Dongguk University English lit professor Jang Shi-ki recently raised a stink when he wrote that North Korean leader Kim Il-sung was a “great modern leader” and that Africans felt more affinity for North Korea than the South. From the Chosun Ilbo:
“Ranked among the likes of India’s Gandhi, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Eygpt and Mao Zedong of China, Kim Il-sung stands out as a great leader, revered by the people of the Third World,” Jang writes. “Therefore, the people of Africa feel more affinity with North Korea than with South Korea.”
He also wrote:
“Most of the fighting against dictatorships in Africa was actually directed against the outside power of the U.S., so for them Kim Il-sung, the leader of a Far Eastern country who was brave enough to stand up to the U.S. even before they did, makes him as worthy of honor as their own leaders. Whenever I am given preferential treatment just because I come from the same country as Kim Il-sung, I feel a little embarrassed.”
Jang wrote this, of course, from South Africa, where he has been on sabbatical since July. The South African embassy in Seoul, however, was apparently taken back by the statement, and issued a press release of its own criticizing the professor’s remarks:
“Such an incorrect remark by a person with wrong ideas can mislead Koreans,” an embassy official said. “We are concerned that if we don’t respond to a false remark by a person who is not in a position to make that remark, it could mean we acknowledge it is true, so we discussed the matter with our home country and decided to issue a press release.”
The embassy went even further:
The press release says, “Statements like ‘Africans feel more affinity with North Korea than South Korea’ and ‘Since the 1960s, the biggest obstacle to the independence of African countries was the U.S.’ are totally incorrect.” It also says it is difficult to understand “how an academic, after visiting South Africa for only two months, can make statements on behalf of South Africans and Africans that are totally distorted.”
Now, it should be pointed out that in its efforts to boost its prestige within the Nonaligned Movement, North Korea did “reach out” to Africa, so to speak. Mostly in the form of military aid:
In the mid-1970s, North Korea supplied modest amounts of military equipment and training to Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Beginning in 1981, Zimbabwe was North Korea’s most ambitious effort. Building on a relationship developed with Robert Mugabe before he took power in 1980, North Korea equipped and trained the Army’s 5th Brigade. North Korea provided equipment, including T-54 tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, artillery, air defense artillery, and about $18 million worth of small arms and ammunition. Training included political indoctrination and Korean-style martial arts.
However, deficiencies surfaced during efforts to use the 5th Brigade in counterinsurgent and border security duties. North Korea had problems with logistics, esprit de corps, and coordinating maneuvers of dispersed companies and platoons. By 1986, British military instructors replaced the North Koreans and solved the problems. By then much of the North Korean equipment was unusable because of poor maintenance and lack of spare parts.
As deficient as the 5th Brigade might have been, prior to 1986, it did rack up an impressive body count terrorising the Ndebele people of southern Zimbabwe:
But it doesn’t take long for Mugabe to reveal his darker side: a new army unit, the 5th Brigade, is trained and equipped by North Korean officers. In 1982, the 5th Brigade is deployed into Matebeleland, the heartland of the Ndebele people, Zimbabwe’s second largest tribe. We hear testimonies from victims like Sheba Dube, an Ndebele human rights activist who was raped in front of her husband by five soldiers from the 5th Brigade. For three years the 5th Brigade terrorizes the Ndebele people. When the 5th Brigade is finally recalled in 1985, reports surface indicating that more than 20,000 people have been murdered, tortured, and raped.
Other recipients of North Korean largesse?
Other recipients of North Korean military assistance include Madagascar, Tanzania, the Seychelles, and Uganda. In the early 1980s, North Korea loaned Madagascar MiG-17/FRESCOs and trained pilots for the MiG-21/FISHBEDs Madagascar had purchased from the Soviet Union. North Korea also gave the Navy four P-4 torpedo boats and constructed a small arms factory before concluding military assistance in 1984. At about the same time, Tanzania received a 77-man North Korean police team to provide personal security for the leadership. North Korea probably provided similar assistance to President Rene of the Seychelles. Between 1981 and 1985, Uganda received counterinsurgency aid until the National Resistance Army forced the North Koreans to flee.
