Today, I would like to criticize a dangerous move by the United States, which is planning to wage a war on the Korean Peninsula.
Before launching into the main topic, I would like to make my position clear: if North Korea is found to be armed with nuclear weapons, I will positively take part in a struggle against it.
However, as the US is seriously threatening to attack North Korea, a campaign against this is more important. The people in South Korea are well aware of the US's plans to attack North Korea and they are increasingly sense the danger of war.
NGOs in South Korea are also strongly pursuing campaigns against the US's plans to provoke North Korea's demise.
Warmongering President Bush is about to wage wars on the "axis of evil" states one after another. The first such state was Iraq. Now, he is scrupulously promoting a plan to occupy North Korea.
The war-like situation on the Korean Peninsula appears to be characterized by the confrontation between neo-conservatives, a war-promoting force in the United States, and the Kim Jong Il regime.
Judging that an all-out war against North Korea, unlike Iraq, could be difficult, the Pentagon is pushing ahead a plan of limited bombing on North Korea's vessels for arms export and of killing chairman of the Defense Commission Kim Jong Il with small nuclear arms.
Should a war on the Korean Peninsula break out again, it is highly possible that it would spill out over Northeast Asia, including Japan.
Should the United States tragically bomb Yeoung Byeon, the area where North Korea's nuclear facilities are concentrated, countless numbers of North Koreans would be exposed to radiation. Worse still, radioactivity would spread to South Korea, Japan, China and Russia and cause nuclear damage to the people in these countries.
And North Korea would mount a counterattack against the U.S. bombing by launching long-range missiles to nuclear power plants in Seoul and other places in South Korea. Should a North Korean missile fall and explode on a nuclear power plant north of Busan, another Chernobyl nuclear accident would occur.
Its radioactivity would spread to Japan. It would probably reach Japan before the contingency laws could be invoked and Japan's Self Defense Forces be sent to the Korean Peninsula.
Even though this worst case situation is likely to occur, does Japan still intend to invoke the contingency laws?
Should a war break out on the Korean Peninsula, South Korean capitalism would collapse, bringing down the Japanese and U.S. transnational corporations which have made large investments in South Korea. Unless neo-conservatives within the Bush administration, which is waging a fruitless war for both U.S. and Japanese capitalism, are defeated, peace will not come to Northeast Asia.
Let us develop a movement to stop the war games being played under the Japan-US military alliance. The games are casting dark clouds of war over the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia. At the same time, let us, Korean and Japanese people, unite and render powerless Japan's contingency laws.