US defeat begins in Korea from sinking of first aggressor ship

September 14, 2025

The US history of aggression against Korea started with the intrusion of the aggressor ship General Sherman.

The United States of America, which declared independence after exterminating Native Americans and occupying the American continent, dispatched the aggressor ship General Sherman to the west coastal area of Korea in consideration of the strategic importance of the Korean peninsula on the Asian continent after the end of the American Civil War.

The aim was to impose a subordinate unequal treaty on Korea and pave the way for the invasion of it.

The General Sherman, named after a man who earned notoriety as homicidal general during the American Civil War, was the most advanced armed vessel at that time carrying nearly 100 combat personnel and four guns.

In August 1866 the aggressors intruded into the West Sea of Korea. When the officials of the Korean feudal government tried to exercise control over their illegal intrusion and urged them to return home, the aggressors claimed that theirs was a peaceful merchant ship without showing its nationality, clamouring about “commerce” and "trade".

In spite of the repeated warnings by the Korean feudal government, the aggressors conducted illegal espionage activities, measured the depth of water of the Taedong River and even made a landing to plunder villages and attacked a vessel of the Pyongyang governor’s quarter on guard duty, thereby killing two Korean soldiers and kidnapping a high-ranking military officer.

In the negotiations with the representative of the Pyongyang governor’s quarter, they, instead of apologizing for their crimes, demanded large quantities of rice, gold, silver, insam and others and threatened that they would not send back the kidnapped officer before the demand was met.

When their demand was rejected, the aggressors raided and plundered various ships sailing along the Taedong River and fired guns at the inhabitants on the river shore to kill them.

Enraged by this, the people of the Walled City of Pyongyang and soldiers formed a death-defying corps and prepared a fire attack to annihilate the aggressors. The death-defying corps sent fire boats to the American vessel in early September.

When the ship started to catch fire, the powder magazine in it exploded and the aggressor ship was finally buried in the Taedong River.

The invaders were shot to death or killed in fire in the course of the battle.

After sinking the aggressor ship, the Koreans fought bravely against the invasions by other aggressor ships Shenandoah and China in 1868, repelling the aggressors.

The struggle of the Korean people to frustrate the US aggression and provocation against their country which started more than 150 years ago has continued century after century and decade after decade.

The DPRK won victory in the three-year Fatherland Liberation War to repulse the armed invasion by the US imperialists in the 1950s and brought the Americans to their knees in the incident of the US armed spy ship Pueblo, the incident of the large spy plane EC-121 and the incident at Panmunjom in the 1960s and 1970s and the nuclear confrontation with the US in the 1990s.

Victory always belongs to the Korean people and the US is fated to be defeated forever.

Aggressors and provocateurs can never escape punishment.

THE PYONGYANG TIMES

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