Confessions of a stranger

러시아 총선거의 결과에 무슨 의미가 있을까?

2011-12-07T23:22:00.002+09:00

모순적인 것은 지금까지 꿈을 꾸지 못할 정도로 좋은 것이 막상 이루어진다면 받아들이지 않고 더 요구하는 것이다. 가령 러시아 같은 경우를 생각해보자. 며칠 전까지만 해도 러시아 야권은 절망적으로 취약하며, 통합러시아당을 이길 가능성이 희박하다고 할 수 있었을 것이다. 그러나 왠지 야권은 여당이 앞서 선거의 결과를 받아들이기는커녕 불만이 넘치고 있다.

러시아는 서양의 언론에 따르면 비자유주의적인 정체 또한 독재제도라고도 한다. 안타깝게도 러시아는 일시적인 시간을 제외하면 러시아의 역사상에 민주주의가 없어왔다. 통합 러시아당은 소련 공산당의 형태대로 구성된 정당이며, 특히 갈수록 더 그 모델대로 심화되고 있는 것으로 보인다. 왜 그런지 또한 러시아의 정치적인 미래를 파악하기 위해 러시아는 소련의 붕괴 뒤에 어떤 정치적인 사건들이 일어났는지를 보면 도움이 될 듯 한다.

소련이 무너지는 가운데 러시아의 경제가 불경기에 접어들며 정치과정이 혼란스러워진다. 그전까지만 해도 한 정당 밖에 모르는 러시아사람들은 계급이익과 이념에 대한 의식에 따라 여러 가지로 나뉘어지게 되었다. 이에 반영되는 정치도 일어났다. 2000년까지 정당들은 한국의 1990년대 정당들과 마찬가지로 4-5년동안만 유지되는 사물이었다. 러시아 같은 경우 당파성이 심할 뿐만 아니라 시간이 흘러갈수록 선거의 절차와 결정절차가 불투명해지며 정당의 변화가 이를 반영하게 되었다.

어느 정도 본인의경제의 위치에 따라 이익의 의식이 형성되어 러시아의 경제적 역사를 살펴보면 러시아의 정치적인 과정을 이해하는 데 도움이 될 듯 한다. 또한 러시아의 현재 정당들은 러시아의 경제 체계를 반영한다. 러시아의 정부는 1990년대 초 중 때 경제의 경기를 향상시키기 위해 구 소련시대의 경제를 구조조정을 하였다. 이 과정에서 쇠퇴해진 국영회사들을 민영화 시켰다. 이 절차가 부패하여 독점 재벌이란 현상이 나타났다. 그렇지 않았더라도 그 당시의 러시아 경제가 쇠퇴해진 만큼 구조조정 하는 것이 필요하였을 것이며 궁극적으로 빈부 격차가 심하게 빚어질밖에 없었을 것이다. 하여튼 이 현상으로 인하여 독점 재벌들은 정부와 정치자체를 독점하게 되었으며, 1990년대중에는 이른바 ‘7인 은행가의 정부’란 현상까지 나타났다.

이 당시에 러시아의 경제는 전개된 상륙 층에게 매우 유리하였으나 경제자체가 불안정한 만큼 러시아의 시민은 경제적으로 피해를 많이 입었으며, 경쟁적인 선거라기보다는 소련시대의 안정성을 갈망하게 되었다고 한다. 1998년의 러시아 금융 재앙에 따라 정체가 변화하기 시작하였다. 이러한 가운데 블라디미르 푸틴 (Vladimir Putin)은 대통령의 자리를 잡는 데를 이어 통합 러시아당이 창당되었다. 어떻게 보면 이것이 창당된 것이 뿐만 아니라 새로운 시대를 시작하는 것을 상징하였다. 이후에 종래의 러시아 정치를 조절하였던 독점 재벌들이 앞서며 개별적인 고위 인사 층이 나왔다. 이들은 국가의 기관과 관련된 산하 기관을 관리함으로써 권력을 잡았다. 통합 러시아당은 한국 또한 대부분 민주주의적인 정체에 있는 정당과 달리 유권자 일부의 이익대로 형성되어있는 것이 아니다. 이 정당은 국가의 고위층으로부터 형성되는 것이다. 1940년대후의 소련공산당과 같이 이 정당은 위에서 아래로 구성되는 기구다.

그렇다고 하여 통합 러시아당 부상의 이유가 분명해진다. 즉, 통합 러시아당은 국가에서 만들어진 정당으로서 선거를 승리해왔다. 러시아 당국은 언론은 물론 러시아의 경제와 정보 접근을 부분적으로 규제하여 국가의 관료 인사들은 정치과정을 조절하기 무난하다. 또한 이들은 경제를 규제 잘함으로써 어느 정도 민심을 끌 수 있었다. 그러나 헌법적으로 푸틴은 2임기로만 대통령으로 권력을 행사할 수 있었으므로 2008년 자리를 물러섰다. 헌법에 따르면 차례적으로 3번째 임기가 불법적이지만 물러서고 4년뒤에 다시 대선에 출마할 수 있다고 한다. 푸틴은 대선에 출마하겠다고 발표하였다. 이에 따라 통합러시아당은 2007년의 총선거에서 64.3%의 투표율에 달하는데 비해 이번 총선거에서 50%에 미치지 못하였다. 이 선거에서 러시아통합당을 위한 부정 성을 감안하면 이 결과에 의미가 크다.

이로써 통합 러시아당의 현재를 이해하는 데 도움이 된다. 그렇다면 통합러시아당의 미래가 무엇일까? 통합 러시아당은 지금까지 10년동안 러시아의 정체를 독점하며 독재자의 정당으로 감지되지 않았다. 그러나 이제 민심을 잃었다고 할 수 있었으며, 푸틴마저 민심을 잃었다고 하면 과대 평가 아니다. 따라서 러시아의 미래는 가능한 길 두 가지가 있다. 한편, 푸틴은 박정희의 유신을 선언한바 같이 실제독재제도를 시행할 수 있다. 이를 통해 통합 러시아당의 위치를 유지할 수 있을 뿐만 아니라 현재 러시아 기득권의 권력을 유지할 수 있다. 두 번째 길은 푸틴이 2016년 대선에 불출마하겠다고 선언함으로써 기성 정체를 유지할 가능성이 높으며, 그 반면에 새로운 정치적인 질서가 나올 가능성도 크다. 새로운 질서가 이라고 민주주의적인 제도가 나타나는 것이 아니다. 정당끼리 사이비 경쟁 성을 창출함으로써 새로운 비자유주의적인 제도를 만들 수 있으며, 러시아의 1990년대 초에 변덕스러운 정당 체계가 나올 수도 있다. 후자가 일어나면 정체를 정의하기 어려워진다.

미래가 막막하다는 말에 의심의 여지가 없다. 민심을 잡기란 쉽지 않다.

한-미 FTA 민주당 왜 그렇게 입장을 바꿨을까?

2011-11-12T23:50:00.001+09:00

처음으로는 한-미 자유 무역 협정 (FTA)을 제안했었던 노무현 전대통령은 통치하는 여당의 논리대로 FTA가 온 국민들에게 혜택이 있다고 주장하였다. 이는 FTA를 체결함으로써 중국에 대하여 한국의 경제적 경쟁 성을 양상 시키는바 있으며, 특히 노무현 전대통령의 정권은 중국이 한국에 반해 노동력을 대신하여 한-미 간의 관세를 긴축하여 중국의 경쟁력을 벌충한다는 논리에서 FTA의 체결을 주장하였다. 진보진영은 여당으로써 이 입장에 일리가 있는 만큼 현재 여당인 한나라당에게도 FTA를 통과시키는 데에 논리적이다.

여당의 목표가 무엇일까? 실제로 한가지의 목표가 있는데 이는 당연히 권력을 행사하며, 잡은(그) 권력을 유지하는 것이지 않을까? 이루기 위해서는 우선적으로는 유권자의 50% 넘게 인기를 끌기 마련이다. 유권자의 50%을 끌 수 있느냐는 것이 중산층이 지지하느냐 않느냐에 달려있는 만큼 노무현 전대통령은 중산층 및 상위 층이 근무하는 대기업에게 혜택을 줄 FTA를 추구하였다. 이는 노무현의 FTA를 추진하는 논리였다. 또한 진보진영밖에 농민층을 대표하는 정당이 없는 만큼 노문현은 농민의 지지를 잃어도 된다고 생각한 것으로 보인다. 농민층은 한나라당의 지지를 반대하며, 다른 진보적 정당을 지지할 수 있음에도 불구하고 궁극적으로 이 정당들은 노무현의 진보적인 정책에 반대하기 어렵다고 생각하였던 것으로 보인다.

그 반면에 민주당은 야당이 된 가운데 정적으로 다른 전략을 세워왔다. 중산층의 경제적 이익이 명백하기는 하지만 어느 정도 민족주의에 호소함으로써 이 경제적 이익 인식을 불명백하게 하는 것이 민주당의 현재 FTA에 대한 전략이다. FTA는 사회층을 분단시키며 농민층에게는 FTA자체가 손해를 입히는 반면에 중산층에게 특혜를 줄 수 있기 때문이다. 예컨대 중산층이 결과적으로 가격대로 식재를 구입하여 소비하는데 미국산에 대한 관세가 떨어지면 농산물의 가격까지 떨어질(지는) 만큼 농민층에게 문제가(부담이) 되며, 오히려 중산층에게 바람직한 것이 된다. 한편, 민주당은 미국에 있는 농업회사들이 특별보조금을 받고 있는 것과 ‘을사늑약’을 비교할 때 과장 하다는 측면이 있겠지만 이를 통해 중산층의 민족주의적 감각에 끌린다.

이 전략에 실효성이 없음에도 불구하고 직접적으로 FTA비준안을 저지할 수 없다고 해서 FTA를 찬성해야 된다는 것이 아니다. 다른 관점에서 절충안과 온건파를 진압하는 데에 일리가 있다고 할 수 있다. 여당입장으로서는 다수의 지지를 유지하는 것이 중요한 반면에 야당입장으로서는 우선적으로 기반 지지층에 호소함으로써 당내의 당파성을 통제할 수 있다. 그렇지 않으면 예전처럼 야당은 심화된 당파성으로 인해 기반적인 진보정당의 희석을 예방하기 어려워진다. 그럼에도 불구하고 노무현이 서거한 데 이어 국민참여당이 창당되어 민주당이 직접적인 경쟁자가 생긴 만큼 기반 지지층에 끌리는 정책을 펼쳐야만 한다는 데에 의심의 여지가 없다.

다음 총선거가 1년 즈음 앞서는 것에서 민주당의 FTA에 대한 시각을 해석하면 도움이 된다. 진보진영에서는 자체가 분열함에 따라 지난 총선거에 패배했다고 할 수 있다. 민심에 끌리면서 아직까지 민주당은 민주노동당과 손을 잡을 수 없다는 사실이 분명하며, 통합시키는 이슈가 필요하다는 말에 그름이 없다. 복지 포퓰리즘은 세대에 맞음에도 불구하고 민주당은 민주노동당의 지도부를 끌기 위해 지나치게 복지와 관련된 공약을 내놓는다면 민심에 끌릴 수 없으며, 한나라당을 이길 수 없게 될 것이다. 이에 따라 대체방법을 구해냈으며, 이는 바로 반미를 부추기는 것이다. 이로써 민주당은 민주노동당 지도부의 잡된 본성을 끌면서 통합시킬 수 있는 만큼 FTA를 과시적으로 반대하기 시작하였다. 한-EU FTA같은 경우를 살펴보자. 한-미 FTA와 비교하면 특별한 차이가 없음에도 불구하고 민주당은 한-EU FTA에 대하여 반대하는 입장을 표출하지 않았기 때문이다.

앞으로 민주당은 야권 통합을 추구하면서 반미를 이용할 것으로 보이며, 야권이 지나치게 민족주의를 통하여 민심에 이끌릴 것으로 보이기도 한다. 안타깝게도 민주당은 이로써 계몽사상에서 유래된 사회적 진보주의를 배신하는 행동이라고 한다. 사회적 진보주의는 국적과 상관없이 묶자는 사상이라며, 민주당은 그러한 이데올로기대로 설립된 정당 인만큼 위선주의적으로 또한 냉소적으로 반미를 쓰기 때문이다. 그렇다고 하여 다른 관점에서도 살펴보면 민주당이 입장을 정적으로 변화하는 것도 유감스러운데 먼저 지지층을 배신하고 나서야 또다시 편들면 무슨 민주주의적 정당 일까? 완전히 기회주의적인 것에 틀림이 없는 만큼 경멸적이다.

북한의 반미주의

2011-07-24T22:24:00.002+09:00

좌익은 반미주의에 대해 의논하면 이것이란정치적 또한 사회적 태도를 말한다. 이태도는 미국가 제국적으로 행위함에 따라 출헌하는 태도라고 할수있다. 비정의감으로부터 일어나는 개념이라고도 한다.

위키백과사전에 따르면 “반미주의(反美主義, Anti-Americanism)는 미국을 반대, 혐오하는 것에서부터 정치적으로 미국의 패권주의적 행보를 반대하는 것에서 부터 저지하려는 것까지 폭넓게 이르는 사상이다.” 물론 이정의에 문제가 있는데 너무 계략적이라고 할수있는데 다가 도덕적으로 어떠한 이유로 인해 반미주의가 일어나는것도 간과하는문제도 있다.

그런가 하면 문화권, 나라, 사회층 등에 따라 반미주의 자체가 다른데 진보적인입장에서 논해 일반적으로 반미주의의 원인을 정당화할수있다. 그러나 북한의 경우를 보면 진보적인 학자들이 미국의 제국적인 행위로 인해 일어났다는 주장을 무시해야된다.

북한은 1945년에 개별적인 영역이 되어 1948년에 공식적으로 건국되었다. 영역이 되는동시에 북한을 통치하는 소련군은 정규적인 반미정책을 실행하지 않았으며, 조선을 해방했던 제2차연합국으로서 미국을 칭송하는 자료도 나왔다. 하지만 미소관계가 악화 되는 가운데 북한 언론은 미국을 비난하게 되었는데, 6.25 전쟁후에 발행된 자료와 달리 그때 자료의 중심적인 내용은 미국의 자본주의를 확산 시키는 데에 역할을 비난하는것이었다.

6.25전쟁은 잔인하며, 한국의 민족적인 비극이었다. 수백만명이 숨졌고 전쟁으로인한 난민이 수백명 이었으며, 전쟁이 종료할때까지는 대부분 북한서민들이 지하, 동굴, 군기지 등등에서 살았다. 전후될때부터 북한은 서민의 힘 및 소련의 경제적인 지원으로 국가를 재건설했으며, 그과정에서 김일성은 노동당 속에 있는 종파 및 본인 권력에 대한 경쟁자를 숙청해냈다. 그러므로 김일성이 패권적인 권력자 되어, 그는 소련군 정권에 의해 설립된 스탈린주의 제도에 민족주의를 추가하였으나, 사회적으로 1994까지의 북한체재는 1940년대 소련과 같이 전형적인 스탈린주의 국가라고 한다. 이로써 북한의 반미주의를 이해해야된다. 북한의 반미주의는 대중의 믿음 및 열망으로인한 개념 아니라 당국은개념을 퍼뜨림으로써 전체적으로 통제한다.

사례를 살펴보면 이사실이 분명하겠다. 북한당국과 진보적인 학자들은 미국의 악한 행위로 반미주의적인 개념의 필수성을 설명하지만 사실상은 미국의 행위 결과가 반미의 강화성과 무관하다. 가령, 독일 또 베트남을 보자. 제2차 세계전쟁으로 미국에 의해 독일이 북한만큼 폭격당했으며, 북한보다 베트남이 고업제 및네이팜탄으로 피해입혔다. 이사실로 북한의 반미주의를 분석해 명확히 북한당국의 정치적인 선택하는것이 여지가 없다.

6.25 전쟁후부터는 북한당국이 반미주의적인 개념을 서민의 세계관에 주입하고자 하였다. 방법과 도구가 이글씨의 범위에 넘므로 포함되지않는데 북한의 반미주의적인 자체를 파악하는 데에 사례가 필요하다. 아래에서 1960년에 작곡된 노래의 가사다. 탈북자에 따르면 이노래는 반미대표작이라고 한다.

동무들아 언제든지 경각성 높이자
우리의 눈앞엔 미제가 있다
피에 주린 승냥이 미제침략자
전쟁을 짖어대며 발광을 한다
미제는 우리의 철천지원쑤
대대손손 골수에 사무친 원쑤
증오와 분노의 피가 끓는다
소탕하자 박멸하자 죽음을 주자

가사는 미국인을 비인간화 시키는 결작이다. 1953년부터 1994까지 북한이 폐쇠된 사회를 감안해 이러한 작품의 기본적인 담론의 효과가 강한것에 틀림이 없다.

반미주의는 북한 당국이 자체정통성을 유지하는 개념의 대외지향적인 일부다. 그를 통해 북한은반미로 자국서민의 애국심을 강화하며, 남한은 미국과 동맹 관계가 있으므로 북한당국은 반미주의를 세움으로써 북한 서민에 심리적으로 대안 국가를 제거하는 기능까지 있다고 할수있다.

남한에서도 배타적인 민족주의가 있지만 남한이 반전되는 과정에세 이러한 현상이 약해졌으나 북한은 반미를 통해 배타적인 규범을 강화하였다. 어쩔때 반미주의가 정당화할수있는 개념 인데, 가령 남미에서는 먼로주의 가 전파되었을때부터 미국은 남미가 자국영토와 같이 개입하였다. 이에 따라 남미인들은 반미주의적인 태도가 있기 마련이다. 종종 반미주의자는 합리적으로 자신 고난의 유래점을 잘 확인하여 미국에 대립한다.

반면에는 북한의 반미주의가 합리적인 대중중심적인것이 아니라 국가는 대중에게 모든문제가 미국의 탓으로 착각시키기위함 이다. 우리는 진보적인 사람으로서 북한의 반미주의를 험오해야겠다. 이개념은 파탄국가의 핵심적인 전파하고있는 거짓이기 때문이다.

죽음을 미제침략자들에게 (최류빈, 1960) Death to the US Imperialist Invaders (Ch'oe Ryu Bin, 1960)

2011-05-30T22:15:00.002+09:00

동무들아 언제든지 경각성 높이자
우리의 눈앞엔 미제가 있다
피에 주린 승냥이 미제침략자
전쟁을 짖어대며 발광을 한다
미제는 우리의 철천지원쑤
대대손손 골수에 사무친 원쑤
증오와 분노의 피가 끓는다
소탕하자 박멸하자 죽음을 주자

Comrades let's awaken!
The US imperialists are in front of us
They are thirsting for blood
They are deranged and howl for war without end
The US imperialists are our mortal enemies
The enemy of generation after generation
Hatred and anger that are overpowering
Let's wipe them out, let's eradicate them, let's give them death

Autotune the news, 무엇인가?

2011-02-19T09:59:00.004+09:00

남한은 민주주의나라 일뿐만 아니라 선진국 이다. 그러나 한국과 달리는 서양사람들은 보도동영상으로 코마디를 창조한다. 그런 코마디가 좀 새롭지만 70년대무렵에 문화적인 지도자들은 당국자를 믿지않게되었는지 방송의 가짜 성실한것을 조롱할수있게되었다. 또한 60년대는 늘 존경한기관을 믿지못하게 되었기때문이다. 근본적인 이유들이 복잡하나 그무렵에 기본적으로 현존한 사회적인 구조들이 대중의 의지를 진압하는것으로 보게되었다. 그로인하여 사회적인 구조가 변화되었으나 자본주의의 기본이 변하지않았다. 구제적으로 성적인 규범이 바뀌었다 . 그따라 일반적인 사람은 사회적인 구조가 실수나 속일수있는것을 감지할수있게되었다.

'Auto-tune the News' (보도의음성을 보정한다)라는것은 보도의 내용을 조롱하는게 아니라 보도를 하는 사람이나 보도를 하는메채를 조롱하는것이다. 보도동영상을 검색하고 목소리의 음성을 음악으로 바꿀수있는 장면을 복사한다. 그후에 노래를 작곡하고 복사한 장면들을 정리하며 제대로 목소리의 음성를 보정하고서 음악이 나왔다. 그 노래에 농담도 많은데 예를 들어 그사람중에서 보수적인 시민을 선동하는 '전문가'라는사람을 조롱하기위해 그사람의 동영상 옆에 소리를 내는 소를 추가하였다. 그사람의 말에 가치가 없다는 느낌을 암시하는것같다.

30년전에 그런 조롱이 불가능했으나 혁명일으켜졌을정도로 일반적인 믿음과 감지가 바뀌었기때문인지 그런 코마디가 만들게되었다.

BO: We are ready to lead once moooooooore
우리는 지도하도록 준비되어있다
EG: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
KC: Barack Obama is now officially
The 44th President of the United States
바락오바마가 공식적으로 44째의미국대통령이 되었다
EG: Oooooh
우우우
KC: But tomorrow President Obama begins to
Unpack that enormous crate of burdens
And expectations
하지만 내일 오바마대통령은 아주큰 부담과 예상의상자를 꺼낼것이다
EG: And expectations
과 에상
KC: And expectations
과 에상
EG: Got to save the nation
나라를 구해야한다
KC: Expectations
예상
EG: Shawty
쌰다에이
KC: Expectations
예상
EG: Shawtayeeeexpeeectaaaations
쌰다에이-예상
KC: Expectations
예상

BO: I have come here tonight
To speak frankly and directly
To the men and women who sent us
저는 우리를 보내온 남자와 여자에게 솔직히 직접적으로 말씀하도록 여기에 왔습니다
To the men and women who sent us
우리를 보내온 남자와 여자에게
(Repeat with ad libs and cowbell)
(다시 한번, 소의 종과 같이)

I will do whatever it takes, whatever it takes
To help the small business and the family
소기업과 가족들을위해 도와드릴수있는것은 모두 할것입니다
That's what this is about
이것은 그이다
To help the small business and the family, family
소기업과 가족들을위해 도와드리도록, 가족
Faaaaaaaamily
가족
MG/SG: Mama, Daddy, Granny, and your Great-Grandpappy
어마, 아빠, 할머니, 니 증조부
Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-family
가-가-가-가-가-가-가족
MG/SG: He love his wife and kids--that's his modus operandi
그는 부인과 아이를 사랑한다-- 그것은 그의 운용이다

BO'Reilly: He did seem to bow
그는 절을 한듯한다.
A lot of Americans very angry about this
많은 미국인들은 그것에대하여 아주 화를 낸다
(ooh ooh ah ah)
(우 우 아 아)

BG: It sent a message that Islam
Is superior to any other master or king
Or president in the world
An American president bound to a Muslim
그것은 이슬람이 다른 주인과 왕과 대통령보다 높은것을 나태냈다 미국대통령이 무슬림에 묶여있다
DM: Yeah, he bowed to the Saudi
네, 그는 사디에 묶여있다
Left the seat up on the potty
변기의 앉는자리를 높여놨다
Must be a president of shoddy qualitayee
불량적인 대통령 이겠네
LK: Here's the picture that bugged the hell out of me
이사진은 나를 괴롭혔죠
I mean it really pissed me off all weekend
진짜로 나를 많이 괴롭혔잖아요
President Obama giving a warm handshake
To, uh, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez
아바마대통령은 베네수엘라 차베즈 독체자에게 따뜻하게 악수했다
Ima put that up on the full screen and take a look at it
전체 크기로 보여줘, 좀봅시다
ALE/MG: OK
오케이
LK: Boys in the hood
남자들이 동네 와있다
MG: Yeah, up to no good
못된짓을 하고있다
ALE: At least we're still capitalists
적어도 아직도 자본주의자들 일뿐이네
ALE/MG: Knock on wood
나무를 두드린다 (부정(不淨) 타지 않기를[행운을] 빌다)
GB: Obama's aunt: she has a limp
오바마의 이모가 다리를 전다
SC: Mooooooo
무우우우우 (소의 소리)
GB: LIke little Tiny Tim: "I'd like more please, please" [sic]
작은 아주 작은 팀처럼, '저는 더 받았으면 좋겠습니다, 주세요'
SC: Mooooo Moo Moo Moooo Mooooooo
무우우우우 (소의 소리)
GB: "God bless us, every one"
우리에게 행운이 깃드시길, 다들
SC: Mooooo Moooooooooooooo
무우우우우 (소의 소리)
MOOOOOooooooooooo
무우우우우 (소의 소리)

China will not make it

2011-01-01T22:43:00.003+09:00

Every Chinese person above the age of 12 must know it; Chairman Mao once said 'More People, More Power'. What he meant was breed, breed for the state, for its human wave tactics-centred military policy, its labor intensive pre-industrial and industrialising economy, and probably more else besides. We have now in China the mother of all baby boomer generations. It is often said in the western press that Western governments are declining, they will face a massive demographic crisis in the next 20 years as they have to pay the healthcare costs and retirement expenses of the soon to retire generation of 'baby-boomers' born after the second world war. What is usually forgotten is that China faces a similar problem of a much higher magnitude in 20 years time.

Today as the press, the left and right, the business sector, the leaders of China and the Chinese people themselves (through their self-confidence) we see the rise of China. China is posting record levels of GDP growth. Its economy is expanding rapidly. Not only this but it is beginning to compete with the United States for its superpower status in East Asia (a central sphere of economic activity in the world economy, that rivals western Europe in economic power). For this reason and because of the fact that China has been consistently growing since that wilily old genius Deng Xiaoping first initiated economic reforms 30 years ago the western press and co. are convinced that China will be the dominant power (if not super power) in the world 50 years from now.

Right now China is buying up everything it can across the western world, it is making a massive imprint upon the developing world too with its blind eye turning and trade. There is no doubt that China is a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. But this will not last forever. In fact I would argue that China's power will peak in the next 20 years and then begin to stagnate just as Europe's did in the 1890s-early 1930s from there Europe entered a period of prolonged relative power stagnation that ended in the end of empire and the realignment of the world power away from the old empires of Paris and London toward the new centred on Moscow and Washington. Likewise Beijing is set to grow further as a world power in the next 20 years. America's relative decline is set to deepen in the 3rd world as Latin America and Africa (the world's key suppliers of raw materials) move away from the Euro-American centred Capitalist world order towards the Sino-Asian centred one. This will not mean that America will lose its status as world power, merely that its power will be more akin to that of the Soviet Union in the 1970s, that of a world power that cannot expand and is seeing its influence decline abroad and its self-confidence shrink at home.

