The Marmot’s Hole

North Korea scholar B.R. Myers recently contributed an absolute MUST READ op-ed to the New York Times warning readers that North Korea just might be suicidal. In particular, Myers notes that while North Korea is often described as “Stalinist,” its worldview is much closer to fascist—and ultimately suicidal—Japan of the 1930s and 1940s.

Like the Japanese in the 1930’s, the North Koreans trace the origins of their race back thousands of years to a single progenitor, and claim that this pure bloodline makes them uniquely virtuous. The country’s mass games — government-choreographed spectacles with a cast of more than 100,000 — are often mistaken by foreign journalists as exercises in Stalinism. They are in fact celebrations of ethnic homogeneity. “No masses in the world,” the state-run Cheollima magazine reminded readers in 2005, “are purer and more upright than our masses.” 

In state propaganda, Kim Jong-il is often linked, as Hirohito once was, to images of white horses, snow-capped mountain peaks and other symbols of racial purity. South Korea, on the other hand, is regarded as contaminated by too close contact with other races. At a recent meeting between generals from both Koreas, the North delegation’s leader condemned the South for allowing racial intermarriage. “Not a single drop of ink,” he intoned, “must be allowed to fall into the Han River.”

Naturally enough, the North Koreans’ race theory, like that of the Japanese fascists, actuates a blithe indifference to international law. A uniquely virtuous people has no reason to obey its moral inferiors, be they allies or enemies. China has now learned that despite decades of military and economic assistance it can draw on no residue of good will in dealing with Pyongyang.

Neither can the South Koreans, whom the North Koreans will revile for their ethnic treason no matter how much cash they pump northward. This utter imperviousness to gestures of friendship and conciliation bears obvious implications for the prospect of normal relations between North Korea and America.

He explains that North Korea has kept its racial ideology to itself—for the most part—and presented itself as a Stalinist state in order to plant in the West the false hope that a dialogue of trust can be built with Pyongyang:

The northern regime has so far restricted its racial propaganda to the home audience, because it wants the world to go on misperceiving it as a Stalinist state. This way we continue to pin our hopes on the kind of trust-building dialogue that worked so well with Communists in the 1980’s — and failed so disastrously with the pure-race crowd a half-century earlier. 

My own belief is that while Kim Jong-il and his closest associates aren’t suicidal and probably don’t believe the ideology on which their state is supposedly built, the rest of the state apparatus—and probably the bulk of the North Korean population—very well might. The implications of this are very, very scary, as it means that as hard as it may be to believe, there are people and things in North Korea even worse than Kim Jong-il. What if angry junior officers in the North Korean military were to launch a coup? We could be faced with a situation in which North Korea—with its 1 million man military and stockpile of WMDs—is in the hands of men who actually believe the noxious racial ideology they’ve been taught almost since birth. They might actually believe that despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, an invasion of South Korea might work because—as Koreans—they can do anything as long as their one-hearted devotion to the minjok is pure enough. Did not Kim Il-sung and his small but devoted band of fighters single-handedly defeat the might Japanese empire? Did not Kim and the mighty Korean People’s Army successfully throw back the American imperialists and their South Korean lackies when they tried to invade in 1950? You can see what kind of decisions this sort of thinking might lead to, and the scenarios said decisions might create are not ones I wish to contemplate.

Anyway, here’s a couple of looks at the racial nature of North Korea’s propaganda, courtesy the boys and girls at the KCNA:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

At this point, I’d point out that the North Korean’s racial ideology is not limited to that area of the Korean Peninsula north of the 38th parallel. For a look at minjok ideology in South Korea, see Michael’s posts here and here. What’s worth noting here is that the prevalent belief—greatly encouraged by the Japanese-trained Park Chung-hee—in South Korea that “the Korean people could do anything if they just put their minds to it” was at least partially to blame for the overconfidence and irresponsible policies that led to the 1997 financial crisis. One shudders to imagine what kind of miscalculations the North Koreans, exposed to a much more noxious form of racial ideology untempered by access to outside information, meaningful exchange with the rest of the planet or a large foreign troop presence, might be capable of. Would a North Korean general, fresh from taking power in a coup, say like Japanese Prime Minister Tojo did at the time of Pearl Harbor that sometimes, you need to to close your eyes and leap from the terrace of Kiyomizu-dera?