76th Anniversary of Start of Korean War
June 25, 1950
U.S. Must Stop its Warmongering on the Korean Peninsula!
Today, when the U.S. imperialists and their allies, Canada included, are rapidly militarizing the Asia-Pacific and endangering the peoples of the region, it is more important than ever to recall the terrible tragedies visited upon the Korean people during the Korean War and to speak out, organize and ensure that the U.S., Canada and others do not wage another tragic war against the Korean people.
On this solemn occasion, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) pays tribute to the Korean people’s heroic resistance to the foreign aggressors. The Korean People’s Army, under the legendary leadership of Kim Il Sung, head of state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), rallied the patriotic Korean people and, assisted by the Chinese People’s Volunteers, forced the U.S./UN aggressors to surrender after three years of brutal warfare. They taught the invaders a lesson they have never forgotten nor forgiven. The U.S. and its allies including Canada and Japan continue to meddle in the internal affairs of the Korean people, falsely accusing the DPRK of being a terrorist state, a danger to peace, abuser of human rights and all sorts of slanders that in fact apply to themselves. The Republic of Korea (ROK) remains under the dictate of the U.S. which maintains some 28,000 troops and one of the largest arsenals of weapons including nuclear and chemical weapons, fighter planes, warships, submarines and other weapons in order to constantly threaten the DPRK and use the Korean Peninsula as a forward staging ground for U.S.-led wars of aggression.
CPC(M-L) calls on Canadians and Quebeckers to join with the Korean people to demand that the U.S. pull out all its troops and weapons from the ROK, end its war exercises against the DPRK, a provocation that violates the provisions of the Korean Armistice Agreement of July 1953 signed between the U.S. and the DPRK to end the Korean War, which the U.S. continues to violate with impunity.
Demonstration against U.S.-ROK war exercises, Seoul, February 28, 2026
Korean War, 1950-1953
On June 25, 1950, at 4:00 am local time, troops from the south of Korea under direction of the U.S. launched an attack north across the 38th parallel. It is noteworthy that the U.S.-based periodical Far East Spotlight in its June-August 1950 issue, condemned the aggression by the U.S. reporting that there was no basis to conclude that the DPRK started the war. It noted: “The manner in which North Korea has been branded as the aggressor by the ‘Western World’ under United States initiative makes the case an unconvincing one. It is not necessary that the American people believe the North Korean version in order for them to appreciate the irresponsible haste and total disregard of the most elemental rules of justice employed by our government [to justify the war].” The U.S. and NATO continue to spread the lie that the DPRK “without warning attacked the south” to cover up that it was they who were meddling in Korea and committing crimes against the Korean people up to this day.
The U.S. had arbitrarily divided Korea at the 38th parallel at the end of the Second World War in order to use the Korean Peninsula as a strategic military staging ground for the U.S. geopolitical ambitions to dominate Asia and the world in the post-war period. Thus, the victorious Korean people were not permitted to enjoy the fruits of their heroic and significant contribution to the Allied victory in the Second World War and were effectively treated like colonized people incapable of running their own affairs despite Korea’s 5000-year history and culture and systems of governance based on the Korean people’s own thought material. For the ensuing five years, until the outbreak of the Korean War, the Korean people refused to accept the division of their country waging a determined struggle, including guerilla warfare, to oust the U.S. military occupiers from the south of their country and reclaim their independence.
Hundreds of thousands of Korean patriots were killed, exiled, imprisoned or disappeared by the U.S. occupation force and local collaborators. For example, more than 30,000 people were killed on Jeju Island in 1948 when the local people boycotted and opposed the U.S.-sponsored May elections aimed at installing a U.S. puppet regime led by the virulent anti-communist Syngman Rhee as the first president of the ROK. Once in power, the Rhee puppet government consolidated a police state which continued to suppress and terrorize the Korean people in their widespread resistance to U.S. military occupation through arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings and civilian massacres.
Meanwhile north of the 38th parallel, the Korean people under the leadership of Kim Il Sung and the Workers’ Party of Korea established the DPRK in 1948 to ensure that the Korean people had their own independent base from which they could affirm their right to independence and self-determination and defend the interests of Korea.
The U.S. launched the Korean War after the fiasco of the May 1950 elections, when their puppet Rhee lost the majority of seats in the National Assembly to opposition candidates and a large number of people boycotted the elections altogether. What is clear from the evidence is that the U.S. provoked the Korean War and launched it in a desperate attempt to hang onto their puppet regime that the people were about to overthrow.
Following its military assault north of the 38th parallel, the U.S. then tried to legitimize its illegal aggression by involving the UN to provide a fig leaf of legality to what was clearly a violation of the UN Charter. At that time, the UN Security Council was dominated by the U.S. The People’s Republic of China had not yet been permitted to take its seat because the U.S. was supporting the deposed Nationalist Chinese regime of Chiang Kai-Shek that had fled to Taiwan. Furthermore, Russia was absent for the vote in protest of this refusal to seat the legitimate government of China. The U.S. used this situation to ram through two self-serving resolutions.