Nonetheless America will survive and continue to prosper. America has too much embedded wealth, talent and remainings the only developed society that records population growth rates above 3% (in the last decade a record low(!) of 9%). America is in the middle of a deep and profound structural crisis caused mainly by a redistribution of purchasing power away from most of the population towards the elite, the results should have been stagnation but through cheating the world with the Dollar as its global reserve currency, the US elite were able to lend what should have been the money of the world's poor to the American middle class in order to expand their purchasing power artificially whilst concurrently growing the incomes of the elite. This is a deeply disturbing state of affairs. It shows no sign of resolution at this stage, the results are a structural debt crisis that I have mentioned before in previous blogs. The US middle class and the US government, the bedrock of the US economy in consumption (and production terms) funded the US economic expansion of the last 30 years. They did so through mortgages, credit cards, raids on pension funds, bonds (lending to foreign nations, private institutions and wealthy individuals in the main) etc. This instead of tax and wage increases. The result is that the engine of US economic growth is for the time being spent. The credit cards are maxed out, the mortgage is going unpaid or is interest only, the pension fund has nothing left to give, the bond markets remain stable, but maybe not forever. But this just means that the United States is for the time being stagnating. This isn't the end of the United States, a long period of stagnation beckons.

In the long run China is in a much more serious situation. Unlike Europe and America it is still a developing country. If it continued to grow at present rates it will catch up to the present United States in 30 years in GDP per capita terms (thats me being very kind). Before that it will run into the huge roadblock of its demographics, basically the ratio of workers to dependents will grow exponentially in the next 20-30 years. China will be the first society in history to be aging before it has become developed. This will slow Chinese development to a crawl, and already it is too late for Beijing to stop this.

It was too late as soon as the One Child Policy was implimented in the 1980s. With its implimentation the Chinese leadership mortgaged medium term expansion for long term crisis and probable stagnation. Of course in the short term the policy was great for Chinese growth, it made some sense in terms of instrumental rationality. It was a necessary step to end the unsustainable population growth of the last 20 years which had been a serious threat to food security and general economic prospects (this is what was thought at the time). But the policy's very rigidity which was seen as so necessary has created an existential problem for the Chinese Communist Party and its state.

After the Second World War Britain (my home land) imported people enmasse from the West Indies (Central America), and the Indian Subcontinent in order to fill the gap left by the loss of heroic service men and women (as well as many innocent civilians) in the Second World War. The results were positive in many ways for cultural diversity in the UK and for its economy. The fact my mum knows how to cook Indian food is indicative of this, and the fact that I have friends from many different ethnicities based in the UK is another sign. There are many more. However there were also major issues in terms of public order, race relations and general community tensions. The numbers were not large in historical terms but the impact of very different peoples being integrated into a society used to a certain ethnic mix (inspite of the small numbers was great).

Out of all the states in the world the Chinese leadership would probably be most prepared to treat humans as cattle, and drag as many people from the developing world into China via 6 countries in order to resolve this crisis. But the effect it would have on Chinese society in terms of wage competition, social stability and governmental stability are unpredictable and dangerous for the very survival of the Communist Party dominated government. Furthermore the number of people required is truly staggering, there will be a need for hundreds of millions of immigrants to plug the gap between dependents and workers. The state itself will have to dramatically expand in its provision of social and medical services for the aged. It will dent the power of the Chinese state on the world stage whether or not the workers can be found.

If they are not, the gap is not plugged (and this is very likely) then the alternative is frightening for the pragmatic, patriotic, hardnosed technocrats who run the show in Beijing. China will enter economic and geo-political decline before it is allowed to finish its march toward first-world levels of GDP per capita. This will undermine and possibly fatally erode the rationalization of Communist Party control. The suffering of the aged will not be tolerated in silence by a strong, proud and well educated Chinese population with technologies that will dwarf what we already have. The future for Chinese Communism is bleak. The state itself is endangered by regional secessionist movements in Xinjiang, and Tibet as well.

China's rise will end. IT will not make it. This is the false dawn of a new world system. America will remain the dominant power for many years to come.

Some thoughts on paving the way for Unification

2010-12-23T11:08:00.002+09:00

I am not what I termed in my last blog post a 'Naive Engagement' advocate. For whatever reason there are a few of these people in America, Jimmy Carter (who advocated a course of action like this whilst receiving his Honorary Doctorate from Korea University), Sielig Harrison, Bruce Cumings and co. I am sure that Carter is truly one of the nicest Presidents the United States ever had. His ideas were visionary in terms of energy and the sustainability of the American dream (in its present form) and most of the time he was an excellent President (and a great stateman after he was defeated unfairly in 1980). Likewise Harrison has lots of interesting and insightful things to say as does Cumings on South Korea. However... As my ginger haired older cousin (in search of a personal pronoun) Chris says here: http://destinationpyongyang.blogspot.com/2010/12/violence-currency-of-north-korea.html
'

North Koreans only respect three South Korean presidents...Who? Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan and... Lee Myung Bak.

Why? This is where the two issues overlap. It's the tendency of these three to employ the diplomatic equivalent of violence, the determination to give nothing until something is given in return.

I am afraid that the glowing words my guides in Pyongyang had for Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun are not a positive sign. I would say this, aid to Pyongyang is probably no longer viable as a way to change the regime. Maybe it was in the wake of the first nuclear crisis in the early 1990s, maybe there was some doubt that allowed American and South Korean policy makers to think they were doing the right thing, but now there appears to be none. It is good to see that the Obama and Lee administrations are not kidding themselves.

The military exercises are also positive shows of force. North Korea's leaders should not receive a non-response. If Lee and Obama were merely to sit around threatening whilst doing absolutely nothing at all this would be a very negative and worrying development. The leaders of North Korea do respond best to organised displays of force, the Axe Murder incident of 1976 is a case in point. The murder of UN soldiers trying to trim a tree resulted in an overwhelming display of force to get the tree trimmed. Of course it would have been nice if the Americans could have marched North, taken Pyongyang and created Hawaii in East Asia but that of course would never have happened (I am sure the Gang of Four might have had something to say about that).

Basically Cheonhan should have been answered with more force. It's just as well that this incident was. North Korea is a high militarised country, I do not believe that the average top-level decision maker believes the stuff that the propaganda apparatus pumps out or in the ideology per se (some do). The point is they do not have to. All they need to believe is that they can attack South Korea, and build Nuclear Weapons producing facilities with impunity as a way to ensure both domestic legitimacy and as a rent seeking device. This is a very negative development. North Korea should not be allowed to get away with actions like this, if they are then hubris is of course the natural outcome for any state, even democracies. So imagine what kind of effect it has on the Oligarcky that is in charge of Pyongyang (although I am sure Kim Jong Il is the strong man, he is surrounded by people who do talk to him about the ins-and-outs).

The signal it sends to Pyongyang is important, but does it mean we should just ignore and freeze the regime out of the international system? The short answer is no. I applaud the Obama attitude to the Nuclear situation, I will explain it. Basically, the North has built a new facility that could very soon pump out Uranium bombs. The facility is more dangerous than existing Plutonium based ones because it is movable, hide-able and rather more efficient. The response has so far been mute and negative. Do as you are obliged to under existing UN resolutions, we are not going to just make some offers of aid. I agree. The best thing to do is work behind North Korea's backs to stop any trade of this material to other states, stop it being used as a device to garner aid, spread proliferation or make money. China and Russia must be aboard for this. The point is North Korea need not get another blank South Korean and American check for bad behaviour.

But just freezing them out might not be such a good idea. Whilst I have already written that the market is a potent adversary in the making for the North Korean state, it remains too disparate because of lines of communication and the divide and rule of state/non-state distinctions. If Kim Jong Il doesn't die in the next two years (some say the follow-up stroke will hit him within the 3 years of his first in 2008) then we may have to deal with North Korea for the next ten years. We need a solution that satisfies both China and Russia as well as South Korea (and America).

Serious talk of unification is important. This talk needs to be directed North by a large information apparatus. Dailynk's Radio Free Chosun is a clear example of what is required in much larger measure; state funding is crucial in this, these Charity operations need a massive expansion in financial support. There also needs to be a concerted effort to flood North Korea with technology and information via the Chinese border. The North Korean state needs to be shown up once and for all to its people. Although this may not spark a revolution immediately, it will begin to convert what is merely cynicism into resistance to the regime on specific issues. We do not need a revolutionary party, all we need is a group across the country motivated by real injustices like rent-seeking by mid-level cadres. If they are fed information from outside they will be able to organise using the existing mobile phone infrastructure in the North and China.

Resistance to small and non-controversial issues is the first small, but crucial step. The fact is that this country has seen no concerted counterbalance to the monolithic power of the Kimist state since the 1960s when a military clique tried to create a few 'heroic' personality cults around a few vain generals. Resistance that does not challenge the state but can mobilise the millions of traders that maintain the livelihood of most of North Koreans is so important. Remember that once the organisation is in place and fighting for small issues it will become more difficult to dislodge or destroy. From here, if the state overreaches it could self-destruct. If not, even if the Kimist regime survives, it may be forced into crucial domestic compromises that could benefit the everyday North Korean, measures like a degree of political relaxation or more reform.

Concurrently, if we can start to spread real promises of post-unification peace and immunity for all except Kim himself (we could even promise to keep the museums to Kim Il Sung if the popularity he has in the North is not overstated) then we could start to make serious headway in the provinces amongst the few remaining supporters of the state line. The fact is this has not even been attempted by South Korea, the only people doing this are small charities in the border areas and South Korea who have highly limited resources. If there was serious money invested in this the results would probably be big.

But the other key component is investment. Basically speaking South Korea and America need to get back in the game. China have been in North Korea for the last 3 years, building up investment channels, opening mines and factories. The South Koreans should start doing the same.

There is a crucial difference between aid and trade. Although they are both expensive for the South Korean tax payer they have rather different effects. Aid is much easier for the North to control than trade is. Basically speaking the Kaesong industrial complex is one big capitalist blackhole, it generates income for the state but everyone who works there understands that the North Korean state is built on a pyramid of lies (like a house of cards).

The Lee regime should make good on the Roh administration agreement with Pyongyang. This agreement envisioned another industrial complex on the West Sea in North Korea. They should for the good reason that it spreads more 'ideological contamination' as the vulgar poets in Pyongyang put it. To me its a simple welfare question, it is better to have North Koreans working than not, people working in Kaesong do so because although they don't get paid well by South Korean standards, they do by North Korean standards. They get to eat, and that is a victory. But it goes much deeper than that. The presence of South Koreans, and their business in the North (if conducted with a common-sense understanding that North Korean labourers must be treated as humans not machines) is very bad for the regime socially and culturally in the medium to long term. Pyongyang will probably tolerate the existence of another zone for the good reason that the money is welcome to sure-up support among its core constituency. However this reflects the short-sightedness of an increasingly geriatric elite.

This is my ideal recipe, increase the power of the markets, and information. Do not make a deal of North Korean terms over the nuclear issue. And also do business with the North. But alas I am not sure whether it is possible to pull such a mixed bag and get a positive response from Pyongyang. The state funding of anti-Northern operations in the South should begin now. The spread of information to the North must be sped up. To deal with the nuclear issue, Washington should seek to put Pyongyang's ambitions in quarantine, there is no point in trying to cut a deal, it will never happen. The best that can be done is to try and stop the spread of what Pyongyang has. The business deal should probably be delayed for long enough that it may pass in South Korea and in Pyongyang. There needs to be a lull. We will have one now hopefully for 3-4 months. Before the North can attack again the South should move to reopen negotiations on business (with no mention of anything else). Perhaps February would be a good time. Hopefully if the North remain quiet until then, this might be possible. If not then it seems that all that is left is the stick.

The Currency Reform: Aims and Results (One Year on)

2010-12-15T09:17:00.003+09:00

You know its funny, you follow a country obsessively, so much so that you move to its arch-enemy's Capital to learn the language in order to understand the country well enough that one day you can become a specialist. This is my relationship to North Korea, I listen to North Korean music, I watch North Korean TV (I don't understand 70%), I clap as a greeting in the style of Kim Jong Il (I am not a supporter, his clap however in its pomposity and flamboyancity, as well as its ubiquity at the high occasions of state make it too tempting to impersonate), and last but not least I sing North Korean music.

Yet with all my enthusiasm I am not all together that much better informed than someone living in America or Europe with an interest. That is because although I dedicate a great deal of time (though not as much as close confidants and uncles) the fact is that much of what is said about official state policy outside of the top ruling class itself is speculation, reports from the ground, conducting literary analysis on pornographically vulgar propaganda etc. Thus the true intentions of the state and its policy are usually divided into pragmatic and ideological explanations. It doesn't help that the core defenders of the North Korean ideology have the most to gain materially from its continuance and that concurrently they have also been socialised in an environment that values ideological conformity (presenting a closed world view, like a cult).

Thus we are left with a seemingly intractable circle. North Korean functionaries want to protect their privileges which they get from the North Korean mobster state (this is the interpretation which I have much time for by a name I am sure you know if you read about North Korea). And/or they do what they do because they believe in the core principles of the regime's militant, ethno-nationalist line. So it seems either way that the currency reform itself had the ideological component of strengthing the nationalist state, for the personal and pragmatic gain of the true-believing ideological pure and concurrently rather chubby, enriched functionaries.

Forgive me, am I the only one who sees the cognitive dissonance in this? I would bet that there are some extraordinarily arrogant functionaries who see themselves and their policies as the destiny of the nation; these people exist. Personally when I wake up in the morning and write a blog before memorising a bunch of Korean words I don't see myself as a national saviour, but I do see myself (in a small, but significant way) as a force for good in the world. If I can labour under such illusions, you can imagine how a high-level functionary in the North Korean state or its big brother the army feels.

Which brings us to the currency reform. The policy has been analysed in a number of ways. There are not enough scholars in English who write on the topic for me to say its been 'analysed to death' but it has certainly been well covered. Nonetheless a few contradiction have emerged. There are scholars who see purges in the North Korean state, or just elite-level adjustments as a sign of policy changes, ideological-factionalism (between so called 'reformers' and 'hard-liners'). Yet this analysis doesn't seem to fit the currency reform; those charged with the implementation of this hard-line policy (I will explain why it is later) were allegedly technocrats (Kim Yong-il the former premier springs to mind). Factionalism in the ideological sense has been dismissed by everyone who does not favour a policy of naive engagement. Sielieg Harrison, Han S. Park etc. favour such a policy, so they trumpet such a line that says we must empower the moderates with engagement. Yet so-called 'moderates' are the leaders of such hardline policies. When the policy failed they were replaced by old-style hardliners (Ch'oe Yong-Rim, a close Kim family confidant can hardly be accused of being a moderate economic technocrat can he?).

Thus the policy of currency reform itself is a good argument against the so-called 'soft-engagement' or 'naive-engagement' idea. It seems that Pyongyang's 'modernisers' are even more reactionary than the so-called 'hard-liners', they just launch even more ambitiously far-sweeping reactionary policy projects. Which brings us to the policy itself.

The North Koreans explained it with the normal bellicosity of socialist rhetoric a la Mao. In fact this reminds me of Stalin's first policy moves after he secured power in the late 1920s. Attack the NEPmen; these were the market traders and intermediaries that were making money in the private economy of the Soviet Union which had come into existence as a result of economic liberalisation in the early 1920s. The liberalisation itself was a practical policy on the part of Lenin who having faced down a rebellion from Sailors demanding a little democracy and food decided to let people trade food (thus meaning more was grown, sold and eaten by most people). The North Koreans seemed to have just let the markets go after 2002, allowed official corruption in the market place so that middle and lower bureaucrats could be paid off the fruits of grass-roots capitalism rather than from an ever contracting state treasury.

But this policy was dangerous for the regime in a number of ways. One the state ceased to be the primary source of wealth and comfort even for its supposed 'core' supporters. These bureaucrats could get involved in market trading, rent-seeking etc. their privileged position as an officer of the state was useful in start-up but if they decided to go private they could make even more money (and if collapse came they would be less likely to end up in a South Korean jail than as an official). So the market did (does again) pose a true threat to the regime socially. It is slowly eroding the North Korean state's economic and social raison d'etre.

The market itself as an institutional mechanism (if we ignore its affects on the regime's political support) has been growing and poses more of a threat every year. I was reading an article in Chosun Ilbo yesterday, my Korean isn't good enough to capture everything that was written but I can mention just a few things and then I will explain their significance. North Koreans have been known to enjoy Chinese and South Korean video taped dramas for sometime (this has been known since the early 2000s in fact). But now we see the spread of modern technology not just DVDs (this is also not news) but computers, USBs and even American films and dramas.

This is of course made possible by a stable market mechanism, untouched by a state that lacks the warewithall outside of the shining citadel of Pyongyang (and increasingly even within the capital) to enforce any kind of ideological discipline on what is sold. In this sense the currency reform itself can be seen as a policy to disrupt and shrink the market, not a source of food (I think even top bureaucrats would admit in private to their wives that the food markets could not be replaced by state provision) but as a source of ideas, technology and 'ideological' pollution. The policy seen in this light has been an abject failure to an extent, but the lasting disruption to the mechanism remains to be seen. We do not know what would have happened if the currency reforms had not taken place but I am guessing the markets would be bigger now. Furthermore the fear the reforms have engendered is a good sign for the regime, it has shown that it can still get involved in and disrupt the economic life of the individual in North Korea and must not be ruled out.

Outside of this the policy seems to have served another aim. The growth of the aforementioned private class of traders; this emergent middle class in North Korea who owe nothing to and have little relation to the ruling class or the military minus the paying of bribes was disrupted and partially dispossessed of their ideologically 'ill-gotten gains'. What I mean is that the average market trader (mainly middle aged, hard working, and not in the least bit rich, or fat) lost upwards of 90% of any old-North Korean won denominated savings. This class of indomitable individuals who have no connection to the state were dispossessed in favour of the state treasury itself and those with direct connections to the state (those with senior positions in party, army, or government). As a regime policy it provoked unrest (see DailyNK, Chosun Ilbo, or even just Wikileaks). But this can be handled.

Unrest could not start a revolution because there are no alternative poles in civil society or groups within the country that have lines of communication extending over the country minus the market itself. But the market is itself a disparate group of individuals without political aims (many of these people are just trying to survive), dependent on the state currency anyway. Thus dispossessing them whilst unpopular, and partially apologised for was not such a bad move from the position of head of state (Kim Billionaire as he is called by refugees).

The central problem is this. It was probably launched by cadres who believe in a Socialist-Nationalist state, this is very Nazi sounding and it should sound Nazi-like, essentially minus a minority racial group to persecute this regime is quite similar to Nazi Germany. Both in its ideology, and the increasingly anarchic state of the state itself (if we believe reliable sources). Nonetheless there are probably many who implemented the policy with the full knowledge it was to their advantage (and at the same time with a belief in the state). Thus we have an irrational molasses of contradictions; funny I think that this is all too realistic.

The results of the policy are even less conclusive. The state lost, it could not revive distribution of food, but that was probably never a true aim. But it could not even stop the markets from growing, they have recovered now and they will continue to grow in terms of the quantity, quality and sophistication of goods they provide. There is no civil society in North Korea worth speaking of; yet the market mechanism will probably destroy the regime one day. Its ability to corrupt the most loyal of its followers, its ability to create an alternative locus of group organisation centred on survival and individual effort (as opposed to the state) represent a massive and probably insurmountable threat to the regime in Pyongyang. Although the market didn't bite the regime in the aftermath of the currency reforms it did already show that it cannot be destroyed. If it continues to grow, the disparate aims of its traders may well start to become more unified, and concurrently more anti-state. Although the state is thoroughly enmeshed with the market at a low level it also pursues policies which do not help the market. IE. The continued nuclear stand-off and the fights with South Korea are not good for the market and trading in the North Korean currency. Its funny what the North Korean state does internationally is much worse for its economy than the South Korean economy. So if it continues to pursue such policies, market traders may start to see and realise that the state can and should be disposed of or changed beyond all recognition. If such a consensus were to emerge as it did in Eastern European civil society after 1956/1968 (the suppression of the Prague spring and Hungarian Revolutions) then all that would be required is an external shock like a South Korean air-attack (as one of my professors has said) to bring the state down.

한국어교과서과 문화차이

2010-12-13T17:43:00.003+09:00

나의 한국어로 글을 쓰는것은 지금까지 많이 복잡해서 쓰는것이도 번거롭고 읽는것이 짜증나게하거나 귀찮게했을거이다. 또한 다른 과목에대한글을 쓰다가 보니까 옛날에 올라왔던 글은 쓰기로 너무 어렵고 독자도와 나에게 이행동에 가치 별로없다. 그래서 그런 글을 쓰는대신에 한국어교과서를 상용하는것으로 통해 서양문화와 한국문화가 어떻게 다른지 알게된것에대해서 쓸것이다.

한국어교과서에 의하면 한국사람들이 여가활동이 종규 3개 있다. 먼저 한국사람들은 외식 많이 하는편인데 영국에 가거나 데채로 유럽에 가면 식당에서 만드는 음식의 품질과 한국에서 마드는 음식이 차이가 별로없지만 보토사람의서득치고 유럼식다의가격이 비싼편이다. 그래서 그런지 유럽에 있는 사람들이 특히 저녁먹게 외식하는경우는 한국사람에비해 많지않은편이다.

두번째는 한국사람에게 인기가 많은 활동이 술을 마시는것인데 나라의문화에따라서는 술을 많이 마시거나 좀 마시거나 마시면 안되는지 청하지만 대부분은 발전했던 나라들이 술을 많이 마시는편이기는 하지만 영어로 배우기를 위한 교과서를 보면 술문화를 간과하지않으면 그런내용을 별로볼수없다. 그따라서 한국 사람과 한국 당국자는 영국 당국자와는 달리는 술을 마시는것을 부정적으로 생각하지않는것같다.

마지막으로는 교육에대한 어휘와 대화가 나오는게 많은편인데 어느정도 이사실은 한국의 교육에과한열정을 나태내는데 왜 한국 사람들은 이런열정이 있냐는 질문에 관심이 있으니까 설명해볼것이다. 한국사회에는 서양사회첨 이념이 많지만 그중에서 유교란 이념과 샤모니즘이란 이념은 교육의열정과 관련이 많다. 샤모니즘에서는 부자가 되고싶단 생각이 기본인데다가 유교에서는 학자가 제일 존경하는 지위란 생각을 바탕으로 한다. 그외에는 자본주의에따라서 황금만 능주의적인 사고방식을 가지고 있다.

Why North Korea will never sell Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists

2010-12-12T12:01:00.003+09:00

A lot has been said in the US amongst academics, the media and in government circles about the risk of North Korea selling Nuclear weapons to terrorists. North Korea is as yet not a threat to the global order, it is barely even a threat to the regional order, and even its capacious, but nonetheless nasty attacks with sadly tragic and unnecessary consequences do not amount to a threat even to the average South Korea, their property or their livelihood. Therefore China remains a mute in public about North Korean provocations and rather unseemly behaviour on the world stage. The likes of Andrei Lankov and Victor Cha, not to mention Brian Myers do a far better job of explaining the ins-and-outs of Chinese policy towards North Korea, so sufficit to say I will offer only the briefest of explanations.

China does not maintain North Korea's existence out of a fraternal sense of loyality and love for its Communist younger brother. The Chinese have made this abundantly clear to both the Americans and to their own people. Its pretty clear that China sees North Korea as a necessary evil. The alternative to North Korean existence is a refugee crisis, possible wars, and of course South Korean-led unification stemming from sudden, state collapse. South Korean-led unification is of course going to happen one day, but neither China nor South Koreans in general are particularly enthusistic about it for differing reasons. The Chinese don't want a pro-American state on their North-eastern border, and the South Koreans don't want to pay the painful costs of unification. But if Wikileaks has told us anything new, it is that China accepts unification's inevitability and is willing to co-operate with both South Korea and the United States. This is a very positive development. If Washington is receptive to the needs of the world's emerging dominant power in East-Asia (I remain sceptical as to whether China will ever become a super power but that's another blog entry) the situation could be very well resolved in the long run.

However even if such cordial soundings were not coming from Beijing there is every reason to believe that the doomsday scenarios dreamt up by the strongest of Hawks in Washington are baseless. I will explain why. But first I will mention some of the things North Korea has done which supposedly add weight to this doomsday scenario. North Korea has sold missiles and Nuclear technology to Iran (with the help of Beijing in the first case, according to the State Department). This of course is not welcome news for the Arab states of the Gulf, or Israel for that matter let alone the United States. Nonetheless this poses no real threat beyond the limiting of a first-strike capability which the United States used to possess over Iran. Contrary to popular-wisdom amongst hawks in general, the Iranian leadership are not suicidal death-cultists who control a state. They are rational, greedy mobsters who seek to silence dissent, in order to fascilitate the continued stealing of their country's oil wealth. They are as much a threat to the wellbeing of the United States as the Saudi Royal family. They just happen to make slightly more offensive noises about history, democracy, and Israel in public. They also sell weapons to our enermies. But they know that if they were to sell more than grenade launchers, I.E. if they were to sell nuclear devices, they would lose their lives and livelihoods. Russia, one of the most anti-American states in the world today would not tolerate such actions let alone the United States. If Iran started selling nuclear weapons to terrorists these weapons could very well get into the hands of Chechen separatists etc. in Russia. The results could be unimaginably horrible. Thus Iran is smart enough to only sell the expertise it has acquired from North Korea to other states. While Iran's president might be a bombastic, election cheating, holocaust denier, he is not so stupid as to destroy what he really wants. The Iranian leadership is very close to Kremlin and is not so stupid as to bite its allies. Concurrently, Russia would not allow a nuclear Iran to attack Israel, as this would threaten world peace. Russia recognises Iran's right to this nuclear deterrent so long as it remains a deterrant and not an aggressive weapon of war.

By the same token, although I am sure Kim Jong Il would welcome the revenue that could be acquired from selling nuclear devices on the open market to wealthy men who seek to fund suicide attacks, such a trade is impossible. North Korea's material survival is founded on aid from and trade with China. China would never allow North Korea to undertake such trades. I would go so far as to say that if China were to suspect that such trade was about to take place it would threaten regime overthrow with South Korean support. China has two very good reasons to prefer South Korean military invasion of the North over the sale of nuclear weapons to terrorists. First, China has its own terrorist problem; Al Qaeda may not be the nightmarish, all knowing, unbiquitous spider that Donald Rumsfeld wanted us to think it was before the Invasion of Iraq in 2003 but put it this way, if they got nuclear technology they might be able to spread it around. The consequences are both dire but not necessarily merely for previously attacked main-land America. China has its own militancy problem in Xinjiang. It is not widely discussed in the west, not so much because its not an issue but because the region itself is difficult to get into and the Chinese authorities don't want to draw attention to it. But they are far better appraised of the problem than I, and I would bet a lot of money that this would be a major reason why the threat of a sale of nuclear technology to terrorists would lead China to almost unbelievable counter-measures.

