North Korea: what the fuck?
The world is staring open-mouthed as the tiny, ancestral, “Juche” dictatorship moves towards a nuclear footing and threatens the by-now familiar “lake of fire” against its enemies. Both South Korea and the United States have put themselves on a war footing, allegedly, as the North restarts a nuclear reactor, suspends the crisis hotline between North and South and shuts down a joint industrial complex on the border.
Whatever panic there might be among the American public — remember, a poll released today shows one in four Americans believe President Barack Obama may be the Antichrist — is not shared by its elite, who know the hermit kingdom has not yet managed to perfect an anti-ballistic delivery system for a nuclear weapon. No easy thing, apparently.
They also know well something Western audiences are barely told: the US and South Korea have, in recent weeks, been engaged in large-scale war games on the peninsula, involving up to 40,000 troops and hundreds of planes and tanks. The line in the Western press, when this is aired at all, is that these are purely defensive measures, because, well, we never start wars against countries we have nominated as part of the “axis of evil”, do we?
Simultaneously we are told North Korea is a joke country that no one could take seriously — so why the large-scale war manoeuvres? The North Koreans have one idea: the imperialists intend to annihilate them. Do the power elite in the country really believe that? Or is it all a ruse designed to keep the game on the road?
The question is impossible to determine, because the answer might be: both. North Korea’s leaders are split between those who have spent time overseas — children of the elite, raised in Swiss boarding schools — and those, in the military chiefly, who have never known anything else. Various diplomats, and the occasional feted Western Stalinist, have said Kim Jong-il had told them they knew the whole thing was a sham and they would have to transition out of it at some point.
Yet on the other hand, the army is an entirely self-supporting system that reproduces itself generation on generation, defining itself not only against the world, but against the bleeding heart liberals in the elite of the Workers’ Party, who dally with notions of rapprochement and international co-operation.
So, one theory is the North’s response is entirely external — to the movements of the US. Another theory is that it’s internal, whereby the Workers’ Party elite tries to assert its power against the army, which accuses it of backsliding. Six weeks ago the leadership made some token measures towards greater openness — chiefly, allowing tourists to use their mobile phones while in the country (there are quite a few tourists, valued for their foreign currency, traipsing through on guided tours).
The third theory is it’s both, combining the two. In the trade we call that “dialectics”. Whatever the case, it has created plenty of opportunity for foreign correspondents to trot out the usual stories on the essential weirdness of North Korea, alternatively portraying it as entirely brainwashed or an entirely captive nation.
“What Western media outlets find hardest to disentangle is the personality cult from the economic system, the 10-storey gold-plated statues from the starvation.”
People are either goose-stepping in front of missiles in ardent fanaticism or they are all faking tears whenever one of the now eternal presidents dies. The popular story flicks between the two. What’s the truth? Both are right, and I would refer you to the earlier answer on dialectics. From extensive accounts of North Korean life, such as Barbara Deming’s Nothing To Envy, it’s clear the North Korean public is entirely split between those devoted to the Kim-il cult and the idea of “Juche” and those who think it’s a crock of shit.
To some extent the split is geographical — those closer to the Chinese border and the major crossing city of Dandong, a Wild East gambling/smuggling/pornorama, have a better idea what’s going on because they can get DVDs of Lindsay Lohan movies smuggled in, etc. It’s also divided in Pyongyang, a relatively prosperous city — though everyone there, to judge from their Los Angeles lithe elegance, is on 1300 calories a day — with some vestigial international connection.
Outside of that, well, as far as one can tell (your correspondent is an expert, based on a four-day tour) it’s simply a dirt-poor farming barracks. Villages have been demolished to house the population in concrete housing blocks, which stand isolated in the fields. There are no shops, no pubs, no clubs, little electricity and not much food. Half the population is in uniform, but a lot of them don’t seem to be doing anything useful. In Pyongyang, thousands of them seemed to be planting flowerbeds, very slowly, like the whole place was a school full of kids who’d been excused phys ed for the afternoon.
What Western media outlets find hardest to disentangle is the personality cult from the economic system, the 10-storey gold-plated statues from the starvation. They’re inter-related obviously, but not identical. It would be quite possible for the North Koreans to loosen the total economic system, allow private farming, small business and move steadily to a mixed economy, while still preserving the Kimist idolatry. Unless you’re a mad Hayekian — and there’s a personality cult if ever there was one — you realise by now, glancing at China, this is not only possible but quite a feasible historical trajectory.
One reason it’s so hard to think about North Korea in that way in the West is that if we did start to distinguish idolatry from efficiency, we’d start to look askance at out own system. Let’s face it, if you’ve lived in Brisbane or Adelaide, or half-a-dozen other places for the past two decades, the wall-to-wall media has been of singular voice, no matter who owns it, which is overwhelmingly Murdoch; the party system is more or less unitary; life offers a smooth singularity, lacking real difference. Yes, since you ask, it is considerably more pleasant than North Korea — which simply makes my point.
