Originally published on the Leftist Critic blog on June 1, 2018.

The same year that Juche Korea was founded, the murderous apartheid and Zionist state of “Israel” was created, and given sanction by the United Nations, which was then dominated by imperialist powers. For the years to come, Juche Korea would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their Palestinian comrades.

In 1966, relations between Juche Korea and Palestinian resistance fighters began, with a “solidarity meeting” held in April 2016 to honor 50 years of relations. While refusing to recognize the murderous Zionist apartheid state, calling it an “imperialist satellite,” Juche Korea has said that it “fully supports the struggle of the Palestinians to expel the Israeli aggressors from their territory and regain their right to self-determination” and has helped Palestine “in many areas, such as maternity or education.” [1] Not only did Juche Korea finance and hand “arms to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” along with the PLO, and DFLP, through the 1970s and 1980s, but during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (Juche 72), Koreans sent air support to defend the territory Syria along with 19 military advisers to Egypt (like the Cubans who also sent troops) and a MiG-21 squadron to Egypt, where, Zionist F-4s engaged them in a dogfight in the “skies south of Cairo” and the Koreans did very well. After the war, Kim Il-Sung met with Syrian and Egyptian ambassadors in Pyongyang, promising to give them assistance, including military aid, with the Egyptians reportedly rewarding “North Korea with missile technology and designs.” This was coupled with the reported visit of George Habash, leader of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) in  September 1970 (Juche 59), along with providing weapons and financial support.

With such support in the past, there have been claims since then that Juche Korea has sent weapons to Hezbollah through different “trafficking network[s],” helped build underground facilities for Hezbollah in 2003 (Juche 92), that 100 Hezbollah fighters “traveled to North Korea for a year of training,” and that Hamas has ties with Juche Korea or even “Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades”  having weapons from the former. Others, even those with a horrid imperialist viewpoint, admit that in the late 1980s, Palestinian resistance fighters, which they call “Palestinian terrorists,” belonging to the “PLO and from Syrian and Libyan-backed groups” stopped being trained, claiming that training of Hezbollah began in years to come, especially in the 1990s and years after that, claiming that Juche Korea backed all sorts of “terrorist” groups, as they  call them. [2] One recent article, in the bourgeois 38 North, claimed that there was a “historical, and possibly continuing arms relationship between North Korea and non-state actors in the Middle East” like Hezbollah and Hamas, saying that Palestinian resistance fighters like a founding member of Fatah received training by Juche Korea in the 1960s, but couched supposed current support by using words like”allegedly” and “reportedly.” They admitted, however, that there was not “proof” that the weapons heading to Gaza in 2009 intercepted by IDF (“Israeli” Defense Forces) were from Juche Korea, and if one goes with the assumption that these weapons were from there, they were “decades old…likely produced in 1988,” reportedly coming through Iran. [3] Further undercutting the argument, 38 North admitted, in the closing words of their article, “none of these postulations can be proven as fact, but as new details arise and other arms shipments bound for Hamas or Hezbollah are seized, they should be kept in mind.” So, what was the point of this horrible article? Nothing, other than smearing Juche Korea, following in the words spewed by the empire’s military establishment and Zionists talking about arms smuggling (claiming arms are even sent to the fascists Myanmar), talking about a “nefarious North Korean role” while admitting, as The National Interest did, “no smoking-gun evidence that North Korea assisted Hamas directly in constructing its tunnels, the evidence is very suggestive,” showing the weakness of their argument. More likely than not, one could say that the weapons that 38 North writes about may have come from Iran, with Juche Korea sending them during the Iran-Iraq War, and some elements, possibly within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) felt that it would be in Iran’s interest to send weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, meaning it was not state policy. Even the bourgeois publication, The Diplomat, admitted that “even though North Korea can no longer match its pro-Palestinian rhetoric with military support, the DPRK remains one of Israel’s most strident international critics.” [4] As the foreign ministry of Juche Korea said in June 2014, about claims it gave missiles to Hamas,”this is utterly baseless sophism and sheer fiction let loose by the US to isolate [us] internationally. Lurking behind this propaganda is a sinister intention of the US to justify its criminal acts of backing Israel. The US is working hard to deliberately link [us] to the so-called ‘terrorist organisations’ defined by it in a bid to divert the focus of international criticism to Pyongyang.” We should take their words to heart and not make broad declarations that they are giving arms and support to Palestinian resistance groups.