Second and much more obvious is that China is a resource importing country. It relies on the stability of the global supply lines of trade. If Nuclear technology were to get into the hands of terrorists the results are unpredictable, but I will guarantee you that the effect on global supply lines of natural resources would be devastating. An attack on a Gulf state, mainland America, Continental Europe, China itself etc. would result in a global economic panic. The consequences for China would be socially and politically far more dangerous than Korean unification. The cost of Korean unification would be securing the North-east border from refugee exodus, in addition to humanitarian and developmental aid. There would also have to be reassurances from the United States and an acceptance by the Chinese of America's ally on its border. But the collapse of Chinese growth would not be on the cards.

However, if a real nuclear terrorist attack were to take place in any of the five areas mentioned above the psychological shock to the global economy would be worse than Black Tuesday which precipitated (in part) the Great Depression. In fact I would bet that the attack itself's direct physical impact would be minimal even if it killed upwards of 500,000 people compared to its effect on the quality of life of the rest of mankind. The reasons for this are simple and yet probably not well understood by most. Markets respond to instability and economic fragulity about as well as my hand does to being put in a fire. Basically global trade would collapse overnight. All supply lines would close out of the fear of more attacks. With global trade at a standstill, credit lines, banks and even sovereign credit lines would cease to function. The result would be an international emergency the likes of which we have not experienced since the Black Death in the 14th Century. Law and Order would breakdown. This of course would be a negative development for everyone (even Kim Jong Il). But the Chinese authorities know only too well that their political legitimacy is premised on the continued rapid growth of their economy. Without that the fragile social order would collapse and the strong (but not strong enough) Chinese state would probably collapse with it.

The argument is therefore simple. North Korea selling nuclear weapons to terrorists threatens the existence of China, so therefore it will never happen.

Africa and Democracy

2010-12-11T18:54:00.003+09:00

Someone I know and love very much told me that her friend had said to her 'expecting African nations to copy western democracy right now is like giving them a complete set of instruments and expecting an instant symphonic performance'. First I will explain why this is right, second I will explain why we should not be too pragmatic in prescriptions we draw from this.

If we impose a democratic process on a country it does not necessarily have to lead to ethnic cleansing, popular uprising, general lawlessness and anarchy like it did in Iraq. We could see a genuine demoncratic process take route in a developing country. This is of course at a cursory glance, superior to a dictatorship. But in practical terms there are no real differences. Minus the dissidents among a marginal and tiny middle class who will no longer need to be silenced the result is really not worth the effort.

A typical democracy has a large, vocal and significant group of voters who are well informed about the general policies of their government and the alternatives that are on offer. This group is known in English as 'Civil Society', they comprise everything from newspapers, universities and other such lofty, authoritative institutions all the way down to neighbourhood watch, and other local groups that interact with government and shape policy. These groups cannot be manufactured in a vacuum. They usually arise when three crucial ingredients are present: social peace, leisure time and education.

Let me provide a not to subtle analysis on Africa with these three factors in mind. Most of Africa lacks one of these ingredients, with the possible exception of South Africa, Egypt, and Libya. But in the latter two cases they are instead benighted by kleptocratic dictatorships. It must be said though that Egypt does have some potential as a democracy, it does have a very active civil society after all if the Muslim Brotherhood's moderate wing is anything to go by and the kind of writers, intellectuals and professionals who come from Egypt. Unfortunately thanks to the conservative policies of the State Department there is as yet no change toward democracy in sight in Egypt. Maybe in the next 20 years there will be some changes. After all the current President Hosni Mubarek (who has a rather catchy name, although I don't think I spelt it right) doesn't have long for this world. Anyway digress.

Social peace is obviously a ubiquitously missing ingredient is it not? A few examples spring to mind, the election catastrophes in Zimbabwe and Kenya; the continued unrest in Sudan (or as it should be known 'Genocide'); the raging civil war in the Congo, and Somalia; the occupation of West Sahara. I don't claim to be an expert on conflicts on the African continent so forgive my woefully incomplete list of countries. Nonetheless even outside of these we have places with notably fragile social peace, Angola (think of the African Cup of Nations), and Sierra Leon (a civil war not long since past) immediately spring to mind. The continued problems with militancy in the oil producing areas of Nigeria also spring to mind.

The reasons why social peace are crucial to a functioning civil society are simple. Basically you need a peaceful environment in which the state and the citizenry can interact and shape government policy in between elections. At election time of course you need a peaceful environment to allow for reasoned debate, and a free and fair election process. Outside of that, without a socially peaceful environment other hallmarks of a functioning civil society such as moral debate, critical self-reflection on the identity and goals of the body politic etc. become of course near impossible. Dissent from the opinion of those who have the means and desire to use violence would of course be dangerous without social peace, so a fully functioning civil society would be impossible no?

Next is less obvious. Leisure time; it might not be something you think of immediately. I am not the first to say this, I know that George Orwell definitely said this. I am sure many other self-aware intellectuals must have realised that their ability to have such 'intellectually sophisticated' thoughts sprung at least in part from their having such vast pools of time in which to mull over that which should be committed to paper/propagated amongst the masses, and that which best be committed to the flames. Even moving beyond this rather intangible and for the broad mass of people tangential at best example even basic processes of a civil society like reasoned political debate through newspapers, neighbourhood meetings etc. require a lot of time. There needs to be a rich pool of talent that shapes the political agenda, and not only that, there needs to be a populous that has the time away from fighting for survival, ie. food subsistence (not an insignificant issue for many on the African continent) who have the energy to consider complex political equations. Africa has no problem with talent. When Africans have the same chances as Europeans the results can be the same, murderous generals (and brave ones too) and wonderful writers (I'm sure there are some who use too many kitsch clichés too).

Last and I suppose least is education. I say least because really, if you are hungry and there are guns being fired, how to solve a quadratic equation doesn't seem to be the most pressing issue. Nonetheless whilst this is very much the case we should not ignore the fact that if a society is well educated it is usually more likely to develop quicker, and concurrently there will be more people who have a proper understanding about the systems around them that shape their lives. I am not saying that a farmer struggling for survival doesn't know how the state is trying to steal from him and deceive him, I am just saying that a reporter who works for a national newspaper with contacts abroad maybe better able to manipulate the system into being less corrupt. For obvious reasons, a continent struggling to feed its people, with violence as a norm, education has taken a back seat.

If we impose democracy on an African state that does not have these three crucial ingredients, the procedure of democracy may function very well, but the procedure will be empty. It will not yield a transparent western state, subject to judicial review, citizen's activism and to the ultimate threat of the ballot box. Rather, the most likely outcome will be the appearance of a democratic process, marred either by fraud, violence, or just rampant corruption between elections.

Its funny but we as westerners are unwilling and unknowing collaborators in this whole sorry state of affairs. If you have a bank account you are party to investments in companies that do business with highly corrupt, labour exploiting dictatorships that help prolong much of the suffering that is still occurring on the African continent. I know its not something that you (and also I) want to think about, its horrible. This psychopathic disconnection between our actions and their consequences in this 'globalised' world we live in is not a positive development, but it should not be ignored. When the university I am currently attending preaches the virtues of 'globalisation' I think of that and feel disgusted by the kitschness of their empty platitudes.

The confetti mill

2010-11-27T12:13:00.002+09:00

Look I am no economist, but this issue is burning in my brain so I want to understand my own thoughts through the ever cathatic act of writing.

The US economy and its younger, smaller and ever so slightly less unbalanced younger brother the UK economy, is a weird mess of an economic imperial centre. Bluntly it produces much less than it consumes. We see this in the levels of consumer debt that make up for a lack of wages, we see this in the level of government debt which makes up for a lack of tax receipts, we see this in the level of financial service sector profits which makes up for a lack of manufacturing. We see this in the size of the service industry itself which poorly substitutes for actual production. Before you right me off as an industrial romantic, compare the trade current account's of Germany/ Japan, industrialised, and developed nations that have strong and robust manufacturing industries, or for that matter my current abode South Korea.

I have been reading my Joe Stiglitz and Robert Reich. I really do not claim to be even an amateur economist but what I see in this global economic system we inhabit is something really bizarre. Basically we have a global ponzi scheme called the Bretton Woods 2. US corporations use the entrenched position of the US dollar, US economic power in the world to outsource almost all productive processes to the 3rd World. All that is productive is done in the 3rd world, what is left is a shadow economy of services which require varying degrees of skill, from high tech design and IT, to selling. The United States is for all intents and purposes living of the legacy of its 1950s boom. It became the centre of world consumption after the war and from this it justified its position as the world's economic hegemon.

As a result we have this truly bizarre position where the United States consumer and government borrow far more than they produce. We have a pyramid of interlocking debt obligations which are unserviable and ultimately inflationary. For instance the US government has a debt of approximately $14 Trillion, the US banking sector has massive debts which are hidden beneath opaque accounting practices and federal guarentees. The US household debt is around the same level as that of the total Federal Government debt ( http://chartingtheeconomy.com/?p=1210). In any other economy this level of debt would result in inflation and probably hyperinflation. Money represents goods and services. If the money supply is much larger than production as a result of debt you should see inflation which lessens the value of money in order to correct for a lack of production.

The UK situation sufficit to say is not much different. When I was a radical anarchist in my teens and my friends, family and my friend's families would lecture me about the incentives, effieneny, and general victory of capitalism as a model for economic, social and political stability and progress. Its seem they were talking out of their hats. The Business community and the mainstream economists been either chronically deluded or willfully deceiving. The finance sector and the services based post-industrial consumption economic model is bluntly merely the short term enrichment of the rich, and the growth of living standards of the middle class through unsustainable debt attached to asset bubbles. House prices fueled increases in consumption not wages. Robert Reich tells us that productivity continued to rise through out this period but there was no increase in wages. There are plenty of economists who saw it, I didn't really understand at the time. At the time I ceathed with snobbish rage at the empty consumption lifestyle. Its complacence, its environmental implications, its emptiness.

Where did it start? Deindustrialisation in the US and UK started in earnest with the New Right and Neo-Liberalism. Services supplanted industry, and especially finance supplanted all other services. The experiment is not over yet, the finance industry lives on under the goodwill of the former imperial glories of the British government and the US treasury. It is the prestige and corner stone status of these two governments and the willing collaboration of other more successful exporters and developing countries that maintain a system which should have long since ended in default, disgrace and mass suffering.

Strangely though, for me I start to see signs of optimism. Maybe we can change. Maybe environmental crisis, new technology and manufacturing will resurrect the Anglo-American economise and drive them in new and more productive directions that will serve the average person.

성군정책을 이해하는걸 시도하자!

2010-11-12T11:35:00.004+09:00

선군정책은 일반적인한국사람한테 모르는거이고해서 이글을 쓰기로했다. 북한에대한 관심이 생기자마자 선군정책을 봤는데도 남한사람들은 보도방송을 관람하면서도 선군정책을 들어본적이없는것같다.

1996년에는 북한에서 대단히 심각하게 기근된체로 김정일이 선군정책을 전파시켰다. 북한 당국자밖에 왜그사상을 전파시켰는줄모르나 외교의필요하기로 (the needs of foreign policy) 생각한다면 김정일은 외부세계의감지에게 (the perception of the outside world) 국가의권력과 권위를 늘리고싶어한것같다. 아시아의공산주의국가말고는 소련과 관련이있는국가들이 모두 멸망됐으니까 다른국가바탕으로는 북한의적에게 안정성을 과시하고싶어한것같다.

그러나 선군정책은 근분적으로 새로운정책아니기란다. 대부분 1960년대부터는 북한'수뇌부'에게 군국화정책이 이뤄졌는데다가 매년 이정책이 심해졌다. 김일성은 폭력적으로만 '조국'통일을 성공할수있었을뿐이라고 본것같다. 그러니까 선군정책을 통해 군사와관계가있는 정부의비용이 변경하지않은것같으나 국가기관이 바뀐것같다. 이정책 때문에 내부선전의강조되는것이 바뀠는데다가 공동체를 통제하는방법이 변화된것같다. 로동당(노동당)의단체가 약해진대신에 군당국은 계획경제도 주민의생활과관렴있는규칙을 실시시키는걸 통제하게된것같다. 그렇다도해도 선군정책이 신설된것은 사회의 불안정성을 예방할수없는데 식량난 때문에 데체로 북한시민들은 배급제도로 식량을 수령할수없으면 영업을통해 식량을 구입하게됐다. 그리고 식량난이 악화될수록 범죄를저지르는행위의경우가 신속히 높아졌다. 예를들면 집단공장에서 집단농민들은 국가의농작물을 도용하고서 군인들이 국가에게 수확하도록 시골로 출동하게했다. 그런것은 기근전에 절대로 발생하지않았다. 또한 한국전쟁이 휴전명령됐을때부터 기근전까지 북한에 탈출해시도한사림이 수백명밖에 없었다. 기근때문에 이동의조절을 실시하지못하게됐다.

첫번째로 한국어로 블로그 쓰기

2010-10-11T20:31:00.004+09:00

나의 한국어 듣기를 가르치는 선생님과 이야기하며 선생님이 북한의 국가이름은 왜 '공산주의'를 부르는 대신에'민주주의' 라고 부르냐했기때문에 그글을썼다. 읽기전에 주의사항 2개있는데 '독재, 기반'가말고는 단어를잧지않고 나의 친구는 문법을고쳤다. 보낸후에 나의 친구는 '층'을 '단계'로 바꾸면 된다고 했다.

공산주의자들는 사회주의자들처럼 다른 경제와 사회체재를 세우기바랬는데 공산주의자들은 다른 체제를 세운다면 우리는 국가가 불필요하게됐을 것이라고 생각했다. 그때문에 공산주의와 관련이있는 정부들은 '공산주의'라고 국가를 불렀다면 그이름이 그국가의 기본관념을 반대했을것이다.

마르크스의생각에 따르면 역사를 단계으로 나눴는데 혁명을 통해서 자본주의의층이 끝나는데 자세하게 근로자들은 정당을 통해서 자본주의가 끝날거라고 생각했다. 그렇다면 새로운 국가의형태를 세우고 그런국가는 '프롤레타리아 독재'라고 마르크스가 말했다. 북한, 소련, 베트남 사회주의 공화국 등은 그런관념이 기반으로 국가를 세웠다.

Whilst I was talking with my Korean listening teacher because she asked why North Korea is called 'Democratic' instead of Communist I have written this piece. Before reading there are two points to note, I looked up the words 'Dictatorship and foundational' and my Korean friend checked it.

Communists like Socialists hope to create a different social and political system, but Communists think if they were establish their system we would no longer have any need for a state. Because of this if governments with a connection to communism were to call their states 'Communist' that name would be in opposition to the founding principles of that state.

According to Marx, history was divided into states; through revolution capitalism the capitalist stage will end, but specifically the Workers will through a political party end the Capitalist stage. Marx said if that were to happen a new state form would be created called the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'. According to these foundational principles the North Korea state, the Soviet Union, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam etc. were created.

Cease Fire!

2010-10-09T23:01:00.001+09:00

Find my latest foray into North Korea right here:
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/2010/10/special-report-north-korea/

American Empire: Part Five

2010-06-22T22:21:00.003+09:00

The death of Kennedy came at the peak of his power and appeal. Yet if he had stayed in power much longer he probably would not have been remembered so fondly. Kennedy was a man of exceptional personal charm and charisma, I am sure his serial affairs could testify to that. Furthermore he was certainly not a polarising figure. Although his election was one of the closest in US history; Kennedy sought to unite the country in a number of ways. Its funny although I do accept that there is a great deal of truth to the 'Cultural Industry' theory of capitalist societies this does not mean that people do not have freedom to make a choice. Most people follow which section of the elite they chose to blindly trust (I.E. the choice between slightly lefter elites and righter); but nonetheless there is a choice, and the choice is constantly can always change. Kennedy sought to follow the elite consensus of hawkishness towards the Soviets. He scaremongered about a 'missile gap' between the Soviet Union and the United States (one did exist but in the opposite direction). When in charge he pursued a reactionary policy towards Castro, trying to topple his regime repeatedly. Then when it came to the Cuban missile crisis, rather than seeing Khrushchev as merely copying similar US nuclear weapon placements in Turkey (next to the Soviet Union) he pursued a policy that risked Nuclear War. This is classic nuclear brinkmanship of the North Korean style though no one calls it that in the history books because of our all too rosy, naive view of the US place in the world.

Furthermore on the domestic front Kennedy sought to temper the call for civil rights and equality. He was not a vocal advocate of black emancipation, although he met with Martin Luther King advised him to not pursue full emancipation, he thought it would be a pyrrhic victory. Yet again this was classic Kennedy horse trading to appear popular, luckily it worked because the United States remained in a period of unparalleled prosperity. US economic power was largely unopposed in the world, it was at the cutting edge of world manufacturing and the global cultural leader (think Hollywood). By contrast Obama who now seeks to emulate Kennedy faces an elite racked by late imperial profligacy, a nation economically in crisis and politically divided. Therefore a consensus style just appears weak, and rather pathetic. Kennedy's style can also be seen in the massive tax cuts that he pushed through for the rich; his rhetorical device for this was 'A rising tide lifts all boats'. A rather seductive and beguiling phrase; reflexively coming from Socialist roots I disagree. The War on poverty did more to lift boats through redistribution than Kennedy's effective redistribution from the state which predominantly enriches the poor, directly to the rich. Nonetheless in a society founded on a dream of becoming prosperous one can understand why Kennedy's policy would be popular even to those who it did not directly benefit. The aspirant middle class is a phenomenon that all good pollsters talk about nowadays; they are a large bloc of voters who aspire to have a life just like the upper class, therefore they think of themselves in those terms when it comes to government policy even though those policies will give them no short term economic benefits.

There is of course a more old fashioned left wing way of looking at this. The cultural industry is owned by the elite, the elite benefits from tax cuts so therefore sets up foundations, institutes, research centres to educate people in the economic science of why tax cuts are not only good for the rich but for everyone. In a real sense the people who are educated in the goodness of tax cuts can probably see why they are good, they can get a job at a newspaper or university promoting them. So therefore tax cuts are good for them, it gives them a guaranteed income from a rich source! But more importantly these ideas begin to spread throughout civil society, they become a reputable opinion held at least by a substantial minority. These people can then start to create 'false consciousness' amongst the masses, so they start to see tax cuts as in their interests, they start to identify the economic interests of a few rich people as being in the interests of everyone. The national economy itself will benefit, the money will trickle down and everyone will be better off. Its all too funny, whilst this explanation is too simplistic it is undoubtedly true that more heavily taxed developed economies have better social services and lower levels of income inequality (compare Finland with the USA).

The Kennedy presidency ended gruesomely. Yet if he had lived longer it would have ended in a similar way for many other Americans. There was choices that had to be made that were made by his successor. Unresolved foreign policy questions hung in the air, decolonisation (think Africa and Vietnam). Massive unresolved domestic policy questions (health policy, social welfare and racial questions). Lyndon Johnson is not fondly remembered by history, all his successes are forgotten by most people who know his name. He is merely remembered for one reason, Vietnam. For good reason in actual fact, at least in some ways.

When we think of government profligacy surely we must look to George W. Bush in cutting taxes for the rich whilst seeking to wage two wars. Lyndon Johnson went even further, he deployed more troops in Vietnam at the height of the War than the US has at any time in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, this after his predecessor had cut taxes for the rich. Concurrently he pursued some of the most Whiggish policies on the home-front of any US imperial president. He was the David Lloyd George of domestic policy and Cecil Rhodes of foreign policy. The Great Society program was one of the most enlightened programs of the post-war era, it involved a massively redistributive war on poverty and concurrently sought to breakdown one of the biggest courses of privation, discrimination. I do not consider it necessary to tell the complete story of blacks in America, suffice it to say, they were systematically and legally discriminated against. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did much to change this. In this regard Johnson was far less scared than his predecessors' of white opinion. As a result however the democratic party and the white population of America was politically transformed. The American equivalent of the working class Tory (or blue collar reactionary!) emerged. A group of people whose economic interests were almost identical to an ethnic minority, but who empathised with the contrary interests of others in their ethnic group. In real terms the Democratic Party was a coalition of elite interests, northern and southern whites who saw their economic and social interests represented in a progressive and socially conservative Democratic party. This coalition began to crack as blacks started to join the party. It was evident that there would eventually be a fateful choice; in 1948 Hubert H. Humphrey who would become Johnson's vice-president added black emancipation to the Democratic political platform. The result of Johnson's progress was that the Democrats lost the south. They also lost many white voters. They became a minority white party in a nation where the whites were the dominant ethnic group. Thus the American empire would become more reactionary at home and abroad.

American Empire: Part Four

2010-06-20T17:41:00.003+09:00

To round off Eisenhower's successful imperial presidency we would see the limits of US imperial power long before Vietnam became a quagmire. Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959 from a US client. He managed to stay in power until the 21st Century. His regime has outlasted him and may last for years to come. The US sought to use Cuba as a sugar plantation for their food companies. Unfortunately a vanguard of Cubans successfully overthrew their greedy, corrupt government and instituted classical Leninism (in all its normal horrors!). Eisenhower and his successors tried to subvert this glorious socialist state (I hope I don't need to tell you that's sarcasm), but to no avail. This brings us nicely on to the rather too brief and exceptionally overrated Kennedy presidency. Kennedy is loved still today by most educated Americans as some kind of beach of hope gunned in the prime of youth. I can understand why, he was one of the youngest US presidents in American history. He was exceptionally handsome, dapper, a great speaker, the man was very unlike his aged (and rather good) predecessor. And when you look at his bald, hapless/paranoid successors (until Carter) you can understand why in context he was a 'blue sky' president. Nonetheless the man was far less liberal on the homefront than his successor and started the second phase of that war.

There is a debate that rages between historians over whether Kennedy gave Johnson no choice but to escalate the war in Vietnam. I wonder if Eisenhower would have been so foolish as to listen to the foolhardy advice of a bunch of Generals who had not commanded any major wars. They were a new generation, these generals had gained the seniority after the Korean war and therefore didn't have much in the way of command experience in the heady Pax Americana of the period of 1953-1964. Moreover the Vietnam War was even more of a fools errand if we remember that the French had fought a losing battle since the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Kennedy's policy of exponentially increasing financial aid and the number of military advisers made sense to him and his Pentagon advisers. They were labouring under a Cold War theory, the so called 'Domino Theory'. The logic of escalation, of as Kennedy put it in his inaugural address

'Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'

If one state fell there was a high probability that others would follow suit. In this context if Vietnam fell then the Communist movements in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand would gain a significant ally and safe house in the form of United Communist Vietnam. I am trying not to start the unending discussion of Vietnam, this will be Johnson's part (coincidentially, Korean guys use the word Johnson as slag for their penises here is my friend talking about it: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150177285405517).

The other major imperial disaster of Kennedy's presidency was the Cuba situation. It didn't disappear with Eisenhower's rather wonderful farewell address to the nation. In fact the situation escalated, Kennedy sent a bunch of anti-Communist Cuban guerrillas to try and overthrow the Castro regime, this is what is now known as the Bay of Pigs fiasco. US power was again checked, the virtuous rhetoric and fact that the mercenaries were Cubans did not disguise that it was an embarrassing defeat in the naked pursuit to maintain absolute power over US's sovereign domain of the Americas. Castro would continue to embarrass the US government who for one reason or another would not modify their policies towards his regime. Having thought about this it must have made a lot of sense to blockade a hostile communist regime in the 1960s. Giving the comfort of American goods and access to American markets (and the resultant possibility of accumulating Hard currency) was of course something to be avoided. Furthermore it would send a powerful signal to other third world statesmen that the hegemon could tangibly punish your disobedience. The third reason that I have heard offered is that the powerful domestic lobby of Cuban Americans perpetuate this policy. The argument goes that they are an important bloc in a swing state (Florida) who exert a disproportionate influence over this area of policy because of their lobbying power, and their votes. This does not seem all that convincing, there are plenty of minorities with such powers who should have stopped their US from opening relations. Consider the Vietnamese lobby, the Taiwanese lobby etc. The tail wagging the dog does not seem that convincing. Rather I believe it must still be a principled stand; the United States does not tolerate disobedience in one of its central spheres of interest.

The Soviet's response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco was to up the ante. The resultant Cuban missile crisis was a far more major victory for the US empire than most people realise. It solidified a number of disagreements in the Soviet bloc between the Chinese and the Soviet Union. It was also the turning point in relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union. These states would never again be part of the Soviet bloc in their foreign policies, they would to a large degree take their own independent line in foreign and domestic policies. This was important as not only meant that the Kremlin had a socialist competitor in China but they also had another disobedient client state in North Korea. For the United States this mean that it could enjoy the fruits of divided Marx-Leninist movements across the third world. This made it much easier to install friendly client states in third world. Furthermore Chinese aligned states were usually perceived as far less threatening and worthy of US attention than Soviet aligned states. Think no further than the Rhodesian Bush War where two liberation movements, representing two ethnicities, one aligned with the Soviet Union and one aligned with the Chinese. Think also of Cambodia under Pol Pot (aligned with the PRC) and Vietnam (aligned with the USSR), and the war of 1979 between the two. So much seemingly unnecessary political factionalism and war within the socialist bloc which could only weaken it. Much to the advantage of the US empire.

American Empire: Part Three

2010-06-20T14:54:00.006+09:00

To get back to history and events, Eisenhower successfully ended the Korean War which was his campaign pledge. Actually the exact pledge was 'I will go to Korea'. Eisenhower was a smart man, a former general, a conservative of the pragmatic mold. Many people who today vote for the Democrats would probably have voted for Eisenhower if he had been on the ballot in 2008. He appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court. The Warren Court would become the most Liberal of American history, reinterpreting the constitution in order to end segregation, bans on mixed marriages, and many other landmark decisions. Eisenhower said he regretted his appointment in retrospect, but maybe we should understand the context in which Eisenhower made this remark. America began to tear itself to pieces in the 1960s, as President Johnson said 'Law and Order have broken down in (I can't remember the place name!)'. Eisenhower seeing this, with his Burkean conservative views would have blamed the Warren court for moving to rapidly in trying to correct social ills. When a judicial elite tries to engineer a better society they more often break the social bonds and norms which keep society at peace.

Getting back to Eisenhower, he should not be credited with ending the war. This was a matter of changes in the Kremlin. Stalin's death in 1953 changed the Cold War. Beria, Khrushchev and Malenkov formed a tripartite collective leadership in the Kremlin; they immediately sought to end the fruitless war in Korea. They had the support of their soon-to-be ex-client Kim Il Sung who knew that his countrymen were almost at breaking-point. US aerial bombardment had destroyed the vast majority of North Korean homes and factories, the North Koreans had become an underground dwelling people, living on starvation rations in a latter day, subterranean Sparta. So the truce was not so much Eisenhower's success as it was the Kremlin giving a reprieve to this shattered land.

