The subway in Pyongyang
By: Ali Ismail
0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)
aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk
ONE NATION DEFIES THE WORLD
North Korea contains the seedbed of a global resistance
Any of our readers who has not yet realised that North Korea has reached centre stage on account of a claimed successful nuclear test must be living in the Land of Nod.
Even today, I heard that the international community, headed by the USA, is contemplating punishment in the form of sanctions, which the North Koreans say they will regard as a collective act of war.
The difficulty here, I submit, is that it is just a tad hard to take the Koreas, either of them, very seriously. Somehow, in people’s unconsciousness that part of the world is associated with MASH and with the slightly eccentric martial arts of the Korean peoples which never attract the followings of the Chinese and Japanese ones.
Furthermore, the two Koreas, even combined, do not possess the technological rigour of Japan or the industrial might of China and have but a slight influence on the world.
The intra-Asian racial profiling, which we know goes on under the surface does not leave the Koreans out. The Japanese had belligerent relations with their Western neighbours for many centuries and these altercations, including periods of Japanese occupation, have not warmed up relations between the two peoples.
In the case of Japan, there are Koreans who have resided there for many generations without integrating socially or genetically and who are still referred to as “the Koreans” by their Japanese neighbours. The passage of time does not make a Korean a Japanese, no matter what he does.
In fact, traditional Japanese wisdom defines the Korean peninsula as “a dagger pointing at the heart of Japan.” During the period of Japanese colonisation the Korean people were forbidden to possess weapons and, in consequence, developed weapons from utility articles such as rice flails.
One misleading description of Korea is: “The Land of Morning Calm.” There is nothing pacific about Korea or the Koreans. The peninsula has had an almost unbroken tradition of war with periods of armed standoffs in between.
Furthermore, like many Asian countries, including and especially India, the Koreans have the penchant to produce wacky religious cult figures and such is the power of modern communications and transport these extraordinary personalities have succeeded in achieving the pinnacle of prestige – a Western following.
The Reverend Moon and the Moonies aka the Unification Church springs to mind. My contact with this religion has consisted of being accosted in London parks when walking alone and twice attending their meetings in which some kind of evangelically inspired capitalism was being promoted.
Which brings us back to North Korea and the atom bomb crisis. What concerns me most is (apart from the fact that nobody is supposed to ask how many nuclear weapons North Korea’s detractors themselves possess) that it is difficult to get the North Korean perspective on the crisis.
Whether one watches CNN, the BBC, reads the Western “heavy” newspapers or listens to the usual licensed radio stations one gets a diet of “approved” news and views. That is not surprising because to do otherwise in the mainstream media is to say goodbye to a potentially lucrative journalistic career and to prepare to spend the rest of one’s working life editing college magazines or, else, looking for jobs in other fields. Hence, the phenomenon of journalistic self-censorship.
Fear not, gentle reader. This organ and this writer has gone further than most and has obtained the other party’s viewpoint, from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) defines itself as follows:
“The great Leader said: ‘The Juche Idea means, in few words, that the owner of the revolution and construction are the people’s masses.’
“The Juche Idea is based in the thinking that the person is the owner of everything and use is to serve him.
“To materialise the Juche Idea means to maintain the position of owner of the revolution and construction and to improve it from an independent and creative way.
“The Juche Idea allows to create an indestructible unit between the people’s masses and the leader, so in this way an independent and sovereign state can be built and the people can use their talent and power for the common benefit.”
The DPRK propaganda machine states further: “The main task of the Government and Republic are to achieve the total socialism of North Korea rejecting the extreme forces. This means to get the national independence in all the Korean peninsula.”
To my way of thinking that means that the Communists up north intend to stay that way and to take over the south and make some sort of socialist paradise in the unified nation.
The fly in the ointment, of course, it that the above does not take into account the hostility, verging on the extreme, of the rest of the world
The American government has this to say about the North Korean economy:
“North Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel.
“Despite an increased harvest in 2005 because of more stable weather conditions, fertilizer assistance from South Korea, and an extraordinary mobilization of the population to help with agricultural production, the nation has suffered its 11th year of food shortages because of on-going systemic problems, including a lack of arable land, collective farming practices, and chronic shortages of tractors and fuel.
“Massive international food aid deliveries have allowed the people of North Korea to escape mass starvation since famine threatened in 1995, but the population continues to suffer from prolonged malnutrition and poor living conditions. Large-scale military spending eats up resources needed for investment and civilian consumption.
“In 2004, the regime formalized an arrangement whereby private "farmers markets" were allowed to begin selling a wider range of goods. It also permitted some private farming on an experimental basis in an effort to boost agricultural output. In October 2005, the regime reversed some of these policies by forbidding private sales of grains and reinstituting a centralized food rationing system.
