The North Korea Discussion Thread

[Berkhamsted]

I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of exclusively blaming the DPRK government for the current situation when the United States has arguably more suffering to the Korean peninsula.

Yes, the war (caused by DPRK aggression) was very destructive, there is no denying that. But I will not have you claim that that caused more suffering than what the DPRK is doing now. Massive concentration camps and all. That's not easily topped by a war. Whereas the war's destruction was great (as in big, not as in amazing) the systemic violence of the DPRK regime and their agricultural mismanagement has caused more suffering than a war ever could. We're talking about a regime that has been in power for nearly sixty years. That's downright disgusting, isn't it?

Hmm. It's important to remember that prior to around 1975 the DPRK actually enjoyed superior material conditions to that of the ROK. I think that the changing geopolitical position and subsequent embargoes played a great role in ensuring the famines of the 1990s, a greater role than the supposed economic mismanagement.

[Memell]

never mind the fact that North Korea kicked off this whole mess back in the 50's

I think war was inevitable and blame can't solely placed at the doorstep of the DPRK, and that's if we accept the notion that they started the war and that isn't universally accepted. There were frequent border skirmishes, many of which the ROK caused, prior to the war commencing, and if anything it's a surprise war didn't break out sooner.

I don't think North Korea will ever initiate a war. If anything, i think the military elite is just waiting for the right moment to devise some sort of civil unrest, which will allow them to quickly dispatch the Kims, and to appear as the champions of the people defending them from the "evil" secret police" or something like that. In short, i think the "Ceausescu scenario" is the most likely to take place.

[Hanryo]

I miss the Sunshine Policy.

[Draakonite]

I think war was inevitable and blame can't solely placed at the doorstep of the DPRK, and that's if we accept the notion that they started the war and that isn't universally accepted. There were frequent border skirmishes, many of which the ROK caused, prior to the war commencing, and if anything it's a surprise war didn't break out sooner.

I don't think North Korea will ever initiate a war. If anything, i think the military elite is just waiting for the right moment to devise some sort of civil unrest, which will allow them to quickly dispatch the Kims, and to appear as the champions of the people defending them from the "evil" secret police" or something like that. In short, i think the "Ceausescu scenario" is the most likely to take place.

Isn't Kim a marionette of the military anyway?

[Memell]

I don't think North Korea will ever initiate a war. If anything, i think the military elite is just waiting for the right moment to devise some sort of civil unrest, which will allow them to quickly dispatch the Kims, and to appear as the champions of the people defending them from the "evil" secret police" or something like that. In short, i think the "Ceausescu scenario" is the most likely to take place.

Isn't Kim a marionette of the military anyway?

Indeed. They might as well him(them) use him as scapegoat(s), when it will be needed.

[The Sotoan Union]

I think it's hard to get a true picture of what reality in the DPRK is actually like. All I know is there is a lot of bullshit that gets chucked around (forcing everyone to have the same haircut, executing people by dogs, telling their population they won the world cup and so on) that I'm generally very cynical with much of what I read on the DPRK. The stories of defectors such as Shin Dong-Hyuk seem to be very inconsistent and ever changing as well.
I also dislike the way people hold South Korea as a bastion of liberty too, considering the way their government bans any left leaning party on the grounds that they are affiliated with the DPRK.

We know a good amount about North Korea through the defectors. An estimated 2,000 people escape North Korea per year, with 55% settling in South Korea. Through these defectors (And allied espionage), we are able to know what's going on in there. Because there are so many of these defectors, the idea that the US is somehow covering up the info is thrown out. It's not as though the US can keep track of all these refugees. These refugees almost uniformly speak of an authoritarian regime with outrageous propaganda. Combined with what we know of North Korea outside of refugee anecdotes (For example, the constant threats of nuclear war, the fake town built on the DMZ, the image of North Korea completely dark due to lack of electrification), and indepth espionage by the US, we know that North Korea is an extremely authoritarian regime.

Source?

[Devvo Mate]

How long before this becomes the "let's all shout at Puryong" thread?

[Reploid Productions]

How long before this becomes the "let's all shout at Puryong" thread?

How about we don't go inviting trouble?

[Devvo Mate]

How about we don't go inviting trouble?

I wasn't inviting trouble, I was just pointing out that we've had a number of North Korea discussion threads closed or deleted in the last week or so because it becomes impossible to actually have a discussion, and instead just devolves into everybody sticking the boot into Puryong at once while she posts the same lines over and over again.

