Wtf is this? (North Korea site)

[The Young Pioneer]

While searching for news on the funeral, I stumbled across this:

http://www.korea-dpr.com/

Is it really the official page of the country?

Also, what does Korean Friendship Association membership entail? Anyone know more about this? If it's a harmless thing to sign up for, would it give one access to more information about current events inside DPRK? I don't support the government there obviously, but it'd be nice to know more.

http://www.korea-dpr.com/membership.htm

TIA.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

That's the KFA website, and it notably looks like something a 10 year old made.

[citizen of industry]

Anyone notice the business link advertising the lowest labor costs in Asia and welcoming foreign investment?

[Zostrianos]

The Korean Friendship Association is a club set up by the Kims for westerners who believe NK isn't really a dictatorship, but a true socialist paradise. They're basically yes-men for the Kim dictatorship (lead by a Spanish NK fan and honorary citizen, Alejandro Cao de Benos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Cao_de_Ben%C3%B3s_de_Les_y_P%C3%A9rez), who is also a complete douchebag as you see in the documentary I linked below), and they organize anti-imperialist protests in NK (with local koreans who are required to attend and protest) which are then publicized to show the outside world that North koreans are allowed to protest and are actually free, and all the stuff we know about oppression and autocracy is just an imperialist lie. The Kims use them to try and show that they have western allies...

There's an interesting documentary on them, called Friends of Kim:

C76HqPaA6kw

[Lanky Wanker]

That's the KFA website, and it notably looks like something a 10 year old made.

We actually made crappy websites school when I was 12, but I think most of ours turned out better than this one.

[Sasha]

But did you see the official shop? Wtf? Best place for glorious anti-imperialist IPhone4 covers:
http://images4.cpcache.com/nocache/product/493676654v2147483647_240x240_Front_Color-White.jpghttp://images4.cpcache.com/nocache/product/493676654v2147483647_240x240_Front_Color-White.jpg

[RadioRaheem84]

Say what you will but I was a bit impressed with some of the stuff in the photos gallery.

The place is still a dictatorship, no doubt, but I was expecting a third world banana republic.

[Homo Songun]

Alejandro Cao de Benos, who is also a complete douchebag as you see in the documentary I linked below
No, I missed it. Please tell us exactly what he said that makes him a complete douchebag.

[RadioRaheem84]

No, I missed it. Please tell us exactly what he said that makes him a complete douchebag.


He is just a bit of a bootlicker. Over zealous. NK has a lot of problems.

[Zostrianos]

No, I missed it. Please tell us exactly what he said that makes him a complete douchebag.

In the last part, he's not too happy with one of the cameramen in the group who's filming a bit too much for his taste, so he breaks into his hotel room, steals his tapes, and breaks his laptop. He also threatened to track him down and kill him for spreading lies about North Korea:
YjkwQPptxPI

And he constantly praises NK as a perfect worker's paradise, where everyone is free, and a perfect society has been achieved.

[Zostrianos]

Sorry, it's in part 7 actually, starting at 4:55 where you see the cameraman who finds his room trashed:
M-43MB5_QKQ

[Nox]

Hahahahha that website is fucking shit! I made better websites on Piczo when I was 10!!!

[Zostrianos]

Say what you will but I was a bit impressed with some of the stuff in the photos gallery.
The place is still a dictatorship, no doubt, but I was expecting a third world banana republic.

The NK government is very selective on what it publicizes about the country to the outside world, showing only prosperous and happy people (chiefly in Pyongyang, where only the most loyal Kim supporters are allowed to live). The stuff on that website is all smoke and mirrors, staged to make the Kims look good. You never see pictures of the starvation in the countryside, of soldiers eating ice cream while citizens dig for food in garbage bins and landfills:

zgNr5FIqILE

As for the store, the Iphone covers and other stuff, they only sell those to westerners. North Koreans aren't allowed to have that kind of stuff, and if they're caught they'll probably get a bullet in the head.

[RadioRaheem84]

Why is the country side so poverty ridden? Why can't Juche manage to bring some sort of social welfare there?

[The Dark Side of the Moon]

Because, during the split, they got the shitty side of Korea, and lost the USsr as their tradin partner.

[Zostrianos]

And the Kims have a "military first" policy, which states that the army should come first in terms of food and financial privileges (and if there's a famine, the ones who should starve are the people in the countryside, who are third class citizens). So the army gets most of the rations, and the common people starve. They don't give a shit about the people; after all, if citizens do or say anything that may be considered subversive (or are caught trying to flee the country) they get executed by firing squad, and their entire family gets deported to a concentration camp to be worked to death. That shows you how much the Kims care about their people.

