War chief goes East

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Black trade unionists: the power that can beat apartheid Join the Labour Committee on Ireland.

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STATE DEPARTMENT ... Experts predict th shooting down of Fligh lead to further nuclear deployment... PRESIDENT Reagan's wild war-mongering statements in Korea are a useful reminder of the role that country has played both in the original Cold War and in the latest imperialist propaganda and military offensive.

As he made new pledges to step up military aid to the vicious South Korean regime of President Chun Doo, Reagan larded his speeches with scaremongering claims that North Korea is about to invade, and hypocritical references to the supposed 'freedom' defended by Chun's dictatorship.

Speaking to some of the 40,000 American troops stationed in Korea to bolster the regime, he declared:

"You stand between the free world and the armed forces of a system hostile to everything we believe in. You are truly on the front line."

•'The Communist system to the north is based on hatred and oppression. It brutally attacks every form of liberty and declares those who worship God to be enemies of the people."

But of course there are millions of South Korean workers who regard Chun's savage treatment of opposition parties and working class opposition as both hateful and repressive.

The South Korean economy functions upon the massive exploitation of men and women workers in the pursuit of superprofits for US and Japanesefinanced firms: to maintain this system requires a massive apparatus of repression, including a standing army of over 500,000 and vast numbers of police.

Many of these police had been busily at work in advance of Reagan's visit, rounding up thousands of the potential opponents of the regime not already incarcerated in Chun's jails, sealing off whole areas through which the US President would travel, and ensuring a massive armed presence on the streets where crowds would gather to see the imperialist chief pass by.

Reagan has good reason , to view South Korea with some affection. It was the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950 which gave the Democratic President Harry Truman exactly the pretext he needed to begin a massive rearmament of the USA demanded by hawkish security advisors.

Truman used the cover of the war to fund the establishment of an integrated NATO force in Europe, extend military aid to the French imperialists fighting Communist forces in Vietnam, and boost the reactionary regime in the Philippines against Communist-led guerrillas.

So useful was the war that Truman and General MacArthur repeatedly sabotaged hopes of a swift negotiated settlement, to prolong the crisis and thus increase military funding trom the US Congress.

It was this key period which was decisive in launching the post-war USA into the frantic arms race with the USSR - an arms race which Reagan has accelerated. extending far beyond military and "security" affairs into political and cultural fields.

And while these decisions are taken behind closed doors by powerful, unaccountable cliques, the extent to which South African businesses have been concentrated in the hands of a few vast conglomerates has also been revealed.

It is estimated that 80% of the shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange are owned by only seven companies, of which the largest, the Anglo-American Corporation, owns no less than 56% of the total. The next largest is the Sanlam life insurance company (9.4%) followed And, ironically, one tool which Reagan himself has used to achieve funding for the new MX missile was the recent shooting down of a South Korean airliner.

Significantly the American hulabaloo about the incident has died away once the holes in the State Department's flimsy propaganda story began to show through, and the hysteria bad helped procure Congress backing for Reagan's immense armaments budget.

This cold and hot war background to the Korean visit helps explain the stark contrast between the flak-jacketed, trigger-happy, bunker-visiting Reagan on the 38th parallel, and the softly-spoken, "peaceloving" Reagan who spoke so movingly of his fears of nuclear war to the Japanese ruling class only hours earlier.

From Japan, Reagan wants trade concessions, and a big increase in their own arms spending to assist in militarising the Pacific Ocean: in Korea he was merely seeking the pretext for a further lurch in the arms race. by Barlow Rand with 7.4%.

Yet even after these figures were compiled there have been further takeovers and mergers by the "Big Seven" which will have further tightened their grip on South African business.

The only serious way in which this vast concentration of power in the hands of South Africa's ruling white capitalists can be fought is through the organisation and mobilisation of the black working class.

Through the building of independent black trade unions and the preparation of mass class action, the South African system can be taken by the throat and the racist rulers defeated.

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