North Korea is North Korea, you cannot you can just call it a socialist oriented totalitarian state. Because it still attempts to have a socialist system, but then again you couldn't possibly say north korea is left wingg
Results 1 to 8 of 8
Do you agree that North Korea's official ideology is actually a type of fascism...
... and has nothing to do with communism?
If you don't know anything about their ideology, then search for "Juche" in Wikipedia. (This website does not let me to post links.)
If not then how would you define this ideology?
North Korea is North Korea, you cannot you can just call it a socialist oriented totalitarian state. Because it still attempts to have a socialist system, but then again you couldn't possibly say north korea is left wingg
I think it's a hard question to answer because nobody knows what goes on in the DPRK. Not those who travel there (and you can for a few thousand bucks) or the people who actually live there, just as I can't tell you everything about my government. There is no free press, so whatever we learn about the DPRK comes from 2 sources, either defectors who have every reason to lie, are often paid to lie, and many have been caught in lies in the past. Or the official response to these charges from the government. Usually outright denials, along with an accusation of a western country fabricating these stories and attacking them and then a demand for those countries to mind their own business.
They aren't fascist by the correct definition, but if we are to believe every defector's story as true, they are a far right government in practice. Yet if we listen to their governments side of the story, they are a left wing paradise. Rhetoric I think is important. When these crimes of torture, eugenics, slave labor, infanticide, cannibalism, forcing people to fake cry in mass at a funeral, or pass a law stating all men must get their haircut exactly like glorious leader etc. etc etc. come out there is no justification, explanation or even admittance that such a policy exists. When Saudi Arabia arrests and hangs a large group for being homosexuals they dont deny it, cover it up, lie to the press, and try keep everything quiet. They do it very publicly and hang them from street posts. Its meant to be a public display of order, power and control. It's also a submission to the more right wing elements of the Saudi Arabian masses who will overthrow the king if they think he's not religious enough.
This is a video that came out a few years ago made in the DPRK to give you an example of their rhetoric
Last edited by willowtooth; 25th January 2017 at 14:30.
I would argue that North Korea once held communism (more precisely Stalinism) as a de facto state ideology, but after the fall of the Eastern Bloc they kinda shifted toward promoting Juche, which is more nationalist (and xenophobic).
From what I can tell about Juche, it is a militant irredentist ideology that seeks to reunite the Korean people under one nation and is dedicated to the preservation and protection of the "Korean race". They have a relatively tight caste system that segregates people based on both socio-economic background and ideological commitment, with Party members and activists being at the top and "counterrevolutionary elements" (descendants of dissidents, landowners, petty bourgeois, etc) at the bottom. After a quick perusal of Wikipedia along with my own knowledge of nationalist and "socialistic" movements, I would argue that Juche is a form of "reactionary socialism" mentioned in the Communist Manifesto, given that is predicated on an ethno-nationalist basis and resembles a completely totalitarian version of the old "Arab socialist" countries in the Middle East, such as Nasserite Egypt and Baathist Iraq.
An injury to one is an injury to all -Industrial Workers of the World
The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all -Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free -Eugene V. Debs
Jucheism itself is not a racist ideology it is explicitly anti racist, what some have said is that racism amongst the people is still stuck in the past, which is expected in any secluded part of the world. If a black person goes to China people will stare and kids will try to grab their hair, if a chinese person goes to africa kids will run around pulling their eyes sideways to look asian. This isn't racism, it might be xenophobia or culture shock maybe, but we shouldn't look at it as established institutional racism. They use the racism and bigotry of other countries to attack them all the time. They frequently talk about the racist genocides of Japan, Britain, Germany, and America.
So these rumors often come from defectors (which are thoroughly denied by the state) stories about women with mixed race babies being forced to have abortions are not confirmed. There is no official policy or law that says this. In fact on many occasions they have allowed many chinese and japanese and africans to come to North Korea and encouraged interracial marriages. So I dont believe that this rumor is true. In America there are still judges that wont issue interacial marriage licenses, nobody has charged America with practicing eugenics as a country. Even though we have much more evidence than a single prisoners story
South Korea is a far more racist fascist nation than the DPRK. It wasn't until 2011 that they even allowed mixed race people to join the military. Pure blood theory is an official ideology in South Korea, brought over from Imperialist Japan. Korean racism was almost unheard of before then, and is a major reason the split between Korea exists in the first place "the racist genocidal south koreans" is a common charge levied by leadership in the DPRK. Racist attacks in South korea against north korean born people and children is common. Discrimination against japanese chinese and everyone else is as well, with polls even showing half of all South Koreans are openly racist and support racial segregation. Racial discrimination in the workplace something the DPRK proudly claims to have ended in its country, is openly done in the South. Go look at jobs in south korea even on sites like craigslist, where you can get a job as an english teacher, you can see them advertise "whites only" "whites preffered" "white woman needed". Where is the outcry from the west about these fascist genocidal bastards? they are completely silent, and more to the point would never accept stories and uncorroborated evidence about secret eugenics programs and forced abortions going on in there prisons, if it were coming from South Korea
EDIT: I forgot to talk about Dennis Rodman, but Dennis Rodman
Last edited by willowtooth; 26th January 2017 at 12:00.
Revisionist no doubt, maybe not even socialist (although I do lean towards saying it's some kind of socialism) but calling it fascist is just anti-communist propaganda. The vast majority of news we hear about the DPRK from the west is completely false and often rooted in racism.
just realized this is a thread from january lol
there was a story recently about defectors returning to the DPRK who claimed to be forced/paid to tell lies about the DPRK, these kind of stories happen all the time but rarely show up in western media
https://www.nknews.org/2013/01/third...-back-to-dprk/
Everything that is found in Juche could be traced back to pre-modern Korean history in some way. The thing about self-reliance bears some anti-capitalist flavour for example, but it has its roots in the latter period of the Joseon dynasty ("hermit kingdom"). Rule of a dynasty is an other thing I would hardly call socialist, but rather a pre-modern remnant resurrected. Songun is basically sacrificing the needs of the people for the needs of the army, a policy which historically mostly thrived during the ages when the first regular military forces came to existence. North Korea has nothing socialist within it. Not a thing. It's funny how right-wing nutjobs and some DPRK-apologists believe the same about socialism, namely that it is an economic model where "the state owns things". The funniest thing is that even in their symbols and rhetoric the DPRK drifted away even from Marxism-Leninism. Also, dodging every criticism of the DPRK as "bourgeois propaganda" is basically wearing a metaphorical tin foil hat. Western media often distorts things, sometimes because of political interest, sometimes because of sensationalism (which is one hell of a drug if you are a journalist) but if, by any chance, the grass is green and "western propaganda" also says (because it accidentally fits their agenda) that the grass is green, there is perhaps a small chance that the grass is not the complementary color.
I would not call Juche fascist, though. It is bad, it shares some characteristics of fascism, it is most certainly nothing close to socialism, it is not a variant of communist thought. But fascism is a different phenomenon. Fascism is a product of modernity. Juche is basically Korean Stalinism taking some inspiration from pre-modern history of Korea.