In Imperial terms the rest of his presidency was for the most part highly successful with a few notable incidents. The first is held up in many Left wing narratives of US history as proof of the domineering power of Corporate interests over the US government. Guatemala in 1954 was led by a Socialist, but democratic government which sought to put into public ownership a number of plantations owned by the United Fruit company. John Foster Dulles who was Secretary of State at that time had been on the board of directors of the United Fruit Company before becoming Secretary of State. And maybe for that reason he was instrumental in organising a CIA-led coup against the Guatemalan Socialists. This seems scandalous, and quite frankly in some ways it is. But one must remember that the Soviet Union in the same position would have behaved in the same way. In fact it did, in 1956 when Imry Nagy declared Hungarian independence from the Socialist bloc the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union invaded and toppled this radical reformist government.

US policies towards South America are classically imperialist. They date back to the Monroe doctrine of 1812; James Monroe the president at that time, defined South America as a sphere of US imperial interests. This doctrine remains the foundation of US foreign policy in South America. Although as a side note, South America becomes less and less pliant as China rises and US power in relative terms wanes. Furthermore the policy has to a large extent been self defeating, the Coups, drug cartels and terrorist organisations (sorry should I say liberators?!) that have either been directly backed by the Pentagon or arisen in opposition have created a number of failed states in the region and a number of hostile anti-American states. When I think of state failure, I think of Mexico, Haiti, and Columbia. When I think of hostile states I think of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Terrorist organisations that spring to mind include the Shining Path (Peru), the Zapatistas (Mexico, they are almost freedom fighters, I just can't help myself!), and the FARC (Columbia). To be sure there have been notable latter day democratisation success stories; Brazil, Chile, Venezuela (yes Hugo Chavez is not a dictator!) and others. Yet the pathetic level of development in South America must be partly blamed on CIA interference and US corporate neo-Colonialism in the legitimately sovereign affairs of these people. And yet, whilst this Left-wing narrative is bewitching and ever so correct in many respects we should not forget the other side. Park Chung-hee was a US client, he led a coup that deposed an at least partially democratic government. His favourite saying about America was 'What do the US bastards know?!', yet he was staunchly pro-American. He was also a far more enlightened man than any of these brutal dictators that the Americans installed in South America. The elite itself in this part of the world seems to be half the problem; they have no enlightened sense of self-interest, nor do they seem to want to develop their countries. Rather they preferred to cream off the fruits of their countrymen's hard labour for US corporations, and use it to enrich themselves and perpetuate the neo-Colonial wage slavery. Certainly the US empire should be partially blamed but do not forget who aided and abetted them at every turn.

Eisenhower was also the man who started the Vietnam War. This is a point that many people outside academic circles who are not French do not know. The French had colonised Vietnam in the 19th Century, they regained control after World War Two and had to fight a battle with the Vietminh for control of their colonial possession. The Vietminh were a revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist organisation; the bulk of the Vietnamese people perceived them as liberators and for good reason. The French backed the King, his criminal syndicates, Feudal privileges and mercenary armies. The colonial masters not only sought to maintain foreign hegemony but they also sought to maintain a state that had no legitimacy and was the bane of all common Vietnamese people. Eisenhower thinking in classical realpolitik terms sought to help his friends in Vietnam (the French) and maintain a friendly nation, and understandably so. So he began to fund French anti-Guerilla operations. This was the start of the unwinnable war.

In a classically ironic double stroke Eisenhower did quite the opposite during the Suez crisis. Gamel Abdel Nassar the very popular President of Egypt (who was a dictator) tried to nationalise his country's oil supplies, it provoked the British, French and Israelis to invade to try and stop him. They were doing no worse than what Eisenhower's administration had done in South America but it was against US interests in the third world at the time. The US empire was not the lips to Israel's teeth at this time, the close Israeli-US alliance was actually not that close at this time. Concurrently Nasser was a symbol of post-colonial Arab and third-world nationalism; he was a potent symbol for the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) and this invasion smacked too much of colonialism. It would just push many decolonising movements further into the arms of the KGB and the Soviet Union. Some rather naive historians portray Eisenhower's motives as being that of a man who believed in the 'American' values of universal freedom and sovereignty. Let us not kid ourselves, this was a realpolitik decision born out of the need to win the competition for the third world. Eisenhower pressured the UK to withdraw, threatening to sell all of the US treasury's sterling holdings. It worked. Egypt emerged victorious, Nasser would live until 1967, and is still loved across Arabia. I can't help but rather like him too. He was an ardent secularist, and a pan-Arab nationalist. Meaning that he wanted to create a more confederal, secular middle east.

American Empire: Part Two

2010-06-19T21:22:00.006+09:00

It started inauspiciously at the Bretton Woods conference but this is often forgotten. Instead when many of us think of the unbridled use of force that marks the start of an imperial expansion, we think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is certainly the second key event in the foundation of the US Empire. It was the ultimate expression of imperial power. A symbol of unrestrained global dominance. It also more tangibly created a US strategic bridgehead in East Asia, Japan became a home to US troops. Yet the use of the bomb was the apex of US power that would never be repeated, and hopefully never will. The United States lost its nuclear monopoly in 1949 and now Nuclear proliferation is a serious concern to the Pentagon as it threatens a key pillar of US power, its first-strike capability.

The first event that demonstrated the limits of US imperial power was the Korean War. An American client the Republic of Korea almost ceased to exist as Kim Il Sung launched a surprise invasion on 25th June 1950. The 'Police Action' the United States launched to defend its client resulted in the liberation of South Korea. Yet America sought to expand its imperial dominance of the Korean peninsula by conquering the North, this choice immediately demonstrated the limits of US power as China intervened on behalf of their North Korean allies. The war lasted three years and ended in stalemate. The leader of US forces until 1951, General Douglas MacArthur, wanted to use Nuclear weapons to break the stalemate. He was a man before his time, a proto-Neocon; a man of great imperial hubris. If he had become president the world may have been annihilated before the end of his first term. Yet the man in the White House at that time was a sane man of Realpolitik. President Truman who is hated by history, saw the immense danger of using Nuclear weapons. It would set a dangerous precedent, and could potentially spark a Third World War. It would create immense insecurity in the international system, Soviet clients would fear the irrational and rampant US imperial hoards. The Soviets may feel obligated to retaliate. Thus Truman did not use Nuclear weapons in Korea, nor did his successor Dwight Eisenhower.

It demonstrated an unwillingness to use scorched earth policies that are the hallmark of absolute imperial domination. If we look at any of the empires of world history, for instance Ancient Rome, the Mongolian Yuan empire, or the French Empire, their was an understanding that overwhelming and brutal force would be used if necessary in order to maintain power. Yet Truman cringed at the thought, he was not prepared to be an American Genghis Khan. Yet this was not the case for all American Imperial presidents. In the fight for 'freedom', anything and everything was on the table. This is not to say that in other ways America didn't use such tactics in Korea. As Bruce Cumings points out, Napalm was first used by the US army in Korea; we usually associate Napalm with Vietnam, but it was actually used against innocent North Korean civilians before the Vietnamese.

Eisenhower's presidency ended with a prescient, prophetic vision of what would become undoing of this growing Empire of freedom. In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower warned of the danger of a permanent military-industrial complex which sought war not as a last resort but as an economic imperative. This complex is still with us today, in fact it is far larger today than it was when Eisenhower was warning of it. It remains a major reason why America fights so many wars; American imperial power is expressed not merely to maintain the perception of its hegemony but also in order to continue the flow of dollars from the US taxpayer to the massive arms cartels.

Interest groups are the natural product of a pluralistic society like the United States. Interest groups include unions, parties, demographics, and corporations. They shape the political process in their favour through lobbying. Lobbying usually involves what a preacher would call sin, what I would call legalised corruption. In order to demonstrate to a politician or a bureaucrat the value of their own concerns and interests, interest groups usually have to appeal to the base desires of their politicians. The military-industrial complex is no different in this regard and its lobbying pressure is crucial in the rise of American empire. But there is a degree of mistaking cause for effect amongst some left-wing scholars. What seems clear is that the threat from Soviet expansion necessitated a massive increase in military spending in order to deter Soviet expansion. The lobby itself grew from increased defence procurement, rather than being an attempt to merely expand the defence budget, it was an attempt by individual companies to expand their market share. Yet we must also remember that increases in military spending usually coincide with the perception of increased insecurity. So therefore it would be natural for arms companies to attempt to build a sense of insecurity in order to increase the size of their market (in this case the US government).

Much is made of the corrupting influence on the contemporary American political process. Both Left and Right blame what they perceive to be the interest groups of the latter for the failure of the US government in pet policy arenas. Here are two examples to illustrate the point. The Left blames 'Big Oil' for the current energy crisis that America faces, this crisis is manifold, multi-dimensional; its the crisis facing an society founded on industrialised mass consumption. Furthermore in the age of plastics, and the age of the internal combustion engine, oil is a necessary foundation to our consumption. Even if we ignore/curtail frivolous consumption on consumer goods like IPODs, and stop using plastic packaging, and walk everywhere the problem remains. Freight uses oil, and plastics are an irreplaceable component of 21st Century high-tech industry. Sadly it is not so simple to blame the Oil lobby for these problems. Oil's stranglehold on the world is not founded on lobbying; country's without a Oil lobby still have massive oil dependency issues. Rather the lobby can only exacerbate the problem for example by demanding less rigorous pollution standards.

The Right makes a similar mistake. The permissive liberalism at the heart of US immigration policy has resulted in an explosion of illegal immigration. Undoubtedly the Latino immigrant community is a very powerful lobby with the Democratic Party. They vote Democrat by large margins, and they have become increasingly important in winning elections for the Democrats. Nonetheless whilst this is certainly the case, we must not forget who illegal immigration actually benefits. Illegal immigrants are usually employed at very low wages in unskilled jobs; the wages they are paid no legal worker would accept. Furthermore given the expectations engineered by the post-war boom of American consumer capitalism its easy to understand why a white American would not settle for such pay. However a Mexican citizen with a family in Mexico who need cash to survive (in a country with a failed state) such pay is enough. The American system itself has a great use for this labour power. To simply blame the Latino vote is obviously very simplistic.

This brings us back to interest group politics. Are interest groups the reason why the American empire became chronically overstretched; are they the reason that the United States cannot afford to provide jobs to over 10% of its citizens. Are they the reason why over 50 million Americans do not have health insurance? The simple answer is yes and no. Who decides government policy? Politician, bureaucrats and their advisers. Interest groups of course shape the perceptions of politicians, but their ideologies and circumstances are also equally important. The current structure of the US health industry for instance can be traced back to Richard Nixon. He made a decision to go with the market because of his ideology, lobbying from friends in the health industry but also circumstances. The US budget was overstretched in the early 1970s, it seemed fiscally advisable to allow the market to sort out provision when the alternative was to further strangle the US taxpayer. In retrospect this was the wrong decision, but it probably was not made out of malice, but out of pragmatism.

American Empire: Part One

2010-06-19T21:05:00.001+09:00

When did it all go badly wrong for the US empire. I suppose it is best to start at the beginning; the term itself is of course a tad problematic for many English speakers, especially residents of that ‘Beautiful country’ as it is known in Korean (via the medium of Chinese characters). I will use it because I hail from firmly left-wing roots of a lower middle-class teenager who subconsciously resented the fact he didn’t go to private school. Being an ex-Marxist, turned pragmatist I have noticed a tendency in many left-wing writings to attribute to mendacious agency what is far more adequately explained through foolishness and blind luck. Thus that is how I interpret the rise of the US empire. We could class the first white settler state as the start, conquering what they called ‘virgin fields’ but which were actually nothing of the sort. America was a land with a people long before my forefathers took it upon themselves to colonise the place. Nonetheless whilst this was part of a vast British imperial project, and could (probably should) be classed as an empire from the beginning of its existence, I will ignore this anomaly.

Rather then, the American empire started by accident in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire. This is a rather famous, and yet far more seminal event in world history than most historians give it credit. Here is where the post-war global financial architecture was formed. We should not forget that to have an empire you must have a dominant currency. British imperial power rested on the pound. The imperial power of the United States rested and still rests on the fact that the dollar is the global reserve currency, universally convertible and usable in any commercial level transaction even in North Korea. Bretton Woods marked the start of America’s pre-eminent status as the world’s banker, both as a sovereign entity and on Wall Street in the private sector. Sovereign nations who needed credit had serious problems during the Great Depression, thus a series of financial institutions were created at Bretton Woods which would insure that the Great Depression would not recur. These included the IMF and World Bank which remain with us today and are key instruments of US imperial power. The way they work is well known so I will not dwell on their functioning suffice it to say most of the capital that the IMF lends is US money. Thus it gives a great deal of leverage to the United States over any country that requires IMF loans.

Bretton Woods was itself the product of British imperial eclipse. Our Empire began to break away as we became deeply indebted and no longer able to finance the huge cost of an empire of diminishing returns. Furthermore the appetite for independence amongst the ‘natives’ should not be underestimated. Anyway suffice it to say America stepped into the breach as did the Soviet Union. Britain whilst having the largest empire, was not the only imperial power in continental Europe. The French, Portugese, Spanish, Belgium’s and Italians all had large empires stretching across what we call the Third World. As these empires collapsed in the 1950s and 1960s they were replaced by states that sought to align with either the Soviet Union or the United States in the cold war. There were of course a few exceptions, there always are; they formed what became known as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which included truly neutral states like Yugoslavia and India, weird places like North Korea, and then erstwhile Soviet allies like Cuba (for some bizarre reasons). Nonetheless lets back to the main topic when did it all start to go wrong for the American empire? When did the decline begin?

The US empire is founded on a number of simple principles. First, US policy makers believe in the benevolence of US power and the benefits to the world of its hegemonic ubiquity far beyond the corridors of power in Washington. Second, they believe in the need to maintain a world market dominated by Liberal states, which have ‘free’ economies. These principles in themselves are not as quintessentially American as you might think; in fact the idea of maintaining an Empire was anathema to the United States well into the twentieth century. Isolationism remained the dominant paradigm of US foreign policy up until 1914. Many did not want to become entangled in a European war or part of the European global system beyond trade. Nonetheless there were imperialists in America going back to its foundation; America did invade Mexico and the Philippines in the 19th/20th Centuries. Closer to home let us not forget the ‘General Sherman incident’ where an American ship tried to forcibly open Pyongyang to trade in the 1860s. Nonetheless it was only as a result of the Great Depression that US thinking was fundamentally altered. The Great Depression was prolonged by the breakdown of the global market, countries across Europe erected trade barriers and implemented capital controls in order to try and stop runs on their currencies and economic failure. A lack of mutual economic dependence was also blamed for the outbreak of the Second World War. Thus America sought to reconstruct the world in its own image. Also remember the threat of the Soviet Union was a pressing concern for the United States. America was to be a reluctant imperialist who was handed its role because of an internecine Europe war that resulted in the spread of Communism and a Third World power vacuum.

The World Cup, expats and Korean nationalism

2010-06-18T13:54:00.005+09:00

There is nothing that seems so bizarre and yet so normal to all my friends in Korea than dressing in Red and supporting the Korean national team. During the World Cup Korea becomes football crazy; when Korea plays, the world stops, 75% of all people put on a red shirt with English language slogans on them about Korea's victory or 'fighting'. Its kitsch, silly and stupid, I hate cheap patriotism. But there are massive anomalies in this, that none of my foreign friends seem to recognize or care to notice.

Korean patriotism is merely a softer form of Korean nationalism; Koreans are one, racially homogeneous master race according to the grand narrative of Korean nationalism. They stand apart from a globalizing world, defined by the enmity towards the brutal, cunning Japanese and dirty, uncivilized Chinese. Korean's are naive, simple and civilized people as Brian Myers says of North Korean literature, South Korean nationalists perceive themselves in the same way. This sea of red is an exclusionary, exclusive, ethno-nationalist group expression. It is not for us foreigners; in fact it is defined by the dichotomy of 'insider' Koreans and 'outsider' foreigners.

My foreign friends who wear their red and participate in the Korean nationalist wave all give me a similar reason for it. They're trying to get to know a culture, and participate in a harmless sporting event. Yet what's forgotten by them is that most Koreans do not care about football itself. Most Koreans do not watch football except during the world cup, and do not play football. This is just a nationalistic (and commercial) fetish; participating in such events makes no sense to me. Furthermore I doubt it makes much sense to most Koreans seeing foreigners participate in something that is explicitly not for them. It almost appears patronizing to try to imitate a nationalist group wave. If I were Korean nationalist, I would find it offensive, in the same way as I would find it offensive if someone thought I was so stupid that they had to talk to me slowly in my own language.

Before I sound like a hypocritical racist. I would say the same things about any ethno-nationalist or even just patriotic wave. When English people don their shirts and support the national team they do not do so in racial terms. Britain is still a multi-ethnic state; England used to be the metropolitan centre of an inclusive multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan, global empire. So we have black, and white players. I much prefer this, I really hate ethno-nationalism, it reminds me of fascism because of my European cultural roots. Nonetheless its still ridiculous to me. It's something I find very discomforting. Why does a state deserve to be treated like a parent, with loyalty and respect? Its an inhuman structure of symbols, ideas, bureaucratic processes and institutions. It does things which are good and things which are bad. We do not owe it unconditional allegiance and we should not take pride in it, it does many terrible things. Korean nationalism is far more discomforting to me, it reminds me of Nazism, although it must be said it is not at present expansionist. Many Koreans do care about Dokdo, and I would class this as somewhat expansionist. But I doubt Korean nationalists will succeed in making war out of this.

Yet it is also truly paradoxical and bizarre. Why do Koreans don t-shirts that are written in the language of the United States, a country that so many progressives blame for dividing their country. Korean nationalism's greatest pride is King Sejong, the man who invented the Korean alphabet. The alphabet one of the ultimate symbols of ethnic particularity. It seems ever so strange and contradictory. Why are the slogans in Konglish, a Koreanisation of American English words; Koreans often say Paiting (fighting), and go K'ori'a.

Its even more ironic that the word 'Korea' is used. The word is a bastardized Romanisation of the word Koryŏ, the name of the dynasty that ruled Korea from 918-1392. I have not been able to trace its precise origins, but the name Corea/Korea appeared on western maps before 1392 so the name stuck in English before a new dynasty called Chosŏn was founded in 1392. Anyways the reason why this is so bizarre is that the name of Korea in the Korean language is Han'guk. This name is a shorted form of Taehanmin'guk, the name itself means 'Great Han People's Nation'. The word Han is very significant in this, it is associated with a group of states that existed on the Korean peninsula in ancient times, the so-called 'Three Han states period'. Han therefore is used to harken back to a great time of independence for the Korean race. Furthermore the name was chosen in 1897 (at that time Taehanjaeguk) when Korea switched from being a tributary nation of Confucian China to being an empire (in name only). The choice of name reflected the desire of the Korean court to rid itself of the legacy of dependence on China (in Korean 'Sadaejuui'). In 1392 when the new Korean dynasty asked China what it should name itself China chose the name Chosŏn over the name 'Han'. So in a symbolic act of retroactive defiance the court changed the name.

The Japanese when they colonized Korea in 1910 eliminated the name, reverting it back to Chosŏn. Nonetheless the name was resurrected by the South Koreans in 1945. The word Korea is a bad western translation of a dynasty that has not existed in Korea since 1392. Why is it now being used as a slogan of popular Korean nationalism?! The word Koryŏ is now associated with the North Korean reunification policy of the 'Democratic Republic of Koryŏ' so to me it seems even more ironic that Korean people should use a bad romanisation of a word now used by North Koreans in their bid for unification.

This is an ever so strange contradictory blend of racial hatred of outsiders, plus an almost slavish adoption of so many foreign cultural symbols. Many Korean parents would hate the idea of their children marrying foreigners. Most Korean girls think western men are dangerous, I got accused of sexual harassment two days ago for doing little more than ask a girl why she was wearing a formal evening gown during the afternoon. (She probably misunderstood my words are nighty, but still the assumption is that I am a pervert gagging for sex.)

I just do not understand, and I am starting to feel the same way about South Korean nationalism as I do about English patriotism. Am I supposed to accept it for what it is? Should I allow my back to break into cultural relativism, and just accept another culture on its own terms? This is a cynical ploy by media executives in the pay of a number of vast corporations who sell their products through appeals to nationalist sentiment (just look at SK telecom, how much more brazen can you get?!). Its also an ideology of national unity that is so important for the South Korean state to rap itself in. Why should it not be criticized? Why should it be respected? Its not a personal choice, its an ideology of the cultural industry; an ideology of a state that does good and bad things and attempts to make itself above criticism through appeals to the imagined idea of race. Its thoroughly worthy of critique.

Post-mortem:
I suppose I maybe attributed a tad too much malice to something that whilst infuriating is quite harmless. Nationalism is blind, bumbling and stupid, yet it needn't end in confrontation or war. Moreover most of the people who were watching the game were probably just there to have a good time, not to partake in some kind of fascist parade.

"The Shapelessness of Macro-Political Organisation" What the hell does that mean?!

2010-06-11T16:40:00.003+09:00

I was reading an article on the collapse of North Korean Stalinism by Andrei Lankov (http://www.nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=198). The man is my biggest hero; if I had to whittle his work down to a few salient points he uses technical vocabulary only when absolutely necessary, he is very insightful, witty and he uses the word 'Stalinist' with some provisos to describe Kim Il Sung era North Korea.

But although the man is an excellent writer, he did cite another rather less transparent man when he was defining Stalinism as a concept. I doubt many people have heard of Seweryn Bialer, but he in his scholarly definition of Stalinism he uses the phrase in the title of this blog. Whilst the phrase is rather difficult of get a handle on I think I have finally understood what it means in practice.

The idea of 'Totalitarianism' as a scholarly term, has fallen out of fashion. In the Cold War it became a term of abuse for any regime that those on the democratic left and right chose to vilify; classic examples of totalitarianism that are often given are Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany etc. But in practice whilst these regimes erected impressive propaganda façades of monolithic unity, total control and submission of their peoples, the reality was obviously more complex. The first people I could find who used the term were Italian Fascists, whose own dictatorship whilst very brutal, was economically and politically laughable. The term was part of the aforementioned ideological fiction. Yet this fiction was believed ex post facto by many political theorists and historians; Hannah Arendt, one of the great post-war European public intellectuals used the term in her understanding of Communism and Fascism. Karl Popper who hailed from similar ideological roots, and from the same time also used the term in the same context. Outside the realm of political philosophy, the more events focused Zbigniew Brzezinski used the term in his analysis of the Soviet Union.

Yet these regimes were administratively and politically anarchic. Whilst certainly they were one-man dictatorships in principle, in reality, whilst power was concentrated in the hands of a few people, there was a great deal of confusion. This confusion was caused by the 'Shapelessness of Macro-political organisation'. This term translates into reality as conflict and overlap between the political party, the state/government and the military. To give a Soviet example, there was both a government cabinet and the more famous party duplicate the 'Politburo' or Political Committee. In Hitler's Reich there were two agencies that undertook espionage activities, the SS and the Abwehr (military intelligence). The SS obviously has infamous cult status, but the Abwehr is not widely known outside historical circles as a hot bed of anti-Nazi resistance. This is a classic example of administrative anarchy which empowers individuals within the state to act on their own for their own advantage or even 'worse', actively against the state.

In the North Korean context the situation is far more opaque, but nonetheless we know rather more than the 'nothing' that the western media sometimes says. The North Korean political structure has three major, and overlapping structures; the party, state and military. There overall power and the difference between them is not widely known in English language publications. What appears clear is that there is a small oligarchy that surrounds Kim Jong Il who have their power through their loyalty, family backgrounds and I am sure to a small degree their competence. Much has been made of North Korea's military first 'Songun' Politics (선군정치), what this means in practice is that the top organ of state is the National Defence Commission (국방위원회). Yet this doesn't mean that the country is just run by a bunch of geriatric generals. So far as we know Kim Jong Il is the man who runs the country, this is what defectors like Hwang Jang Yop say. Yet control of the economy and the army itself at an every day level cannot merely be managed by one man. This is the same for all one-man dictatorships, there has to be a degree of delegation to trusted confidantes. Yet in the North Korean context, some party agencies for instance the 'Organisation and Guidance Department' are reputed to have a great deal of power. Whilst the apex of the military hierarchy is said to manage and control most of the State Corporations. Concomitantly there barons of the state as well, economic policy itself is not merely set by Kim, or the generals, but there are economic technocrats in the state who are also heavily involved. The currency re-denomination of last year for instance is widely thought to have been the work of a number of high level state technocrats. This is one dimension of the so-called 'Shapelessness of Macro-political organisation'. There is no clear division of labour between party, state and military. All three seem to be intermeshed in their control of the key functions of what I would collectively call the 'regime'.

The second dimension of this 'Shapelessness' is the overlap that I already mentioned in the Nazi context. There are actual institutional overlaps and competition between institutions that share the same basic functions and roles in the regime. A good example of this is the security agencies; there is The Central Committee Secretary in Charge of South Korean Affairs (CCSCSKA), which is an agency of the Korean Workers Pary (KWP). Then there is the State Security Department (SSD) which is controlled by the National Defence Commission. And last and most important now is the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS). There has been some interesting things written about this in English. I can imagine from what I'm told that the Korean language stuff is compulsive reading...

Nonetheless North Korean watchers use rather sophisticated and at the same time crude guess work to try and work out who is influential in the leadership. Checking the order of lists, photographs etc. in the official media. Its quite amusing, and often yields similar results to interviews with defectors. The shapelessness makes any straight faced look at the North Korean political structure rather useless however.

The South Korean Personality Cult

2010-06-05T01:36:00.005+09:00

Its fair to say that the term 'Cult of Personality' has very unsavoury and totalitarian overtones. In fact I cannot think of a single positive instance of the application of the term. Just dissecting the term itself, it makes perfect sense that it should only have a negative meaning. Cults are small sect organisations that are founded on the worship of some being that is not credible enough due to popularity of said being to for these organisations to be large. Cult as a word also implies a level of unreasonable fanaticism and superstition. No organisation would want to be termed a cult, any organisation that is usually tries to dispute the application of the term. Think of Scientology; its the perfect example of an organisation that vigorously disputes the allegation of the word cult. And for good reason, its used as a derogatory term.

Therefore the term 'Cult of Personality' conjures up two concurrent meanings, the fanatical, sectional, irrationality of cults linked to the physical, and/or mental characteristics real and/or imaged of a person (usually a man). This is what Max Weber termed the 'Charismatic' type of political authority. The alleged greatness of an individual gives them political legitimacy, and thus authority in addition to the power they possess from control of the state's coercive apparatus e.g. the police, military, tax collectors etc.

Classic examples of the Cult of Personality that immediately spring to mind are Stalin, Mao and Hitler. The world today is still littered with such political authority however. When I look at Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan though, I wonder if the cult of personality has any real resonance with the people who are forced to be a part of such a shallow and obviously silly ideology. Yet in historical contexts personality cults are actually genuine loci of political group cohesion; they actually unite communities and strengthen them. They actually aid in political legitimacy and in control. Look no further than North Korea, the perfect example. Many North Koreans still like Kim Il Sung, and whilst most loathe or merely tolerate his son even some North Korean refugees in the south have a respect for his late father.

