Free medical care, free housing, full employment, free education and safety for your children. These things are desired by all working people – and they are being achieved for people in north Korea in spite of US aggression and economic sanctions.

Despite the further stepping up of sanctions at the time of writing, the achievements listed above, unattainable for ordinary people in even the richest imperialist nations, were clear to the CPGB-ML’s delegation during its recent visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Our party’s delegation was privileged to spend a week in the DPRK at the invitation of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in the early part of September this year. In a short time we were able to have very valuable discussions with our hosts (as reported in the last issue of Proletarian), and we were also able to visit many places in Pyongyang and outside it that gave us a huge amount of information about the country’s cultural, educational and historical development since the US-led aggression against the north was defeated in 1953.

From the very outset, we were impressed by the beauty of north Korea and the fact that this beauty is allowed to flourish because Korea is a socialist country. Indeed, part of that beauty comes from the obvious unity and determination of a people in the process of building socialism.

Driving into Pyongyang from the airport, we were immediately struck by the clean air, lack of billboards exhorting one to purchase the latest variation of Coca-Cola or washing powder, and a countryside tended and cared for, from roadside flowers to irrigated rice fields, by a population actively participating in the construction of a new society. In short, the difference in the quality of life for ordinary people between imperialist Britain and socialist Korea was immediately apparent.