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Stop the Nuclear Bomb - The Meaning of North Korea and Japan’s Peace Movements in the Korean War

This paper intends to examine the meaning and limits of the collaboration of the systematic peace efforts between North Korea and Japan during the Korean War and the concurrent international peace movements. The North Koreans claimed that the Korean War was not an aggressive invasion but instead a ‘homeland emancipation war’ by the decolonized in order to recapture their native territory from American imperialism. The Japan Communist Party accepted the Korean War as a necessary stage in the new Asian world order following Chinese Communization, thus the Party supported North Korea and conducted armed warfare in the hopes of establishing national liberation through the united international struggles of the era. Yet the threat of nuclear warfare was inescapable insofar as North Korea adhered to the ideological pacifism that employed the rhetoric of the ‘homeland emancipation war’ as a means to peace. Meanwhile, Japan’s revolutionary powers abandoned armed conflict in favor of absolute pacifism while forgetting Chosun’s history as non-Japanese radiation testers. Thus the two peace movements lost their link of solidarity and the two different ideas of peace began to run parallel to one another.