“In December 2005, the regime confirmed that it intended to carry out earlier threats to terminate all international humanitarian assistance operations in the DPRK (calling instead for developmental assistance only) and to restrict the activities of international and non-governmental aid organizations such as the World Food Program. Firm political control remains the Communist government's overriding concern, which will likely inhibit the loosening of economic regulations.”
Does this remind you of anything, gentle reader? It should remind you of the set-to between the North Vietnamese and the Americans during the Vietnam War and the heady days of the Cuban crises, missile and otherwise.
The important thing to bear in mind, I reckon, is that although the Cubans and the North Vietnamese got what they wanted superficially in the teeth of Uncle Sam’s hostility, they failed signally to secure the deeper values for which they had fought and sacrificed so much.
The Cubans have kept their revolution at the cost of partial international isolation and the impoverishment of its people although they themselves seem to think that a price worth paying for following Dr Castro.
The North Vietnamese got their united Vietnam and then astonished the world with their “boat people” who were fleeing the socialist paradise because of intolerable living conditions brought on, partially, by American vengeance.
This makes me think that even if the North ever takes over the South it will probably be a pyrrhic victory, a hollow win not worth the effort let alone the sacrifice.
A united Korea under Communist rule would be the pariah of the world and excluded from many technical, scientific and cultural developments. Few, if any, other nations would be prepared to enter into military pacts with such a nation and therefore military spending would be a troublesome burden in a small and fragile economy.
Stephen Wiseman of Regina, Saskatchewan has this to say: “Basically, they (the North Koreans) need sorting out. Somebody needs to take a big stick to them.
“They are the 1% and the 99% are against what they are doing.
“It should be sanctions of some sort. I understand they don’t have an economy as such. The statements that have come out of there that they will view sanctions as an act of war needs looking at.
“If they retaliate against sanctions they should get a limited but adequate military response.”
Some final points I would like to make are, firstly, that it is a mistake to think that the Cold War is over because North Korea is the world’s last Stalinist regime and the border between North and South Korea is the last Cold War frontier.
It follows that since the Western alliance has set itself the goal of ridding the world of the practical applications of Marxism/Leninism the final delivery will not have taken place until or unless North Korea come round to the majority view at some time in the future.
Secondly, and finally, I submit that although the Communist movement is largely dead it is far from buried and can be revived. Regular readers of our own international pages know that Maoist guerrillas are waging a violent and bloody civil war in Nepal and they may also know that South America is a present and future nursery of left wing uprisings against the horrible gringo and his capitalism.
So, it follows that whatever happens North Korea will not be left alone.
ONE NATION DEFIES THE WORLD
North Korea contains the seedbed of a global resistance
Any of our readers who has not yet realised that North Korea has reached centre stage on account of a claimed successful nuclear test must be living in the Land of Nod.
Even today, I heard that the international community, headed by the USA, is contemplating punishment in the form of sanctions, which the North Koreans say they will regard as a collective act of war.
The difficulty here, I submit, is that it is just a tad hard to take the Koreas, either of them, very seriously. Somehow, in people’s unconsciousness that part of the world is associated with MASH and with the slightly eccentric martial arts of the Korean peoples which never attract the followings of the Chinese and Japanese ones.
Furthermore, the two Koreas, even combined, do not possess the technological rigour of Japan or the industrial might of China and have but a slight influence on the world.
The intra-Asian racial profiling, which we know goes on under the surface does not leave the Koreans out. The Japanese had belligerent relations with their Western neighbours for many centuries and these altercations, including periods of Japanese occupation, have not warmed up relations between the two peoples.
In the case of Japan, there are Koreans who have resided there for many generations without integrating socially or genetically and who are still referred to as “the Koreans” by their Japanese neighbours. The passage of time does not make a Korean a Japanese, no matter what he does.
In fact, traditional Japanese wisdom defines the Korean peninsula as “a dagger pointing at the heart of Japan.” During the period of Japanese colonisation the Korean people were forbidden to possess weapons and, in consequence, developed weapons from utility articles such as rice flails.
One misleading description of Korea is: “The Land of Morning Calm.” There is nothing pacific about Korea or the Koreans. The peninsula has had an almost unbroken tradition of war with periods of armed standoffs in between.
Furthermore, like many Asian countries, including and especially India, the Koreans have the penchant to produce wacky religious cult figures and such is the power of modern communications and transport these extraordinary personalities have succeeded in achieving the pinnacle of prestige – a Western following.
The Reverend Moon and the Moonies aka the Unification Church springs to mind. My contact with this religion has consisted of being accosted in London parks when walking alone and twice attending their meetings in which some kind of evangelically inspired capitalism was being promoted.
Which brings us back to North Korea and the atom bomb crisis. What concerns me most is (apart from the fact that nobody is supposed to ask how many nuclear weapons North Korea’s detractors themselves possess) that it is difficult to get the North Korean perspective on the crisis.