[Puryong]

I see that as with any thread on North Korea, you're going the get a few types of people. There are the really original people who hilariously post "Best Korea" 'jokes' and follow it up with a vague criticism, then you'll get the people who have watched the last 30 minutes of documentary a while ago, usually from a huge billionaire news broadcaster, which uses footage of the Arduous March in order to distort people's perception of the DPRK, and then you get people who are willing to discuss the possibility that not everything you see on the news is fact, as well as open to other ideas they might not have considered before.

This is more of an informative post than an argument, I get 3 or 4 telegrams a day asking my about my beliefs and I felt like the best thing to do would be to type it all up into one big post which hopefully answers pretty much everything!! Starting with what made me support the DPRK, explaining some of the lies, and of course showing some of the plenty but often ignored amazing things about the DPRK, hopefully in a way which doesn't make too many people want to shout at me...

Both of my parents were born and lived in the ROK until they were adults, then they moved to the UK and had me. I'm quite glad I was born in the UK and not the ROK because the anti-DPRK sentiment is so much stronger there, but my parents both did their best to keep up the standards of anti-DPRK propaganda, which I believed until my early teens. I got interested in politics when I was quite young, I was very shy at school and mostly kept to myself so I spent most of my free time watching and reading things, and I watched a documentary on the DPRK, I was expecting it to show me what a hellhole it was, but I was surprised to see that, yeah it was a poor country, but the people there were happy. It's what started off my research into the realities of the DPRK, not just what western media wants you to believe.

I stared to realise that when you see the 'depravity' in North Korea you're watching re-runs from the famine in the 90's but, prior to that, especially in the 60's and 70's, the DPRK's economy was better than South Korea's. When you see images of famine in documentaries, notice how the quality of the film is not as good as the rest of the documentary, that's because these images are re-runs of the same stuff captured 20-25 years ago - but of course they don't say that in the coverage. People have tried to film the supposedly apparent poverty in recent years only to discover that it doesn't exist. Don't you think if these documentaries could find newer footage of poverty, they would? Of course, even when there was poverty, the West didn't even consider it's role, people didn't even think if the western world traded properly with the DPRK the poorest people in the country would no longer be so poor, the government isn't deliberately making it's inhabitants poor, it's distributing the very little wealth they do have, albeit very thinly. I say that the west is much more responsible for poverty in N. Korea than the government. They do all they can to feed their citizens while also having to fund their military as a US backed nation claims sovereignty over their land. The government and people of North Korea are in between a rock and a hard place - but regardless they're achieving amazing things.

But then people say "They spend a lot on their military, why should that be a priority?". Isn't it obvious, because they want to protect themselves. You cannot talk shit about their defence spending until you understand their position. Firstly, it is still the DPRK’s desire to denuclearise the Korean peninsula and eradicate the threat of nuclear war. At the end of the Second World War, the US was the only country in the world that had nuclear weapons. In order to achieve global domination, they used an atomic bomb against Japan even though there was no need for the US to use such a weapon in that situation. They wanted the world to find out how strong these weapons were, so that the world would be forced to go along with US policy. So the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Later on the USSR developed nuclear weapons too. As time went on, the Soviet nuclear arsenal played the role of stopping the possibility of US nuclear weapon usage. That is the main reason that the US couldn't use these weapons in the second half of the 20th century, the idea of MAD and stuff. Later on the nations with nuclear weapons was expanded to include China, Britain and France. In terms of world peace as a whole, the expansion of the nuclear weapon would be seen as a bad thing, but the reality was that the possession of nuclear weapons by China and the Soviet Union was able to check the use of nuclear weapons by anyone for any purposes.

Then the Fatherland Liberation War started in 1950. The Americans thought they could easily win this war, because they had all the advanced conventional weapons. Also at this time China was just one year old and the Soviet Union was still recovering from the vast destruction of the Second World War. However, the Americans found out that their arrogance was misplaced. In fact, the Fatherland Liberation War was the first war that checked US ambitions. The Korean People’s Army and the Chinese volunteers fought with incredible strength against the US. From the US point of view, this was a war against socialism. But the socialists had the full support of the people of these countries. Korea and China were rural countries, where the people were motivated by the idea of getting their own land. It is the Workers’ Party of Korea that distributed land equally to all farmers. So the WPK had the full support of the people, and the masses of the people took part in the war, another thing you won't read in your history book.