The Zionists, not content with the “harsh and well-deserved criticism” tried to hurt “the DPRK’s dignified social system” by allying with the ROK, and declaiming the nuclear weapons (without realizing their hypocrisy) of Juche Korea, and not recognizing that “the Korean- and Palestinian people share many important things in common – their struggle against a foreign aggressor on their respective lands, freedom and sovereignty for the people” with both the peoples “of Korea and Palestine…forged together as brothers in arms against common imperialist foes.”  Even a self-defined Korean-American, Zavi Kang Engles, who holds Orientalist views on Juche Korea, declaring in Mondoweiss that “North Koreans still suffer under a brutal regime, marked by poverty, starvation, and captivity” and that they have “relatives in North Korea, but I know nothing of them, nor if they’re even still alive” posing it as some scary and forbidden place, in line with bourgeois media, wrote something similar back in June 2015:

As a Korean-American concerned about the influence of the United States on other countries, I’ve begun to wonder something: do Korean people have more in common with Israelis, as the official story would have us believe, or with Palestinians? In recent years, the Israeli government has been strengthening ties with the South Korean government, which is headed by the conservative President Park Geun-Hye, daughter of the former US-backed dictator Park Chung-Hee. Prominent government officials on both sides propagate a false narrative of kinship between Israel and South Korea, asserting economic and geopolitical similarities…The governments of South Korea and Israel have gone beyond mere words with concrete steps towards joint economic collaboration…Israel is also a major arms supplier to South Korea…These recent developments are deeply unsettling to those who understand realities in both places behind the political platitudes…at the same time, both the Korean and Palestinian people saw their lands violently divided at the whim of imperialist interests…the true parallel to ordinary Koreans and their history is not Israelis, but Palestinians…Both the Koreans and Palestinians also continue to suffer the consequences of borders imposed and created by outside imperialist countries, with the United States playing a significant role in both cases…While South Korea is a technologically and economically advanced country with a high standard of living, it is still occupied by almost 30,000 US troops, despite constant protests from Korean citizens. Furthermore, South Korea represents only half the fate of the Korean people who had been unified for hundreds of years and were only divided in 1948, a consequence of their country being used as a pawn in a proxy war…Though to outsiders, North and South Korea may now simply be two enemy nations, for many Koreans, it’s a recent division that literally hits home…Of course, the suffering of Palestinians and Koreans cannot be conflated but, as the above facts attest, the similarities between Palestinians and Koreans run far deeper than the shallow sentiments expressed by Israeli and South Korean officials. It worries me, as a Korean-American, when I see the South Korean government so eagerly align itself with Israel, against its own constitution…If Park’s administration acted according to the Korean constitution and adhered to the anti-colonial sentiments so many Koreans hold, there is no doubt that they would call for an end to the Israeli occupation and work in solidarity with the Palestinians…the more authentic, shared experiences of oppression and occupation between Koreans and Palestinians…Through solidarity actions such as participating in BDS and sharing the stories that elucidate our shared experiences of oppression, we can actively work to dismantle these political entities that fail to represent our truths in the interest of selective political and economic gains.

There is also the case of Jindallae Safarini (also spelled Saphariny), a girl of Palestinian descent, born in Juche Korea in 1985, “thanks to the health advances of the country” and given her first name by Kim Jong-Il himself. Her parents, one of whom was a former Palestinian ambassador, not able to have any more children, and with the help of doctors, “they got Jindallae’s mother to become pregnant,” making Jindallae “Kim Jong Il’s Palestinian foster daughter” and demonstrating the “love and care that Dear Leader Kim Jong Il showed for everyone.” [5] As she noted in her interview with KCNA, she came back to Juche Korea in 2005, went back to China, and felt she had to “do something good,” after talking with her father, establishing the nonprofit Jindallae Children′s Foundation in November 2012 to help children (which she says she “loves”), especially for “health services,” in Juche Korea, which she calls her “second homeland.” While bourgeois media claimed they couldn’t “find” her (they are bad at researching), there is a page on the website of United Family Healthcare in Beijing, clearly referring to her. It notes that  she received a “medical Degree from the Peking University Health Science Center in 2008” the same university where she “completed her Master of Medicine in Obstetrics and Gynecology” in 2011 (Juche 100), that she “studied Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University,” and that after completing her “residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Peking University Health Science Center’s Third Hospital,” she jointed “Beijing United Family Hospital and Clinics as a Physician Assistant” in 2012 (Juche 101), and is currently “a full-time Obstetrician and Gynecologist.”

