The forgotten war that never ended — imperialism's devastation of Korea and the Korean people's resistance
Korea was a single nation for over a thousand years before imperialism tore it apart. Japan colonised Korea in 1910, subjecting its people to decades of brutal exploitation, forced labour, cultural suppression, and the attempted destruction of Korean identity. When Japan was defeated in 1945, the Korean people expected liberation and reunification. Instead, the United States and the Soviet Union divided the peninsula at the 38th parallel.
In the north, the Korean Workers' Party under Kim Il-sung — a veteran anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter — carried out land reform, nationalised industry, and established a people's government. In the south, the US military government installed Syngman Rhee, a right-wing autocrat who had spent decades in exile in America. Rhee's regime massacred tens of thousands of leftists, trade unionists, and independence fighters before the war even began.
Before the Korean War began in 1950, the Rhee regime had already killed an estimated 100,000 people in the suppression of the Jeju uprising (1948–1949), the Yeosu-Suncheon rebellion, and the Bodo League massacres. These were not acts of war — they were the systematic extermination of the Korean left by a US-backed dictatorship.
"We will not submit to any force, however great, that seeks to violate our sovereignty."
— Kim Il-sungThe Korean War erupted in June 1950. The Western narrative frames it as unprovoked aggression by the north. The reality is far more complex. The peninsula had been in a state of civil conflict since partition, with cross-border skirmishes initiated by both sides. The south's Rhee regime openly declared its intention to march north and unify Korea under capitalist rule.
When full-scale war began, the Korean People's Army rapidly advanced south, liberating Seoul within three days. The United States intervened under the banner of the United Nations — a body from which the Soviet Union was temporarily absent — and launched a massive military campaign that would devastate the entire peninsula.
The US Air Force dropped more bombs on Korea than it had used in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II. Every city in the north was flattened. General Curtis LeMay admitted that the US destroyed approximately 20 per cent of the Korean population. This was not collateral damage — it was deliberate extermination.
The US employed napalm extensively, burning entire villages and their inhabitants alive. Credible evidence exists that the US also used biological weapons, deploying infected insects over Korean and Chinese territory — allegations investigated by an international scientific commission that confirmed their use.
When US forces crossed the 38th parallel and advanced toward the Chinese border, the People's Republic of China sent hundreds of thousands of volunteers to defend Korea. The Chinese People's Volunteer Army, fighting in brutal winter conditions with inferior equipment, drove the US forces back from the Yalu River in one of the most remarkable military feats of the 20th century.
The United States repeatedly considered using nuclear weapons against Korea and China. General MacArthur requested authorisation to drop atomic bombs. Only the threat of Soviet retaliation and the risk of a wider war prevented nuclear annihilation. The Korean people lived under this existential threat throughout the war — and continue to live under it today.
The war ended in stalemate. An armistice was signed on 27 July 1953, but no peace treaty has ever been concluded. Technically, the Korean War has never ended. The United States maintains approximately 28,500 troops in South Korea to this day, along with a massive arsenal of conventional weapons pointed at the north.
The war killed an estimated three to four million Koreans — the vast majority civilians — along with over one million Chinese and 36,000 Americans. The north was reduced to rubble. Not a single building of two storeys or more remained standing in Pyongyang. The devastation was so complete that the US Air Force ran out of urban targets and began bombing irrigation dams to flood rice paddies and starve the population.
The Korean War has never formally ended. The 1953 armistice was a ceasefire agreement, not a peace treaty. The US has refused every proposal for a peace treaty from the DPRK. This is not an oversight — it is a deliberate policy of maintaining a state of permanent war to justify military occupation of the south and the encirclement of China.
"The US imperialists started the war and the Korean people finished it."
— Korean Workers' PartyAfter the war, the DPRK faced the monumental task of rebuilding a country that had been completely destroyed. With Soviet and Chinese assistance — but primarily through the labour and determination of the Korean people themselves — the DPRK rebuilt its cities, constructed new industries, and developed an independent national economy in a remarkably short period.
The DPRK has been subjected to comprehensive economic sanctions for decades. These sanctions — imposed by the United States and enforced through the UN Security Council — restrict trade in virtually everything: fuel, machinery, food, medicine, construction materials, and consumer goods. They are not targeted sanctions against weapons programmes — they are collective punishment of an entire population.
The sanctions regime against the DPRK is the most comprehensive in the world. It is designed to cause maximum suffering to ordinary people in the hope that economic misery will produce regime change. This is the same strategy the US employed against Iraq, where sanctions killed an estimated 500,000 children — a price that US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said was "worth it."
The DPRK's nuclear weapons programme must be understood in this context. A small nation, still technically at war with the most powerful military in history, surrounded by US bases and under constant threat of invasion, developed nuclear deterrence as the only guarantee of its survival. Every nation that has given up its nuclear programme or failed to develop one — Iraq, Libya, Syria — has been invaded or destroyed.
The Korean War reveals the true character of US imperialism and the determination of socialist nations to resist it.
Korea was divided not by the Korean people but by imperialism. The 38th parallel was drawn by two American colonels in 1945 with no Korean input. National division serves imperialism by creating permanent instability and justifying military occupation. The same pattern repeats in Germany, Vietnam, Yemen, and China (Taiwan).
Everything the Western media tells you about the DPRK is filtered through the lens of imperialist propaganda. The same media that told you Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Libya was a humanitarian intervention, and that NATO is a defensive alliance now tells you that the DPRK is an irrational threat. Apply the same scepticism to Korea that you would apply to any other target of US foreign policy.
The DPRK has survived for over seventy years despite the full weight of US imperialism being directed against it. It survived the loss of its Soviet ally, devastating floods and famines in the 1990s, and the most comprehensive sanctions regime in history. The Korean people's resistance proves that a determined nation with a socialist system can withstand imperialist pressure.
The Korean people — north and south — desire reunification. This has been the consistent position of the DPRK since partition. The obstacle to reunification is not the DPRK but the United States, which maintains its military occupation of the south precisely to prevent the emergence of a unified, independent Korea that might chart its own course outside the US sphere of influence.
A unified Korea, free from US military bases, would fundamentally alter the balance of power in East Asia. It would remove a key component of the US military encirclement of China. It would demonstrate that imperialism can be defeated. For these reasons, the US will never voluntarily agree to Korean reunification — it must be won through struggle.
Communists worldwide must demand: US troops out of Korea. Sign a peace treaty. End all sanctions. Let the Korean people determine their own future without foreign interference.
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