You never know when you’re in the middle of a wrap-around ideology, so all-encompassing that there’s very little opportunity for most people to think outside it. So places like North Korea become extremely useful in that situation. You can run relentless military exercises on their border, and construct any response as the product of a paranoid totalitarian self-enclosed state, a surviving mutant of 20th century history. Of course half the time it is, but the other half, it’s just a mixture of rational statecraft, and internal politicking, and it might be useful if the meeja offered better analysis than “North Korea: what the fuck?”.
Seriously, this is the reason to subscribe to Crikey – right here. An actual balanced and more importantly informative article that also gives us a relevant personal context. Brilliant.
Now a please sir may I have some more in the form of an analysis of what the political situation / mood and context is in South Korea? 🙂
I find it harder and harder to take Rundle, and by extension Crikey seriously.
Equating Murdoch to North Korea? What drugs is Rundle on FFS?
One is a proprietor of media and entertainment who cleaves to a right wing agenda which upsets the delicate sensibilities of the left, not exactly an outstanding apostle of moral rectitude, the other is a dynastic dictatorship that has pursued nuclear weapons, ballistic missile systems (not anti-ballistic delivery systems, try doing your research Guy), shelled villages in other countries with artillery, sent it’s subs out to sink another countries ships and despatched special forces troops and assassins and to try and assassinate the leadership of their neighbour. One is a media proprietor, the other is a blight on the map.
Rundle needs to take a reality check, his conspiracy theories are in overdrive.
As for the US/South Korean military exercises, they are an annual event, have been going on for decades and are ritualistically denounced as invasion preparations by the North. That too has been going on for decades.
If the US and South Korea were going to invade North Korea, they could have done it decades ago, before the North developed nukes, the fact that they didn’t should tell Rundle something but he’s so caught up in his loathing of everything American he can’t see past his own prejudices.
The reason for the exercises is that South Korea is threatened by a regime that prefaces its diplomacy with loud proclamations about how its going to bathe its enemies cities in nuclear fire, while siting thousands of artillery pieces in range of Seoul, where they could drop hundreds of thousands of rounds onto the home of millions of civilians in a few hours, turning a modern major metropolis into a present-day re-enactment of Stalingrad.
There are two sides to every story, trust Rundle to hit the button marked histrionics while ditching objectivity, but then it’s no more than we’d expect for someone who gave up any pretence to objectivity to pander to a particular demographic of readers
Do you really need to start your article with WTF? I can hear that on the street without subscribing. Please lift your language standard!
” Do the power elite in the country really believe that? Or is it all a ruse designed to keep the game on the road?”
Yep, that’s the key question that goes through my mind when I think of North Korea. Do the local inhabitants display all the usual hallmarks of humanity; duality, difference, ideas, creativity etc (which must be the case unless provenotherwise) or are they so locked in their culture and state-demanded ignorance that they become firm believers in the ‘game’.
I can’t say, but certainly some must see through it all, while others must be buying it lock stock and barrel. But are they the fringes, or does that dichotomy cover the vast bulk of the populace.
Or are they just getting on with their lives, trying to ignore government where they can, a bit like us really?
As for equating Murdoch and North Korea, I took Guy’s comments less literally than Mr James, but there is a thread of truth in the lack of voice for difference in Australia, not just at the media level, but more importantly at the political level. The battle for the ‘centre’ has left little real difference between political parties, certainly there is none in ideology, as neither party really has any.
There is a totalitarianism in that, in our abject comfort and glorious lifestyle we seem to have developed the habit of manufacturing difference where there is none.
To quieten the masses in the most effective way, by pretending that their voice (vote) matters.
Brilliant if planned, but it was all by accident, not design.
While I agree with some of Michael James’ observations on the historic repetitive nature of the Hermit Kingdom’s belicosity, the USA’s belligerent response with the nuclear tools of their hegemony adds a new dimension.
It is my contention that we should widen our prism and reflect on the current position of the negotiations with Iran to denuke their military capacity at the behest of the zionist and Israeli lobby.
The military and strategic value and opportunities for the USA and Israel to use the bellocity of King Jong Il’s to surgically remove his nuclear infrastructure as an example to Iran cannot be ignored.
Considering four of the national participants in these escalating tensions are among our five most important trading partners it is an astute and appropriate decision for Prime Minister Ms Gillard to be leading the party that will have the ear of senior members of the Chinese government.
Her presence will not only give gravitas to these meetings but keep Carr’s tendency to ‘forelock tugging’ before the American/ Isaeli lobby that drives a lot of his international responses.