When he saw that the war was not going according to plan, Eisenhower and the American generals suggested using the nuclear threat. The US felt that if they warned the population that they were going to drop a nuclear bomb, the people would flee from the front. Having witnessed the effects of nuclear warfare just five years previously, millions of people fled the DPRK to avoid being struck by nuclear weapons, and this is why the whole Korean peninsula is not under DPRK control – nuclear bullying. After the Fatherland Liberation War, the US never stopped its hostile policy towards Korea. Today they say that they cannot normalise relations with the DPRK because the DPRK has nuclear weapons. But in the 60s, 70s and 80s, they didn’t have nuclear weapons – did they normalise relations then? No. Rather, they continued trying to dominate the Korean peninsula with their own military force. It is the US that introduced nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. In the 70s, in order to check the influence of the Soviet Union, they deployed nuclear weapons in Europe and also in South Korea. The US never stopped threatening the DPRK with these weapons, which were just next to the DPRK, the other side of the demilitarised zone. The DPRK is a very small country, with a high population density, if the US used its nuclear weapons, the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe would be unimaginable.

The DPRK had to find a strategy to prevent the US from using these weapons against them. In the 1970s, the big five counties agreed they would stop the production and use of nuclear weapons. Only five countries would be allowed to have nuclear weapons; the others would not. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was born in 1970. The NPT clearly states that nuclear power states cannot use nuclear weapons for the purpose of threatening or endangering non-nuclear states. So the DPRK thought that if they joined the NPT, they would be able to get rid of the nuclear threat from the US. Therefore they joined. However, the US never withdrew its right of pre-emptive nuclear strike. They always said that, once US interests are threatened, they always have the right to use their nuclear weapons for pre-emptive purposes. So it’s quite obvious that the NPT could not ensure safety. On this basis, they decided to withdraw and to formulate a different strategy to protect themselves.

The world situation changed again after 11 September 2001. After this, Bush said that if the US wants to protect its safety, then it must remove the ‘axis of evil’. The three countries he listed as members of this ‘axis of evil’ were Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Bush said that, in order to remove these 'evils' from the earth, the US would not hesitate even to use nuclear weapons. Events since then have proved that this was not a simply rhetorical threat – they have carried out this threat against Afghanistan and Iraq. Now it comes to North Korea. There was a DPRK Framework Agreement between the Clinton government and the DPRK in 1994, but the Bush administration cancelled this, saying that America should not negotiate with 'evil'. They said that ‘evil states’ should be removed by force. Having witnessed what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, the DPRK realised that they needed their own nuclear weapons in order to defend the people against the US threat. In addition to the direct nuclear threat, there is also the issue of the ‘nuclear umbrella’. The US extends its nuclear umbrella to Japan, South Korea and the Nato countries. But Russia and China aren't willing to open a nuclear umbrella to other countries, because they are afraid of the response from the US. So what was the DPRK supposed to do to defend it's sovereignty?

It's obvious now that their choice to develop their own nuclear deterrent was a correct decision. What happened to Libya? When Gaddafi wanted to improve Libya’s relations with the US, the imperialists said that in order to attract international investment he would have to give up his weapons programmes. Gaddafi even said that he would visit the DPRK to try and convince them to give up their nuclear programme. But once Libya dismantled all of it's weapons programmes and this was confirmed by western intelligence, the west changed its tune. This led to a situation where Gaddafi could not protect Libya’s sovereignty; he could not even protect his own life. The DPRK wants to protect its security.

The US should take the issue of North Korea seriously; it should take a positive approach to solve this matter. Even though there is a huge US military presence in the Korean peninsula and in northeast Asia, so far the DPRK have been very successful in preventing another war. The US war machine never stops. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… In fact the USA has been in at least some war constantly since the end of the Fatherland Liberation War. Every day, innocent people are dying because of imperialist policy led by the US. But the DPRK has been able to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula, and I think this is a great achievement.

Although the past two decades were very difficult for the DPRK: not only did they have to survive alone economically but they also had to prevent US military intentions, therefore they had to put a lot of investment and focus on strengthening the army, building weapons and developing nuclear capability. Now that they have nuclear weapons, they are beginning to reduce military investment, because even a small nuclear arsenal can play a deterrent role. They are in a position where they can make the US hesitate to attack them. Therefore now the government can focus more on people’s welfare - and this is happening even with the trade sanctions. Ever since the Fatherland Liberation War The US issued a threat to all companies: if they do business with North Korea, they will be subject to sanctions by the US. This is still in place. The US government thought that if they cut economic relations between the DPRK and the rest of the world, they would capitulate, and these sanctions were intensified during the famines of the 90's, in the hope that they could starve the DPRK out of existence. So next time you see the 90's re-runs of the Arduous March, remember the US policy towards that.