North Korea also cooperated with the Warsaw Pact, particularly the Soviet Union, to defend embattled Marxist governments in Angola, Mozambique, and most recently Ethiopia. North Korea provided military advisers and some weapons. Although military assistance was relatively modest in both Angola and Mozambique, heavy involvement in Ethiopia was suspected. As the circle of hardline Marxist countries shrinks, North Korea will pursue solidarity with those remaining even more desperately.
Granted, the United States had little cause to be proud of its Cold War friends in the region, but I wonder if Prof. Jang bothered to check out North Korea’s list of chums. Mugabe, Mengistu, Obote, the MPLA, FRELIMO…
On a related note, as you may know, I did spend a year in Tanzania way back in 1995. Interestingly enough, the three biggest foreign embassies (as I recall) belonged to China, the United States and North Korea. The North Korean embassy was a rather imposing complex that I would pass each time I took the bus from downtown Dar Es Salaam to the University of Dar Es Salaam, where I was studying.
21 Comments
Maybe the institute that’s researching Korea’s image overseas (that did the survey relating to Korean’s spouses) should start looking at people like this more. They are going to have to have some effect on the international image of Koreans.
Hmmmm, and old macdonald had a farm e-i-e-i-o. KJI a modern leader? In what year? 200 b.c.?
everytime this guy opens his mouth he further validates massive structural damage to left side of his cerebellum.
Great Korean National Leadership
Marmot provides quotes of and links to the reply by the Seoul embassy of South Africa to Mr Chang’s views.
This is trully a delicious piece of news.
This is notable, since the current regime in South Africa should be an authority on black African nationalism as much as anyoneindeed, the black majority there had to wait longer than in any other country to gain power!
Actually, the RSA would be an interesting case study. According to a white (non-Afrikaaner) person I know who grew up there, the transition away from Apartheid was much more gradualand started earlierthan I thought…a long time before De Klerk freed Mandela from prison (in 1990, as I recall). Conversely, the transition since then to black majority rule has been much smootherand with much less of a backlashthan in some other countries (e.g., Zimbabwe).
I find it supremely ironic that this bloke went to South Africa and has proceeded to embarrass himself by pontificating on subjects he knows absolutely nothing about and presumably, we are supposed to accept what he says as fact because he has a PhD? Yeah right. Koreans abhor non-Koreans that speculate about Korea and why certain things have and have not happened because they are not Koreans. I was at Stanford with a group of Korean executives and they got very upset at the questions a very smart and even famous (in leadership management academic circles) professor asked-namely why is it that there are non-Asians that are heads of major Asian companies but why are there no Asian (Korean) heads of non-Korean companies. He had his theories that he shared with me (but was discreet enough not to share them with the group). The Koreans complained that he shouldn?t talk about Korea because he knows nothing about it. It is true his area of expertise is not Korean studies but he didn?t get anywhere close to being as embarrassing as this guy in South Africa. All he did was ask questions. I didn?t see it listed anywhere but what is this joker?s PhD in anyway? I suspect it is probably not African studies with a focus on modern history, politics and economics.
It always makes me uncomfortable whenever Korean leftists attempt to enlist Africans or other people in less prosperous countries for whatever critical attack they attempt to make on the US, knowing full well how people from those countries are treated here, and how little effort is expended by what passes for the “left” in Korea to protect the rights of these people. Hankyoreh has itself published racist cartoons of “savage” Africans seemingly without the slightest clue as to their offensive nature. It’s good that the South African embassy said something, I’m sure they’ve been rolling their eyes for years now.
As a South African I find this guys comments completely over the top, does he REALLY have a Phd?
Does anyone have any links to interviews with the good “professor”? I am curious to find out just how someone with such a tenuous grip on reality ticks.
so james, what were the good professor’s ideas on why it is that koreans don’t run major non-korean corps? i could prolly come up with about five reasons off the bat, but i’m wondering if he had any thoughts that might be more interesting or different than mine.
One of the longest delusions I cherished and only recently gave up was that the more education a person had, the smarter he or she proved to be……
ah, usinkorea, through decades of farting around and avoiding edumacation at all costs, i have learned that it’s actually an inverse relationship. the more one studies, the higher the probability that their intelligence is low.