And they can't really afford to feed the population anyway, because they need all the resources to build massive monuments to the glory of the Great Leader :rolleyes:

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The state seems to be run as a form of military oligarchy.Large parts of the economy are essentially leased to Russian, Japanese and South Korean firms for the benefit of the military tops.Of course this wasn't the original intention but how the society evolved under the forces of its own bureaucratic deformations and of course the hammer blows of US imperialism.

Northern Korea had been built up by the Japanese as the far more industrialized region of Korea. This was destroyed by massive US bombardment. Something like 3/4s of all buildings in the North were destroyed in the Korean War.The DPRK was kept going by massive Soviet subsides. After the SU collapsed and the Yeltsin successor regime discontinued aid to North Korea is when the DPRK officially replaced Marxism-Leninism for Juche. It appears the Kim Jung Ill had to cede a great deal of control to the military tops. That is when Juche seens to have been partly supplanted by the "Songon" ideology. Photos of Kim Jung Ill show him smiling and goofing around with "his" generals.

Stories of a famine in the mid 90s are probably true.This most likely resulted from chaos after the discontinuation of Soviet aid, the diversion of resources to the army, and possibly just plain incompetence.

The decision making process in the DPRK appears to be confined to a small group of (not unjustifiably) paranoid people.

The tears shed for the Dear Leader are probably sincere.Possibly much of the population around Pyongyang has been drawn into a sort of emotional cathartic adulation of the regime.Nothing surprising about this. Similar means of social control have been used for centuries based o emperors, popes, presidents, etc.

The 20th century has been an almost continuous tragedy for the Korean people.The DPRK is a horrendous regime which should not be given any support. We shouldn't forget the horrors and repression of the ROK regime though or the manipulations of US imperialism in that region.

The DPRK is a historic relic, a frozen fossilleftover from a previous revolutionary wave.Possibly it may collapse under the effects of the current crisis of capitaliusm which it obviously can't isolate itself from.My guess it will be able to keep itself going for quite some time.

[RadioRaheem84]

I am sure everything you're saying is true, but I am going to have to see some sources.

Secondly, so their problem is sort of like the Special Period in Cuba?

[Zostrianos]

Their military first policy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songun

[Zostrianos]

And here's hidden footage of 2 people being judged, and one of them shot by firing squad for trying to flee the country:
73KOEXPEvok

[RadioRaheem84]

When people see stuff like this with no foundational understanding of politics and theory, I can see why people are so anti-communist.

The level of depravity some of the ML nations have resorted to in order to keep themselves alive enough to stave off imperialism is astounding.

[RadioRaheem84]

Was North Korea this bad before the collapse of the USSR?

[Commissar Rykov]

Was North Korea this bad before the collapse of the USSR?

It was in pretty bad shape after the Korean War and has remained balanced on a knife edge until the collapse of the USSR which led to the adoption of Songun Politics. The reality is most nations would not be doing well when 3/4 of their buildings are completely destroyed thus ruining their Industrial Capacity and their major source of aid completely halts. What you see in North Korea is a bunker mentality due to a abandonment by their few allies in the world thus leaving them a pariah state.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Some good links on the DPRK

http://kasamaproject.org/2011/12/18/gary-leupp-north-korea-as-a-religious-state/

http://kasamaproject.org/2011/12/19/kim-jong-il-dies-u-s-hands-off-korea/

http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article11.php?id=1749

John Pilger edited a book about the DPRK which I can't find right now.It talked about US manipulation in Northwest Asia to keep tensions at a high point and sabotage any moves for reunification.

I would say that the DPRK has gone way beyond the Special Period in Cuba. A "Special Period" has existed for most of North Korea's existence.In Cuba it was implied there was a need to preserve socialist economic relations. This doesn't seen to exist even as a pretense in North Korea.An example is the fact that the DPRK calls for reunion of Korea on a "separate systems" basis, not on the basis of socialism.

I am far more cynical about the DPRK regime.

[Rafiq]

Look at this shit. Read it.

http://www.korea-dpr.com/business.htm

[Krano]

Official news site http://sptv.co.kr/

[RadioRaheem84]

While we are at it, we can bring up another interesting topic surrounding the development of ML nations.

If all that could be built in the midst of strangling economic blockade, terrorism, war and autarky, what were the necessary requirements for it having to be systemically brutal, ie. a dictatorship?

Did these nations have to be ruled like that to ward off the imperialists with an ever watchful military eye to guard the people?

Could more be done in a Democratic Socialist NK than the Juche quasi-fascist rule they have now?

At this point what can a democratic revolution do for NK?