Yet are all personality cults so totalitarian and evil? I think immediately of three 'great' figures of history, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and George Washington. I guarantee you this, the popular biography is a mythology. They all had their flaws and made their mistakes. Popular percepts of these figures are founded on almost slavish and irrational half-pictures of sinless saints. Now don't get me wrong, these are not bad people who we should exhume and subject to posthumous burning. But nonetheless the popular perception of these men is akin to a cult of personality, and not posthumous in the cases of Mandela and Washington.

When we think of Kim Il Sung, if you know the man's history, it is truly vile that such a grisly dictator should have such an equally grotesque personality cult. So a second proviso, I am not in any way comparing the rather nice, and men of great deeds to Kim. Its amusing to note though; in South Korea there is one man of almost equal stature to Kim's in the North. He is almost worshipped by historians as the greatest man of Korean history. He is held up as South Korea's symbol of modernity before the concept existed, and as South Korea's first man-of-the-people. A man who was so egalitarian and such a proto-welfare liberal that he invented an alphabet of such simplistic beauty (here I wholly agree!). If you have ever held a 10,000won note in your hand then you have seen him! His name is King Sejong (세종대왕). Now don't get me wrong, the Hunminjŏngŭm writing system (훈민정음) now known as Hangeul (한글) or Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) is incredible. In fact it has become more and more incredible as the linguistic authorities have made it so. Sejong should be lauded for it.

But let me point out some often forgotten and glaringly obvious problems with this story. Sejong was like any other 15th Century monarch, you would not know it if you went to the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul where the man has a Museum, Cultural Centre and a Kim Il Sung sized statue of himself. Not his doing, but certainly if I were him I would be very pleased to have such landmarks dedicated to my memory. Nonetheless, this alphabet was not designed just to please the peasants and slaves who remained part of the quasi-feudal system for another 500 years. If the man was really so concerned with welfare then such a system would have surely been abolished by one of the most powerful monarchs in Korean history. Concurrently, he was a bloody king who rather enjoyed punitive raids on the nomadic tribes north of the Korean peninsula. A man of his time yes, we should not be too quick to judge him by our modern standards. But surely then, we should not lionise either, or disingenuously interpret his actions as those of a 20th Century social reformer before his time.

However the other major concern is that the man is not only lionised, but the purpose this cult of personality serves. It serves the racially nationalistic purpose. Hangeul is a symbol of Korean uniqueness, a language is a key identifier of ethnic particularity. Therefore the pride that is expressed in Hangeul is part of a narrative of national uniqueness and autonomy from the outside world. These narratives are to be found in all ethnic groups, but in South Korea this narrative remains very strong. South Korean nationalism is strong and still prone to bouts of popular, irrational and convulsive mass emotion, just like a cult. This cult is part of that nationalism and therefore it would be best to tone it down a bit.

On a side note, I was talking to someone yesterday about the cult of Sejong when a thought dawned on me. Park Chung-hee the 'greatest' leader South Korea has had since the Korean War could have had a cult like Sejong's. He tried to create a shallow and silly version of Kim Il Sung's cult in the late 1970s without much success. Civil Society and popular perceptions were rather weighted against this increasingly illegitimate authoritarian dictator. Yet what would have happened if he had stepped down when his time was up in 1972 and not become a proper dictator? Well he may have very well be thanked unconditionally by history (rather than extremely conditionally) for his massive part in the creation of South Korea. He may very well have had a cult that was as large and unquestioned as Kim Il Sung's; and the difference is that people would not now be rethinking it and doubting it as many North Koreans are starting to doubt Kim's now.

My Korean teacher and the conspiratorial minds of the South Korean intelligencia

2010-05-29T17:24:00.007+09:00

My Korean teacher is a wonderful, patient and expert woman. I admire her tremendous yet understated zeal for her language; like all good language teachers she knows her language inside-out, she can explain anything in Korean and English. Her English is rather too good, when I try to talk to her in my very basic Korean I usually choke with embarassment because her English shames me. She used to work with foreigners all the time, using just English, so it is understandable that she would be very good at English. You might have guessed from my writing style that I am an impatient, and loud learner, a rather dominant presence in the class room; yet one-to-one my teacher and I still get on well, in spite of the fact that I am not always conducive to group learning.

She is a very knowledgeable person, she knows a great deal more about Korean politics and history than the average person does about their country and its history. From our infrequent one-to-one chats I think she leans leftwards on the Korean political spectrum. This is not saying much, in this age of Neo-Liberal globalisation, to lean to the left anywhere except in western Europe, a couple of ex-communist countries (North Korea, and China), and in some parts of South America is unremarkable. It also usually means little more than an advocacy of a few extra percentage points on general taxation. In domestic and foreign terms this is very much her position, and I find myself, as I become more and more pragmatic with age to be in agreement with her most of the time.

The South Korean left can be broken down into three main parties, which roughly correspond with three factions. There is the Democratic Party (민주당) which is roughly equivalent in most regards to the British Labour Party, or to the Left-wing of the American Democratic Party. This is the dominant, and rather prosaically Liberal part of the South Korean left. The people who are now members of this party ran the country from 1998 to 2008. Both Kim Dae Jung, and Roh Moo Hyun were part of this faction (although because South Korean political parties have a habit of fragmenting and reforming, their respective parties changed names).

The other two notable parties of the Left in South Korea are the Democratic Labour Party (민주노동당) and the New Progressive Party (진보신당). These two parties have remarkably similar Socially Democratic ideological platforms; the key cleavage between them is the former's emphasis on nationalism and the nation. The Democratic Labour Party advocates what is called National Liberation (민족해방), seeking to free South Korean society from the excesses of Capitalism. Whilst the New Progressive Party seeks People's Democracy (민중민주), this slogan connotes a desire to correct the excesses of capitalism embedded in the international economic system. The New Progressive Party is also refreshingly anti-Nationalist. The South Korean left as epitomised by the Democratic Party and its more extreme cousin the Democratic Labour Party is well known for being nationalist. In fact, at times almost xenophobic racial nationalism is one of the fundamental loci of group identity for the South Korean left. The state has always been captive to the 'US imperialists' and their capitalist designs, therefore patriotism is treachery to the left. Rather the race itself is what unites the people, the the downtrodden toiling masses (민중) are united racially by their pure blood line. This is ever so redolent of North Korean nationalism...

My teacher is not a racial nationalist, she has an open mind and a kind heart. She enjoys teaching foreigners, and finds our stories of our homelands interesting, although she prefers it when we tell them in Korean. Yet she on one topic she seems to get her political identity from this nationalism that I just described. The sinking of the Cheonan has spawned lots of paranoid and rather ridiculous conspiracy theories on the South Korean left. Apparently the United States has aided and abetted, a Conservative coverup of the 'real story'. It is all too convenient so the story goes that the Cheonan should be sunk just before an election, and it is to the advantage of the ruling conservative Grand National Party (한나라당). These conspiracies are both baseless, and spring from the nationalism of the left, which is distinctly anti-American. Frankly it was shocking to hear my otherwise sane teacher echoing these conspiracies with a straight face. She told me that she also suspects that the 1987 bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 by North Korea, may not have been what it appears to be.

It is ironic how well the left did in the elections therefore. It is also worth reiterating that this racial nationalism on the Left rose in reaction to the perception on the left of the corruption of the state. Therefore it is at the very root of the Left's Weltanschauung to perceive the state and its investigation as lies. The state is captive to the United States and its flunkeyist (사대주의자) right-wing running dogs.

Tan’gun in Korea

2010-05-13T22:55:00.004+09:00

The Son of the Lord of heaven Hwanung wanted to go to earth, his father the Lord of Heaven Hwanin gave him permission, so he descended to Mount Paekdu (which is in Modern North Korea/China) with assorted ministers. A Bear and Tiger preyed to Hwanung begging to become human. He told them to eat 20 cloves of garlic and some mugwort then fast for 100 days. The bear was successful (the tiger got hungry after 20 days so he was not). The bear as human was lonely, so Hwanung out of pity married her and they had a son. His name was Tan’gun and he founded the first kingdom on the Korean peninsula, Old Chosŏn and built its first city Asadal.

In the late 19th Century Korean historians and intellectuals began to look to the Myth of Tan’gun as the perfect foundation myth to underline Korean ethnic homogeneity. Tan’gun became the head of the Korean national family tree that extended back 5,000 years. Korea had been an independent people in a variety states for 5,000 years these nationalists claimed. Therefore they should resist the imperialist forces of Japan and the west, and maintain their autonomy and sovereignty at all costs. Tan’gun was a powerful symbol but prominent nationalists like Shin Ch’ae-ho didn’t believe the whole myth. Most of these nationalists were rationalists, who used Tan’gun as a powerful racial symbol, a real but wholly human national progenitor (or as he is known in Korean ‘Grandfather Tan’gun’). Taejong’gyo is the obvious exception. Taejong’gyo is a religion that was started in the early 20th Century. It worships Tan’gun as a god, along with Hwanin and Hwanung. But whilst claiming to have a rich history, it was both new and not popular.

After 1945 Tan’gun gradually became less important in South Korea. Syngman Rhee tried to use the Tan’gun myth as a nationalist rallying point, but this was abandoned by his successors. North Korea went in the opposite direction. Initially the state, heavily influenced by Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideas of history interpreted Tan’gun as a myth that marked the start of a change in Ancient society. Tan’gun was a myth that indicated the start of a new political epoch. The first king of Old Chosŏn used the title Tan’gun and claimed to be descendent of the heavenly Lords in order to legitimise his claims to political authority. This is not as farcical as it may sound; the Japanese emperors still nominally claim to be descended from a Goddess.

But the North has changed their interpretation of Tan’gun. The North gradually moved away from the Soviet model, and started to practice a far more nationalist style of ‘Socialism’ after 1956. Their historical narratives started to change with this ideological and geopolitical shift. Just as North Korea started to assert their autonomy geopolitically, they also began to assert the independent spirit of the Korean people. Initially they did not reinterpret the Tan’gun myth; they just pushed the historic borders of the Old Chosŏn into Manchuria, much to the chagrin of the Chinese.

But by the 1990s when it became clear that ‘Socialism’ had failed as a worldwide movement, they began to go further in their historical narrative. The Koreans were now not only a unique people, racially and culturally; but they had had their own civilisation for 5,000 years. This cuts to the heart of Korean nationalism in general. I will make a clear distinction between primitive, vehement nationalism and patriotic feeling. They are clearly different beasts, whilst states can mobilise the masses under patriotism to do terrible things, patriotism in itself is not malign. To be patriotic is to hold your own state in high esteem, to look to it as you look to your parents. Patriotism can be expressed in many ways, singing the national anthem, saluting the flag etc. Patriotism notice has the state as its focus; from talking to Koreans patriotism is increasingly popular amongst our generation. Nationalism is the counterpart to patriotism. It is in some ways similar, certainly nationalists also use state symbols, the Taeguk for instance is a symbol for both nationalists and patriots. But nationalism does not have the state as its primary focus, rather it is focused on an ethnic identity, it is usually racial. Nationalists identify with an ‘imagined’ racial group as their own; this group is privileged above all others, in terms of its history, culture, language and customs. Korean nationalism is an exemplary example of this, in all respects. The North Korean variant was dramatically strengthened starting from the early 1960s.Originally North Korea had relied mainly on patriotic ‘Socialist’ fervour (loyalty to the revolution and its state). But as the regime distanced itself from the Soviet Union, Kim Il Sung started to use the same ideas that Shin Ch’ae Ho had set out 70 years before. South Korean nationalism is rather crude and unnecessary but North Korean nationalism is both extraordinarily primitive and very necessary as a means of ensuring the survival of the regime.

Part of this nationalist strategy was the use of Tan’gun. In the Northern narrative he was a person, his father was not the son of the Lord of Heaven, and his mother was not a former bear. But nonetheless the shamanistic myth became a real person, they even ‘found’ his tomb near Pyongyang, and proceeded to reconstruct it in 1993. This new narrative was a convenient way to paint Pyongyang as the natural centre of the Korean people, politically, culturally and historically. The North had been doing this since the 1960s. They had begun to ignore the achievements of Southern based kingdoms of Korean history, for instance Shilla, and began to exaggerate the achievements of the Northern kingdoms like Koguryŏ.

It was also part of a survival strategy for a regime that desperately needed add to its nationalist credentials now that socialism had been discredited worldwide, and was soon to fail at home in a catastrophic famine. It is not widely known by most people but the North Korean famine was did not start suddenly as a result of natural disasters in 1995. Rather it was a slow-motion event that actually began in the late 1980s. The North Korean economy had been stagnating and spluttering since the early 1980s. Then Soviets reduced aid in the late 1980s, and then the aid stopped completely with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The effects of this were much more immediate than most people realise. North Korea instituted a ‘Let’s Eat 2 Meals a Day’ campaign in 1991, this starkly illustrates the food shortages even at that early stage. The discovery of Tan’gun coincides with the slow-motion catastrophe, and thus can be seen as a part of the nationalist coping strategy of the regime. Just as the first modern Korean nationalists used Tan’gun as a nationalist symbol to unite the people and achieve independence, the North today uses Tan’gun as part of a strategy to maintain the regime’s independence.

Why this is the end of the Liberal Democrats

2010-05-12T22:46:00.004+09:00

The Liberal Democrats are the nice party; I have not met anyone in England who has a nasty thing to say about them, most people may be thoroughly ignorant of the Lib Dems core principles and policies, but this is another matter.

Their electoral performance was catastrophic. The Lib Dems were expecting their final breakthrough given the hype, and so-called 'Cleggomania'. Instead as we all know they ended up losing seats rather than gaining the 20+ they were anticipating. Yet here they are the king-makers of British politics who have just decided the make-up of the next British government. Their position as king-maker is however very unenviable. Certainly this was the position the Lib Dems wanted to be in, in 1997. But this is the wrong party to make a coalition with and this is the wrong time, a time of unparalleled post-WW2 economic crisis and social stagnation.

What will be the effect of this coalition? To begin with I must note that for the time being the Liberal Democrats have become a central force in British politics. They hold senior cabinet posts and have genuine influence over future government policy and legislation. This is more power than they have had in 80 years certainly. It is also the position they must have craved since the early 1980s when they seemed have a genuine chance of becoming a third force in UK politics.

But there is a major, soon to emerge electoral problem for the Liberal Democrats. Their electoral strategy, even political raison d'être is being the party of permanent and principled opposition. The party that is free to offer populist policies, and echo national discontent safe in the knowledge that they will never become the party of the establishment and safe in the knowledge that they will never have to face the true political test of holding high office. Now they do. Now they cannot present themselves as the party of alternatives. They have become an establishment party. Yet their electoral base is far too narrow for them to compete with Labour or the Conservatives as a truly national party.So they face all of the problems of being a governing party, I.E. the blame for crisis. But they also face all the funding and electoral problems of a minor party competing with far more established parties.

This leads us to two hypothetical futures. If the economy recovers, and the coalition government remains popular (as it surely is now) then who will get the credit? Undoubtedly the senior partner, the Conservatives. They are also in a better position financially, politically, electorally, and institutionally (think of the right-wing media) to capitalise on this hypothetical success. The Liberal Democrats if the coalition is successful will not be able to capitalise on it. Labour voters will not vote for the Lib Dems in Lib/Lab marginals for the obvious reason that this means supporting a coalition involving the arch-enemy. Naturally conservative voters will not vote for the Lib Dems in Con/Lib marginals when the party they naturally gravitate towards is successful. Thus if the coalition is successful, the best the Lib Dems can hope for is stagnation, the worst is a squeeze where Labour and the Conservatives regains former voters. This is assuming that the desired referendum on Proportional Representation flounders, which it probably will considering how difficult this kind of change is to sell without right-wing media backing and the use of all the organs of state. How can the Lib Dems sell PR to the public on their own? Will Labour join them? It is not clear as yet.

But what if the coalition is a failure? What if the economy still so deeply mired in a corporate and consumer structural debt crisis does not spontaneously bounce back to former glory even with an incredibly weak pound? Who will be blamed? Undoubtedly the coalition. What would this mean for the Lib Dems? The same basic logic of the above paragraph applies. Lab/Lib marginals will swing to the favour of Labour, and Con/Lib margins will likely remain static. In fact ironically it would almost be better for the Lib Dems if the coalition was less successful as at least their would not be a swing to the conservatives in Con/Lib marginals.

At any rate this coalition was to a large extent unavoidable. Labour it seems was not prepared to create a Coalition of the Defeated, and the British public would probably have not worn it. The Conservatives were strategically very smart to seek a deal with the Lib Dems, although it is not especially popular with the Tory grassroots or backbenches it makes a great deal of sense electorally in the future. It is the Clause Four moment for the Tories, it proves that they have moved beyond the Thatcherite legacy. They are now the party of the centre and the party of consensus, when they were the party of right-wing radicalism. A minority Conservative government would certainly have been more popular with the base, and may have been electorally successful in the event of a no-confidence vote. But the coalition makes much more sense in terms of long-term governmental stability, and could very well change the whole British electoral landscape.

How developed is South Korea?

2010-05-02T20:46:00.009+09:00

Before I launch into this argument, I will first acknowledge the methodological assumptions at its heart. Development, modernity, and culture are all assumed as universals in this argument. They are essentialist notions, that are in reality constructions of western culture and western historical circumstances. Specifically as a western paradigm it is rather self congratulatory to say that our industrial revolution, our technological creations, they are development, and pre-existing alternatives are regressive, and antiquated.

South Korea is a developed country. It has one of the largest GDP per capita in the world. Economically it is one of the most advanced economies producing cutting edge technology, as an example broadband in South Korea is far faster than the rest of the developed world with the possible exception of Japan. If you know Samsung, Hyundai, LG, or POSCO then you've seen the Korean economic miracle; South Korea emerged from the the Korean War in 1953 as poor as any state in the world, similar to any sub-Saharan African state in the 1950s. This is understandable, the war itself was tremendously brutal, and destroyed an already extremely underdeveloped post-colonial economy. Yet thanks to excellent economic management of the country under President Park Chung-hee and the influx of foreign capital the country took off.

Concomitantly Korean culture has changed radically since the 1945. There had been Korean nationalists since the 1880s. By this I mean nationalists in the modern sense of the world, appealing to an abstract racial and ethnic identity, an imagined, pure blood line. This is a rather modern idea in world terms and even more so in Korean terms. Certainly Korea culture does have an insular element to it. Korea was well known as the hermit nation, the Confucian Choson dynasty relied on seclusion to maintain itself; and modern Korean nationalism in its racial claims to ethnic homogeneity owes a debt to this. Nonetheless the concept of a Korean race was not a part of the Korean popular identity until after 1945. Korean nationalism is almost more important in the political Korean left today, in its suspicion of American power, the globalisation project and its desire for close cooperation with North Korea. Nonetheless nationalism is still very important to the Korean right, in spite of their pragmatic pro-America foreign policy, and their open door toward western capital the right is firmly committed to the Korean nationalist nativity story. But this wasn't the point of my blog...

Korea whilst being very developed in world terms still suffers from cultural lag in a number of fields. Culturally for obvious reasons the middle-class in the main behave like Russian oligarchs; their conspicuous consumption of consumer goods, and services, the mass proliferation of plastic-surgery is a classic example of this. People in this country are not only not ashamed of their environmental impact, in the main they are positively proud of it. Before I sound patronising or condemnatory I should point out that many western people are equally unconcerned by their environmental impact. But consumption in this country is a direct hallmark of status, to have a specific set of consumer goods marks you as having arrived. To shop in western shops, and to buy western consumer products marks you as a sophisticated middle class person. It is rather comical that to many but by no means all Koreans, Starbucks is considered sophisticated.

Culturally this country is often branded as Confucian. This is a rather general term, it means many things in many different time periods and countries. In this context the term is used to account for among other things the extreme commitment Koreans have to education, which does appear to the outsider as excessive, personally I find it refreshing coming from England. In the context of education, I perceive development itself as being more important, education is associated with the ability to live a middle class or even better a rich lifestyle. In a society that was only 30 years ago still suffering from many of the material problems of a developing country (such as a shortage of electricity and some foods) one can understand why people still prize material security bordering on excess. Excessive scholasticism can be seen in this context as perfectly rational, rather than as being a throwback to a bunch of bearded scholars sitting around ornate palaces in the late 19th Century studying their Confucian classics by candle light.

But in other ways the Confucian label does make a great deal of sense. For instance the persistence of gender inequality. Cultural lag is an extremely pertinent term in this context; whilst an economy can develop from an agrarian backwater to a modern, dynamic consumer society, cultural norms and values usually take longer to change. Whilst I have a great respect for Korean culture, specially the respect for elders, and the strong sense of family, speaking bluntly the status of women is contemptible, and should not be excused according to a relativistic accommodation of cultural differences. To be specific the persistence of the largest gap in pay in the OECD, and the extreme segregation of the Korean workforce with women predominantly occupying informal, part-time and low paying jobs desperately needs to change. Furthermore the ubiquity of prostitution, all my peers know of it, many have visited brothels and are proud of it. Many more men of all ages do so routinely to seal business deals, promotions or foster useful connections at work. There are arguments in favour of prostitution, but in a society where sex trafficking is still widespread, visiting a prostitute is little different to rape or domestic violence in terms of its morality and impact. Yet many thanks to women's culturally inferior status, this developmental vestige or form of cultural lag, excuses what should be considered despicable.

More prosaically, the Korean economy whilst being very advanced remains dominated by Chaebols. Chaebol which literally means Rich family is the name commonly given to Korean mega corporations which I mentioned earlier. These companies along with an activist state were one the key motive forces behind the Korean economic miracle. Yet like in a developing economy they still exercise an inordinate amount of power over civil society, the government and of course the economy. The negative side effects of this are numerous. The Korean media is widely reputed amongst the general public to be in the pay of the rich and therefore not trustworthy when it comes to sensitive political issues like corruption (which it often allegedly does not report) and incidents like the Cheonan (which it allegedly was complicit in aiding government cover-ups). Now most of these conspiracy theories are undoubtedly just that, but the media lacks incentive to critically analyse corporate abuses and pro-business politicians seeing as the media is owned by those corporations. Furthermore, the government itself is widely know to not function according to the law but the rule of personal connections. One can see this in the fact that every Korean president since 1980 has been embroiled in a business related corruption scandal that has affected them or their close relatives. This is improving year-on-year, but corruption remains worse here than most other parts of the developed world and still in many ways is reminiscent of a developing rather than developed state. This is partly born out of the extraordinary economic power of the Chaebols and their oligopolistic control of the Korean economy, civil society and government itself. In the purely economic sphere this is expressed in many different ways. The level of consumer protection is much lower than in Western Europe, therefore phones are far more expensive to use than in Britain in terms of line rental for example. Another example is the frankly unjustifiable banking charges, we have to pay if we withdraw money from our banks after closing time, and if we make a withdrawal from an ATM that is not our bank's own. This is as a result of the Chaebol's economic and political power that mean consumer protection remains much lower than the rest of the developed world.

This is just a small sketch of the ways in which South Korea whilst being a developed society still has developmental vestiges and culturally lags behind Europe. Nonetheless, this country has another feature that much of the developed world now lacks, it has tremendous dynamism, people in this country are so filled with energy and are so constantly busy. It is inspiring to be around, and to be a part of this society as it progresses towards unification....

The Third Korean War?

2010-04-22T16:31:00.003+09:00

It is a little known fact but in the 1960s the North Koreans launched a campaign of terrorism, violence and infitration into South Korea in an attempt to stimulate an almost non-existent revolutionary movement in the South to mobilise the masses and rise up against their colonial masters (I promise I am being tongue-in-cheek). There is a label for this that I have not seen widely used in scholarship, but nonetheless wikipedia has the reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Korean_War . As the trusty wikipedia page lists, the North Koreans became incredibly provocative and brazen in this period. If you doubt the veracity of the page then I will be happy to refer you to some reliable books that coroborate wikipedia.

Anyway yes, the North Koreans went so far as trying to assasinate the South Korean president Park Chung-hee. One gets a sense of the motives from the international circumstances of the time. South Korea was finally rising, a phoneix from the fires of the Korean War. Concomitantly, Vietnam was ablaze with an 'anti-imperialist' war of its own. The Vietcong must have appealed to the sensibilities of the North Korean leadership. By this time North Korea's elite was almost completely monolithic; it was composed of the Guerilla comrades of Kim Il Sung who fought with him during the 1930s. The idea of an armed insurrectionary guerilla struggle that mimiced the North Vietnamese strategy must have been very appealing. The country had been heavily militarising since the early 1960s, after the initial rehabilitation of North Korean heavy industry post-(1st) Korean War. Therefore an educated guess would be that Kim sought to ferment uprising and struggle in the South that could be used as a pretext for an invasion of the south. He went so far as to set up a Southern party 'The Revolutionary Party of Reunification' a meager and ineffectual group of Southern True Believers. From here came heightened border provocations, then two attempted assasinations of Park Chung-hee; first a raid on his residence, then another botched attempt that killed his wife instead. At around the same time as the first attempt in 1968, the North interdicted a US vessel,the Pueblo. The crowning and final event was the 'Axe Murder incident' where two US servicemen where murdered by North Korean soldiers for attempting to trim a tree.

Obviously the Cheonan incident is serious, and the mindless killing of young Korean men is abhorrent. Nevertheless, by comparison to the 'Second Korean War' this is a small incident. Furthermore the North Koreans have done even worse; they blew up a South Korean civilian airliner in 1987 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858).

This is a time of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula, an icy freeze has set into Inter-Korean relations. Since the end of the Sunshine Policy, North Korea has repeatedly provoked the South, we learnt yesterday that the North sent two agents masquerading as refugees to kill Hwang Jang-yop (the highest ranking defector), they did not succeed but this is another compelling example the brazenness of the North. Nonetheless, there will not be a Korean War, do not fear, America and China would never allow it. The North needs Chinese material support for its continued existence, and China does not seek a war that could potentially destroy the Chinese economic miracle. The South may tough talk, but a war would destroy Seoul and endanger 10s of millions of Korean lives.

The Prism of Yushin

2010-04-19T16:13:00.009+09:00

The Yushin System was the constitution of South Korea from 1972 to 1979; technically the system remained until the early 1980s, but really it was merely a constitutional codification of a personal and oligopolistic dictatorship in South Korea. Park Chung-hee was president of South Korea from 1961 to 1979; he overthrew the democratic but sclerotic 2nd Republic in 1961 in a military coup d'état. After 5 years in charge of the country he converted his rule from a Junta to a nominally civilian government, where the military swapped fatigues for suits but to a large extent the political structure remained highly authoritarian and the state highly militarised. Yet there was competitive elections, which were not rigged, Park won the presidential election in 1967 by the skin of his teeth. The other candidate Yun Bo-seon did not inspire the popular imagination, but nor did rule by military barons. However Park won because he had control of the media and dominance over the organs of civil society; when this is combined with a growing record of success in economic development and a highly appealing strident anti-communism, one has all the ingredients of a highly manipulated but procedurally free election.