Also when it comes to North Korea, 'penal labour' gets turned into concentration camps by western propaganda. Yes, the DPRK uses penal labour - so does the USA. In fact the USA has more citizens incarcerated per capita than the DPRK. I think the saying is 'physician heal thyself'. The prisons in the DPRK are not up to the same standards as in the USA because the DPRK is a poor country, this should be obvious. Prisoners are not as high a priority as the innocent people themselves, so regretfully some prisoners are not looked after as well as in rich, capitalist countries, but the claims are wildly exaggerated. They are not 'concentration camps', no mass murder happens there, they're places where criminals go to repay their debt to society by working and contributing something. A lot of these prisons also offer education - like in western prisons - to help rehabilitate criminals and allow them to successfully return into society as a better person.

As for why I support the DPRK, it's simple. I believe their people are free in the purest form, free from imperialism and corporate indoctrination. The ideology of Juche is Kim Il Sung’s creative application of Marxist-Leninist principles to the modern political realities & situation in the DPRK. People often refer to Juche as meaning just 'self reliance', but in actuality it means the individual is the master of revolution and reconstruction in their own nation. Rejecting dependence from others, using your own strengths and intelligence to fully capture the revolutionary spirit, and this solving problems both for yourself and your nation. It's important to note that unlike a lot of socialistic ideals, Juche celebrates and encourages the intellectual, the centre of the Juche symbol is a calligraphy brush to represent the intellectuals who Kim Il-Sung felt previous revolutions had sidelines or repressed.

This idea of self reliance, amongst other ideas, were implicated on a large scale when it came to severing idealogical and political ties to the crumbling Soviet bloc, accepting the fact that they could not remain dependant on the communist 'empires' of the 20th century, and this is the reason the DPRK is still around today, despite crippling trade restrictions and economic sanctions imposed by the west to try and starve the DPRK our of existence. The Arduous March was the greatest test of Juche, and while it involved much tragedy at the hand of the imperialist oppressors, the people used their revolutionary Juche spirit to continue the 'march', and eventually rising from the ashes once again as a proud and resilient nation. It's now in the top 100 nations worldwide in terms of GDP, beating even some western nations. And with new trade deals over the horizon, I predict a golden age for Juche in the DPRK much like in the 60's and 70's.

But you still get people shouting 'the DPRK isn't a democracy', they are oppressed! However in actuality the people of the DPRK have no oppressor, there is very little crime and the people control the means of production through electing a local candidate, often through discussion at your place of work to represent them in the Supreme People's Assembly. While the nation is not perfect, being strangled by western embargoes and sanctions, the Juche system is as close to perfection as there can be. The DPRK is a democracy, workers vote for candidates to serve in the Supreme People's Assembly to represent them and their interests. Not everybody votes for one party, Social Democrats hold 51 seats and the Chondoist Chongu Party holds 21, with 13 independents. Yes the majority is held by the Worker's Party but that is because it is the most popular, citizens are free to approve or disapprove of candidates of any party. They don't chose the Supreme Leader, the elected representatives do. It's not a western auction- I mean 'democracy', but it is still a democracy. I think democracy is a word which is thrown around too much, and in the west today it's become nearly meaningless...

So let's summarise:
- There is no famine, that happened 25 years ago, the state now manages to provide for all of its citizens, in urban areas very well, in rural areas this is sometimes still very basic care, but nobody is starving
- The DPRK needs a nuclear deterrent and the Songun policy to ensure their sovereignty, this has been proven by the barbarity of the US imperialist foreign policy
- Penal labour, used worldwide as a form of punishment, is no different in the DPRK, it's just 'work camps' sound worse than 'Federal Prison Industries' but it's essentially the same principle, criminals repaying their debt to society by contributing to the economy
- Juche and the revolutionary spirit of the people is why the DPRK survived and the Soviet bloc fell
- The DPRK is not a dictatorship, a 'dynasty' or anything other than democratic

[Val Halla]

I'm pretty sure that North Korea isn't the bizarre place everybody cracks it up to be. In fact, I'd say it's probably the most normal dictatorship of all. Mugabe is much more of a looney than Kim Jung Un. And he's also one of the best looking leaders and important figures. He's no Natalia Poklonskaya, but he's definitely on the higher end of the scale.

[Russels Orbiting Teapot]

- The DPRK is not a dictatorship, a 'dynasty' or anything other than democratic

I'll get to the other points once I'm able to do a bit more research, but how do you defend the continuous and unilateral rule of the Kim family, and their many excesses?

[Hanryo]

I'm pretty sure that North Korea isn't the bizarre place everybody cracks it up to be. In fact, I'd say it's probably the most normal dictatorship of all.