[Krano]

While we are at it, we can bring up another interesting topic surrounding the development of ML nations.

If all that could be built in the midst of strangling economic blockade, terrorism, war and autarky, what were the necessary requirements for it having to be systemically brutal, ie. a dictatorship?

Did these nations have to be ruled like that to ward off the imperialists with an ever watchful military eye to guard the people?

Could more be done in a Democratic Socialist NK than the Juche quasi-fascist rule they have now?

At this point what can a democratic revolution do for NK?
You have to keep in mind that North Koreans don't know anything else then North Korea they have no access what so ever to any different ideologies, no internet no nothing so when all you hear is propaganda about your country and are completely isolated from the rest of the world i think it would be really hard to change things.

[RadioRaheem84]

You have to keep in mind that North Koreans don't know anything else then North Korea they have no access what so ever to any different ideologies, no internet no nothing so when all you hear is propaganda about your country and are completely isolated from the rest of the world i think it would be really hard to change things.

What I meant was, for the leaders, why is the need for such enclosure justified? Not only that, why is democratic socialism not something they would recommend?

[The Intransigent Faction]

What I meant was, for the leaders, why is the need for such enclosure justified? Not only that, why is democratic socialism not something they would recommend?

Because openness/democratic socialism would threaten the power of the Kim dynasty, of course! So much of the state propaganda would just collapse in the face of any contact with those outside of North Korea.

Or if you're talking about the KFA, they would justify NK's isolationism for essentially the same reasons some people justify the Berlin wall. National security against imperialist interlopers and such.

[Commissar Rykov]

Because openness/democratic socialism would threaten the power of the kim dynasty, of course! So much of the state propaganda would just collapse in the face of any contact with those outside of North Korea.

The Kim's have little power now due to the establishment of Songun politics. It is literally a state run by the military with the Kim's from now on being solely figureheads.

[SHORAS]

Most of what has been said in this thread is in direct contradiction to the little I know about North Korea.

That it was pretty well industrialized and relatively advanced due to Japanese colonialism prior to the Korean War.

Despite the Korean War and the North having much more death and destruction than the south it was 'ahead' of the south until about the 1970's.

So no, there hasn't always been a "special period". That's just meaningless jive.

And the "bunker mentality" if you meant it literally is mostly because of the experience of being bombed and basically having no defence against it. I think they still have a very limited airforce and have a huge number of buildings military and non underground. They started to build as early as the Korean War.

On famines and so on I have heard the one most people talk of caused under a million deaths which is obviously horrible but not the several million you often hear and still less than what occurs in places like India every single year on year.

Also the US broke the armistice as early as the 1950s by placing nuclear warheads in the south and the south was a dictatorship with US command over the military (so the North has had to live under that threat all the time)...oh and the South never actually signed the armistice. The US/UN or whoever did. Also the US still has about 30,000 troops in Korea officially and loads of bases. I suppose if you imagine Washington or London full of Swedish bases and soldiers you'll get the idea.

Can people with actual knowledge talk more and those who derive their views out of thin air talk less please?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Why is the country side so poverty ridden? Why can't Juche manage to bring some sort of social welfare there?

It wasn't always. It greatly surpassed the south for the first few decades after the split. That's why there are so many North Korean citizens in Japan. They were given a choice in citizenship after WW2 and the split, and they chose the most prosperous side (also had a lot to do with the South being a U.S. puppet state that integrated Korean bureaucrats and businessmen who collaborated with the Japanese occupation).


***


"By the 1960s North Korea was the second most industrialized nation in East Asia, trailing only Japan. While a number of internal limitations appeared, such as in the production of consumer goods, the national standard of living was considered by many third-world nations as an alternative to the capitalist model of development sponsored by the United States. Building upon the ruins left by the Korean War, the North Korean economy by the late 1960s provided its people with medical care, universal education, adequate caloric intake, and habitable housing. By the early 60s, many thousand ethnic Koreans in Japan began to migrate back to Korea, North Korea, where they believed they had greater opportunities ...." - http://koreanhistory.info/NorthKoreanHistory.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://koreanhistory.info/NorthKoreanHistory.htm)

Journal of Third World Studies (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_/ai_n8879856) - In a comparison of the economies of North and South Korea, Eui-Gak Hwang, while acknowledging the difficulty of making definitive comparisons due to the unreliability of statistics from North Korea, nevertheless tries to put economic growth on the peninsula into perspective by considering more than just GNP growth rates. Though the impressive growth rates of the 1980s led some to call the South Korean economy miraculous, and though comparisons today make the North Korean economic landscape look bleak indeed, Hwang maintains that in terms of per capita GNP and real standard of living, the southern economy surpassed that of the north considerably later than many would suppose-perhaps only as recently as the mid-1980s. And while the standard of living in South Korea is much higher today than in the north, Hwang points out that disparities in income, wealth, and spending are much higher as well. By many standards (life expectancy, mortality, literacy, access to housing) there may have been little difference between north and south during the "miracle" days of the 1980s and 1990s.