However, whilst Park won in 1967, it was unlikely that he could do so again in 1972. Transparent rule by force the 3rd Republic may not have been. But its harsh labour conditions, its courtship of Japanese business (Japan was considered the enemy, as a result of Korea's 35 years of colonisation), and most importantly the yawning gap between elite and commoner created an untenable situation for Park as a democrat. Therefore he changed the system, the presidency would now be elected by an electoral college appointed by the president himself. There were no term limits, this represented effectively Life-presidency for Park, legally codified in a new constitution. Yushin means rebirth; it comes from the same Chinese characters as Restoration (of the Meiji Restoration).

This constitutional arrangement is associated by the modern day South Korean left with the worst excesses of the South Korean dictatorial years. It is associated with horrendous working conditions for young adults in textile factories, it is associated with violent street fights between unarmed workers and a corrupt, essentially bourgeois state. And it is associated with a revolutionary wave for democracy that finally motivated Kim jae-gyu (the director of the KCIA in 1979) to assassinate President Park who was about to repress a massive street protest.

It is through this prism that modern day South Korean leftists approach North Korea as a political entity and the coming reunification of the Koreas. They rightly predict that North Korea will be absorbed by the South Korean capitalist economy. It will become an internal colony of South Korea, economically and politically. North Korean politics will be dominated by South Korean technocratic and political elites for a generation to come and they will probably apply a very similar developmental model to the North as did President Park to the South. The North will probably become a sweatshop for world capital but especially medium sized South Korean business. The catch-up will be long and drawn out, it might take 30 years for the North Korean economy to achieve parity even with heavy infrastructural investment by the South Korean tax payer, and developmental aid, FDI etc.

This developmental model is the symbol of what is wrong with Korea's path to modernity for leftists. But not only that, it is the economic offspring and child of the Yushin system. Hence following the economic model is repeating the terrible Yushin system. So therefore to South Korean leftists, the status quo is better than the alternative. It is better to have Son'gun, the Red Flag ideology, a 'Strong and Prosperous Nation'; in short it is better to keep one of the most brutal dictatorships in world history in power than risk what was merely 7 years of South Korean history, being to some extent repeated in the North. Forgive an ends and means argument, but this is deeply disturbing. What is more so is that there are many on the Left who think like this, too blinkered by their own personal experiences to accept the fact that Park Chung-hee whilst no saint was infinitely better than Kim Il Sung and his even more cynical, tyrannical heir. Ultimately without reunification there is no hope for the North Korean people to be lifted out of the endless fight for survival that characterises a subsistence-level existence. North Korea and its people have been bankrupt since the nation was founded. The nation itself has been reliant on aid from the Socialist bloc and since its collapse China and South Korea. Concomitantly if the regime did not traffic weapons to rogue regimes and run a vast criminal empire then it could not survive. To see this system as somehow better than Yushin is unbelievably myopic, coming from people who live 80 miles away from it. It is best if the regime collapses now and is replaced by a developmental state; there will be massive problems, and if the South Korean state is not responsible enough, North Koreans will have to endure additional, and unnecessary hardships. But even if this is the case to destroy Yodok is better than not. Yodok is worse than Chon Tae-il.

The Renminbi issue

2010-04-12T13:40:00.002+09:00

The key means of US imperial dominance are Economic, linked to that is political, and military dominance. As US economic power declines its global political and military power is also on the wane.

Pushing for a depegging of the Renminbi from the dollar makes sound financial sense for the US Treasury. Basically it enables the US manufacturing sector to become more competitive with China and hopefully in their minds, allows the US to close its still massive current account deficit. In the short to medium term therefore it could be a boon for the US economy; it could also increase US tax receipts as it would boost US corporate earnings. From this the US government could start to reduce its yearly deficit (although not its overall deficit which will still continue to balloon). So in the short term it makes perfect sense.

But... in the long run this spells the final deathknell for the Bretton Woods system, the final end of US financial and economic hegemony. The US Empire has been in decline since the 1970s. Vietnam represented the end of the idea of an Omnipotent US Empire that could and would do anything to stop the spread of Communism. From then on successive US governments had to chose their wars wisely, conflicts that could be easily won, for instance Grenada, the Gulf War et al. These were wars where US soldiers would be greeted as a liberator. This was to an extent trial and error, sometimes they chose well, but Somalia is an example of a bad choice.

9/11 changed the game, yet again a US administration sort to impose its will on the world; the Iraq War has multiple causes but the three that stand out are Geo-political power in the mid-east, punishing a pariah in order to show that disobedience is not an option in the US dominated world system, and third to open the Iraqi oil reserves up to foreign investment. The war showed the weakness of US military might, but also the inability of a US administration to create an obedient state with military might. It also further indebted the US federal government; when you combine this with Bush's extremely short sighted Fiscal policy (tax cuts), you have an extremely big issue. Add the current banking mess, and economic decline of the United States and you have a perfect storm. The United States today is very close to where Britain was just before it lost its empire. It is a classic example of imperial overstretch, hubris and economic decline.

The Renminbi issue is the final piece of this chain, if the Renminbi is depegged against the dollar it will no longer be a currency subservient to the value of the world's current receive currency. It will compete with the dollar on a level playing field. Now China is growing astonishingly quickly, if the depegging does not disturb this rate of growth, then the Chinese GDP will overtake the United States in the next 20 years. The Dollar has been debased by US imperial overstretch, these debt levels are not sustainable. If the Renminbi is decoupled then the dollar will gradually lose alot of its value. It will no longer be a sound currency because the debasement will make US government debt a bad investment. Therefore this decoupling will result in the end of the US dollar as the global reserve currency, and it will most probably be replaced by the Renminbi.

This will mark the beginning of modern Sino-centric world order. A move away from the current Pax Americana that will live in.

If it was the North, Why?

2010-04-04T16:34:00.000+09:00

We still do not know why the Cheonan sank. But if it was a missile launched by a North Korean vessel/submarine why did they do it? There are a number of possible reasons which are not mutually exclusive. This article will focus on three possible reasons, which are all valid to a certain extent.

First where was the Cheonan when it sank? On the west coast near the ‘Northern Limit Line’ as it is known in English. This was the line unilaterally drawn by the US and ROK forces at the end of the Korean War to denote the sea border between North and South Korea. The line has never been accepted by the North and has been the sight of many minor skirmishes and more major but localised naval incidents since 1953. Four deadly skirmishes have taken place in the last 11 years if we count the Cheonan. The North disputes the line for a number of reasons, namely that it was drawn without its consultation and was not included in the armistice agreement. From the US-ROK side this makes perfect sense, seeing as sea-borders are fluid (forgive the pun) but the DMZ was literally the de-facto border at the cessation of hostilities. Furthermore not only was the North not consulted, but the border is extremely advantageous to the South, the angle is entirely different to the Southward going DMZ. This is a long standing issue which flares up regularly regardless of who occupies the Blue House.

Second who is occupying the Blue House? Lee Myung bak may not be a warmonger, but his North Korea foreign policy is very dark compared to his Sunshine predecessors. The North has become used to unconditional South Korean investment (in Kaesŏng and Mount Kŭmgang) and massive amounts of unconditional aid in the form of fertiliser and free food from the South. The Sunshine policy as it was known is still looked back on by the North Korean elite with nostalgia. When I went to North Korea last summer my guides were shocked and sad to hear that Roh Moo-hyun had died, and were dismayed to hear that Kim Dae-jung was at death’s door. They had nothing to say about Lee Myung-bak which in itself said a lot. His policy of linking aid and investment to progress on the Nuclear issue has stung Pyongyang. Their response has been schizophrenic, first delivering revenge with the shooting of an innocent South Korean tourist at Mount Kŭmgang, but then offering a peace treaty in their latest New Years address. The bellicose rhetoric has resumed with a vengeance since late January. One gets the impression that the North Korean leadership does not know what to do. If it responds with threats they are ignored, if it responds with cooperation, they demonstrate their weakness and therefore begin to lose what little diplomatic leverage they have. The sinking of the Cheonan may very well be a show of strength; and it certainly does demonstrate the weakness of the Lee’s North Korean position. The South and their most important ally the United States have very little leverage over North Korea. The Sanctions regime cannot become any tougher without China reversing its policy of unconditional aid to the North. The South cannot attack the North this is both risky and a vote looser. So the North has successfully made the President of the South look very impotent if that was their intent. But there are other possible reasons.

Third the North Korean economy is in terrible shape. Late last year North Korea launched a currency redenomination which was catastrophic for the real North Korean economy. There are several theories as to why the North launched the redenomination. The North is currently in the middle of a massive propaganda drive to build a ‘Strong and Prosperous Nation’ (in Korean: 강성대국) by 2012 for Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday. This allegedly involves stamping out market activities which are now pervasive in North Korea, reports say that over 70% of working North Koreans work in a job related to the Market. The redenomination therefore seems to have been designed to stamp out the Market by confiscating the earnings of the entrepreneurial class and the savings of the middle income class in North Korea, thus destroying the a lot of capital which created and perpetuates the Market system. This has not resulted in the recreation of the Socialist System because the government does not have the capital to distribute food to the people, nor to restart the centrally planned industrial economy. Instead it has sparked rage across the country and the temporary closure of the markets until early January. It has not brought prosperity but anarchy. Marcus Noland a seasoned observer of North Korea has speculated that the redenomination was supposed to be the coming-out party for the successor Kim Jong-eun but its cataclysmic effects have resulted mean that this was not possible. Many western observers have started to speculate that the regime’s days are numbered to a couple of years. When Kim Jong-il dies, they think the regime will probably splinter and collapse with him, leaving an extremely unpredictable and messy situation. Thus as a show of strength the Cheonan incident makes perfect sense. It could also be used by the regime to sure up support for the Jong-eun succession amongst the military top-brass in Pyongyang, if it is linked to him as Noland has speculated.

So there are three very good reasons why the North could have attacked the Cheonan. Yet it could still have been an accident resulting from faulty hardware, or Korean War era mines. It would be ironic if it turned out to be a mine from the Korean War, this being the 60th Anniversary Year of the outbreak of the Korean War.

More on 성형, plastic surgery and advertising

2010-02-22T18:01:00.004+09:00

Watching TV in Seoul is rather strange sometimes especially when the adverts start. Maybe because I don't understand the language but alot of the adverts seem unusually aggressive. But the 'best' part is the use of sex to sell alcohol. For a very long time in England (which increasingly seems well regulated to me) adverts have not been able to equate alcohol consumption to sexual success. But in relatively prudish Korea, this is not the case. Much as I like seeing beautiful women it seems only ever so slightly unsubtle and crude to think that people will drink more of the drink they are culturally accustomed to drink if a pretty women in a skimpy outfit tells them to. In fact there are so many vast conglomerates that have a near monopoly on selling their product that still spend what must be vast sums of cash in pervasive public advertising campaigns. I don't understand why they bother.

The other strange one is the women themselves. I saw an advert with a young woman walking in a field with a guitar on her back in the folksy cliched way. She was beautiful according to my friend, personally I found her honking nose rather amusing and not attractive. But the kids that ran up to greet her were a completely different race. They had darker skin, and smaller features. Plastic surgery seems to have created a race of aliens that inhabit the TV but look nothing like real people. I guess the UK is the same, but I didn't really notice it before.

Review: The Cleanest Race by Brian Myers

2010-02-18T16:54:00.001+09:00

Brian Myers is an American academic based in Pusan who has a remarkable and original (at least in Anglophone scholarship) thesis of what North Korea is. The standard media line is North Korea remains the last hardline Stalinist dictatorship in the world. Whilst China, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba remain as constitutionally communist regimes, they are relatively mild in their human rights abuses, and they are to varying degrees pursuing economic reform along Neoliberal lines. Many scholars continue to call North Korea before the collapse of the Soviet Union a National Stalinist dictatorship, with its own Korean eccentricities certainly, the bizarre personality cult for one. Other circumstantial features like the huge army can be explained as a result of the elder dictator Kim Il Sung’s drive to reunify the country militarily if the opportunity were to present itself. The Stalinist features of the country include its command economy and its opaque state socialist political structure headed by the Korean Workers Party (KWP). The KWP from the 1960s claimed to follow its own ‘Juche Idea’, originally described as a creative application of Marxism-Leninism to Korean conditions.

Today however, the state might still make references to socialism but all references to Marx and Lenin in official discourse have long since disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The replacement in this ideological void is Songun or Military-First Politics as it is rendered in English. What this amounts to in practice is the worker is no longer the ‘vanguard of the revolution’. This is no longer a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, but a military dictatorship, led by the ‘Ever Victorious, iron-willed Brilliant Commander, Chairman of the National Defence Commission General Kim Jong il’.

But was it ever a Marxist-Leninist (Stalinist) state to begin with? Myers thinks not; the regime was certainly installed by the Soviets in 1945, but the man who they gave power Kim Il Sung, and the bulk of the cultural apparatus who they left to create a pliant ‘People’s Democratic’ Soviet Satellite did not know their Marx from their Kautsky. In his earlier study of the first head of the North Korean literary bureaucracy Myers set out the case that North Korean culture and ideology owes more to Japanese interwar Militarism than Marxism-Leninism. This thesis which he builds on here is that the heart of the regime’s ideology is xenophobic nationalism which sees the Americans in a similar light to the way the Nazis saw the Jews. It relies not on the promise of a communist utopia for its legitimacy but on its claim to ethnic virtues, as the purer North independent of the US bastards and their contaminated seed. The Koreans are depicted as a pure, naïve, and infant race; who can do evil but never be evil. Foreigners whilst occasionally kind are often evil, and therefore Koreans should pursue isolation and national reunification to emancipate their ethnically contaminated and previously enslaved southern brethren.

The other startling part of his thesis is the way that he analyses the Personality Cult surrounding the Kim family, father and son. Some scholars, notably Lim Jae Cheon, see the succession of father to son as a pragmatic step to maintain the regime. The argument goes that Kim Il Sung having seen what Stalin and Mao’s successors did to their respective regimes and reputations chose to appoint his son to conserve what he had built. Selig Harrison sees the succession as part of a Confucian monarchy; the regime has more in common with its monarchical past than Marxism-Leninism. Yet as Myers is at pains to point out, the personality cult that surrounds both men is not that of a Confucian father, emotionally austere and scholarly, making decisions according to the will of heaven. Nor is it Marxist-Leninist, a man of superior genius who understands the science of socialism so well that he alone should lead the masses. Rather this is the cult of ethnic purity and motherhood. The Kims- father, son and family are the most pure Koreans. They embody the Korean virtues of naiveté and innocence par excellence. But more interestingly, they mother their people. They care about their wellbeing: ‘The Parent leader Kim Il Sung holding the Children of Mt. Ma’an to his Breast’.

Myers is a great writer, and you might ask why hasn’t anyone already said what he proposes? His explanation is that many scholars rely on the face that the regime projects to the outside world- namely, the anti-US imperialist, Marxist-Leninist face of old. Why would the regime ever want the rest of the world to know about its belligerent racism? It is really only appropriate for Korean ears. Myers reconstructs North Korean ideology from domestic fiction, children’s textbooks and other cultural output like posters, plays, films etc. His original thesis therefore is compelling.

I highly recommend this book as the best way to understand the North Korean mindset. But on one point I would still caution the reader. The regime did and still does follow Stalinist policies. The command economy whilst on its knees still exists, alongside nascent grassroots capitalism. The terror apparatus is still intact with its very own Gulags. The regime still preaches about the virtues of the ‘Korean Revolution under the wise leadership of General Kim Jong il’. Certainly extreme nationalism and personality cult exist in North Korea today and in the past, in a way they never did in any other so called Stalinist country. But this is not just a nationalist dictatorship, it relies on Stalinist economic and political ideas.

If you want to understand North Korea read Myers then read ‘North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea’ by Andrei Lankov for the other side of the North Korean tragedy.

Why North Korea did not collapse in 1989

2010-01-10T08:35:00.004+09:00

North Korea like East Germany has a Capitalist ‘evil’ twin; North Korea closely resembles the late regime of Nicolae Ceauesceu in Romania. In fact, Ceauesceu consciously copied the North Korean example and to a lesser extent the Chinese Communist model after his visits to Beijing and Pyongyang in 1971. But unlike East Germany and Romania, North Korea did not experience revolution in the period of 1989-91.
The reasons given for the collapse of the East German state are:
- Economic inferiority contra West Germany
- The political illegitimacy of communism as perceived by the people due to corruption et al.
- The Cultural penetration of the West German culture into the East
- The repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine by Gorbachev
- The Reformist policies of the Soviet Union, and the spread of reformism to East German neighbours Hungary and Poland

In addition to this, the East German state was at the time seen as a state without a nation; in other words, it was an artificial construct imposed upon the Germany by the Cold War, because of the Soviet fears of a rearmed and hostile Germany. German unification was not inevitable, but Gorbachev’s reformism and its spread to the East Germany’s neighbours certainly endangered the regime. When it became clear that the regime could not rely on the Brezhnev doctrine to maintain itself against the reformists in its own elite, and the desire amongst its people for reunification, it collapsed. But this was only possible because East Germans were so aware of how poor they were compared to their West German brethren, the regime didn’t block TV signals after 1972, thus the virtues of Capitalism were plane for all East Germans to see. Additionally, the regime became increasingly reliant on West German trade, which meant that the West German Mark became the black market currency of choice. The Western Mark was clear and undeniable evidence of the superior lives of West Germans, and their prosperity. Finally East Germans were increasingly permitted to travel to the West for holidays, and vice-versa.

North Korea is most unlike East Germany in almost every regard. First, it has never been dependent on Soviet military support for regime survival, its own secret police and military provide ample protection for the regime against all potential threats from its populous. Second, until very recently the North Korean people were not aware of their own economic inferiority; the cultural penetration of North Korea by the South has been very gradual, and not officially sanctioned. In fact it remains illegal for North Koreans to trade in or own South Korean cultural products, but many still do. Third, with the exception of North Koreans who worked in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s (mainly involved in logging in Siberia), most North Koreans only knew what their government told them about Glasnost and Perestroika. Information even about ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ was not available to the average North Korean. The North Korean government had done a much better job of isolating their people from the outside world; this is partially thanks to the isolationist tendencies within Korean culture, the Korean War was also a factor. As a result there was no popular appetite for reform. South Korea has not penetrated North Korea economically in any way like the West German economy became attached to the East. East Germany was an important lesson for the North Korean elite; if we reform we will lose everything.

The lack of destalinization is also important. East Germany after Khrushchev denounced Stalin, became a post-Stalinist state. This means that it no longer underwent frequent, irrational, and terrifying purges of the party and populous. Instead the elite became imbedded, and increasingly aged. North Korea never destalinized, it remains the world’s Last Stalinist state at least in the sense of all pervading police network which seeks to deter and eliminate all threats to the regime’s survival from within the population. It remains effective in this regard, stifling all attempts to organise civil society. East Germany had an emerging civil society in the late 1980s, spearheaded by the Protestant Church, whose frequent campaigns and open dissent against the regime were tolerated.

North Korea therefore is not like East Germany, but it does bear striking resemblance to Romania. Romania’s leader until 1989, Ceausescu was very like Kim Il Sung. His personal vanity seemed to have known no limit; all attempts at dissent were ruthlessly crushed, as were protests. He actively copied North Korea and China in 1971 with his July theses. But there are two very important differences, whilst his Securitate was very effective, it could not keep out foreign information through radio broadcasts; so Romanians were aware of how Ceausescu’s policies were pauperising the nation contra the rest of Europe. Second, the reformism of the rest of Europe seeped into Romania, the substantial ethnic minority Hungarians became aware of the reformism and relative prosperity of their motherland through the radio. Third, the external threat of the Soviet Union after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 which united Romanians around the Ceausescu state no longer existed. Thus the regime had no economic legitimacy or foreign threat to help maintain its control over the people. So when the people rose up, the state splintered and the elite fractured between who saw the protest as ’counter-revolutionary’ and opportunists who saw it as a way to gain more power by toppling Ceausescu. North Korea still has and will always have an external enemy, in fact two, the United States and South Korea. Neither will be collapsing any time soon, so the elite would never dare to initiate reform, or topple the Kim dynasty. If they did, their state would most surely collapse and they would lose their privileges and maybe their lives. The Romanian elite could safely get rid of Ceausescu, blame him for everything, then seize power; the North Korean elite must cling to the Kims, they are the elite’s and the state’s Raison d'être.

North Korea is therefore unlikely to collapse like East Germany, or suddenly be overthrown by an elite coup like Romania (with popular support and unrest).

North/South Korean Electro 또는 보천보전자악단 vs. 백지영

2009-11-15T05:12:00.005+09:00

Can I just say whilst not agreeing with the sentiments of defending what amounts to the most grisly kind of State Socialism, I still find the music surprisingly catchy!

This is its South Korean variant

Commentary on South Korea: Plastic Surgery

2009-10-23T00:37:00.004+09:00

South Korea is a strange place for women, certainly much freer than any developing country, women command important jobs in South Korean companies and are able to have six figure salaries. Whilst there has not been a sexual revolution, and social mores are still more restrictive in Sexual practices. An illustration of this is one of my best Korean friends is a really normal guy, kind, funny, with a slightly cheeky wit. You would expect him to be a demon with ladies; not a bit of it, he has a very steady girlfriend, and he knows to the day when they got together. What is so wonderful about this couple for me is how normal they are by Western standards; they have similar interests, the same "major" etc. The funny thing is, the boy is better looking. He told me his society is plagued by what is called in Korean "lookism". Yet he is not defined by that, and he does not critically engage with his culture. He doesn't really see how terribly shallow South Korean popular culture is even by the low standards of western popular culture in general. He told me he likes his girlfriend for her heart (in the Korean world view there is no heart/mind distinction). This male friend of mine is irreligious, but he has the sexual ethics of a strict Christian; he says he will not have sex until he gets married. This is an old way and he is not the only man in Korea like this. Its strange sometimes, you meet people who are on the surface very western, they watch western TV, listen to Rap, and yet they aren't.

Another close Korean friend of mine has exactly the same sexual ethics, and he is even more steeped in Americanization, considering the fact he lives in America. It's very weird to hear a liberal, ethnic Korean with an American accent tell me, he has never had sex and doesn't want to think about it until he gets married. Part of me is quite envious, sex is so confusing and complicating. But here is the paradox, my second friend likes women who have been surgically "enhanced". What is meant by this is that the woman is made to look more westernized through surgery.

The most popular surgery in Korea is the splitting of the eyelid. I have feminist Korean friends who have fathers that want them to get surgery in order to increase their confidence with men. Its really unbearably sad for me to think of otherwise descent parents pressuring their children to have their faces (the very representation of their soul, their uniqueness), mutilated, defaced, turned into a lie, in order to please the rabble. This is the paradox of westernization, it liberates women from old pre-modern patriarchal power structures. Specifically women are no longer forced to stay at home, they have economic freedom. Yet in the case of South Korea, the cultural westernization has just created a new, unrealistic perception of beauty. Women are supposed to have bigger noses, straighter cheeks and bigger eyes. I have arguments with people about this, they say it is a choice, and many people do it for themselves and not for men. But this is clearly bullshit, we define ourselves in looks terms by what we desire, and what the desired wants. Its Stockholm syndrome, the prison guards, the dumb rabble who wants vacuous, mutilated, plastic women has won; so many women in South Korea now think of their own interests and that of the object of their desire as one and the same. A whole new internalized patriarchy exists.

DPRK Travellogue: Day Four

2009-10-04T19:42:00.002+09:00

The following day we went to Kumsusan memorial palace; this was the primary residence of the eternal president Kim Il Sung (he had many other secret retreats but this was his official state residence). It is a vast building, of which were only allowed to see small parts, foreigners are apparently not worthy to see his office and bed chambers. It allegedly cost $750 million to convert it from a residence to a pilgrimage site after the death of the great leader in 1994; this was the time of the great famine, when people were starving across the country. The parts of the palace we are allowed to see were the room of lamentation which is the room where every North Korean listens to the MP3 player provided that tells them about the death of the great leader. The other room to see takes the perversion grand prize for the country, Kim Il Sung’s embalmed corpse is on display, and as you pass through you must bow 3 times, at both his sides and at his head.

The final day in the country became the honoured dead grand tour in the morning. The next stop was the revolutionary martyr’s cemetery; this has over 500 grave stones for many obscure guerrilla comrades of Kim Il Sung, as well as the most honoured graves for his first wife (Kim Jong-suk) and favourite fellow fighter (O Chin-u). The cemetery is really just an obligatory ideological stop for all visitors to Pyongyang; it holds no particular interest to most, except to the relations of the dead buried there, and to regime true-believers. I did manage to make it interesting for myself though, by meeting more students from Kim Il Sung University, and talking to them in bad, broken Korean.

Tourism is a foreign currency earner, this is its role for the North Korean government, and they are not subtle in trying to liberate every last penny from your capitalist wallet. We went to 8 gift shops at least in the space of 4 days, perhaps more, I wasn’t really keeping count. The gift shop we went to on our last day was quite interesting however, because it wasn’t just for tourists, it was a functional shop open for domestic consumers. Most gift shops in Pyongyang are only opened when a tourist or visiting delegation is coming; they are left shut the rest of the time as they serve no other purpose. This means that the staff probably only serve customers 2-3 hours a week, 7 months of the year during the tourist season, at a maximum. The exception to the rule would be the shops at the Yanggakdo, which must be open most of daytime, whenever the hotel is open, as the hotel will always have a small number of guests, business or humanitarian as well as the seasonal tourists. But this gift shop was different; the ground floor had imported goods, dresses from China, motorbikes and watches from Japan to name a few. I even saw a copy of Rodong Shinmun (Workers News), the party newspaper, on the counter; the shop attendant wouldn’t let me buy it though. All the prices were in Euros, this is now the standard foreign currency in Pyongyang, and so this shop was clearly for the elite who can afford to spend hard currency on luxury goods. Most people even in Pyongyang who have hard currency, spend the bulk of it on food, to supplement very austere rations that are apportioned them by the state. Outside the capital, North Koreans often do not have access to state rations, or hard currency, so they have to barter or use the local North Korean currency, the Won. The quality of the goods on offer was poor, they did not look new, the watches were fake, the clothes looked akin to Primark knock-offs of named brands, and the motorbikes looked old, early 90s or late 80s in style. But this is to be expected, in a country almost untouched by globalisation and the influx of western goods that third world elites usually have access to as a result.

Mansudae is a very famous sight in the DPRK; if you have ever seen the giant statue of Kim Il Sung, hand outstretched toward the sky then you have seen Mansudae (Mansu Hill). It is another obligatory ideological stop, you are supposed to lay flowers at the feet of the statue, and bow before it to show even more respect to the peerless Patriot Kim Il Sung. It wasn’t worth the trip, the Supreme People’s Assembly the North Korean parliament, was just down the road from there, and it would have been much more interesting to see that. The statue is flanked by two sets of sculptures depicting Korean revolutionaries before and after the war, the constant theme of a united people of Peasants, workers and intellectuals is repeated.

