http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTragUC8AnY
Just watched this amazing documentary. What's most incredible is how Kim Jung Il and his father seem mad but it's almost more like it's a place where time stands still and has more in commom with some ancient civilizations. Some of the testimony can bring tears to your eyes. I realize for some everything is always about the USA but the tragic absurdity and grandiosity of North Korea runs much deeper than politics.
Did not know ears could see....
Did not know ears could see....
Tis' but a matter of definition, remind! 
A Qualyian feat, like potato and potatoe.
But back to DPRK - uhhhhhhhhh...yeah, blockade evil west fighting the good fight bombing, etc., etc. I'm sure that we'll hear the same lines of defence (the regime has a big army and nuclear bombs, I doubt that vociferously defending the Kim kingdom is going to do much to further any progressive agenda).
However, there was a really interesting article re: NK and its ties to what is basically a privately run criminial army. Room 39, as it is called, seems to be quite the bad ass set up. I remember a while back I went to the dentist and was happy to see that they had a copy of Vanity Fair with the article I shall link to you...NOW
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/09/office-39-200909?cur...
This doesn't have to be about the nuclear issue, I'm more interested in talking about what it's like for the people living there and what it's like for those who get out and see the outside modern world for the first time.
please watch the whole clip before commenting.
My reference to ancient cultures was mainly the Eygptian living god Rulers and I wondered how much Kim Jung Il and his father actually believe their own mythology.
This is a very sincere and emotional but also aestically well made documentary not some american governemnt propaganda.
http://www.kimjongiliathemovie.com/pressroom.html
It available for download on the internet if you know how but it should be out on dvd in a few months.
I'd suggest you ask a mod to change the thread title to better represent what you wish to discuss.
ie, 'Kimjongilia: DPRK documentary' or 'What we know about NK daily life' or something to keep it on topic for your desired conversation.
I thought since it was in culture and not politics that would understood but maybe you're right. In any case I don't know how to do that.
Amish children have to do the same thing, at 16. Get out an see the modern world, I mean.
Ear, I do not do online video, so have not even watched a moment of the propaganda link. I was more making a yuk over your moniker, because your topic is oh so boring.
My reference to ancient cultures was mainly the Eygptian living god Rulers and I wondered how much Kim Jung Il and his father actually believe their own mythology.
Since Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il actually created that mythology, no, I would not think it very likely that they actually believe it. Kim Il Sung would have known, for example, that his son was born in Russia, not on on Mount Baekdu, the site where the Son Of Heaven came down to Earth and founded the Korean race, according to mythology.
As to how much this is believed by members of the North Korean hierarchy, according to a defector quoted in the book I've linked below, most students at the elite universities start questionning the state mythology in their second year of univeristy. Not sure how credible his claims are, but I do think it probably the case that anyone who has met KJI up close and in person would question the idea that he is a living god.
[url=http://www.amazon.com/Under-Loving-Care-Fatherly-Leader/dp/0312322216]li...
My wife and many of our friends grew up in Chinese occupied Inner Mongolia during the 60s and 70s when it was a giant cult to the god Mao. It was demented: daily hymms praising Mao while crazed gangs of thugs loyal to their emperor-god roamed the country enforcing whatever rules Mao dreamed up. One of our friends was forced, at the age of 7, to watch his father beaten to death because he had dared to ask one of the Red Guards why they did not investigate one of their own members who was widely suspected of being a serial child abuser. Every Chinese person I know who lived in China at that time has endless stories of beatings, famines, suicides etc.... My wife finds news from North Korea eerily familiar.
Remind
I'm sorry that you can't watch video
Your closed mind, cynicism and lack of feeling truly amaze me. To say that this "topic is oh so boring" strikes me as such a bourgeois decadent dismissal of peoples suffering that it borders on satire. If you think that I posted this based on promoting some political view you don't understand me at all and I don't think much will change your mind. Que Sera sera
Thanks Joey, Voice of the Damned, I'm trying to find good sources to learn more.
Oh, and [url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n24/bruce-cumings/we-look-at-it-and-see-ourselv... is a link to a Cumings' review of two books about North Korea, one of which is the Fatherly Leader book I mentioned above. I think he's more positive on that book than the other one he reviews, but it's been a while since I read the article.