***



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Two_koreas_gdp_1950_1977.jpg


GDP per capita (in 1990 Geary-Khamis dollars) 1950-1977; extracted from Historical Statistics for the World Economy, 1-2003 - available at www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_03-2007.xls (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_03-2007.xls)


***


It's not something that can be covered in a few lines. But it helps if you try to make a materialist analysis of the situation instead of just raging on your keyboard.

For example, the huge military in the DPRK is a direct result of stuff like, uh, idk... the world's largest super power stationing tens of thousands of soldiers on its border, a few miles from its capital city? The massive conscript army in South Korea? The huge U.S. military presence in Japan, the Philippines, etc.?

Of course the rulers of the DPRK being what they are, they've turned necessity into principle (e.g. 선군정치 -- seon gun jeongchi, or "military first politics;" commonly referred to as "Songun" outside of Korea).

Then there's the DPRK's international isolation, which might have something to do with.. uh, maybe the sudden disappearance of their main trading partners, combined with embargoes and blockades spearheaded by the world's largest national economy?

This has less to do with the DPRK's rulers' policies than it does international relations, since they've been trying to set up China-style "special economic zones" that international capital has largely ignored.


***


Believe it or not, there is a certain appeal to the DPRK, especially among people who live in "third world" countries, under the boot of imperialism, no national healthcare, etc.

There are people from other countries who go there for study, training, etc. And other who extol it.

"I once asked a Peruvian writer and militant who visited the DPRK many times, wrote a laudatory book about it, talked at length with Kim several times and played an active part in the 100 per cent solidarity movement why he did it. He answered: ‘They fought the North Americans; they have done incredible things in the economy; it’s the only Third World country where everyone has good health, good education and good housing.’ So I asked him what he really thought about it, as a poet. His reply: ‘It is the saddest, most miserable country I’ve ever been in in my life. As a poet, it strikes bleakness into my heart.’" - Jon Halliday

***


The DPRK is one of the few places in the world where the famines are not caused by social relations (as they are in some places where "famines" really amount to people not being able to afford to purchase food -- there have been famines reported in the horn of Africa while the countries there were simultaneously exporting food, for example). On the contrary, their system of distribution (rationing) has actually limited the effects of food shortages according to the UN.

About food distribution and the army being well-fed:

"Provincial authorities reacted to human insecurities by attempting to maintain a minimum food distribution to the most needy of their populations. They were also flexible in permitting the wide variety of decentralized coping mechanisms that included the toleration of markets and the growth of unregulated petty trade.... The armed forces were given priority for food distribution, but this did not mean that all members of the armed forces received generous rations. The army was told to find ways to grow its own food and to develop industries so that it could purchase food and other necessities from the markets and from abroad. There were no indication that the ranks of the army were given excessively large rations..." - Hazel Smith. Hungry For Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance, And Social Change in North Korea. pp 87

Let's briefly look at the food shortages and try to get at the root causes.

1990 - Growth in energy, industry and agriculture stops for the first time in DPRK history as the country's trading partners in the "Socialist Bloc" collapse. Imports of necessities like fertilizer and fuel cease. Economy screeches to a halt.

1995/1996 - Some of the worst floods in the history of the world occur in the DPRK. According to the UN: "Flooding of this magnitude had not been recorded in at least 70 years." More than a million tons of food lost, crops ruined. The flooding destroys coal mines and absolutely cripples hydroelectric power production (which is the major source of electricity) -- more sources of energy gone. Combine this with the loss of fertilizer and fuel imports and industrialized agriculture becomes almost impossible. Between the floods in this period came some of the worst droughts in history, which also reeked havoc on crops and hydroelectricity.

Now - Although food production nearly doubled between 1997 and 2007, a lot of that progress was destroyed by another huge series of floods in 2007 that was combined with the reductions of food donations from abroad that the country became reliant on. The situation remains tenuous.

Also remember that the DPRK got the short end of the stick in agriculture, since only 14% of its land is arable (compared to 19% in the south). It's a mountainous (80% of the country is covered in mountains) and cold place. This photo says a lot:


http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/9417/koreao.jpg


I've studied Korea a bit, but even someone who hasn't could have probably found all this info with Google and about 30 minutes of free time. But why do that? This is DPRK we're talking about! One can literally make up whatever the fuck they want and pass it off as truth, and most people will accept it.