The Pyongyang subway was opened in 1973, I have heard many journalists and commentators compare it to the Moscow metro. I have never been to Moscow so I cannot comment as to the veracity of these claims, but trusted sources tell me it was built with Russian expertise, architectural and engineering. It is the deepest subway system in the world and doubles as an air raid shelter, as you would imagine in the most militarised society on the planet. The platforms have luxuriant murals to the revolutionary exploits of Kim Il Sung, and the chandeliers befits a socialist paradise. The subway trains themselves are old East German (Correction: The Current rolling stock are West Berliner vintage from the 1980s) former communist rolling stock from the 1950s-80s. The doors don’t open automatically; you have to pull them with a handle! Inside the train there are very old fashioned hard, faux-leather seats and pictures of Kim father and son stare down from above the door to the next carriage. The Pyongyang subway is the showcase that isn’t, when compared to the Seoul subway. The Seoul subway is one the largest and most impressive subways in the world, ultra-modern and fully functional. Whilst the Pyongyang subway would have been impressive in the 1930s or 1940s, it looks extremely dated and quaint now.

When we exited the subway our driver was waiting to take us to the stamp shop, I managed to nab some shots of the Koryo Hotel before we got on the coach. I persuaded my guide to let me take my friend to the Koryo Hotel rather than go to the stamp shop directly (another gift shop to hoover up our hard currency). The Koryo Hotel was complete in 1985. It isn’t the first Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang, there was a Koryo Hotel in Pyongyang in 1945, this is where the old Nationalist leader in Pyongyang, Cho Man-sik (the so-called Korean Gandhi) was imprisoned after he disagreed with the Soviet Union over their plans for Korea (when they occupied the country in 1945). The new Koryo Hotel is the most luxurious hotel in Pyongyang; it has a vast, cavernous lobby, flanked by a tea house on one side and a bar on the other. The hotel is a favoured haunt of the North Korean Nomenklatura; I read a rumour in Bradley Martin’s book that Kim Jong-nam (first son of the dear leader) went on a shooting rampage there in the late 1990s and I really wanted see the place for myself. I didn’t see any bullet holes or signs of a massacre; I asked one frequent traveller to the DPRK and he dismissed the rumour as idle gossip. I played the piano at the hotel and had a very overpriced cup of coffee for €3; but this was the best cup of coffee in the country, it came from a machine that had real coffee beans in it. You could tell this was an elite hang out by all the creepy bureaucrats in Mao suits and sunglasses sitting at tables. This seems to be the style of the Nomenklatura in Pyongyang, the baggy summer Mao suit that looks like pyjamas (see Kim Jong Il in one here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Kim_Jong_il_2009_2.jpg), and the tinted sunglasses. They look like a cabal of gangsters as a result.

The Tower of the Juche Idea was built in 1982 to replace the industrial achievements exhibit on the same sight. This was to celebrate the 60th Birthday of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. Juche as already mentioned is the ideology of North Korea; like many words in Korean it has more than one meaning, but in this context it is often translated as Self-reliance. What it means in practice is that the DPRK has attempted (disastrously) to achieve self-suffiency in agriculture, and to rely less on foreign technology in manufacturing. North Korea was always reliant on Soviet preferential prices for oil and other vital raw materials which amounted to Aid. The tower itself is like a bigger version of the Washington Monument with a giant red light bulb in the shape of a flame at its peak. They charge you €5 to ride the elevator to the top; it’s worth the money because you get a panoramic view of Pyongyang (except when it’s covered in Mist, like the day we were there). I met an American academic at the top who specialises in Chinese 20th Century History; he said that the place had a feeling similar to Beijing after the death of Mao. He elaborated, it felt like it was in a transition period, the prevalence of foreign currency and the existence of state sanctioned markets seemed to him like the green shoots of a Korean style “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. I disagreed with him; I see the reform process in North Korea as being dead locked in an institutional cul-de-sac. The military and the party hierarchy have much to gain by small reforms that can bring in foreign currency, like joint ventures with foreign companies (like the Kaesong industrial project). But they have everything to lose by embracing Chinese style reform; these reforms would necessarily lead to an influx of information about the outside world and would destroy the regime’s credibility. As so often noted by specialists in this field, Vietnam and China could risk capitalism because they did not have a large ethnically identical capitalist rival that would discredit the regime (Taiwan is far too small to discredit Beijing). The other major road block to reform is the continued profitability of the status quo, the Nomenklatura is Pyongyang have control over all the profitable industries that the state still runs; this means that they can still enjoy a comparatively comfortable standard of living. When East Europe liberalised in 1980s and 1990s, most of the Nomenklatura lost these kinds of privileges; even in China, former Nomenklatura status is no guarantee of a decent standard of living.

The second to last stop on the trip was the 50th Anniversary Monument to the Foundation of the Worker’s Party of Korea. It was completed in 1995; this isn’t actually the 50th Anniversary the WKP was founded in 1949, when the Southern and Northern parties were merged into one party. The 1945 date is the founding date of the Korean Communist Party, which was a fundamentally different organisation. Anyway, the monument is quite an iconic image for Pyongyang. It is a large stone building with a stone paint brush (symbolic of the intellectual), a stone sickle (the peasant), and a stone hammer (the worker). It is another example of terrible waste, completed at the start of the great famine.

My last evening in Pyongyang was very interesting; I went the far side of the island on which the Yanggakdo resides. There was an outdoor bar staffed by 20 year old bar staff, their English was about as basic as my Korean, but they were very interested to hear about South Korea. I did an impression of my South Korean friends talking on their mobiles in Korean which they found uproariously funny. One of the staff was a girl my age who was very cute for a North Korean, and she seemed very interested in me, so I bought her a drink and tried to talk to her in Korean and English. It was very difficult, but she wanted me to come back to Pyongyang to see her again; she was reading a Korean folk love story, and I wish I had met her sooner, then I could have taken her on more dates. I went back the following morning to tell her that I was leaving, and told her I would be coming back to Pyongyang to take her out on another date. She was about as forward as any girl in Pyongyang can be considering how conservative North Korea is, but I hope to continue my North Korean love life when I go back.

I owe a debt of thanks to the following scholars who have been so influential on my thoughts on North Korea: Andrei Lankov, Dae-sook Suh, Brian Reynolds Myers, Robert Scalapino, Chong-sik Lee, David Hawk, Charles Armstrong, Adrian Buzo, Erik Cornell, Ralph C. Hassig, Kongdan Oh, Bradley K. Martin, Bruce Cumings, Helen Louise Hunter, Marcus Noland, Stephen Haggard, Balazs Szalontai, and Hy-sang Lee.

DPRK Travellogue: Day Three

2009-10-04T19:39:00.001+09:00

The hangover from the Taedŏnggang Beer was rather slight; we stopped at the coffee place of the previous day on our route back to Pyongyang. I had a rather interesting conversation with my male guide about the South, when I asked him about Sŏngbun (the North Korean hereditary class system) he told me that it was the name for a worker, expertly dodging what would have been an impossibly politically dangerous question. I also asked him what he thought of the South, and he told me that he had no problem with the people, whilst making vague references to the horrors of the Korean War. He was very interested in Seoul and the way South Koreans talk; I found it rather interesting discussing the levels of formality. North Koreans talk to each other as if they were addressing their very senior elders, whilst in the South people seem most of the time to be far more familiar with each other. He told me that the way he talks to his wife is equivalent to the way a southerner would address the President.

The other interesting thing about this conversation is that my guide did know that No Mu-hyŏn had died, whilst my female guide did not know. Neither of them knew that at that time Kim Dae-Jung was at death’s door. He was also very interested in the list of all the world leaders who have been embalmed, Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, and Kim Il Sung. He also knew that Stalin’s body had been buried on Khrushchev’s orders. My male guide seemed always to have a look of pained discomfort on his face long before I started asking what I subsequently realised were awkward questions. When he talked about the division it looked like he held the grief and pain of the Korean nation in his heart; when he talked about daily life in Pyongyang he didn’t look happy. Part of me suspects that he is very sad about what has happened to his country since the death of Kim Il Sung; without access to outside information he would probably not blame his own government. But it would be very naive to assume that he was a true believer; I felt that he accepted his system as a fact of life, almost second nature, but did not actively approve or disapprove of it. Maybe the way I think about human biological realities is comparable to this feeling; I accept the inevitability of aging and death, but I do not like or approve of it in the abstract, but it would be folly to actively disapprove of it.

A monument that you will see a lot of if you ever leave Pyongyang to go southward in the DPRK is the Arch of Reunification (Choguk Tongil is National reunification in Korean, and that it is worth memorising). It’s a rather large arch that overhangs the road that leads out of Pyongyang to the south. It’s rather bizarre that they would build an arch composed of two women in a neoclassical style in a country where even the nicer apartment blocks in the showcase capital look like they were last repaired in the 1970s. No matter, this is Pyongyang to a tee. We stopped there and I fraternised with our very sociable driver who looked like the Korean Scarface; when he drove he wore white gloves and shades. He drove like a maniac as fast as the coach would move, and honked his horn at anything that got in the way. The one time he gave way it was to an expensive car in Kaesŏng that was honking its horn; I got the impression that the driver’s were high Nomenklatura of the military variety. But Driver Lee as he was known was damn cool, I had running jokes with him where I would mime myself being killed in ever more intricate ways which he found hysterically funny. He told me through my female guide that he didn’t know who Scarface was (no surprise given the absence of American culture of any kind in the DPRK). He thought I was referring to Chinese martial arts films, and he condemned them for their gratuitous violence. I thought this was rather funny considering his sense of style and his driving abilities.

The Korean War Museum was the next port of call for our on-the-rails tour of the DPRK. If you don’t the back story I will give you a brief overview; the real story so far as the world is concerned (including the Russian archives) is that on June 25th 1950 Kim Il Sung launched an invasion of South Korea. The North have a rather funny story about the Americans invading the North first on the aforementioned date; the reason why this is so comical is that there weren’t any American troops in South Korea when they were supposed to be invading the North. Anyway, the Museum’s rather funny propaganda film makes the same point. On a serious note, the DPRK was bombed into rubble and Napalm was used first in Korea. Wada Haruki called the DPRK a “garrison state”, this means the place is filled with underground facilities from homes to arms production; this originates from the Korean war time, and is as a result of the war crimes perpetrated by the USA in their aerial bombardment of the DPRK. It’s not difficult to explain why anti-Americanism in the DPRK is still official state ideology and why it was so easy to drill into the national consciousness, the Americans did the job for the leadership. The museum was horrifying in its cataloguing of US atrocities (and no mention of the KPA atrocities), but I was quite bored by the whole experience.

I spent most of the time talking to the very attractive guide for the other tour group; she had a kind of beautiful but deadly sex appeal about her, indomitable, an ideal partner for a rather overbearing person like me. She had heard from her colleagues about my knowledge of Korean history, and my impossible number of questions. She said that she was interested in history; this is something I have noticed about East Asia in general, it’s not a taboo for people to be interested in intelligent things, and I find that it so often is in the west. The other point is that there are very few women as beautiful as this guide in the west who could have a serious and stimulating chat with me about North Korean history. Anyway she asked how obscure my knowledge could get, so I recited Kim Jong-il’s family tree, which she was extremely impressed by. I saw on Wikipedia when I got back that I had forgotten Kim’s first wife, but the guide didn’t correct me. Wikipedia also told me why she wouldn’t have been able to correct me, because she wouldn’t have known Kim Jong-il’s family history, because it is state secret. I didn’t know that when I was parroting the names, but in retrospect I should be more careful! I mentioned Hwang Jang-yop, the most senior defector from the DPRK (and Kim Jong-il’s tutor, as well as the architect of the Juche idea). This was a very interesting avenue of conversation, she wanted to know what the man had to say about the country, and I duly told her some of it in very polite and apologetic language. She wrote him off as being greedy, which I suppose is fair enough considering her very limited access to fair and impartial information.

Lunch was a very interesting experience; the usual fusion of bizarre pseudo-western foods like Corn based faux-sausage. There is also a great deal of fried and grilled meat with every meal in the DPRK; they seem to be most enthusiastic about showing the carnivorous triumph of Juche socialism. But this was my only opportunity to have North Korean raengmyŏn. Raengmyŏn is a Korean summer delicacy; it is a specific kind of thin noodles served ice cold. I caused quite a funny situation when I asked for my noodles to be cut with scissors; this is a common practice in the south. My waitress was very confused and didn’t understand, so the waiter/manager type male came over, it took a minute for him to understand. When he did he erupted into laughter, North Koreans never cut their raengmyŏn with scissors, how bizarre. The other point worth noting is that North Korea has never been rice-self-sufficient. As a result, even before the collapse of production in the 1990s many North Koreans had to eat a mixture of Rice and Corn as their staple food, this is of course not ideal for a people who use the same word for rice as they do for meal (Pap). You notice the lack of food in the country in very subtle ways when eating in the DPRK; you are given a lot of food, but 85% is not Korean in style, and clearly comes from China along with the small bottles of shampoo in your en suite bath room. The rice however does come from the north, and is of a much lower quality than what you would get in the South even in the cheapest restraints. This is some of the best food there is in the country, a show case, and it is bad quality, to the point where 5% of your rice is not ripe and therefore very crunchy.

The afternoon started with the USS Pueblo, the US ‘spy’ ship that was captured by the North Koreans in 1968. This is quite an interesting story; my friends told me that it certainly had too much genuine US equipment on it not to be a spy ship, so I will take their word for it. But it is almost certain that the DPRK was not within its rights to seize the ship; Charles Jenkins the US defector to the DPRK wrote in his book that the first English draft of a pamphlet the North was going to publish on the incident makes reference the ship being captured on the “high seas”. It was captured to the East of Wŏnsan, and the crew were held in custody by the DPRK for 11 months, apparently in rather appalling conditions. It is now docked in Pyongyang in almost the same place where the General Sherman was destroyed in 1866. The General Sherman incident was the first incursion of the ‘US imperialist aggression forces’ on Korean territory, when an American trading vessel tried to force its way up the Taedong River, and fired on hostile Koreans. The ship ran aground and was burnt by a crowd that according to North Korean historiography contained the Great-grandfather of Kim Il Sung, Kim Ung-u. There is no evidence beyond what North Korean historians assert, but it adds to the compelling narrative of US imperialist aggression toward Korea, and to the revolutionary lineage of the Kim family.

The USS Pueblo itself is alright, to be frank I would have preferred to have gone to the Korean history museum to see the differing interpretations of Korean history. Or to the ‘restored tomb’ of the legendary founder of Korea, Tan’gun. Nonetheless, the Pueblo was rather amusing, the North Koreans had put all the magazines the crew had in a display cabinet, such choice articles as Reader’s Digest 1967 vintage; the country is so isolated they can’t seem to tell the difference between complete mundanity and outright mendacity.

Man’gyŏngdae was the next stop on a rather stilted day. This is the sight of Kim Il Sung’s early life; actually he was born Kim Sŏng-ju, Il Sung was his nom de gurre. Man’gyŏngdae is a rather nice traditional Korean cottage with a well nearby, that will give you explosive diarrhoea (that wasn’t a nice experience). It is a sacred revolutionary site as you would expect, and not in the least bit interesting; except for the crowds of ‘young-pioneer-esque’ children that come on school trips to the site, and the rather standoffish cadres on their day trip.

What came next was a long walk up the park that surrounds Man’gyŏngdae, the walk was interesting for two reasons. North Korean ice cream is not nice and is ridiculously overpriced at €1.50 for a shitty little cone; it tastes like frozen and partially curdled milk, I thought it was what gave me my upset stomach until two of my friends told me they had upset stomachs as well and that they hadn’t had the ice cream, but had Kim’s water from the well. The other curiosity which was much more interesting was a small cart that I saw on a side path as we were descending down the hill. It was being moved by a woman who was selling dried-out sea food, cidar and beer; she was clearly not a state employee given the set up of the stall and how almost illicit it felt to see her; she didn’t know any English whilst most of the state employees know enough to get by. My guide didn’t try to keep me away from her, in fact when she saw me approach she had a world-weary look of resignation on her face. Even the show case capital cannot maintain the façade of socialism for its tourists. I bought nothing from the vendor, and in hindsight I feel a bit guilty for not giving her some money that she probably needed a lot more than me.

The next stop was the best part of the whole trip, a trip to Moran Hill (Moranbong) park; this is where the young people like to be, so my guides said any way. It’s quite a pretty place; there was street entertainment which was rather silly, one American tourist resorted to self-humiliation, I hate street entertainment, but the North Koreans thought Americans being silly rather than bastard-like was good fun. I found some students who were talking, singing and laughing; they were all very welcoming, they insisted I have as much Beer and Kimpap (Korean equivalent of Sushi) as I could eat. North Korean Kimpap is lacking in meat which is to be expected, but the rice is greased with egg as it should be. The beer as already mentioned is the best you can have in Asia, and vastly superior to South Korean stuff. The students sung me a folk song that I had never hear before, they demanded a song in return, and the only song I can ever remember the words to is ‘Tainted Love’ by Soft Sell, so I sung that. I doubt they have ever heard it before, or are familiar English synthpop (I just looked the term up on Wikipedia).

We climbed the Moran hill which is rather pretty and we saw many different gatherings of very friendly North Koreans. When we got to the top we descended to the monument commemorating the liberation of the north by the USSR. Around there was a group of North Korean students from Kim Il Sung University, who were very friendly; among their number was the most beautiful girl I saw in all of the North, and maybe even the south, she was truly perfect. I think she must have been around my age, I asked her for a photo which she refused me; but I did manage to get a photo for posterity, of the whole group of Kim Il Sung undergraduates, which she was in. Like all Kim Il Sung university undergrads she must have been from an elite family, she had the look of someone who eats a very good diet and the face she pulled on the photo made her look like a Japanese anime character smiling, eyes closing. Looking back, out of all my 2 months on the Korean peninsula, this was the time that I most wanted to speak Korean. To be able to socialise with people my age who have a very similar standard of living to me and live in the most interesting country in the world. They were very friendly and did their best to understand my very broken Korean, but it just was so frustrating; if I had known the language I could have conversed with the future cadres, these upper stratum elite children will be the ones who perpetuate, reform or collapse North Korea. What do they want, what do they know about the South and China and the wider world. What do they think of their country, its history, and culture; have they met Kim Jong-il? I had so many questions, and no way to ask them. My guess would be that these students would know a lot more than we would expect; considering their upper elite status, they probably have VCRs, and videos of at least Chinese TV, and possibly South Korean soap operas. They must know something of the wealth of South Korea considering they have South Korean Samsung Cameras. If asked directly they probably wouldn’t have anything bad to say about South Korea, just like my guide, they would probably not just parrot state policy. I get the feeling from watching documentaries on the DPRK, that there is one line for journalists, heavily scripted by party guides and officials who echo a 1970s style anti-imperialist line. Then there is the contemporary tourist line, which seems resigned to the decline of the DPRK economically, and treats the Kim cult as a fact of life not as something to enthuse over, just something that has to necessarily be acknowledged, but an uncomfortable subject.

The next stop was the second traditional restaurant of the trip; the food was excellent if a bit on the sparing side. We had grilled meat, and I don’t think it was Bulgogi but maybe it was, the quality wasn’t bad, but in South Korea I could eat about three times as much at a buffet near Korea University for £3.50. The best part of the restaurant was introducing my guides to So-maek, a South Korean drink that their Northern brethren had never heard of. So-maek is a neologism, Soju is a rice based clear alcohol of 20% and Maekju is the Korean name for Beer. So when you mix them you get So-maek, a punchy light brown drink which tastes better in the North because the beer is so much better. My Korean guides seemed to appreciate it to the extent that they downed it; it’s really bizarre to think that I know more about South Korean popular culture than North Koreans.

The supposed highlight of the entire trip so far as most tourists was next on our itinerary, the Arirang Mass games. Our guide did the best she could to give us a synopsis of the event, but it goes on for a while and has a series of interconnected images which often make no sense unless you have an intimate understanding of the motifs of North Korean propaganda and an advanced ability in the Korean language (for a somewhat comprehensive breakdown see: http://1stopkorea.com/index.htm?nk-trip5.htm~mainframe). This is not the half of it however; it is never noted in the western press or in other travelogues of the DPRK that I have read, or for that matter in any publication on the DPRK that I have read, Arirang is a violation of U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. This isn’t my idea, I read it here: http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00300&num=3578, and I think it is a compelling case. It is in some ways the greatest show on earth, when the boys and girls holding the cards that make up the flashcard picture in front of you let out their first screams at the start, you feel a burst of excitement. There are many beautiful images, and the old Korean folk song is so ubiquitous throughout the performance (check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FlXH9CGnvw ) it sounds more beautiful when it’s sung by a girl you love, but it is still beautiful. The symbolism is apt; the song is about a woman left by her lover, singing for him to come back and for them to be reunited (read: reunified). This is a theme of the display; as we queued up to enter the stadium we saw young men dressed from head to foot in white carrying very large light blue flags. The colours white and light blue are part of the symbolism of the reunification in both North and South Koreas.
There is a very simple reason why it is called a “display”, the performance is jaw dropping in its size and coordination, but it has no soul. There are no protagonists except for the collective, the Korean people. The aim of the display is to interweave the revolutionary exploits of the two leaders into the fabric of modern Korean History, within the art form of gymnastics. If you can read the Korean alphabet, even with minimal vocabulary, it works. I picked out the names and titles of the two Kim’s hundreds of times over the course of two hours. The revolutionary mythology of the regime is ubiquitous in all North Korean art and culture. I don’t have much else to say about Arirang, it is worth seeing, but personally I preferred other events on the tour, like actually meeting North Korean elite children. One funny thing I noted was how bored the tour guides were, they had seen it so many times before. I sat with my tour guide alone, because everyone else bought more expensive tickets, my poor guide was constantly pestered by questions about the revolutionary slogans that were appearing on the mosaic opposite us.

DPRK Travellogue: Day Two

2009-10-04T19:35:00.002+09:00

The first full day in the DPRK began early; if you ever plan to go on tour in the DPRK be prepared to be chronically sleep deprived. The beer in Pyongyang costs €0.60 a bottle and the bottles are 640ml so it’s very cheap to get drunk. The beer is also exceptionally good, they imported a brewery from England in 2001 and it shows. If I could get Taedonggang beer I would buy it in England. The upshot of all this is that I got very little sleep in the DPRK because I was too busy drinking and trying to flirt with the North Korean waitresses with lyrics from South Korean songs and it didn’t go to badly, except when the bar maid asked me about my Sowŏn and I thought she said Sŏwŏn. Sŏwŏn is a Confucian academy from the Chosŏn period, but Sowŏn is the Korean word for wish. I kept asking her why I would go to a Confucian University if I were British; the barman thought this was rather hilarious and I did too once I understood what she was trying to say.

We went to Panmunjŏm (the village where soldiers from both sides stare at each other); one of the first things you will notice when you come to the DPRK is that it has very few cars. The country has a number of very impressive motorways and yet there is no traffic to fill them. Personally I can see the advantage of having the motorways, I do not think they are merely more folly on the part of the regime. They make a great deal of strategic sense for military transportation and logistics, being a country technically still at war it makes moving tanks and troop transports around very easy. And you can see the level of militarisation in the DPRK when you travel between two cities, there are multiple roadblocks between Pyongyang and Panmunjŏm, all staffed by very young looking KPA conscripts. This also goes back to an earlier point I made about re-Stalinisation, you can see it when you’re on the roads, its’ that the state is reasserting itself by curbing freedom of movement. At least that was my impression. This was my first real chance to talk to my guides about the DPRK and I think I started by humming my favourite Korean tunes from the North. This was rather shocking for my guides, I am pretty sure they have never encountered such an enthusiast as me when it comes to DPRK music and propaganda (and I did ask them if they have ever had a tourist who knew the music).

On our way to Panmunjŏm we stopped at a ‘coffee’ house, one of many occasions where the Korean International Tourist Company (KITC) attempted to liberate foreign exchange from our imperialist wallets to use the phrase of my friend Ed from the tour. The coffee house was an ugly building that overhung the expressway in the middle of nowhere but was well staffed for some reason known only to the North Korean state. I went up and struck up a thoroughly broken conversation with one of the waitresses asking her if she had a Hanbok (Korean traditional female clothing). She looked at me blankly, I asked several times thinking my pronunciation was wrong and then I remembered. The use of the word “han” in Hanbok is derived from the name of South Korea in Korean “Hanguk”; in the North as the waitress told me when I asked her, the outfit is known as the Chosŏn-ut. The division of Korea can be very confusing for Korean language novices like me.

The drive to Panmunjom was quite interesting for what we could see from the car; the motorway that we were supposed to drive up was undergoing repairs so we had to turn off onto a dirt track for a substantial portion of the journey. We saw columns of soldiers several times; something you will notice if you ever visit the DPRK is that there are soldiers everywhere. They are usually very young looking; most of them look like they have not long left school. Before I blow this out of proportion I should add that both Koreas have conscription, so there are plenty of young men who are in the military straight after school in both Koreas. The difference in proportions can be seen North of the border; I met plenty of guys older than me who had been in the military, but the only time I ever saw a South Korean soldier was when I was in Panmunjom from the Northern side. The south maintains an army just over half a million strong, drawn from a total population of 44 million. The north on the other hand, maintains an army of over one million from a population of 22 million. This means that the north is four times more militarised than the south. If this worries you then I should just add that the south spends more than double what the north does on defence; they counter the raw numbers of the north with far more advanced firepower.

One other thing worthy of mention from the trip to Panmunjom was that I saw Sariwŏn. Sariwŏn is the capital of North Hwanghae province; this isn’t particularly interesting in itself, but I know someone who is from there. My pre-modern Korean history teacher at summer school in the south was originally from very near Sariwŏn; his family fled south during the Korean War, and he is sad to never be able to see where he is from. We sped past it, and I am sure that he would not recognise it; the skyline was composed purely of brutalist tower blocks, it was a very ugly city. If Korea is ever reunified, southerners will be very disappointed to see what their northern brothers have done to their beautiful country. While I was in the south I went up the Seoul tower on the South Mountain, Seoul is a beautiful and dynamic city at night. Pyongyang is relatively well lit at night compared to the videos I have seen from the 1990s; tower blocks are now lit, in the 1990s they would be dark at night. North Korea seems to have much more power than it did during the arduous march of the 1990s. But it’s a very ugly view; it looks like a skyline from George Orwell; the triumph of mechanistic rationality, no character, no randomness, just perfectly planned, cheap and ugly tower blocks. At least capitalism has some flair to it; Pyongyang is the triumph of socialist planning.

