On Thursday, the North Korean government culminated the celebration of “Struggle Against US Imperialism Month” with a large stadium commemoration of the anniversary of the Korean War. In addition to propaganda significantly more belligerent than its usual fare and praise for communist leader Kim Il Sung and current dictator Kim Jong Un, the nation’s museums were teeming with individuals observing the holiday.
An Associated Press reporter attended the anniversary festivities in Pyongyang, where 100,000 people convened to honor Kim Il Sung, for whom the stadium is named. The extensive ceremony, officially titled the “Pyongyang Mass Rally on the Day of the Struggle Against the US,” included a number of speeches blaming the United States for igniting the Korean War and chants of slogans against the United States. The AP describes the entire month as “a time for North Koreans to swarm to war museums, mobilize for gatherings denouncing the evils of the United States and join in a general, nationwide whipping up of anti-American sentiment.”
In one particularly museum, North Koreans commemorated the loss of about 35,000 lives in the battle of Sinchon, which they deem a massacre at the hands of American soldiers. The AP notes that little evidence exists of an American presence at the event at all, and the dead were likely instead victims of “local anti-communist vigilantes.” The reporter found similar factual problems with nearly every crime North Korean officials blamed on the United States.
In addition to ceremonies within North Korea, the nation issued a number of media postings against the United States. The official statement from the North Korean government is, of course, the most bellicose. “The whole world has to pool efforts to dismember the fatty monster U.S. imperialists,” reads the statement on state newspaper site Rodong Sinmun. “The U.S. is just like a paper tiger easy to be crushed and set on fire.”
The statement continues, urging “whoever truly wishes for durable peace in the world, welfare of humankind and lasting security of posterity has to turn out in the anti-U.S. struggle in high spirits.”
Lest anyone get the impression that the government is solely pushing this effort against the United States, Rodong Sinmun and the Korean Central News Agency have also published a number of articles claiming public grassroots support for the destruction of America. “Though 62 years have passed since the cease-fire, the remains make us keenly feel that the U.S. imperialists are a herd of brutes, the sworn enemy of the Korean people,” says a Korean Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries officials of America. Headlines blare that “Agricultural Workers Vow to Take Revenge upon U.S. Aggressors” and “Workers and Trade Unions Members Vow to Take Revenge upon U.S. Imperialists.”
Earlier this month, all of which is dedicated to attacking the United States, the North Korean government also accused America of attempting to poison North Koreans with anthrax. “The United States not only possesses deadly weapons of mass destruction… but also is attempting to use them in actual warfare against [North Korea],” claimed North Korean Ambassador to the UN Ja Song Nam. Nam insists in the letter that the United Nations investigate the possibility of the United States attempting this “hideous crime aimed at genocide,” though the letter itself does not indicate that North Korea has any evidence to back up their claim.