Whether one watches CNN, the BBC, reads the Western “heavy” newspapers or listens to the usual licensed radio stations one gets a diet of “approved” news and views. That is not surprising because to do otherwise in the mainstream media is to say goodbye to a potentially lucrative journalistic career and to prepare to spend the rest of one’s working life editing college magazines or, else, looking for jobs in other fields. Hence, the phenomenon of journalistic self-censorship.
Fear not, gentle reader. This organ and this writer has gone further than most and has obtained the other party’s viewpoint, from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) defines itself as follows:
“The great Leader said: ‘The Juche Idea means, in few words, that the owner of the revolution and construction are the people’s masses.’
“The Juche Idea is based in the thinking that the person is the owner of everything and use is to serve him.
“To materialise the Juche Idea means to maintain the position of owner of the revolution and construction and to improve it from an independent and creative way.
“The Juche Idea allows to create an indestructible unit between the people’s masses and the leader, so in this way an independent and sovereign state can be built and the people can use their talent and power for the common benefit.”
The DPRK propaganda machine states further: “The main task of the Government and Republic are to achieve the total socialism of North Korea rejecting the extreme forces. This means to get the national independence in all the Korean peninsula.”
To my way of thinking that means that the Communists up north intend to stay that way and to take over the south and make some sort of socialist paradise in the unified nation.
The fly in the ointment, of course, it that the above does not take into account the hostility, verging on the extreme, of the rest of the world
The American government has this to say about the North Korean economy:
“North Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel.
“Despite an increased harvest in 2005 because of more stable weather conditions, fertilizer assistance from South Korea, and an extraordinary mobilization of the population to help with agricultural production, the nation has suffered its 11th year of food shortages because of on-going systemic problems, including a lack of arable land, collective farming practices, and chronic shortages of tractors and fuel.
“Massive international food aid deliveries have allowed the people of North Korea to escape mass starvation since famine threatened in 1995, but the population continues to suffer from prolonged malnutrition and poor living conditions. Large-scale military spending eats up resources needed for investment and civilian consumption.
“In 2004, the regime formalized an arrangement whereby private "farmers markets" were allowed to begin selling a wider range of goods. It also permitted some private farming on an experimental basis in an effort to boost agricultural output. In October 2005, the regime reversed some of these policies by forbidding private sales of grains and reinstituting a centralized food rationing system.
“In December 2005, the regime confirmed that it intended to carry out earlier threats to terminate all international humanitarian assistance operations in the DPRK (calling instead for developmental assistance only) and to restrict the activities of international and non-governmental aid organizations such as the World Food Program. Firm political control remains the Communist government's overriding concern, which will likely inhibit the loosening of economic regulations.”
Does this remind you of anything, gentle reader? It should remind you of the set-to between the North Vietnamese and the Americans during the Vietnam War and the heady days of the Cuban crises, missile and otherwise.
The important thing to bear in mind, I reckon, is that although the Cubans and the North Vietnamese got what they wanted superficially in the teeth of Uncle Sam’s hostility, they failed signally to secure the deeper values for which they had fought and sacrificed so much.
The Cubans have kept their revolution at the cost of partial international isolation and the impoverishment of its people although they themselves seem to think that a price worth paying for following Dr Castro.
The North Vietnamese got their united Vietnam and then astonished the world with their “boat people” who were fleeing the socialist paradise because of intolerable living conditions brought on, partially, by American vengeance.
This makes me think that even if the North ever takes over the South it will probably be a pyrrhic victory, a hollow win not worth the effort let alone the sacrifice.
A united Korea under Communist rule would be the pariah of the world and excluded from many technical, scientific and cultural developments. Few, if any, other nations would be prepared to enter into military pacts with such a nation and therefore military spending would be a troublesome burden in a small and fragile economy.
Stephen Wiseman of Regina, Saskatchewan has this to say: “Basically, they (the North Koreans) need sorting out. Somebody needs to take a big stick to them.
“They are the 1% and the 99% are against what they are doing.
“It should be sanctions of some sort. I understand they don’t have an economy as such. The statements that have come out of there that they will view sanctions as an act of war needs looking at.
“If they retaliate against sanctions they should get a limited but adequate military response.”
Some final points I would like to make are, firstly, that it is a mistake to think that the Cold War is over because North Korea is the world’s last Stalinist regime and the border between North and South Korea is the last Cold War frontier.
It follows that since the Western alliance has set itself the goal of ridding the world of the practical applications of Marxism/Leninism the final delivery will not have taken place until or unless North Korea come round to the majority view at some time in the future.
Secondly, and finally, I submit that although the Communist movement is largely dead it is far from buried and can be revived. Regular readers of our own international pages know that Maoist guerrillas are waging a violent and bloody civil war in Nepal and they may also know that South America is a present and future nursery of left wing uprisings against the horrible gringo and his capitalism.
So, it follows that whatever happens North Korea will not be left alone.
THE END
This article was published in the 14 October 2006 issue of the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read everywhere from the Arctic to the sub-Antarctic.
posted by Ali @ 2:23 PM
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