In June 1986 (Juche 75), Kim Il Sung gave a speech to a committee of the people and the political bureau of  the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK)’s central committee. While he mainly talked on the subject of the non-aligned movement, endorsing it and calling it anti-interventionist, anti-imperialist, anti-war, and anti-colonialist, he also strongly condemned Zionists. He argued that Zionists and South African racists, along with “other stooges” are “shock forces” of imperialists, with the latter groups pursuing “the racist and expansionist policy of aggression.” On one hand he said that South Africa’s racist government pursued “the vicious policy of apartheid, of racial discrimination, and the policy of brutal repression” while on the other he condemned  Zionist occupation of Arab lands to create a “Great Zionist Empire” within the Middle East. In another breath, he declared that the “expansionist, aggressive schemes of the Israeli Zionists” must be foiled because “Zionism is a form of racism and colonialism,” saying that the “Palestinian and other Arab people” have just cause to fight for the “restoration of land lost to them.” This statement can be coupled with a June 1985 Special National Intelligence Assessment of the U$ Intelligence establishment, saying that while “active liberation movements” have declined, Juche Korea has less ability for involvement, but still gives arms and training to PLO, which includes small number of advisers, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, antitank weapons, mortars, antiaircraft machine guns, and renewed pledges of support to Arafat with arms shipments. This was likely the case, at the time, and it shows the solidarity of Juche Korea with Palestinian liberation.

Kim Il Sung’s speech was not out of the ordinary. Juche Korea has reportedly  given arms to Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in Gaza as an act in solidarity with armed struggle by Palestinians. Capitalists shouted that the Koreans are supporting terrorism but the real terrorism comes from Zionist forces murdering innocent Palestinians in cold blood.  Since Yassar Arafat of the PLO declared independence of Palestine in 1988 (Juche 77), Juche Korea has recognized the State of Palestine, saying it covers the whole Zionist state and occupied territories, except for the Golan Heights, which Juche Korea sees as part of Syria. [6] Arafat was reportedly a “frequent visitor to Pyongyang,” visiting Kim Il Sung six times, with this Kim awarding Arafat the “Star of Palestine” in 1993 (Juche 82), showing the connection between Palestine and Korea.

Around that same time, in November 1992 (Juche 81), as the Times of Israel claims, “three Israeli diplomats boarded a plane from Pyongyang to Tokyo,” hoping they could “reverse their bitter decades-old enmity and embark on a new era of fruitful cooperation,” dreaming of “setting up an Israeli mission in Pyongyang, and of persuading the reclusive regime to stop selling arms to Israel’s enemies in the Middle East.” [7] They further say that the diplomatic mission was disrupted by Mossad, meaning that “nothing tangible would come of the diplomats’ project to bring Jerusalem and Pyongyang closer together” ans was cut short by “then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in early 1993, presumably due to US pressure” with some still lauding the effort. They further claim that some of leadership of Juche Korea, along with a “Korean businessman,” appeared to be ready to consider opening the country to the West” as they were suffering an economic crisis, claiming they received “a friendly welcome in Pyongyang,” making them think that the country was open to rapprochement. Supporters claimed that if the effort had gone forward, “North Korea today would be a state like China” since some, reportedly, “in the leadership were ready to steer the country into a different, more pro-Western direction.” Let’s say this story was true. It could be the case based on the fact that Juche Korea was in an economic crunch after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and seemed to lower its direct support for international causes, in terms of assistance, after that point. Even so, it seems  fantastical. It could and likely is made-up propaganda created by the Zionists.

Instead, it is better to deal with the reality, that Juche Korea has always supported the

…Palestinian people’s right to self determination and the Palestinians people’s rightful struggle against Zionism. President Kim Il Sung had a close relationship with Yasser Arafat and the support for the Palestinian struggle was always supported by the DPRK by providing arms and aid. After the Cold War the material support declined, but the DPRK have always condemned Israeli attacks and the DPRK is still today supporting the Palestinians people’s struggle for national liberation. The DPRK was there to recognize the State of Palestine when it was proclaimed by the Palestine Liberation Organization. What many so called socialists, communists and anti-imperialists tend to forget is that the struggle against Zionism in Palestine and the Korean people’s struggle against imperialism is one and the same. If we decide not to support one oppressed people’s struggle against an oppressor and we let the imperialist oppressor wins, then we have failed the other oppressed people and helped their oppressor. The DPRK, Cuba, Syria, and Iran for example are countries that always have supported the Palestinians people’s struggle but if we let these countries fall, then the Palestinians people’s struggle will turn out even harder then what it is today if they won’t have material nor political support by some…Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il supported the righteous struggle of the Palestinian people

Fast forward to the 2008-2009 conflict. During that time, Juche Korea condemned the Gaza flotilla raid, doing the same during similar raids in in 2010 (Juche 99) and 2014 (Juche 103), rightly calling them “crimes against humanity,” angering the Zionists. [8] Additionally, in December 2008 (Juche 97), Juche Korea denounced “Israel’s killing of unarmed civilians as a crime against humanity, a serious provocation against the Palestinians and other Arab people and an open challenge to the Middle East peace process.” They were right to say that, without a doubt.