I’d say not exactly low so much as muddled, especially if one has a Ph.D. in sociology, evidently….
Sorry, English Literature. The other guy is the one with the doctorate in Sociology. I must try to keep my Gongguk (? ฑ??sorry, Dongguk/ๆ?ฑ??) PhDs straight….
he may have a phd, but its prob only a korean phd which doesn’t mean much when its takes 2 years and you can’t fail.
Jang Shi-ki’s (how come think of ?ง?จ?ธฐ when prononuncing his name) Ph.D. is from Dongguk.
“Your mum” asked about interviews. Since Mr Jang is in South Africa at the moment, he apparently hasn’t been able to grant interviews like Mr Kang, but he’s been sending contributions to Korean websites to clarify his positions.
Here’s one to his own National Association of Professors for Democratic Society:
“Stop being puppets of US imperialism” .
And to Ohmynews:
“Here’s to Chosun Ilbo and Grand National Party”
In his contributions he states that the Nobel peace price should have been given to both Kims instead of only to Kim Dae-jung, like it was given to both Mandela and de Klerk. In the first text he suggests it was because of US that only the southern Kim was awarded, in the latter he only asks the rhetorical question “why?”.
He already made a fool of himself by inviting a correction from the embassy of the country of his sabbatical leave. Now he suggests that the Norwegian Nobel Committee was subservient to the US in not remembering the leader of DPRK, whom Mr Jang hopes would prove a “great postmodern leader” along with his ROK colleague.
I’d like to add a slightly different perspective. I was military attache for the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) to the North Korean Embassy in Harare in 1980-1. APLA was the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa). In 1976 the PAC’s main external backers, Chairman Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, both died, and PAC was then given assistance by Libya. In 1977-78 the US Carter administration paid thousands of dolalrs to selected PAC personnel to abandon the revolutionary line and support dialogue and detente. The restricted and external leaders Mangaliso Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo refused but David Sibeko, Vus Make and others, feeling challenged by the influx of young radical recruits from the 1976 Soweto and Cape risings, launched a partially successful coup against Leballo after Sobukwe’s death. Sibeko was shot by APLA troops but when the APLA army at Chunya, Tanzania, refused to recognise Make, the Tanzanian TPDF opened fire, killing 11 , woudning 40, and imprisoning the rest. A new puppet leader, Nyati Pokela, was placed on the PAC. Leballo, myself and other APLA from Libya relocated to Zimbabwe. At taht time North Korea was not the nightmare it now is - South Korea was under military dictatorship - haven’t you heard of the 1980 Kwangju massacre? Since Nyerere effectively controlled the OAU liberation committee in Dar es Salaam, he was able to dictate to all African states not to support our PAC faction and deport or arrest us if we entered Africa. The North Korean ambassador was extremely kind to us and paid for necessities out of his own pocket. As pressure increased from Tanzania to expel us so their eunuch pupprt PAC would be recognised, I argued unsuccessfully that we should temporarily relocate to North Korea because we could no longer trust African governments. In the event we were arrested, imprisoned in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison and deported. The puppet PAC got 1.2% of the vote in 1994 election and 0.7% since.
I agree that North Korea has become a ghastly place but it 1980-1 we really appreciated what they were trying to do for African liberation.
The more I study the more I know,
the more I know the more I forget,
the more I forget the less I know,
so why study?
a silly but appropriate quip for Mr.(I can’t call him Dr.)Jang.
No African I’ve met, particularly those from SA or Kenya, would EVER make compare KJI to Gandhi favorably. The good doctor is clearly not fit to teach in…hell, anywhere.
Rowan, you said it. This is just another glaring example of the inescapable truth: the typical ‘lowly’ English teacher with a foreign BA is better educated than your typical Korean PhD. Sad.
JYC: “by what passes for the โleftโ in Korea to protect the rights of these people.”
Thank you for pointing that out. As a person of the left I fully remove myself from the wacked out, self-only-promoting Korean (not to mention North Korean) version of. Internationalist it aint.