So yeah, ignore everything I've written. Kim Il-Sung canceled the import of fuel and fertilizer in 91 on his own accord, because he wanted more money to buy virgins from abroad for his concubine. He also ordered that crops be ripped up so that he could have dozens of golf courses built for his personal use. Kim Jong-il had the country's diabolical scientists bring the massive rains and flooding in the mid-90's because he wanted to try his new surf board on the Amnoc River. The later famine was created because the army had huge buffets on a daily basis celebrating their superiority, because the DPRK is a fascist racist regime run by madmen.


***


There is no longer any need to mouth allegiance to the official ideology of the Socialist Bloc ("Marxism-Leninism") since it no longer exists. Isolated by international events and conditions, the rulers of the DPRK have concocted a new ideology of "self-reliance" to replace it.


***


Ultimately, the DPRK is as much a creation of world capitalism as anything else. Every act of the Kim Jong-il clique finds its match in the bourgeois dictatorships in Seoul, Washington, Tokyo, etc. They'll pit us against each other and then send us to blow each others brains out in some muddy field to defend their interests. Well, our interests are to revolutionize society and abolish their rule before they have the chance.

[The Intransigent Faction]

The Kim's have little power now due to the establishment of Songun politics. It is literally a state run by the military with the Kim's from now on being solely figureheads.

This is true, at least now with the death of Kim Jong Il. I was thinking in terms of reasons why they've isolated themselves up to this point, and no doubt the God-like status granted to Kim Jong Il, whether he was a military puppet or politically powerful in his own right, are no doubt a consideration for them.

[RedZezz]

Here is a short interview with the founder of the website from NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=901846

It is about 5 min.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Two_koreas_gdp_1950_1977.jpg










I believe 1970-1976 somewhere was the end of generous loans given by the Soviet Union after the war. The Soviet Union, in good capitalist manner, wanted something back on its investment and demanded repayments.

Thereafter, North Korean economy stagnated and eventually begun receding, and was - in a curious parallel to certain Western countries as well as Romania and Yugoslavia - required to do some economic reforms so that the Soviets were happy with the flow of cash. I think the total amount of debt the DPRK had to the Soviet Union was around the order of 2 billion dollars.

(And by the way: you who seem to just have found this website, I seriously wonder under what rock you've been resting. The "LOWEST LABOUR IN ASIA!" has been around from sometime like 2006 and the website is as old as time itself, in fact both have been posted often around here, and it is amazing how some can be new to it.)

[Renegade Saint]

And here's hidden footage of 2 people being judged, and one of them shot by firing squad for trying to flee the country:
73KOEXPEvok
If a country has to use the threat of death to keep people from leaving that may be a sign it's not a worker's paradise. Maybe.

It took a hell of a lot of courage to shoot this video.

I'm waiting for our resident PSL and WWP people to show up to call all of this lies and Western propaganda and tell us how anyone who doesn't support the Kim's is just a liberal.


If the WWP ever starts showing up at local events I'm going to print copies of this http://www.workers.org/2011/world/korea_1229/ and pass them out so people know what they're dealing with.

[Zostrianos]

It's pretty easy to debunk those illusions that NK is a worker's paradise, aside from the hidden footage of atrocities. Just tell Kim apologists to go to NK and publicly criticize the regime and see what happens. Even in the KFA video I posted there's a great scene; at one point the cameraman asks one of the members (who's firmly convinced that everything the west says about NK is just propaganda) what would happen to people who disagree with the regime, and he's stumped and doesn't know what to say. It's here, starting at 25 seconds in:
vw9IAilxBj4

[Red Noob]

And here's hidden footage of 2 people being judged, and one of them shot by firing squad for trying to flee the country:
73KOEXPEvok

Now that's what I call a worker's paradise.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

While we are at it, we can bring up another interesting topic surrounding the development of ML nations.

If all that could be built in the midst of strangling economic blockade, terrorism, war and autarky, what were the necessary requirements for it having to be systemically brutal, ie. a dictatorship?

Did these nations have to be ruled like that to ward off the imperialists with an ever watchful military eye to guard the people?

Could more be done in a Democratic Socialist NK than the Juche quasi-fascist rule they have now?

At this point what can a democratic revolution do for NK?

Phrased slightly differently, your question may be one of the most important questions a socialist could ask.

In a nutshell...

Classical Marxism pre supposes that socialism will develop first in the developed, industrialized countries. One could argue "Marx 1850s" vis later Marx, Silvia Federici, "non-capitalist development", etc. but thats the classic viewpoint.All the ML countries, with the possible exception of the DDR, were "under developed". The regimes did provide an important space for at least "second wave" industrialization which could not have happened under the various forms of comprador capitalism that previously prevailed.