Panmunjŏm is the place where all the tourists get their kicks; to see the frontline of the frozen war that is still theoretically going on. Personally I found it quite dull; seeing soldiers stare at each other with rather forced and practiced contempt. But our guide did impart something quite interesting; there was a rather horrible incident known as the Axe Murder incident that occurred near Panmunjom in 1976. So far as the west is concerned the story is this: a poplar tree was obscuring the view from a lookout point in the southern part of the DMZ, so a group of UN soldiers went to trim it. Some KPA soldiers accosted them and demanded they stop, the UN soldiers told them they were within their rights to trim the tree, so the KPA soldiers attacked them. My North Korean guide told a different story; that the KPA were attacked by UN soldiers. There was a convincing justification to this, why would the USA need to trim this tree? They have the most sophisticated observing equipment in the world and would be able to see perfectly well without the need to trim the tree. To me the incident doesn’t make much sense, the US would obviously not want a war straight after Vietnam, the north could not win a war, and the south did not want a war in the middle of industrialisation. But I suppose it could play into the imperialist propaganda narrative of the north in the same way as other bizarre incidents did in the 1970s.

One other thing I noticed in Panmunjŏm which I found very amusing was the Samsung air conditioning unit installed on the North Korean side. I asked my guide if she had ever heard of the company and she looked at me blankly. In the South Korean language the big companies like Samsung, Hyundai et al are known as chaebŏls, this is the Korean pronunciation of the Japanese word for company. My North Korean guide had never heard the word before which I found surprising. And she didn’t find it funny that the air conditioning was made by South Koreans, in fact I don’t think she would have realised if I hadn’t pointed it out.

After Panmunjŏm we went to Kaesŏng which I found much more interesting. Kaesŏng was the capital of Korea until 1392 under what is known as the Koryŏ dynasty; actually the English name for Korea is a bad Romanisation of the word Koryŏ. Kaesŏng still has a little of its pre-modern charm, but more about that later. The first thing I noticed about Kaesŏng is how much poorer it was than Pyongyang, when you enter the city there are no cars; Pyongyang has some cars, not many, it’s not like any other capital, there is no traffic. But Kaesong has no cars on entry, just people on bicycles and walking by the side of the road. The other indication of poverty is roughness of the roads, they are filled with potholes and cracks; the Pyongyang roads are not, and they are much more used than the Kaesŏng roads, which leads me to suspect that the roads in Kaesŏng are badly maintained. This is the second city of North Korea in terms of size and in terms of resources allotted; most foreigners who visit Pyongyang will also be taken to Kaesong. The decaying state of its infrastructure and the poverty of its people show just how bankrupt the North Korean state is.

For lunch in Kaesong we went to a ‘local restaurant’, a euphemism our guide used for what was clearly a showcase. There is no way the people walking/riding past me on the street could have afforded the lunch we were given. The presence of a gift shop selling only in Euros to liberate more foreign exchange from my purse was further proof of this. Whilst the elite in North Korea obviously have access to foreign exchange, the common people surely would not have the money to afford a meal at the ‘restaurant’. The food was very good; an assortment of cold, traditional Korean side dishes, and the Soju (the Korean equivalent of Vodka) was very good too. Having called it a showcase, I should add a proviso; I saw some side rooms there, so I think it might have been an elite luncheon hangout as well as being for tourists.

When the meal was over I went outside; I had already seen quite a bit of revolutionary paraphernalia in Pyongyang. Currently there is a 150 day work campaign instituted by the party to speed up production. This is the standard growth strategy adopted by communist countries; make up for a lack of capital investment by trying to make your workers work harder. This is known as Stakhanovism after Alexey Stakhanov, the famous Russian miner who over fulfilled his coal quota by 10 times. The 150 day work campaign offers the ideological incentive of medals and flags to those who work the hardest; the problem with this kind of economic model is that of diminishing returns. Labour can only give so much, machinery and infrastructure is just as important; this is why the DPRK is mired in persistent underdevelopment with a moribund and stagnant economy. It does not have the money or the inclination to modernise its industrial base. So instead it pursues pointless and for its people, exhausting campaigns to increase production and try to push the economy out of its quagmire.

What I noticed on the streets of Pyongyang and on the streets of Kaesŏng is how obvious the gap is between rich and poor. Near the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang the day before, I saw two very beautiful high school students; if it weren’t for their modest, long skirts, they could have been Japanese and in Kaesong I saw girls just like them. Whilst I was trying to read aloud one of the revolutionary posters a man from Kaesŏng came alongside me and helped me read it. He was missing teeth, and was wearing ragged clothes, an oversized Mao suit jacket which was unbuttoned, with a vest underneath, and baggy trousers that were above the waistline with a belt. He looked very haggard; I can imagine that he struggled for food in the 1990s. It is a blatantly class society, the gap between the connected and the unconnected is yawning; it is especially disturbing considering the state socialist roots of the DPRK.

From the ‘local restaurant’ we went to the Concrete wall, this is the Korean version of the Berlin wall. The DPRK alleges that the South Koreans built a concrete wall along the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) in the late 1970s. The South contends that it is merely a tank barrier and does not take up the entire DMZ; the fact is I don’t know who to believe. The North has carefully built a lookout post in one area where the wall/barrier is visible through a telescope, so either side could be telling the truth. I know if the south had built such a wall they probably wouldn’t make it public, and there isn’t any way for the media to double check the truth of northern claims because freedom of movement is heavily restricted in the DMZ.

The route to the concrete wall was far more interesting than the lookout point itself. North Hwanghae province is one of the wealthiest provinces in the North, it has a productive agricultural base and being near Pyongyang it is treated quite well in allocation of state resources. Being near the border with the south also means that it would be treated better, in order to showcase the triumph of the Juche idea. I think it’s important to note this before I describe what I saw; leaving Kaesong there were many people on bicycles on both sides of the road. But as we progressed beyond the city limits we saw few people; there were soldiers, young conscripts yet again. But there were also children, dressed in old and oversized clothes walking or sitting by the side of the road. I saw one of them doing their washing in the stream, a clear sign of the third world. The one happy sight was a river filled with children and adults enjoying the warm day and swimming; one of the guides told me later the reason why they were swimming. He said that the waters are suspected to have medicinal qualities at this time of year; I think it may have something to do with Shamanism but he didn’t mention it. I don’t think there is a prohibition against the recognition of native Korean superstitions; my beautiful North Korean guide did not know much about Chŏndogyo, but the North Korean state continues to recognise the religion (as a political force, Chŏndogyo Young Friends Party), which is a home grown mix of shamanism, Catholicism and Buddhism.

The concrete wall itself was a rather bland exhibit; the curator was a KPA major who was rather too friendly to be real. They subjected us to a nice bit of badly translated and crass propaganda film about the US imperialists and their flunkey’s in the south. The major was very enthusiastic about us having pictures with him and he said that he wanted us to come back to the country again. I asked him if he had ever met Kim Jong-il and I could tell that my guide called Kim Jong-il “the general” (Chang-gun) in Korean. He said he had his photo taken with him. This is a bizarre thing about the DPRK, propaganda exhibits that obviously cost time and money to construct and are staffed by permanent guides exist right next to the most grinding poverty. This kind of noxious misallocation of resources toward prestige projects over the basic needs of the people is ubiquitous in the north. You see it when you drive past villages, each having its own obelisk at its centre that says “the great leader Kim Il Sung will always be with us”. I also saw it at the book shop at the Yanggakdo, one of the books I bought was called ‘Let’s Learn Korean’, was published at the start of the famine in 1995. The Yanggakdo was completed in 1995; the North Korean state seems to genuinely not care about much of its people, seeing its prestige projects as more important.

After the concrete wall we went to the Koryŏ museum; it was a jarring contrast between the decrepit tower blocks in Kaesŏng and the immaculately maintained Koryŏ museum that was completely empty except for the specialist guide who took us around it. There were quotations and pictures of the Kim’s on the walls, yet they were completely ignored; the same was the case at Panmunjŏm, the guides made no effort to tell us about the Kims. I don’t think my female guide was a true believer; it felt like talking to a South Korean about their politics; the references to the great and dear leaders seemed perfunctory, when the cult could be ignored it was.

The next sight after that was the Tomb of King Kongmin, the flawed genius during the final decline of the Koryo dynasty. The tomb was robbed by those Waenŏm (Cunning bastards, the colloquial Korean for Japanese) in 1905. It was completely unideological which was slightly surprising; the reason why King Kongmin is famous in Korea is because of his attempts at land reform, he wasn’t as radical as Kim Il Sung but he did seek to break the power of the nobility and empower the common people. He also disempowered the pro-Mongol elite within Koryŏ; as I have already mentioned the whole point of the Juche idea is national independence. King Kongmin would fit perfectly into the North Korean historical narrative, yet my guides said nothing about the historical parallels. Maybe it was because Kongmin was assassinated and failed in his efforts at reform.

We did not go back to the Yanggakdo in the evening; rather we stayed at the Kaesŏng Folk Hotel. Folk hotel means that you sleep on the floor, the doors are made of paper and the food is western/Korean fusion as usual. It was a reasonably pleasant experience, but I managed to drink too much and tell my guides rather too much about their country that they didn’t know and I don’t think in retrospect they would have wanted to know.

DPRK Travellogue: Day One

2009-10-04T19:33:00.002+09:00

The tour company I went with was Koryo Tours, which is run by a group of British expatriates in Beijing, they have been taking tourists to the DPRK since the late 1980s, and have also been involved in making very interesting documentaries about the country. The staff advised us before we went on several things; we should be polite to our guides, not dogmatic, don’t ask to go to places not on the itinerary, and also never insult the dear/great leaders. Easy enough guidelines to follow, or so I thought at the time.

Air Koryo is the state carrier of the DPRK, and so far as I am aware there are no other civilian airlines in the DPRK; it is run by the military and has a rather interesting, somewhat dated fleet of Russian aircraft. The aircraft we took I think was an Ilyushin Il-62, a late 1960s passenger jet that could carry over 150 passengers. I remember at check-in being stared at by the North Korean passengers who were wearing blue jackets and shirts, and had their Kim Il Sung badge pinned to their lapel. It was a rather daunting sight, I wondered what the country would be like if these were my native co-passengers. On the flight stewardesses said nothing to any of the non-Korean passengers and this added to the feeling of apprehension I had.

We landed at Sunan airport, customs was exactly the same as anywhere else in the world, a health check, and passport control took a scan of my passport, they do have computers in the North. I talked to a random Korean People’s Army (KPA) major whilst waiting for my bag; he giggled when he heard me try to speak in very broken South Korean style Korean. He was rather intimidating before I opened my mouth, but surprisingly friendly. We were met at the airport by our North Korean guides; the main one was an exceptionally beautiful girl aged 27 was called Ung-nim. She started every new paragraph with a very cute and laboured “soooooo” and I was entranced by her the moment I met her. She had the most readable changes in attitude; when she was being official and parroting what she was supposed to she would say “yes, umhum” with a serious almost robotic voice. When she was talking with about her own life she did so with warmth and affection; she was so perfect I could see why she was picked as a guide. She had a way of talking that reminds me of one of my most beautiful Korean friends. Like I said to one of my friends on the tour, I was in love with our guide at first meeting.

One of the first things our guide told us was that Korea had 4 distinct seasons, and then told us what we should expect from each season in Korea (it sounded just like England). I was overwhelmed by the views from the windows as she was talking, to see the murals and the villages, the rice paddy fields and the people on bicycles. There is a monument in every village, town and city in the DPRK that says that “the great leader Kim Il Sung will always be with us”. Seeing them for the first time as we passed many villages on our way to the capital it made me feel like ill.
The first revolutionary sight we saw in Pyongyang was the Arch of Triumph built in 1982 for the occasion of the Great Leader’s 70th birthday. It’s very similar to the one in Paris except its bigger, and it commemorates the liberation of Korea by Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla forces the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army (KPRA). This is actually a propaganda fiction; when this organisation was allegedly liberating Korea with Soviet assistance, Kim Il Sung was actually living in Soviet Army barracks in the Russian far-east. It’s part of the contemporary North Korean Juche propaganda narrative that emerged in the 1960s. Juche is the state ideology of the DPRK (sometimes called Kimilsungism); it translates roughly as self-reliance. What it meant for the history of the DPRK was to lionise the Kim Il Sung faction of the Korean Worker’s Party (KWP) and marginalise all other communists as factionalists. It also meant that the role of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was that of supporting Kim in liberation and in the Korean War. They were no longer recognised as the great powers that created and sustained the DPRK in the 1940s and 1950s. The KPRA is a convenient creation to play into the self-reliance narrative, but there is no documentary evidence of its existence except for the assertion of North Korean propaganda.

We stayed at the Yanggakdo hotel in the evening, a rather large hotel with 1000 rooms, and about 75 occupants at most. Typical of the gargantuan folly that is North Korean prestige projects. There are at least 4 hotels in Pyongyang, and I think there might be as many as 8, yet the place has nowhere near enough tourists to justify the expense. The Ryugyong hotel is a prime example of this folly; it is now being completed by an Egyptian company hopefully to at least look presentable by 2012, in time for the 100 anniversary of the Great leader’s birth. It is over 100 stories tall and could house over 1000 rooms, and what is the point? Apparently the Yanggakdo was built by a French company in some crocked scheme between President Mitterrand and Kim Il Sung.

The first night in the DPRK was a rather shocking if pleasant experience; to actually arrive in the country I have been obsessing over for three years was quite a head-(expletive deleted). The bowling alley at the Yanggakdo was rather difficult for someone of my very limited sporting talents but it was very interesting to talk to the staff in broken Korean. I couldn’t ask them any particularly interesting questions, but even with my rather rudimentary understanding of Korean language I could hear the highly formalised nature of Chosŏnmal (the name of Korean in North Korea). They use the most formal verb and adjective endings, but they still speak too quickly for me to understand.

I went to the small bookshop in the Yanggakdo after supper in the evening of the first night. In fact I went several times, I wish they had North Korean bookshops in London; I would spend hundreds of pounds on DVDs, CDs and posters. I sang “No motherland without you” to the rather pretty older woman who staffed the shop on the first night, and she found me the version by the Pochonbo electrical ensemble, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9b85_KlIBU . I wish I had asked her for some more music, I have so many North Korean songs I really like, and want on CD for my MP3 player. What is interesting was that she looked quite young for a woman in her late 30s; she clearly had access to good food and took good care of herself possibly at the gym or through a strict dietary regime. Her clothes were western, clearly quite expensive and well fitted; I think she might have bought them from one of the department stores in Pyongyang. She wore an expensive watch, a Seiko and she had styled hair. The point is she had an income comparable to an upper middle-class westerner. But on the streets of Pyongyang, the show case capital of the DPRK, she would be extremely wealthy; many of the people on the streets wear quite loose fitting clothes of Soviet style, they often do not look well fed, nor do they have watches. The older they are the more coarse they look, very few look as soft and young as she did; this is just my view from the coach as we sped through Pyongyang every day, when I did got out and walked around I had these impressions confirmed. It’s funny how few pretty girls there were in Pyongyang; my guide and the guide for the other group were both pretty, but most female cadets and general bystanders were not in any way eye-catching.

The bookshop was interesting for another reason, I met the guide for the other group staying at the hotel; I couldn’t resist asking him his opinions of all the key figures in the North Korean leadership who I know the name of from the last 50 years. I can’t remember all the names I asked him about, but I do remember what he said about some contemporary figures in the leadership. He knew who Chang Sung-taek was, the fact that he knew the name made no sense considering how he described Chang. He said that he was a mere high level functionary. Now how would my North Korean guide have heard of Chang if he honestly thought the man was a mere Samuwon (functionary in Korean). For reference Chang Sung-taek is the alleged regent in charge of the day-to-day running of the North Korean state because of the illness of Kim Jong-il.

I asked him about Kim Jong-un, the third son of Kim Jong-il; he told me that they call him the Young General, the rumour in the western press is that he is being groomed as the successor to Kim Jong-il. This sounds like part of an emerging personality cult, but who knows, there have been such things in the past for the other sons that came to nothing. Kim Jong-il’s family history is quite interesting; Kim Jong-nam the first son has fallen out of favour because he was caught trying to enter Japan on a forged Dominican Republic passport with some of his wives (yes the plural is correct) and children in 2001. He now lives in Macao and gambles away the excess family savings; he was recently on Japanese TV and didn’t know what was going on in his own country which I found rather amusing. The second son, Kim Jong-chŏl is allegedly gay and rather feminine which apparently father Kim thinks is a disqualification for succession. My guide was rummaging through my flash cards and found the South Korean word for gay (I thought it would be funny to memorise). He told me that they had a different word for gay, in the south its “homo”, so I asked if there were any gay people in the north, and he said with an uncomfortable smile “no”.

DPRK Travellogue: INTRODUCTION

2009-08-27T22:01:00.001+09:00

Where should I begin? I have been obsessed with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for 3 years. I can tell you when it started, July 5^th 2006; I forgot the North Korean cover story for the missile test when my guide asked me why I was interested in the DPRK. I just asked her if she had ever heard of the Taepodong missile. I didn’t know at the time that the North called the tests a military drill.

At the time I was 17, I had recently gone through a profound family crisis that had lead to an obsession with Classical music (which continues to this day); I was studying the Soviet Union in history class, and had become completely absorbed with its alienness. To be honest, my despair with contemporary London suburban living has much to do with it; I rather hate daily life in its mundanity. Added to that I have found dictatorships very interesting for many years, I found the Nazis fascinating when I was 15, the Soviet Union when I was 17 (and still today). The DPRK is so very interesting because it is the information black hole, the most perfect Stalinist society in history (or it was until the 1990s). So when I first encountered it, I was instantly attracted; culturally Korea is very alien, the language, the look of the people when compared to the west, which made it doubly attractive.

The DPRK is much more interesting when you get into what we actually know; the western media is filled with rather bland hyperbole about it being the “last Stalinist” this and the “mysterious” that. Yet we do know plenty, about Kim Il Sung’s rise to power from fighting the Japanese as a guerrilla in Manchuria. We know about the purges against his domestic opponents in the wake of the Korean War, and the emergence of the Juche idea in the 1960s. We have plenty of information not merely derived from North Korean propaganda. My North Korean guides did not understand why I was so insistent on getting hold of a copy of “On eliminating dogmatism and formalism and establishing Juche in ideological work” (a speech by Kim Il Sung). This is the first time Kim uses the term Juche as an ideological term. My North Korean guides merely know the contemporary propaganda narrative, of Kim expounding the idea in the early 1930s, when he was a teenager. The speech was in Volume 9 of Kim Il Sung’s collected works (only €5, what a bargin!).

Western scholars mainly focus on the nuclear issue in North Korea, this is rather boring. If you have ever studied international relations then you understand why I find it boring; strategic balancing, sanctions etc. It’s rather drab and technical. However it is the major reason why North Korea is so well known, how many people have heard of Turkmenistan or Sapurmurat Niyazov? Many more will have heard of Kim Il Sung or at least Kim Jong-il, for the very good reason that they are perceived to be a threat to the peace and security of the Pacific region.

The other main issue that takes up the bulk of writings in western scholarship is Human Rights. Human Rights are an interesting Western concept; personally I think they are a very useful fiction. We should believe that all humans have an entitlement because they are human, to certain fundamental rights. The major human rights abuses in the DPRK are extrajudicial execution, generational punishment, cruel and unusual punishment, and the absence of basic freedoms. These human rights abuses have been well documented, and are harrowing if extremely interesting reading. The best report around can be found here: http://www.hrnk.org/hiddengulag/toc.html . I gave up after about 20 pages, but I read enough to come across some useful Korean terminology like Kwan li so. Human rights are a very liberal concept; each human has rights on an individual basis, but no specifically codified duties to their community. Personally I prefer to think of humans as social, who exist within a community not in opposition to it; in an ideal society which these charters appear to want to create, humans have responsibilities to each other, not rights to demand of each other. It might sound like semantics, but it is very different to demand of your mother the right to milk rather than she says to you that she has a responsibility to feed you. One is a self-centred concept, “what is owed to me?” the other is a concept based on giving. I prefer the idea of responsibilities, it means we actively help each other rather than demand that we are not impeded. This isn’t my idea; it’s just me reversing the ideas of Isaiah Berlin, the famous liberal thinker who had two concepts of freedom. The freedom from something e.g. coercion (what he called “Negative freedom”), this is the basis of modern human rights; and the freedom to do something e.g. be educated (what he called “positive freedom”).

The problem with the human rights literature is that it is an analytic dead end; it recognises the symptoms of a perverse society like North Korea, but that is its main focus, it does not focus on the causes and the historical roots of the DPRK. This is my main interest, how can such a society be created, and remain so stable in the face of extreme hardship. Bruce Cumings has called it a “post-colonial society” and this a fair term. Colonisation in my very limited knowledge seems to have one of two political effects when the coloniser leaves. Often the national unit that the coloniser has created is inheritently unstable; it is merely the product of what Edward Said calls “imagined geography” or the competition between colonial powers for territory. Look at countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are at least 250 distinct ethnic groups; now certainly this is not the only reason why the country has such a brutal contemporary history, but nonetheless this is part of the issue.

Korea is the alternative; it is one of the most ethnically homogenous societies on earth, linguistically and culturally. The historical roots of this can be traced back to two significant events in Korea’s recent history. The Imjin War of 1592-7 is key to explaining where the modern Korean suspicion and hatred of the Japanese comes from. Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded the Korean peninsula on his way to Ming China. Chosŏn Korea relied on the naval genius I Sung-shin (his famous turtle ships), and peasant (Sangmin in Korean) militias known in English as the Righteous Armies (Ŭibyŏng in Korean). However this created a problem of political legitimacy for the Korean king, reliance on the lower orders and a military figure made the monarchy look very weak. So the Kings of Korea would exaggerate the role of Ming China in repelling the Japanese invaders from Korea in order to disempower possible alternate centres of political power and opposition. Thus Korea became more fawning in its praise and respect for the Ming Chinese East Asian order. Ming China became the father to the Korean Kingdom; its emperor was accorded the same filial devotion by the Korean Kings as sons gave to their fathers in a Confucian society. This relationship is known as a Suzerain-tributary relationship, where one state is nominally subservient to another in order to attain approval from the stronger state.

When Ming China was superseded by Qing China in the early 17^th Century this created a major problem for the Korean monarchy. Qing China was ruled by non-Chinese Manchu ‘barbarians’; Ming had been like the father of Chosŏn Korea, and maintaining a similar relationship with Qing China would be like a son loving his father’s killer like his own father. However the Manchu’s made it clear through two invasions in 1627 and 1637 that they would not tolerate anything but the continuance of the existing tributary relationship. This created a major issue for the Korean monarchy; Korean society was and is founded on the fundamental concept of filial piety. Thus sons and daughters are loyal to their parents, their parents are loyal to their social superiors and they are all loyal to the king. The king is loyal to the emperor (of China). If the emperor is toppled and replaced with a barbarian and the king shows the same loyalty to the new emperor then it fundamentally undermines the concept of filial piety. The king is basically saying that superiors are replaceable, and therefore loyalty can be conditional. To resolve this crisis of legitimacy the Korean kings sought to isolate their country completely from the outside world; Korea became what William Griffis would call the “Hermit nation”.

The impact of this isolationist policy was to hermetically seal Korea from cultural, linguistic and racial interactions with the outside world. Certainly some of the aristocracy travelled to Beijing and brought back modern science and the bible and there were western landings in Korea. But for most of the common people there was no significant interaction with the outside world for centuries. This had the effect of fostering near complete ethnic homogeneity. There are no significant minority ethnicities in Korea who are citizens of one of the two Korean republics.

Modern Korean nationalism and the vehement assertion of Korean cultural identity was partly a product of this homogeneity. However it was through the crucible of colonialism that “Koreaness” became actualised and realised. Japan took control of Korea from 1905, and through their brutality and attempts to Japanise the peninsula they created a Korean national consciousness that still defines both sides of the peninsula today. The North often accuse the south of flunkeyism (Sadaejuui in Korean), seeing the Americans as being like the Japanese.

But back to the original point, Korea was not ethnically divided in 1945; it was divided by ideology and by class. The elite had enriched themselves through Japanese sponsored industrialisation, whilst the common people had become cannon fodder for the Japanese war effort, as well as being further pauperised in the drive to produce grain and weapons for the Japanese. The intervention of the Soviet Union in the Pacific war and their subsequent annexation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula is the other half of the explanation behind the DPRK. It emerged from a combination of Soviet ideology, vehement post-colonial nationalism and as a result of class polarisation.

The DPRK until before the collapse of the Soviet Union was what my hero Andrei Lankov has called the “most perfect Stalinist society” in history. The third ingredient that created this society was the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle that Kim Il Sung waged in Manchuria in the 1930s; his militia background and those of his comrades would create the most militarised society in the world. An oft repeated slogan in the DPRK was to toil with “arms in one hand, hammer and sickle in the other”. This has not changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

However much has changed since 1989 in the DPRK as a result of the collapse of the USSR. The DPRK maintained its ability to feed its population through subsidies from the Socialist bloc in the form of oil, and fertiliser. However with the collapse of the Soviet Union such goods would have to be henceforth purchased at market price. This lead to famine as the DPRK prioritised arms over food; it is often claimed by the DPRK that the famine of 1995-9 was as a result of natural disasters. This is false; the government started a campaign encouraging people to eat “two meals a day” in 1991, food shortages had started when the USSR first reduced its aid to the DPRK in 1987. I have anecdotal evidence from teachers that there were already people dying in the streets in northern towns and villages well before 1995. The main causes of the famine was the end of Soviet aid, the government not intervening by getting food aid sooner, a lack of systemic agricultural reform and misallocation of capital resources toward prestige projects (more on that later), the military and the palace economy.

The famine resulted in 600,000-1,000,000 excess deaths according to Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard. It lead to the end of the stranglehold of the state economy over the everyday lives of all North Koreans; most state run factories had to close or lay idle and instead those who survived peddled at the market place to make enough money to eat. Those who couldn’t either starved or migrated.

The military rose as the new “vanguard of the revolution”, North Korea ceased to be a Marxist-Leninist state in terms of political organisation, the working class was no longer the guiding light of the revolution. This is called Songun politics in North Korean parlance, which literally translates as “Military First”. Simon at Koryo Tours was quick to correct me on this point when I said that North Korea was still Stalinist.

North Korea is no longer Stalinist; instead it is a Nationalist military dictatorship of sorts. What’s left of the state economy that funds the military and elite life is controlled by the leading military generals such as O Kuk-ryol. However the Kim clan still maintains power over the party and state, and connected with the military, the secret police network is still active and still maintains a relatively tight stranglehold over the populous. Legitimacy is still derived from post-colonial nationalism and the government is now seeking to reassert its control over the populous through the re-Stalinisation of food distribution. This is a brief introduction to the DPRK, my interest in the place and its history.