sacred cause of reunification without fail by their own efforts.

　

The six years witnessed miraculous changes, impossible in the previous several decades in the inter-Korean relations and the reunification movement.

The adoption of the joint declaration made an epoch in the reunification movement, and the reunification ideal “by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation” pointed out in the joint declaration was imprinted as motto of patriotism in the minds of all the Koreans. The south and north of Korea have dynamically advanced towards reconciliation and reunification, shouting in unison, “Reunify the country by the concerted efforts of the nation!”

The south and north had a dozen rounds of ministerial-level talks and varieties of other talks including red-cross talks and meetings of the economic cooperation promotion committee.

National joint functions for reunification took place with a high attendance on the occasions of June 15 on which the inter-Korean joint declaration was adopted, the national liberation day of August 15, the international workers’ holiday of May, and the like. This enabled the Koreans to deepen mutual understanding and trust, thus promoting the national reconciliation and unity.

Taking the tide, inter-Korean railway and roadway re-linking projects started and went on, and even the sea and air routes were opened to traffic. Many people traveled between the south and north, to and from Pyongyang, Seoul, Mt Geumgang resort, Cheju Island and other places, sharing the kinship feelings with one another and inspiring a passion for reunification across the land.

In those days, the Koreans keenly realized that they are of the same stock with the same language and blood, and the same customs and greeting manners and therefore, cannot live divided any longer.

The June 15 declaration is the one of independent reunification that has developed anti-US independence into the main trend of the time. The cause of reunifying Korea is the Koreans’ own effort to achieve their national sovereignty on a nationwide scale.

With the advent of a new era when the Korean people, as master of their own destiny, launched the campaign to reunify their country in conformity with their independent will and desire, the anti-reunification forces at home and abroad kicked up vicious challenges.

The US imperialists and their obedient ultra-rightist conservative forces of south Korea such as the Grand National Party stopped at nothing to check the course of inter-Korean reconciliation and unity.

As a result the development of the inter-Korean relations towards reconciliation and cooperation had to undergo frustration and throes repeatedly. But for the joint declaration and its ideal “by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation” the Korean people could not have overcome the sever ordeals and challenges.

Almost miraculous changes are taking place that were unimaginable before the adoption of the declaration, south Korea has got out of the past state of anti-US doldrums. Anti-US candlelight processions sweep south Korea, and Americans begin to know they cannot behave themselves recklessly there. As the ideal of “by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation” is giving fuel, the flame of the candlelight is not only the one of protest against the haughtiness and high-handedness of the United States just as ever before, but also has turned into an anti-US wildfire for reunification.

Now that the Koreans are engaged in the anti-US struggle, the structure of confrontation on the Korean Peninsula has turned into that of the entire Korean nation against the United States, and the anti-US independence and national cooperation have become the current of the time.

The prospect for reunification is bright as long there are the June 15 joint declaration and 70 million Koreans who have accepted the preposition “by the concerted efforts of the Korean nation” as the ideal of the time.

Charters propel efforts for national reunification

“Let us achieve independent and peaceful reunification of the country with the concerted efforts of the entire nation under the banner of the three charters for national reunification!”---this is the slogan to be held by the Korean nation in accomplishing the cause of national reunification.

The three principles of national reunification, the ten-point program for overall national unity, and the proposal for founding a Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo constitute the three charters for Korea’s reunification. They involve the basic principles and methods in a unified, systematic and comprehensive way.

The three charters reflect the spirit of national independence, which enables the Koreans to have the will to put an end to national division forced by outsiders.

The Koreans should reunify the country through the concerted efforts of the entire nation.

The charters illumine the most fair and reasonable ways for the earlier reunification of the country to meet the actual situation in the country where different ideologies and systems have long existed.

Korea’s reunification is not intended to conquer one side by the other, but to achieve overall national unity.

The differences in ideology and system can never be greater than national commonness formed through 5,000-year-long history.

The Koreans are unanimous in their will to put aside these differences and subordinate everything to the cause of national reunification, the common interests of the nation. The three charters for national reunification clarify the way to country’s reunification by founding a reunified country in a form of federation based on one nation, one state, two systems and two governments.

As it proved the quickest and secure road towards national reunification, it is acceptable to everyone who wants to see the country reunified.

The validity of the three charters has already been proved in practice.

The entire Korean nation should continue to adhere to the three charters to achieve the national reunification, come what may.

They will serve as an impetus to the Koreans in their patriotic movement for independent reunification, peace against war and overall national unity under the banner of “by our nation itself.”

GIs’ killing of Koreans during the Korean War disclosed

It was disclosed that the US officially ordered its troops to kill civilians during the Korean War. This irrefutably revealed the US true nature as man-killers who indiscriminately massacred innumerable south Koreans during the war.

According to the then US ambassador to south Korea John J. Muccio's letter declassified on 29, May by the AP, staffs of the 8^th US Division decided to fire at the south Korean refugees and ordered it to all the US army on July 25, 1950 the day before 7^th US Cavalry massacred the civilians at Nogeun-ri, south Korea.

"If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," wrote US Ambassador Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

The US Army reports own list of sources for the 1999-2001 investigation shows its researchers reviewed the microfilm containing the letter of Muccio.  But the 300-page report did not mention it.

A Nogeun-ri survivors group called the killing "a clear war crime," demanded an apology and compensation from the U.S. government, and said the U.S. Congress and the United Nations should conduct investigations. The survivors also said they would file a lawsuit against the Pentagon for alleged manipulation of the earlier probe.

The US has so far persistently evaded its responsibility for the shocking massacres of civilians by its soldiers during the war including the murder case in Nogeun-ri, saying that they were “accidents” and that it could not confirm whether there was an order to fire.

The mass killings of Koreans by GIs during the war were not accidents but deliberate and premeditated atrocity as clearly evidenced by the recent disclosed fact. The US army massacred innocent civilians in Mi Rai, Viet Nam in 1968 and now in Hahditah, Iraq.

The US refuses to admit the fact, although it was proven to have been deliberate and premeditated one.

The US is working overtime to provoke another Korean War to reduce Korea into the battlefield of a nuclear war and exterminate the Korean nation.

It is beyond doubt that in case a war is provoked on the Korean Peninsula again by the US imperialists, it will turn out to be a war of genocide as the US is keen to realize its domination over the whole of Korea even by reducing the peninsula to ruins and exterminating the Korean nation.

    The Koreans can never tolerate the US feverish moves to start a nuclear war in the Korean Peninsula today after killing millions of Koreans in cold blood in the last Korean War.