Love or hate him, Bruce Cumings speaks a lot of sense in his Le Monde diplomatique piece on North Korea’s transition. Read it on your own— here’s just a taste:
My first visit to North Korea was in 1981. I flew from Beijing and hoped to go out through the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian railway. Consular officials said I should obtain a visa at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang. When I got there, a friendly (read KGB) counsellor offered me cognac and inquired what I might be doing in Pyongyang. Then he asked what I thought of Kim Jong-il, who had just been officially designated as successor to Kim Il-sung at the 6th Party Congress in 1980. “Well, he doesn’t have his father’s charisma,” I said; “He’s diminutive, pear-shaped, homely. Looks like his mother.” The counsellor replied: “Oh, you Americans, always thinking about personality. Don’t you know they have a bureaucratic bloc behind him, they all rise or fall with him — these people really know how to do this. You should come back in 2020 and see his son take power.”
It was the best prediction I’ve ever heard about this communist state-cum-dynasty, even if Kim Jong-il’s heart attack at 69 hastened the succession to Kim Jong-un by a few years. North Korea has known only millennia of monarchy and then a century of dictatorship — Japanese from 1910-1945 (in the late stages of colonial rule Koreans had to worship the Japanese emperor), and then for the past 66 years the hegemony of the Kim family.
Cumings concludes, “Kim Jong-un may not yet be 30, but if my Soviet interlocutor is right, we are going to see his face for a long, long time.” The pessimist in me says he’s probably right. Still, while I find the analogies Cumings draws between North Korea and Joseon Dynasty interesting, I think it’s possible to find precedent in Joseon history suggesting other possible outcomes, too, including a palace coup (eerily involving an uncle overthrowing his nephew), military insurrection or popular uprisings leading to foreign intervention.
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Sometimes even cousin Bruce gets it right!
Good read!
Interesting reading!
Looks like naked self aggrandizement on the part of Cumings to me; Norman Mailer would be proud. Cumings waited months after Jong Il’s death to write this. If there was going to be a riotous outpouring into the streets, it would have happened by now. It’s disingenuous to let that window for action go by and then write an article like this. I would have been far more impressed if he’d written this the day before the funeral.
If you’ve read Cumings you have noted that he has an alarming tendency to see virtue in the Norths’ totalitarian ways. He’s long since bet his chips on their longevity as a regime, so if he’s wrong on this, it will be all over for him anyway. As a predictor of events if not a career political scientist/historian. Academia in the US has all kinds of room for Marxist sympathizers.
I’ve got mixed feelings about Cumings, and he’s said some stupid things, but I don’t think he’s ever praised the DPRK’s totalitarian system. I’m prepared to be enlightened though, if you’ve got any links?
The beauty of “Academia in the US” is that people can say and write what they want, without censorship. What do you suggest? Making less “room” for “Marxist sympathizers”? Maybe we could have ourselves a good ‘ol fashioned book burnin’!
Anyway, on Cumings assertion that the regime is going to be around for a long time, I completely agree. I don’t think I’ll see reunification in my lifetime, at least.
While I appreciate you enlightening me as to academic freedom in America, I was merely pointing out that fans of marxism indeed inhabit American academia more so than, say, the Flying J truck stop in S. Idaho. Do you suggest it ain’t so?
Sorry, no time to fish through Cumings and provide you with quotes. Draw your own conclusions.
American academia is filled with intelligent people, in far higher proportion than is found in general society — and i’ll presume that’s the same in most nations — and intelligent people are more likely to be familiar with theories that explain reality to more or less accurate extents. So yes, as 송림 sez, plenty of those familiar with Marxism, Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, Catholicism, Liberalism, Buddhism and so-on can be found in universities, far more than in Idaho truck-stops. Which is fully as it ought to be…
Cumings waited months after Jong Il’s death to write this.
This was posted on the Korea Studies list on January 22. Just saying.
Oh, and B.R. Myers reviewed Cumings book on North Korea back in 2004:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/09/mother-of-all-mothers/3403/
“and fought serious wars against both France (1866) and the US (1871)”
A serious war against 650 men? 650? In which the casualty ratio was something like 200 dead Koreans to 3 Yanks? Did I miss something at the museum, Bruce, like the giant display of Koreans with muskets pushing back American divisions?
Really, if you want the rest of the article to have credibility it would be best to can the hagiography.
I did notice that. And I did chuckle.
Great point, and funny, Yu Bum Suk. I just have a hard time taking Cumings seriously.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And Marxism at unis: Universities are the only places these people can make a decent living. OK, maybe in government and at Ben & Jerry’s. Universities have the added benefit of being insulated from free-market realities, so these Marxists can pretend they are right all day long without suffering much cognitive dissonance.
Thanks , Wedge, that was the answer I didn’t have the energy to write at the time..
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