More misogynist bs from the DPRK state media

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

More proof that the DPRK is anything but a worker's Republic or remotely Marxist. Instead of criticizing the RoK from ignoring the rights of workers or participating in the global system of capitalism, they are instead focusing on the fact that the RoK has a female leader while simultaneously using language which marginalizes sex workers. I'm sure some quasi-Stalinists, PSL types and other so-called "Leftists" will be more than happy to try to deflect this though by trying to change the topic to the "bourgeois media" and whatnot - not that the bourgeois media doesn't deserve criticism, but not for the sake of defending such a truly worthless, exploitative, misogynistic, authoritarian and reactionary regime.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...geun-hye-obama

North Korea has launched a personal attack on the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, calling her a "crafty prostitute" in thrall to her "pimp" Barack Obama, as it said it was ready for "full-scale nuclear war".
In an unusually strongly worded diatribe even by its own standards, North Korea lashed out at the relationship between a "master and its puppet" and said that Park would pay a "dear price".
"Park Geun-hye's recent behaviour with Obama was like a mean, immature girl begging gangsters to beat up someone she does not like," said the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) on Sunday.
"Or a crafty prostitute eagerly trying to frame someone by giving her body to a powerful pimp," it added, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
KCNA's official English translation of the Korean-language dispatch offered "capricious whore" as its description of Park.
The vitriol came the day after Obama wrapped up a two-day visit to South Korea, during which he called North Korea a "pariah state" whose isolation would deepen further if it pushed ahead with a fourth nuclear test.
Recent satellite imagery has revealed heightened activity at North Korea's nuclear test site, and Park warned on Friday that Pyongyang was ready to stage another atomic test.
Both presidents cautioned that defiance of international rules would mean harsher sanctions on the impoverished country, and urged China to discourage its wayward ally from a new provocation.
The CPRK, the North's body tasked with handling cross-border affairs, criticised the pair's remarks as "intolerable insults" against its leadership.
"If Obama and Park Geun-hye believed that they could change our minds with such threats and blackmailing, they can't be more foolish," it said.
"In particular, Park Geun-Hye continued to viciously take issue with our dignity, system and nuclear programmes," it said, characterising her remarks as "froth(ing) at the mouth".
"She thus laid bare her despicable true colours as a wicked sycophant and traitor, a dirty comfort woman for the US and despicable prostitute selling off the nation," the KCNA translation said.
The allegation that Park is a "comfort woman" – a euphemism for women enslaved to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during the second world war – will likely prove extremely controversial in South Korea, where it remains a hot topic in relations with Tokyo.
The CPRK also denounced Obama, whose visit was "utterly indifferent to the sorrow" felt in South Korea over the sinking of a ferry full of schoolchildren.
"Had Obama even an iota of ethics and morality, he should have postponed or shelved his trip," the KCNA translation said.
"The latest visit by Obama only reaffirmed our long-held belief that might, not words, are the only option to deal with the old enemy US and strengthened our resolve and determination to stick with our policy to fight a full-scale nuclear war.
"Park Geun-hye will pay a dear price for abandoning the opportunity we earlier gave and choosing a path of anti-unification and anti-peace and a path to confrontation and war."
The latest invective follows months of increasingly colourful personal attacks on Park. Her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, was also the target of highly personal criticism by North Korea's state media, but the attacks on Park have been notable for their repeated allusions to her sex – she is Seoul's first female president.
Pyongyang earlier likened her to a "peasant woman babbling to herself in the corner of her room" and derided her as a "low-quality politician" who talks "nonsense gibberish".
Since assuming office in February 2013, Park has repeatedly spoken of her desire to build trust with Pyongyang while remaining firm in the face of any provocation.
The policy has not gone down well in Pyongyang, which has angrily rejected her proposal to prepare for unification as an attempt to absorb North Korea into the South.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

To be honest I just think that they seize at whatever they fancy is a useful insult to hurl and don't rightly care about any other aspect of their raving. They latch at something like that and get at it.

Did they ever deride Dung-back for being in the Unification Church, that insane cult? Nah, I bet not... they do deals with the Unification cult after all, like that little auto-maker in Nampo.

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't think you can deny a state's claim to Marxism or being a workers' republic on the basis that its media makes crazy sexist comments. It strikes me as idealism really.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I also find it curious that a handful of people here defend a regime which uses language which would get them insta-banned on this forum. I think I've seen some of them also post on the anti-discrimination forum railing against this kind of language from Western Capitalists. Imagine if someone criticized a female poster for being a whore or comparing them to Japanese "comfort women". They would get banned so hard they wouldn't know what hit them. And they'd totally deserve the ban too. Of course we should be critical of bourgeois women, but not because they are women, and not by using language which marginalizes non-bourgeois women. We shouldn't call Hillary Clinton a "whore" we should call her a political adviser for a capitalist government which imposes free market reforms on the 3rd world.

I also wonder whether or not their accusations against Obama as a "pimp" also reflect some racist discourse, although I'm not so sure since the association of African Americans as "pimps" seems something which would not have the same kind of cultural resonance in Korea.

To be honest I just think that they seize at whatever they fancy is a useful insult to hurl and don't rightly care about any other aspect of their raving. They latch at something like that and get at it.

Yeah I think you're right - but that just shows the extent to which they are opportunists at heart. Some people here seem to be more oblivious to that fact than you are unfortunately, perhaps because they lack the willingness to critically analyze such regimes.

I don't think you can deny a state's claim to Marxism or being a workers' republic on the basis that its media makes crazy sexist comments. It strikes me as idealism really.

I don't think it's idealism to associate the political nature of a regime with the discourse it produces. The material conditions of the regime has a direct impact on the kind of discourse it utilizes, and a regime which utilizes Marxist politics and empowers actual working women (including sex workers) would not end up using such language. It is how we can explain why the political positions proclaimed in propaganda outlets like Pravda would differ from the political positions proclaimed by propaganda outlets like, say, Voice of America. Idealism would be the reverse kind of claim - that the discourse it uses leads to the kind of regime which it is.

Of course, individual Marxists might resort to reactionary discourse, and there is ample evidence of this (from Marx and Engels themselves even), but a regime which has been around for 60 years, which has progressed beyond the limited perspective of the 19th century, and which actually adopts critical positions leading to the empowerment of otherwise marginalized groups like women and sex workers, would presumably have abandoned such reactionary attitudes over time.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Yeah, that shit's fucked.
I don't think anybody on this board thinks it's acceptable to pull sexist shit like that.

Mind you, some of us don't think that means US-sable-rattling or mainstream media propaganda about the DPRK do anything to address misogyny.