Welcome back?

[index]

I used this site briefly years back but now return with a change in ideology but still a radical leftist. Welcome back I guess

[Comrade Njordr]

Juche?

[Ismail]

Juche?I find it weird how in all the years the Korean Friendship Association has existed, there's never been an effort to scan Kim Il Sung's collected works (which do exist in English) or even compilations of his writings.

I only mention this because the collected works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are online, as are basically all the writings of Mao, practically all of the published writings of Hoxha (even his collected works in Albanian are online), etc.

Yet for all the glories bestowed upon Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un by Juche fans, 99% of those who uphold them seem oblivious to most anything they wrote. Not that I'm seriously complaining since what little I've read from them is incredibly unoriginal and boring, just saying.

[Q]

Welcome back.


I only mention this because the collected works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are online, as are basically all the writings of Mao, practically all of the published writings of Hoxha (even his collected works in Albanian are online), etc.
Well, Stalin, Mao and Hoxha all stood in the socialist tradition (distorted as it was in their cases). The Kim dynasty seems to be something else entirely though.

[Ismail]

Well, Stalin, Mao and Hoxha all stood in the socialist tradition (distorted as it was in their cases). The Kim dynasty seems to be something else entirely though.DPRK historiography is... different. It credits Kim Il Sung with founding the first "real" communist group in Korea (at the age of 14, no less), of valiantly defying "dogmatic" Comintern instructions and carrying out his "Juche idea" in the 30s, of single-handedly leading the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle, and of liberating northern Korea with his guerrilla army (whereas the Soviets are said to have played a minor role, assisting his forces.) Soviet historians retaliated by almost never mentioning Kim Il Sung in histories of Korea covering the pre-1948 period, and of course by crediting the Red Army with liberating northern Korea with the assistance of Korean guerrilla units. Juche was portrayed as taking the world by storm with a growing number of governments and liberation movements reading Kim Il Sung's works to learn how to better their own countries (whereas in reality that... didn't happen.)

As far as Marxist theory goes, Kim Il Sung wasn't a genius but he could at least sound like a commie when he needed to do so. Case in point, him trying to explain the law of value under socialism: click (https://books.google.com/books?id=5GppqmU13pIC&pg=PA109&dq=Kim+Il+Sung+%22law+of+value%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=s7ZoVenHFYORyASTt4LACg&ved=0CDsQ6wEwBg#v=onepage&q=Kim%20Il%20Sung%20%22law%20of%20value%22&f=false). Whether you agree with what he says there or not, it at least "looks" Marxist. His "Juche idea" is still dumb though.