In February 2017 (Juche 106), Juche Korea sent a delegation to a “conference in the Islamic Republic of Iran in support of the Palestinian struggle” in Tehran called the 6th International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada (Uprising). Many other countries across the world attended, with delegations from over 80 countries, including Bosnia, Syria, India, Malaysia, Lebanon, Libya, Algeria, Russia, China, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Iraq, to name a few, with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas also sending delegations. The conference was described in the Pyongyang Times in late February [9]

Choe Thae Bok, speaker of the Supreme People’s Assembly, paid an official visit to Iran, leading a delegation. He met Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. He courteously conveyed the warm regards from Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un to the Iranian counterpart who expressed thanks for this and asked Choe to pass on his best wishes to the DPRK leader. Choe Thae Bok also met with the parliamentary leaders of Iran, Palestine, Niger, Malaysia and Madagascar and other figures. The DPRK delegation attended the 6th international conference for supporting the Palestinians which was held in Teheran on February 21-22.  The meeting brought together parliamentary delegations from over 50 countries and about 700 personages including representatives of organizations for solidarity with Palestine. The participants discussed how to fight against Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its expansion of Jewish settlements and how to promote international solidarity to support the Palestinians in their drive to win statehood. In the opening session Iran’s supreme leader and parliamentary speaker made congratulatory remarks. Choe Thae Bok told the event that President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il had described the Palestinian issue as a sacred liberation struggle and a matter of life and death for the Palestinian people, adding that the great leaders had rendered material and moral assistance to the Palestinians’ just cause since they rose up against Zionism. He stressed the need to grant the Palestinians the right to self-determination and to disallow the intervention of the US that overtly aids and abets Israel, in order to ensure peace in the Middle East and resolve the regional issue in a comprehensive and fair way. The DPRK will as ever strengthen militant solidarity with Iran, Palestine and other countries to reject all sorts of aggression, interference and inequality and to build a new independent world, he said. The meeting released a joint statement in support of the just cause of the Palestinian people.

The same year, in April, the defense minister of the murderous Zionist apartheid state would say that the standoff between Juche Korea and the murderous empire affected them. In response, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Juche Korea, responded, saying that “Israel is the only illegal possessor of nukes in the Middle East under the patronage of the US,” also arguing that the Zionist state is a “disturber of peace in the Middle East, occupier of the Arab territories and culprit of crimes against humanity.” [10] They are undeniably right: just recent the IDF killed a Palestinian in cold blood, and hospitals in Gaza have had to shut down because of the deadly siege by the Zionists, the latter of whom have been destroying EU-built schools time and time again.

The relationship between the Palestinian resistance and Juche Korea has been occasionally reciprocated. For example, Mahmoud Abbas, PLO president, sent a greeting to Juche Korea in August 2017, praising the “historic friendship” (evidenced by the embassy of the State of Palestine in Juche Korea), wishing “the Korean people continued stability and prosperity; and that the historical friendly relations between Palestine and North Korea and their two peoples will continue to develop and grow,” while he also sent a message the same day to  the ROK. [11] Another example in in April 2017 when  Hamas condemned “the Israeli insult to Pyongyang and emphasizes that the occupation is the leader of evil.” As one site favorable to Juche Korea remarked, “the DPRK have, and will always, provide support in fields such as diplomatic, educational and military, to the Palestinian people in their righteous struggle for freedom and independence” while saying that the fact that “the DPRK is providing arms and trainings to liberation movements in the Middle East is very disturbing to the imperialists” although I would say that isn’t specifically a fact.

