Dr. Andrei Lankov (who also posts over at NKzone) contributed a piece in Tuesday’s Asia Times on North Korea’s creeping capitalist revolution that really is a MUST READ. Just a teaser:
A creeping revolution, both social and economic, is under way in North Korea and it seems there’s no turning back. For decades, the country served as the closest possible approximation of an ideal Stalinist state. But the changes in its economy that have taken place after 1990 have transformed the country completely and, perhaps, irreversibly.
As they say, read the rest on your own.
(Hat tip to Lost Nomad)
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[...] only forward. Stalinism is dead. Welcome to capitalism, comrades! Read all Via le Marmot [...]
North Korea News
Firstly, via the Marmot’s Hole, is this long background article about how capitalism has spread bottom up in North Korea and how, essentially, the Stalinist state controls are mostly gone. As he says, READ THE WHOLE THING.
Didn’t care much for the article. Sorry. It is the same as the other efforts to point the joyous finger toward “change” in the North Korean state. They found their “optimism” on looking back at how fucked up (I think strong words fit here) the NK state was during the heyday of Juche. Then they turn to “reforms” seen recently as “signs” the North is “irrecoverably” changing as a whole.
I don’t buy it. It takes a perverse view of the old “half-empty or half-full” conundrum. With NK, the optimist outsiders simply jump for joy when a couple tiny drops of water splash into the wasteland desert that is North Korea.
One thing unusual about this article, however, is that it doesn’t even pretend that the Korean government has a thawing heart toward change that will lead (eventually) to lasting social structural changes. This author simply sees the desperatation of the North Koreans at the bottom during the faliure of the state as hopeful change. It’s a little odd.
He is most likely correct in saying NK won’t return to the past when the Korean government was strong enough around the whole nation to keep the people from opening markets and such by means of the state providing enough to the people to keep them from revolting. The North seems to be clearly pinning its hopes that they can win over the United States into joining South Korea and influencing Japan and China to replace the USSR and The People’s Repubic of China as the milk cows that allowed the nutty North Korea regime to pretend to establish “complete” Juche in the past. And if they gain such massive support from other nations to replace what they got before the 1990s from China and the USSR, you can bet easy money that the regime will crack down completely on all of these “reforms” people see as such magificant “signs” of “coming change” in North Korea as a whole.
I will add this, however. The article does give me hope in one aspect —- if the North Korean regime has allowed these reforms because it can no longer control the masses from revolting under both the crushing blow of famine poverty and the usual harshness of the regime, there is hope that if SK and China and others don’t flood the North with supplies on a continual basis, maybe the North Korean people will find that they have enough strength in collective action against the state to overthrow it.
QUOTE This author simply sees the desperatation of the North Koreans at the bottom during the faliure of the state as hopeful change. It?€™s a little odd. UNQUOTE
Yes, I do see it as hopefull. I would agree with you that if the ROK/PRC/whoever agrees to feed them on a truly large scale, they will happily go back to old ways of the 1970s. But I doubt whether anybody is going to give them enough money, especially because they are so good in using money inefficiently. Much more likely, however, that the regime will gradually fall apart. And I do not feel too sorry about this.
To Lankov,
Re-reading my 2 comments, the wording is somewhat too harsh (seemingly) to your article alone. In reality, I mean to point a dissapointed finger at a strong trend in outside views of North Korea. I’ve read and heard too many people give the North Korean government way TOO MUCH credit for “reforms.” The desire to be “optimistic” is much, much too strong.
I was going to say that I wouldn?€™t call Dr. Lankov, exactly an optimist. If you want to read his ?€œoptimistic?€? view, you should read,
http://ifes.kyungnam.ac.kr/ife.....amp;page=1
And I also wanted to add that the auto-genocide of Cambodia can also be construed as a ?€œstrength in collective action against the state.?€?
I?€™m not against a sanction, but people should know what a sanction is before they start to embrace it whole-heartedly. Sanctions punish the weak and the destitute mostly, and is a way to force the weak and the destitute to use violent means to overthrow their oppressors. To put it bluntly, sanctions kill the poor through hunger and the one who puts up the sanctions hope that the poor will kill the dictator out of desperation. Obviously, many of the poor will die during the insurrection. Unless we are talking about a targetted sanction, which who knows if it?€™s even feasible or not. Maybe it?€™s better to shorten the lifespan of a gruesome regime by shortening the lifespan of some poor people in North Korea?€“and I say this without saracasm. But that is exactly what sanctions are aimed to do, and we should talk about sanctions in this term, because it?€™s horribly unethical to sugarcoat this.
But/And the flip side is that not having sanctions also fails to satisfy many of the same people sanctions offend. In the 1970s and early 80s, many of the same types of groups in the US who are against sanctions against a NK or Hussein-led Iraq were the ones calling for an end to the “support of third world dictators” and using human rights as a key to foreign policy decision making.
Like most all things, a case by case basis is necessary.
Certainly true. Wasn’t it Aung San Suu Kyi herself who asked that we sanction Burma? I remember when people like Dr. Vollertsen was called a tree hugging liberal, but now he is called a bible thumping conservative.
Then again, wasn’t South Korea the true warhawk for decades? Begging and groveling at Uncle Sam for heightend military build up againt North Korea, taking far far rightwing stance against North Korea than the US? What a difference a generation makes.
I just feel a bit apprehensive about Japan’s possible decision to end aid and sanction NK. It’s not that I am against taking punitive action against NK, it just feels like a flip-flop move on Japan’s part. More importantly, I don’t think Japan would really keep up their hardline stance when KJI calls their bluff.
I would love to see some consistency. If they are trully serious about encouraging NK to change, then a clear regimen of stick and carrot is needed. But Dr.Lankov’s view from the link above, is essentially that NK would never do something as foolish as reform and possibly shoot themselves in the head. Could be true. Who knows? I would love to see Dr.Lankov’s policy suggestions.
In a world of No Moo Hyun-Al Gore/Kerry presidency or Lee Hoi Chang-George W presidency, we probably wouldn’t have half the problem we have now.
Well now I’ve seen everything.