Societies must move forward though or they are pushed back. That is basically what happened in the ML countries. Also, ironically paraphrasing Maoism, "politics were in command", That is the economies were more directly politically controlled. That is why culture and the direct control of culture was so much more important in these countries.Obviously culture is controlled and mediated under capitalism but the mechanism of control is different. In the US artists aren't arrested for exhibiting avante garde art at a McDonalds, as happened in the SU. The repression was more direct and deadening.

There is a story of an East German folk singer who emigrated to the West. He was free to sing and say almost anything he wanted. He was also free to starve. The guy was surprised that no one at all cared about his subversive lyrics.


Could the ML countries have allowed "democratic socialism"? Probably not.

The way forward could have been a revolutionary foreign policy. The USSR, being a state, had to prioritize the foreign policy goals of the USSR, not the international working class.Instead the ML countries were forced to operate under the yoke of the Soviet bureaucracy. The alternative could have been "worker's democracy". This is the traditional Trotskyist view of course but as I understand many MLs follow variations of this today in explaining why the "actually existing socialist" states collapsed.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

I would hate to live in North Korea, but I would love to visit for a couple days.

[Renegade Saint]

Even without embracing democratic socialism, why couldn't North Korea have been more like Cuba, ie a relatively mild form of authoritarianism?
It's true that Cuba and North Korea are different situations, but the excuse most people use for North Korea's repressiveness (when they don't dismiss it as Western lies of course) is the threat from the US and its allies. However Cuba has also had the threat of a US government that explicitly wants it overthrown (and has been just as active in trying to do so there as in NK).

[Seresan]

The thing that I love about NK is how pretty much everyone hates them, and those few that don't are either brainwashed or idiots.

For some reason I envision the Kims as hipsters who think that capitalism is "too conformist", but lack any real merit to institute anything better. All that I need now is to see Kim Jong Il in an ironic tee...

[Sixiang]

While we are at it, we can bring up another interesting topic surrounding the development of ML nations.

If all that could be built in the midst of strangling economic blockade, terrorism, war and autarky, what were the necessary requirements for it having to be systemically brutal, ie. a dictatorship?

Did these nations have to be ruled like that to ward off the imperialists with an ever watchful military eye to guard the people?

Could more be done in a Democratic Socialist NK than the Juche quasi-fascist rule they have now?

At this point what can a democratic revolution do for NK?
Well, what would that mean? Multiple parties in power in the legislature? Actually, the DPRK has four political parties and independents represented in its legislature. Claims about "dictatorship" are moot. Every country in the world at this moment is under some form of dictatorship, whether that be bourgeois, military, or whatever else you want to call any of them. I think the DPRK has all kinds of problems and I don't think it is "the worker's paradise", but any sort of massive direct democracy uprising in the country seems highly unlikely at this point. Battling corruption in the government and separating the military from party politics and governance may be reasonable things to fight for.


The Kim's have little power now due to the establishment of Songun politics. It is literally a state run by the military with the Kim's from now on being solely figureheads.
That's how I basically see it these days. The country is not run by some all-powerful one dictator, but by a ruling elite.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I would hate to live in North Korea, but I would love to visit for a couple days.

http://www.koryogroup.com/

[A Marxist Historian]

It was in pretty bad shape after the Korean War and has remained balanced on a knife edge until the collapse of the USSR which led to the adoption of Songun Politics. The reality is most nations would not be doing well when 3/4 of their buildings are completely destroyed thus ruining their Industrial Capacity and their major source of aid completely halts. What you see in North Korea is a bunker mentality due to a abandonment by their few allies in the world thus leaving them a pariah state.

Be it noted that South Korea was in bad shape too. According to the stats North Korea had a higher GNP per capita than the South, until the 1970s or early '80s when the South Korean economy took off. After all, the North had been the industrial half traditionally whereas the South was mostly agricultural. Moreover, the old South Korean military dictatorship was pretty much just as repressive as the North was, till the popular uprisings of the early '80s forced through a partial democratization.

The basis of the rapid South Korean economic growth of the last half century was the radical land reforms carried out by Kim Il Sung during the brief occupation of almost all of South Korea by the North during the Korean War. Which the CIA and its Korean lackeys were clever enough not to reverse, since after all the expropriated big landlords were all *Japanese* compradors, not American, so why not from their POV.

