8-15 Korea Liberation Day of Action, San Francisco CA Korea Policy Institute Statement of Solidarity

By Paul Liem, KPI Board Chairperson | August 15, 2026

On behalf of the Korea Policy Institute I want to congratulate Nodutdol and BAYAN, and all who organized today’s remembrance and celebration of Korea’s liberation from 45 years of Japanese colonial rule.  We remember this as Kwangbok, meaning “return of the light.”  But today, darkness still pervades our path.

As the United States (U.S.) exhausts it weapons in Ukraine, in Iran and the gulf region faster than its deindustrialized economy is able to replace them, it is transforming its allies in Asia, namely the Republic of Korea (R.O.K), Philippines, and Japan into self-financing forward-deployed proxies of aggression targeting China and the D.P.R.K. 

Extremely concerning is the encroachment of the Japanese military on its previously occupied countries.  The U.S.-Philippines Balikatan 2026 war games included, for the first time since WWll, Japanese combat forces numbering 1400, conducting live-fire exercises on Philippine soil.  Japan and the R.O.K. already conduct joint naval exercises.  Will the U.S.-Korea Ulchi Freedom war games someday call for Japan to plant its “rising sun” flag on Korean soil?

The danger of nuclear war is ever more threatening. 

• To its nuclear umbrella over the R.O.K. and Japan, the U.S. is recklessly flaunting the idea of adding so-called “tactical nuclear weapons,” considered more usable, because smaller. But for that reason, they vastly increase the danger of nuclear holocaust. 

• The government of Sanae Takaichi has opened the pandora’s box of nuclear escalation by questioning Japan’s 70 year old policy which prohibits the possession, production, and introduction of nuclear weapons.

• The administration of Lee Jae Myung is pursuing production of a nuclear submarine in partnership with the U.S. and is also lobbying for the right to pursue nuclear enrichment, a path that can lead to the weaponization of nuclear material.

In 2025 the U.S. bombed the nuclear enrichment facilities of Iran, a non-nuclear country.  This year it assassinated the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Kamenei, and members of his family, and threatened to “end all of Iranian civilization” if Iran did not bend the knee to the U.S.-Israeli cabal.  The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K.) has carved into its constitution measures to defend itself  from such victimization, principally by defining itself a nuclear power.  The D.P.R.K. has the right to self-defense.  U.S., hands off the D.P.R.K.

Under the present circumstance, in which the U.S. and R.O.K. continue to call for the denuclearization of “North Korea,” the D.P.R.K. has concluded that reunification with the R.O.K., is not possible, and that diplomacy with the U.S. is no longer a priority.  It will rather go its separate way as a socialist country, strengthening its alliances with Russia and China. What then can lead us to peace on the Korean peninsula, and hopefully reunification - someday? 

The R.O.K. and D.P.R.K. appear to be divided as much by their differing social systems as they are by the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ).  But there is no imperative, carved in stone, for either to seek to impose its system upon the other.  The D.P.R.K. is eager to trade with capitalist countries, which are not hostile to it. It was ready to partner on development projects with the former Moon Jae-in administration, and it needs access to the international banking system.  The will to engage with capitalist countries for mutual benefit is there, but it is blocked by U.S.-led economic sanctions and diplomatic hostility.

For the R.O.K to re-engage with the D.P.RK. requires foremost that the Lee Jae Myung administration be willing to test the proposition that a multi-lateral foreign policy that is also inclusive of the D.P.R.K., Russia and China, may be a better guarantor of the security of the republic, the economic well-being of the people, and the personal freedoms they enjoy, than a bilateral cold war U.S.-R.O.K. military alliance, and a Japan-Korea-U.S. (J.A.K.U.S.) trilateral alliance.  And it means letting go of the insistence, codified in the R.O.K constitution, that the territory of the R.O.K. encompasses the entire peninsula (including the D.P.R.K.).

Such developments will go much further toward re-establishing inter-Korea dialog toward peaceful reconciliation than calling for the D.P.R.K. to denuclearize while conducting war games that envision the decapitation of the D.P.R.K. state leadership.  They will also serve notice to the U.S. that the R.O.K. has no intentions of becoming cannon fodder in any U.S. military adventurism in Asia, or that of any foreign power.

To eliminate the threat of nuclear war, “denuclearization,” is, of course, necessary.  But as Korean A-Bomb victim, Mr. Lee Tae-jae, told students at San Francisco State University in April, the U.S. must apologize and denuclearize FIRST. Mr. Lee and other Korean Hibakusha are convening a People’s International Tribunal in Seoul, this November, to demand redress and an apology from the U.S. for its 1945 atomic bombing.  Apologize!

To imagine that the R.O.K. may someday let go of its staunch anti-North, anti-communist outlook, may seem far-fetched.  However, the number one anti-communist society in the world today is, and always has been, the United States.  And even here, especially since the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, and now the U.S. kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, its blockade of Cuba, U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine, and aggression against Iran, the ideas that economic planning should be left to a billionaire elite and foreign policy left to war mongers, have given way to a new generation of political leaders, socialist-minded leaders, who are addressing, responsibly, the two issues that unite us all, here, in Korea, and everywhere – affordability and forever wars!

The Korean people, after liberation, did not demand land reform without compensation to landlords for ideological reasons.  They did so because paying for land previously hoarded by a parasitic class and used to exploit them was irrational.  Likewise, we and the world’s people today are not beginning to address social problems, such as lack of housing, food security and health insurance, with public solutions for high-minded theoretical reasons, but because privatization and financialization are destroying the fabric of U.S. society, depressing the earnings of the working class, fueling racist attacks against immigrants and marginalized communities, while driving us to debt peonage and fascism.

The light of Kwangbok was never ethereal.  It was political.  It was the casting out of the colonial master and the people struggling to build a new society based on an equitable distribution of wealth.  Kwangbok will come again.  But as our forbearers, we must struggle to make it happen.  We will make it happen!

Toojeng!