This. I'm hardly a fan of the DPRK, but they aren't the embodiment of evil. Their leadership is not psychotic, either, just ruthless and highly focused on survival. If they were as crazy as the West claims they are, they would have collapsed long ago.

[Puryong]

- The DPRK is not a dictatorship, a 'dynasty' or anything other than democratic

I'll get to the other points once I'm able to do a bit more research, but how do you defend the continuous and unilateral rule of the Kim family, and their many excesses?

Did you even read the post or just the summary? ¬_¬

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

So, North Korea to most, True to Korea to others and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea officially.
North Korea is a topic of discussion that comes up quite a bit in NS and the news, so I thought it would be appropriate to create a thread.

So this week in North Korea we have:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31581935
Foreigners banned from Pyongyang Marathon because of Ebola
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31596976
North Korea calls on US and South Korea to cease their 'war games'
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-ad ... 7235805071
and something to do with strange propaganda slogans
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html
and concentration camps with North Korea's human rights record.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Co ... nDPRK.aspx
Record of human rights North Korea.

So peoples of NationStatesGeneral, what do you think about North Korea, is it a rogue state, is it True Korea, is it a totalitarian wasteland or is it something else?

My opinion: So North Korea, in my opinion, is a totalitarian rogue state that has committed crimes against humanity and has concentration camps(I admit the Australian government does too, but I do not deny or endorse it) as well as that, they are hypocrites on a scale rarely seen before. They are a threat to humanity and do not seem to understand the principle of MAD; the whole reason Nuclear Weapons exist as a deterrent

Sadly, I consider it a totalitarian wasteland and the poor North Koreans are the ones suffering from it all. Something has to give, the change needs to come from within.

[Russels Orbiting Teapot]

Did you even read the post or just the summary? ¬_¬

Yes, I read your entire post, but I don't feel qualified to respond to most of it until I get the chance to do, like, an hour or two worth of research at least. I agree that Bush is responsible for the current state of affairs, and may have ruined our chance to reconcile with DPNK. Otherwise, up-to-date information is somewhat hard to find, as DPNK hasn't been terribly interested in letting foreign journalists snoop around in their back woods recently.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Yes, I read your entire post, but I don't feel qualified to respond to most of it until I get the chance to do, like, an hour or two worth of research at least. I agree that Bush is responsible for the current state of affairs, and may have ruined our chance to reconcile with DPNK. Otherwise, up-to-date information is somewhat hard to find, as DPNK hasn't been terribly interested in letting foreign journalists snoop around in their back woods recently.

If you're interested in finding more about current NK news, Norkies on exile in South Korea broadcast news frequently, and news they get from people on the inside.

[The Nuclear Fist]

North Korea is probably almost as shitty as everyone says it is.

[Memell]

So let's summarise:
- There is no famine, that happened 25 years ago, the state now manages to provide for all of its citizens, in urban areas very well, in rural areas this is sometimes still very basic care, but nobody is starving
- The DPRK needs a nuclear deterrent and the Songun policy to ensure their sovereignty, this has been proven by the barbarity of the US imperialist foreign policy
- Penal labour, used worldwide as a form of punishment, is no different in the DPRK, it's just 'work camps' sound worse than 'Federal Prison Industries' but it's essentially the same principle, criminals repaying their debt to society by contributing to the economy
- Juche and the revolutionary spirit of the people is why the DPRK survived and the Soviet bloc fell
- The DPRK is not a dictatorship, a 'dynasty' or anything other than democratic

[Hanchu]

I wonder how many pro Kim people on this site would move to north Korea if given the chance

[Reddogkeno101]

I wonder how many pro Kim people on this site would move to north Korea if given the chance

Some apparently. I hope they enjoy.

[Russels Orbiting Teapot]

I'm looking into various sources to see what I can find. Obviously a lot of sources come from North Korean defectors, of which there appear to be an average of almost 2000 per year that make it to South Korea.
Source: http://www.unikorea.go.kr/content.do?cmsid=1440

Puryong, I'm interested in whether you have a response to why so many people seem to be fleeing the DPRK every year. I'd also like to ask in advance if you're going to discount their testimony, and if so, why.

And in general, what kind of evidence would you accept for things that would be negative about the DPRK?

[Scepez]

I wonder how many pro Kim people on this site would move to north Korea if given the chance

None. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemies. Okay, maybe some of them.

[Draakonite]

I wonder how many pro Kim people on this site would move to north Korea if given the chance

The good thing is, they propably won't come back. A nation that builds a wall to stop emigration can only be a bad place to live in.

[Geilinor]

Puryong, remember that North Korea controls the flow of information out of the country the next time you post pictures of the country.