Resolution 83 allowed UN member states to provide military and logistical assistance to the ROK “to repel the North Korean invasion” and Resolution 84 established a unified UN Command under U.S. leadership and authorized participating forces to fly the UN flag. These actions contravened Article 32 of the UN Charter which calls for parties to the dispute to be present at the discussions of the problems – and paragraph 3 of Article 27 of the UN Charter, which provides that a Security Council resolution is only valid if approved by a vote of Council members, including approval by all permanent Council members. Neither condition was met since at the time neither the Soviet Union nor China were present. Nor were Korean representatives from the DPRK invited to present their case since the DPRK was not yet a member of the UN.
During the Korean War, the U.S. and its allies carried out massive bombing raids, massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians in the north and south of Korea, engaged in germ warfare and chemical warfare and bombed cities and infrastructure north of the 38th parallel, razing them to the ground. Civilians were buried alive, dismembered, burned to death and drowned. Many were forced to dig their own graves before being executed in the same manner that the Nazis massacred civilians, particularly those who resisted. Chinese and Korean prisoners of war were tortured and murdered on Koje Island and in other prisoner of war camps.
Scene of the devastation of Pyongyang by the end of the Korean war in 1953.
All this was documented with hard evidence left by the U.S. forces after the war, including instructions by military commanders written in their own hand and signed by them. But it was also documented during the war itself and provided to the UN.
The Women’s International Democratic Federation sent a 21-member international commission to Korea from May 16-27, 1951 and wrote a report recording all the evidence. In their report We Accuse!, the Commission condemned these crimes that were being committed against defenseless civilians and called for the UN to demand an end to all fighting, for all foreign troops to leave and for the Korean people to be left in peace to settle their own affairs.
In a fact finding report written in 1952, the International Democratic Lawyers’ Association also confirmed the use of germ and biological warfare by the U.S. in Korea as well as other war crimes and crimes against humanity such as the massacring of Korean civilians by U.S. and UN troops. Canadian historian John Price, writing in the Asia-Pacific Journal in January 2012, noted that his research revealed that Canadian troops committed war crimes including killing civilians and raping women during the Korean War but faced no justice because they were protected by Canadian military authorities at the highest levels.
Since then, U.S. soldiers who fought in Korea have also confirmed what the U.S. did in Korea during the war, as documented in the book The Bridge at No-Gun Ri, published in 2001 and other reports. By the time of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement in July 1953, some four million people, mostly civilians, had perished and countless others were wounded, and most of Korea had been destroyed.
Demonstration in London, England against the Korean war.
The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed on July 27, 1953 in Panmunjon, a village in the demilitarized zone, after complicated negotiations which were constantly sabotaged by the U.S. The U.S. has never fully complied with the agreement, particularly that the two sides would sign a peace treaty as soon as possible which the U.S. has refused to do.
The U.S. refusal to formalize the peace shows its true intent. The U.S. and the ROK, along with a remilitarizing Japan, continue to carry out joint military exercises which involve other countries, including Canada. Canada is also involved in what is tantamount to piracy on the high seas against the DPRK through its “Operation NEON.” In the service of U.S. imperialist aims, Canadian warships and surveillance aircraft are deployed in enforcing unjust and illegal UN Security Council sanctions against the DPRK. This is collective punishment for the DPRK which upholds its honour and sovereignty against U.S. threats and blackmail.
Today the Trump administration and its allies are carrying out serious provocations against China and the DPRK which they call undemocratic dictatorships and threats to western civilization and the “free world.”
In the face of these ongoing threats from the U.S. and its warmongering allies, the DPRK has built its own nuclear deterrent to maintain a state of equilibrium on the Korean Peninsula. On this 76th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, it is time once again to demand that the U.S. stop its threats and bullying of the DPRK, withdraw its 28,000 troops from the ROK, close all its military bases in and around the ROK, remove all its nuclear and chemical weapons from the Korean Peninsula as well as promptly sign a peace treaty with the DPRK. This is the demand of the Korean people and peace and justice-loving peoples of the world including in Canada.
While diplomatic relations between the DPRK and Canada were established in 2000, no effort has been made to date by the Canadian government to normalize relations, which would be a real contribution to peace on the Korean Peninsula. Instead, the Carney war government is tying Canada more closely to U.S. sanctions and provocations against the DPRK. As a contribution to global peace and security Canada must make amends for its involvement in the Korean War by ending Operation NEON, withdrawing from the unjust sanctions regime engineered by the U.S. and normalizing relations with the DPRK.
U.S. Troops Out of Korea!
Dismantle Operation NEON! Normalize Relations Between Canada and the DPRK!
School children rally on the plaza of the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, June 23, 2026, vowing revenge on the U.S on the anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
Note
1. The countries that fought alongside the U.S. in the Korean War were: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
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