There has been some support among the common Palestinians, whom may remember or recognize the “long history of warm relationship” between the Palestine and Juche Korea. In late 2017, a Gaza strip restaurant displayed a poster showing “Kim Jong Un next to a North Korean and a Palestinian flag announces a special offer: an 80 percent discount to North Korean customers” which was meant to show gratitude that Kim Jong-Un criticized “President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, as the capital of Israel,” as one restaurant owner, Raba, noted. [12] He also said that Kim “is not a Muslim, a Christian or an Arab, he’s not even in the Middle East, but he is supporting us,” and that he doesn’t believe “Erdoğan’s words.” Another media outlet, connected with Russia’s RT, interviewed the restaurant owner and others, with one frame of their video showing the poster:

One Zionist claims that “Pyongyang regularly voices support for Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.” [13] The  perception of such support was so strong that family of Otto Warmbier, a citizen of the murderous empire, concealed he had a “Jewish background and identity,” that he “became active with his campus Hillel at the University of Virginia (UVA)” and had even visited the Zionist  state, where he  was “given a Hebrew name,” with his mother being Jewish while he was as well, indicating that he was perhaps a Zionist! Undoubtedly those in Juche Korea likely recognized this, but if they had been told the whole truth, it may have been different. After all, Zionists are horrible, upholding an inherently “racist ideology” which promotes “segregation and ethnic cleansing,” the foundation of the whole Zionist state, the same state which demands a PA takeover of Gaza, wanting “Hamas disarmed and rendered impotent, the PA it controls in charge.”

The ties between Korea and Palestine reiterated again and again in the media of Juche Korea. In Rodong Sinmun there are 35 results for the term “Palestine.” These include a speech by the Juche Korea permanent representative at an emergency meeting of the UN’s Security Council on December 21, 2017, saying that

the status of Kuds [also called Jerusalem] remains so sensitive that it, for sure, should be solved fairly by means of regaining the national rights of the Palestinian people and striking a comprehensive and lasting solution to the Middle East problem. The U.S. and Israel should bear full responsibility for all the consequences of tension and instability that will be entailed in the Middle East region owing to its reckless and highhanded act…My delegation avails itself of this opportunity to reiterate its support and encouragement to the struggle of Palestinian people retrieving their legitimate right to setting up the independent state with East-al-Quds as its capital and to the struggle of the Arab people for their cause of justice.

Other articles in Rodong Sinmun quote Ri Jong Hyok, deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK and director of the National Reunification Institute, as saying to the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in later November 2017, “I would like to express unreserved support to and solidarity with the peoples in Asian countries including Iran, Syria and Palestine who are struggling to put an end to the interference of foreign forces and to defend the sovereignty of the nation,” and greetings sent to the President of Palestine (also see here). Additionally, the Palestinian ambassador had a reception in Pyongyang in October of last year, with Ri Su Yong saying that “the DPRK government [is looking] to boost the militant friendship and solidarity between the peoples of the two countries” and that the “Korean people will as ever extend invariable support and solidarity to the Palestinian people in the just cause to put an end to the Israeli aggressors’ occupation and retake the legitimate national rights including the founding of an independent state,”  similar to what Ri Young Ho said in February, Kim Jong Un at the beginning of the year, Kim Yong Nam in January. Other greetings were sent from Mahmoud Abbas to Kim Jong Un in October, August, and February of last year, while he also referred to the “friendly  relations” with Juche Korea, sent a floral basket (and another), and even a New Years card. In 2016, it was the same. The Palestinians sent floral baskets in December,  September, August, and February, held receptions in October and April, and messages from Abbas (also see here) to which the Koreans replied with  greetings (also see here), a messages (also see here, here, and here) from Kim Jong Un, a face-to-face meeting, along with honoring other anniversaries.

It can  be said with confidence that relations between Juche Korea and Palestine will be strong for years to come, while the Zionists try to “crack down” on BDS.

Notes

[9] KCNA, “DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly delegation visits Iran, attends meeting,” Pyongyang Times, Feb 26, 2017.

[10] KCNA, “Israeli defence minister denounced for smear campaign against DPRK,” Pyongyang Times, Apr 30, 2017.

[11] Shlomo, “Anyone Surprised? PLO Leader Abbas Sends Greeting to North Korea Dictator,” JTF News, Aug 16, 2017; Algemeiner Staff, “Hamas Praises North Korea After Pyongyang Regime Threatens to ‘Mercilessly Punish’ Israel,” Algemeiner, Apr 30, 2017; Samuel Ramani, “Why Did North Korea Just Threaten Israel?,” The Diplomat, May 3, 2017; Gary Willig, “Abbas congratulates North Korean dictator on ‘Liberation Day’,” Israel National News, Aug 15, 2017.

[12] Sofia Lotto Persio, “Who Likes North Korea? Kim Jong Un Finds Grateful Fans in Gaza,” Newsweek, Dec 15, 2017.

[39] Michael Freud, “Fundamentally Freund: When Israel fought North Korea,” Jerusalem Post (opinion), Oct 7, 2014; Eric Cortellessa, “Otto Warmbier’s family kept his Jewishness under wraps while North Korea held him hostage,” Times of Israel, Jun 22, 2017.