The peasant uprising in the early '80s which caused the fall of the South Korean military dictatorship (not immediately) was in the Inchon area, the only area that the North never overrun, which still had semi-feudalistic land relations until then.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Even without embracing democratic socialism, why couldn't North Korea have been more like Cuba, ie a relatively mild form of authoritarianism?
It's true that Cuba and North Korea are different situations, but the excuse most people use for North Korea's repressiveness (when they don't dismiss it as Western lies of course) is the threat from the US and its allies. However Cuba has also had the threat of a US government that explicitly wants it overthrown (and has been just as active in trying to do so there as in NK).

Castro gained power through an indigenous Cuban revolution, or rather the total collapse of the Batista dictatorship with Batista fleeing to Miami and Castro's guerillas filling the vacuum by default. At first he was not a Stalinist, but a left-liberal idealist. He adopted "Marxism Leninism" through the logic of the political position he stumbled into, finding himself more or less by accident the head of a state basically after the Soviet model, what with all private capital expropriated and power in the hands of a self-selected group of radicals, not the workers.

Kim Il Sung OTOH gained power primarily through being put in by Soviet troops, although he did lead a peasant guerilla movement that fought the Japanese. And was an extremely hardened Stalinist from the getgo, sole survivor and orchestrator of murderous Stalinist purges among Korean revolutionaries who had fled across the border to Siberia.

That's why, though fundamentally Cuba and North Korea are similar countries qualitatively, in quantitative terms Cuba is the nicest Stalinist regime around and North Korea the ugliest.

But in the last analysis, both are fundamentally the same thing in different contexts.

-M.H.-

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The peasant uprising in the early '80s which caused the fall of the South Korean military dictatorship (not immediately) was in the Inchon area, the only area that the North never overrun, which still had semi-feudalistic land relations until then.What?

The north absolutely took Incheon.

The only areas they weren't able to take were the parts of Gyeongsangbok-do, Gyeonsangnam-do, and Busan that made up "the Pusan Perimeter."

That was the basis for the U.S. forces landing at Incheon ("The Battle of Incheon"). Among the first forces the U.S. engaged in the run up that battle were the north's gunners on Wolmi-do in the Incheon Harbor. The north's forces were mainly concentrated in Gunsan, where they expected the landing to take place, but there were definitely forces in Incheon too -- which is why 200 were killed in the battle.

The unrest in the early 80's began with students in Seoul and Kwangju -- with the high point being the Kwangju Uprising.

"Democratization" resulted from the June Democracy Movement in 1987, itself a sort of conclusion of ongoing struggles in the period after Kwangju. The Democracy Movement was marked by unrest across the country, with millions of people participating in dozens of cities. The most important factor was the rise in labor actions, with more than 3,000 instances of strike action taking place in 3 months.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Info on the strikes:


The June Struggle did not come to an end despite the June 29 Declaration. The flames of the June Struggle in the streets spread to the labor world and sparked a grand workers' struggle between July, August and September 1987. On July 3, 1987 when the passion of the June struggle did not cool down yet, a landmark incident happened in Ulsan, the country's greatest heavy-industry city. A labor union in the Hyundai Engine, which had sparked the grand workers' struggle, was formed. The formation of a labor union in the Hyundai Engine instantly flared up all Ulsan flare into the flames of workers' struggle. The flames of the struggle continued to spread to neighboring Busan, Geoje, Masan and Changwon and at last to the metropolitan area such as Seoul, Incheon, Bucheon, Guro, Anyang, Gunpo, Seongnam. And among the category of businesses, the manufacturing industry accounted for the largest proportion but the flames spread to various businesses of transportation, mining, white-collar work, sales and services. By doing so, a total of 1,060 labor unions were newly organized during the grand workers' struggle of July, August and September 1987, which outnumbered the ones formed between 1980 and 1986 formerly. In addition, the number of labor strikes that broke out during the grand workers' struggle was 3,458, which averaged some 40 strikes a day, and it was revealed that a total of 10 million workers were participating inn them. The strikes increased by as many as 50 times compared with the average number of 0.76 per day in 1986 and rose by 8 times in comparison to the number of the workers' struggle ( a total of 407 strikes) in the spring of 1980.

http://www.kdemocracy.or.kr/mail/newsletter/mail_article_200704_01.html

[A Marxist Historian]

What?

The north absolutely took Incheon.

The only areas they weren't able to take were the parts of Gyeongsangbok-do, Gyeonsangnam-do, and Busan that made up "the Pusan Perimeter."

That was the basis for the U.S. forces landing at Incheon ("The Battle of Incheon"). Among the first forces the U.S. engaged in the run up that battle were the north's gunners on Wolmi-do in the Incheon Harbor. The north's forces were mainly concentrated in Gunsan, where they expected the landing to take place, but there were definitely forces in Incheon too -- which is why 200 were killed in the battle.

