On May 17, the World Anti-Imperialist Platform, the Anti-US Struggle Headquarters, and the People’s Democracy Party (PDP) co-organized the May World Anti-Imperialist Simultaneous Struggle at the May 18 Democracy Square in Gwangju, South Korea, under the slogans: “Uphold the Spirit of the Gwangju People’s Resistance! Eliminate the Coup Forces! Withdraw U.S. Troops from South Korea!”
The World Anti-Imperialist Platform, founded in Paris, France in 2022, has been organizing mass anti-imperialist struggles on a global scale.
This demonstration and rally, held in the lead-up to the 45th anniversary of the Gwangju People’s Uprising, were marked by a passionate atmosphere with the participation of workers, farmers, youth, and students from across the country.
Lee Mi-suk, the head of the PDP’s Gwangju city committee who was the moderator, pointed out, “‘Republic of Korea (ROK)’ is moving from an insurrection toward a civil war. The pro-US forces to are inciting unrest—the key pretext for declaring emergency martial law—to push for a second martial law, and ultimately civil war. The ‘January 19 Seoul District Court riot’ is a signal flare for this civil war.”
Isabel Di Carlo Quero, Deputy ambassador of Venezuela in the “ROK”, said “45 years ago, is sufficient time to historically considerer the magnitude and significance of that day, catalogue as the Gwgangju Uprising, in my view is a credential of the democratic convictions in the people of the ‘ROK’.” “When I was thinking in this episode, inevitable came to my mind the similitude with the “Caracazo”, name given for the capital’s name of Venezuela the city of Caracas. The Caracazo was a popular uprising that happened in 1898 against the neo-liberal economic measures taken in Venezuelan”
And, “The Caracazo taught us that never again the use of the military forces against the peoples, and in the case of Venezuela served to see the exhaustion of the representative democracy we had, that model of democracy that, a moment of time, left behind the gross population of our Nation living in poverty in a country with the oil peak income ever seen in the republican history. This dramatic episode in Venezuela was the starting of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.”
Finally she said “Let us reflect on the common history of resistance shared by the ‘ROK’ and Venezuela, despite the distance between them.”
Following her remarks, the crowd showed solidarity by chanting, “End Sanctions on Venezuela!”
Dimitrios Patelis, Coordinator of Greek Revolutionary Unification and member of World Anti-imperialist Platform said, “We deeply honor the heroic sacrifice of our comrades, who were among the finest representatives of the fraternal Korean people. This is yet another of the many common threads in the history of our peoples. Similarly, in Greece, those who had collaborated with the invaders of the anti-Comintern axis swiftly became accomplices of the American invaders.”
Thierry Deronne, Belgian-Venezuelan filmmaker ‘How Venezuela Moves the Mountain’, vice-president of the participatory public television channel Vive TV introduced, “I’ve been making documentaries and writing about the Bolivarian revolution for 25 years.”
He announced, “Then I realized that the media’s desire to transform Venezuela’s participatory democracy into a “dictatorship” is due to the fear of contagion of the political construction of direct democracy to other peoples.”
And he said, “‘Cursed be the soldier who turns his weapons against the people’. President Hugo Chavez often recalled Liberator Simon Bolivar’s phrase, and it was on the basis of this peseta that he weaned the Venezuelan army from the School of Americas, ‘the school of executioners’.”
Finally, he pledged solidarity to say “Whenever they try to force us to believe history is over, the people rise up. They rise up again with faces of Gwangju, Caracas, Ouagadougou. For us, and for you, Gwangju is not just a memory of the past but a living future.”
In closing, the speaker delivered the statement at the World Anti-imperialist Simultaneous Struggle. Following the statement, participants sang a song ‘The Internationale.’
The following is the full text of the World Anti-imperialist Simultaneous Struggle Statement.
Let’s inherit the spirit of the Gwangju People’s Uprising to liquidate the rebellion and crush the aggression!
The US-“Republic of Korea (ROK)” are intensely conducting aggressive exercises against the DPRK in various areas. On April 15, the US and the “ROK” mobilized B-1B strategic bombers to conduct joint air drills, and from the April 17 to 2 of this month, they conducted combined flying training exercise “Freedom Flag”. On April 1, the allies prepared for a space war with military exercises that claimed to strengthen alliance response to the so-called “space threat,” and from April 8 to 11, they conducted joint naval exercises mobilizing the US Navy’s Aegis destroyer Lawrence. On the other hand, from April 21 to 25, the US conducted the Iron Maiden “25-1 nuclear war drill”, which integrates US nuclear power with the conventional power of the USFK and the “ROK” militaries. The current situation in East Asia is also serious. In mid-April, B-1Bs were rotationally deployed to Misawa Air Base in Japan, provoking DPRK, China, and Russia. In response, Russia conducted military exercises including live-fire drills in the Kuril Islands, and China deployed the “Shandong” aircraft carrier toward Okinawa, Japan.
NATO’s war provocations continue. Having politically completed the “NATO’s pacificization” at the NATO Washington Summit in July 2024 and militarily completed it through the “Freedom Edge”, “Rimpac”, and “Ulchi Freedom Shield” war drills, the imperialist warmongers and their pro-US warmongers allies in the “ROK” are further intensifying the situation in East Asia by holding the NATO-“ROK” military staff talks following the “Locked Shield 2025” NATO cyber exercise from May 5 to 9. In the first half of this year alone, NATO conducted large-scale anti-Russian military exercises such as “Steadfast Dart 25”, “Sea Defense”, “Joint Viking”, and “Defender 25” in the vicinity of Russia, frantically trying to provoke a Russian invasion. Meanwhile, in West Asia, in March, Israel resumed its aggression against the Palestinian Gaza Strip, revealing its true colors as a killing machine.
The imperialist warmongers are madly trying to start World War III. While negotiations to end the war in Ukraine were underway, the Kiev authorities terrorized and murdered Russian military personnel on the Russian mainland. The Israeli Mossad blew up an Iranian port as the US-Iran nuclear deal was being negotiated, and terrorism in the Indian-Pakistani disputed territory of Kashmir, one of the world’s hot spots, has brought the region to the brink of all-out war. These events reflect the imperialist warmongers’ vicious schemes to block the imperialist non-warmongers who are going against the flow of World War III. Similarly, in the “ROK”, a “judicial coup d’état” and a “political coup d’état” have recently occurred, and assassination threats against Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, are continuing, creating a tense situation that could lead to an “electoral coup d’état”.
The civil war which is a detonator of “war in the ROK” is the only way out for the rebels who are about to die. It is very dangerous that the manipulations for the civil war of the rebels are part of the imperialist warmongers’ World War III machination. In order to start World War III in earnest, the imperialist warmongers may blow up nuclear power plants in Eastern Europe and Iranian nuclear facilities in Western Asia, but they are trying to start a war in East Asia, one of the three battlefields, where the three countries of Japan, China, and Russia are gathered. In summary, the “war in the ROK” is the best card for the imperialist warmongers desperate for World War III and East Asia, and the best card to subdue the imperialist non-warmongers. Our Korean people made a great contribution to strengthening the world anti-imperialist struggle by crushing the emergency martial law and defeating the insurgency. Inheriting the spirit of the Gwangju people’s uprising, we, the people in the “ROK”, will wage a general strike against the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist uprising, end the insurgents, crush the manipulation of civil war, realize true democracy, and advance world independence and true peace.
May 17, 2025, Gwangju
World Anti-imperialism Platform
Anti-US Struggle Headquarters
People’s Democracy Party
