On 11 May 2026, the British government imposed asset-freeze and travel sanctions on the Songdowon International children’s camp in north Korea. This announcement was made alongside a fresh package of financial sanctions targeting Russian entities.
The Labour government accused the facility, which is located at a well-known beauty spot near the east coast port city of Wonsan, of “supporting Russia’s programme for the forced deportation and re-education of Ukrainian children”, specifically citing (fabricated) claims that “Ukrainian” youth from the Donbass (“occupied territories”) are being subjected to political indoctrination and anti-western “militarised” education.
The camp was, in fact, established in 1960 and has a long history of providing educational and recreational activities to local children and their international visitors in beautiful surroundings. Besides a pristine beachside space, facilities for the children include a water park, an aquarium, classrooms for learning about nature and the environment, sports fields, boating equipment, kitchens for learning to cook, and everything needed for making music and sharing cultural exchanges.
Since it is highly unlikely that a socialist children’s centre has bank accounts or assets in the west, Songdowon’s inclusion in the list of sanctioned entities can only be viewed as a propaganda attack. The real purpose of spreading such a story is not to ‘protect children’ but to frame north Korea and Russia as ‘evil entities’, justifying further aggression against them in the minds of the British people.
By drip-feeding us with the entirely spurious narrative that Russian authorities are ‘kidnapping Ukrainian children’, and that the DPRK is ‘assisting’ this heinous activity, we are being trained to see both countries as cartoon baddies, beyond comprehension or reprieve, and to accept the accelerated war preparations of the British ruling class as an inevitable ‘response’ to the dangers apparently lurking ‘out there’ in the world.
As so often, we must take every baseless accusation by the imperialists as a hidden confession. It is being increasingly widely reported by independent media that the west-backed Ukrainian regime has allowed its territory to become a warren for the hunting of bodies for the global imperialist trade in children and young people, who are being kidnapped and trafficked for horrific purposes including sexual slavery, organ harvesting and medical experimentation. Yet we are supposed to believe that it is Russia that wishes to harm the children of the Donbass!
One has only to consider the systematic targeting of civilians – leading to the killing of hundreds of children by west-backed Ukrainian forces – over the last 12 years of war in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions to understand the vile hypocrisy of the Starmer government. Britain has, in fact, been the biggest cheerleader for Nato’s war against Russia and is known to be heavily involved in training and directing the fascist death squads whose terrorist operations have caused so many civilian deaths and have kept the war going for so long.
The fact that the very same imperialists who shed crocodile tears over the alleged ‘mistreatment’ of children by Russia went on to plan and execute and the cold-blooded murder of 21 schoolgirls in a Lugansk dormitory less than two weeks after making their baseless claims against the DPRK further underlines the absolute shamelessness of the journalists and politicians who prostitute themselves in the service of British finance capital.
DPRK slams ‘reckless’ provocation, warns of consequences
At a press conference in Pyongyang on 15 May, a DPRK foreign ministry spokesperson made the following comments in response to the British state’s hostile action:
“Britain’s reckless act is a heinous, unethical and politically-motivated provocation to tarnish the external image of our state and disparage the DPRK-Russia relations of friendship and cooperation by unreasonably linking our children’s camping facility with the baseless issue of supposed ‘forced migration’ of Ukrainian children.
“We strongly denounce and reject the malicious act of the British government, which will target even a sacred base for education and the growth of children in order to achieve its political purposes.
“Britain has zealously followed the USA in carrying out acts of hostility toward the DPRK, routinely taking issue with the exercise of sovereign rights by our state and participating in war drills against the DPRK, systematically aggravating bilateral relations between our two countries.
“The British government’s recent designation of the Songdowon children’s camp as a target of its ‘sanctions’ is one of many moves in its conspiracy to demonise Russia. It is also an intolerable insult to our dignified state, proving that British hostility toward the DPRK is exceeding all limits.
“Now that Britain has committed such reckless acts as toying with even the rights and interests of the children that our state values the most, we have every right to counter London’s malicious behaviour. The British government will be wholly responsible for all the consequences that may follow this gravely hostile act.”
For our part, the CPGB-ML unequivocally condemns this aggressive act, whose aim is not to protect children but to promote russophobic narratives as part of its propaganda campaign and war drive against the Russian Federation.
The aggressive war drive of Anglo-American imperialism does not only target Russia: it is also aimed at the Democratic People’s Republic Korea, the Islamic Republic of Iran, every part of the middle-eastern Axis of Resistance, the Alliance of Sahel States, the People’s Republic of China, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Socialist Republic of Cuba … and any other nation or movement that stands in the way of unbridled imperialist domination and plunder.