The unrest in the early 80's began with students in Seoul and Kwangju -- with the high point being the Kwangju Uprising.

"Democratization" resulted from the June Democracy Movement in 1987, itself a sort of conclusion of ongoing struggles in the period after Kwangju. The Democracy Movement was marked by unrest across the country, with millions of people participating in dozens of cities. The most important factor was the rise in labor actions, with more than 3,000 instances of strike action taking place in 3 months.

Thanx. That was a typo. Wrote Inchon, meant Pusan.

I was referring to the Kwangju Uprising, which according to my understanding was essentially a peasant uprising in the old "Pusan Perimeter," where the land was still in the hands of the old landlords, as opposed to elsewhere in South Korea where that was ended during the brief period of "North Korean occupation." My source for this is a piece I read in the New Left Review I think it was some 20 years ago, by Jon Halliday I think.

It led very directly, according to my understanding at least, to the nationwide labor-centered popular explosion, the "Democracy Movement," that toppled the military dictatorship. That Kwangju was itself touched off by the student rebellions of 1968 and the '70s sounds plausible to me.

My description of what went down in the '80s was very telescoped, glad for your correction and unpacking of my brief comment.

-M.H.-

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I was referring to the Kwangju Uprising, which according to my understanding was essentially a peasant uprising in the old "Pusan Perimeter," where the land was still in the hands of the old landlords, as opposed to elsewhere in South Korea where that was ended during the brief period of "North Korean occupation." My source for this is a piece I read in the New Left Review I think it was some 20 years ago, by Jon Halliday I think.I don't know the piece, but if that's what he said, he's wrong.

For one, Kwangju wasn't in the Pusan Perimeter. It's in the southwest. Busan is in the southeast.

Secondly, Kwangju was pretty industrialized, based on the railway built to connect it to Seoul and the creation of an "industrial zone" in the 60's. (That part of Korea -- Jeolla -- is absolutely the breadbasket of Korea though, and home to many peasant rebellions in the past, against foreign and domestic regimes).

Third, the uprising in Kwangju came after Pak Chunghee was assassinated. In the brief bit of opening that came along, democratization became a big topic on college campuses. Student groups formed, and they joined professors in demonstrating against the all the repressive laws against speech, assembly, etc.

After a march against martial law in Seoul grew huge, the government panicked and shut down universities across the country. Students in always-rebellious Kwangju came to their school to block its closure.

From there it went something like: Soldiers and students fought, soldiers beat the fuck out of students, people saw it and got pissed off, people joined the fight, soldiers fired on crowd, truckers and cab drivers convoyed in to support demonstration, soldiers beat the fuck out of truckers and cab drivers, more people joined the fight, local residents raided a local arms depot and formed a militia, firefights broke out, military was driven out of downtown, standoff, blockade of the city... eventually military retook city.

[RadioRaheem84]

This the most intellectually stimulating thread yet. :thumbup1:

We should just create a whole new thread analyzing the development of the ML nations in order to understand why they failed, instead of jumping on the liberal bandwagon that they're that way because of ideology.

[Rafiq]

I agree with RadioRaheem

[Renegade Saint]

This the most intellectually stimulating thread yet. :thumbup1:

We should just create a whole new thread analyzing the development of the ML nations in order to understand why they failed, instead of jumping on the liberal bandwagon that they're that way because of ideology.

Perhaps surprisingly, not even all liberals jump on that bandwagon. In "the Rise and Fall of Communism", Archie Brown posits that if not for Gorby's reforms the USSR would likely still be around.

[SacRedMan]

I wonder what the opinion of Stalin and/or Marx would be on N.-Korea.

[Zostrianos]

Marx would surely condemn it. Stalin, on the other hand, would probably be happy and proud to see a state modelled on his dictatorship.

[A Marxist Historian]

Marx would surely condemn it. Stalin, on the other hand, would probably be happy and proud to see a state modelled on his dictatorship.

Marx would be nauseated--but would certainly have been willing to defend it vs. imperialism anyway. There were plenty of thoroughly unpleasant regimes which Marx had contempt for in the 19th Century but held his nose and defended as objectively historically progressive nonetheless.

He even defended British colonialism in India as progressive at first, though he figured out that that was wrong in his later writings.

Stalin? Stalin didn't care for anybody he didn't trust, and I see no reason to think he would have seen the Sung dynasty as trustworthy. Moreover, he would have found that dynastic stuff objectionable. After all, Stalin didn't care much for his own son.

Nor would he have been thrilled by the Sungs replacing orthodox Stalinism with this "juche" business.

-M.H.-