VGE:
You may be interested in the writings of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Lankov]Andrei Lankov[/url], a Russian who actually studied at North Korean universities during the Soviet days. He currently teaches in South Korea, and writes for the Korean press. I think he's fairly "establishment" in his views(he also writes for Foreign Affairs), but does know a lot about North Korea.
As well, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Cumings]Bruce Cumings[/url] is an American prof who writes about Korean affairs from a more left-wing perspective, but is not as focussed on the North as Lankov is. He wrote a well-known book about the Korean War, and has apparently also written one about North Korea. Both he and Lankov are generally repsected for their scholarship.
Hey, is it ever a pleasure to see you around these parts, VOTD! Welcome back, even if it's only a visit!
Also, Pepe Escobar wrote a really interesting series of articles about his travels in North Korea.
Part 1 Happy Birthday, Comrade Kim- http://atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LB25Dg01.html
Part 2 Happiness Rolls Over Us Like A Wave- http://atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LB26Dg01.html
Part 3 The Last Frontier Of The Cold War- http://atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LB27Dg01.html
Some of the testimony can bring tears to your eyes. I realize for some everything is always about the USA but the tragic absurdity and grandiosity of North Korea runs much deeper than politics
Why are Yanqui imperialists afraid to allow a united Korea? How can there be an outbreak of democracy in the region when the North is threatened with nuclear weapons on a constant basis?
How can military threats from the USA and other countries possibly create conditions for democracy on the Peninsula? Our largest trade partners have threatened North Korea with nuclear weapons since the 1950's.
There can be no legitimate purpose for nuclear weapons, and I think those who focus on just North Korea's turn inward since as if not influenced by these glaring external factors is misguided, uninformed, and unhelpful in understanding this ongoing situation. If the US Military left the peninsula once and for all, steps toward unification of the Koreas could take place, like German reunification took place at the end of cold war. What are Yanqui imperialists afraid of with allowing the Koreas to re-unite? What's with this continuing Yanqui-imperialist policy to maintain division among the barbarians?
Fidel
From VOTD's link to Bruce Comings
As we search backward for that point, we slowly grope toward the truth that civil wars do not start: they come. They originate in multiple causes, with blame enough to go around for everyone- and blame enough to include Americans who thoughtlessly divided Korea and then reestablished the colonial government machinery and the Koreans who served it. How many Koreans might still be alive had not that happened? Blame enough to include a Soviet Union likewise unconcerned with Korea's ancient integrity and determined to "build socialism" whether Koreans wanted their kind of system or not. How many Koreans might still be alive had that not happened? And then, as we peer inside Korea to inquire about Korean actions that might have avoided national division and fratricidal conflict, we get a long list indeed.
That's a short version of the kind of analysis I appreiciate. I find your view to be simplistic and overly biased, so I rarely read your links, I won't bother responding to more of the same.
There are some critics of Bruce Cumings as well
Writing in the Atlantic Monthly, North Korean literature professor B.R. Myers lambasted Cumings and in particular his book North Korea: Another Country. Myers argued that, in the book, "Cumings likens North Korea to Thomas More's Utopia, and this time the wrongheadedness seems downright willful; it's as if he were so tired of being made to look silly by forces beyond his control that he decided to do the job himself".
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/09/mother-of-all-mothers/3403/
Fidel
From VOTD's link to Bruce Comings
As we search backward for that point, we slowly grope toward the truth that civil wars ...
That link doesn't work for me. And I think Comings could use some help with the spreading of blame. Does he mention that the US hired Japanese imperial officers to do the policing in Korea after the war? Or that McArthur and whackos threatened to incinerate hundreds of millions of human beings in Asia in some far out, whacked-out right-rightist plan to draw China and Russia into a nuclear war? I find that the Hollywood movie Dr Strangelove is a good first start to understanding the madness of the 1950s. These are the people who lived next door to us for decades we're talking about. Lemay and McArthur and Westmoreland were all megalomaniacal psyschopaths and leftovers from WW II. The UN wasn't sure who was calling the shots from the US then, Truman or his assholier General McArthur. I find war tends to be a drawing card for psychotics in general.
Fidel:
If you think that Bruce Cumings is the kind of writer who would NOT mention Japanese police working for the Americans after the war, or MacArthur's plans to use nukes in the Korean war, I think you really need to try and get that link working and read the article. Either that, or go to a library and look up the London Review Of Books December 2005.
I still get a 404 error. Hmm Oh well. If you say so, VOTD
I still get a 404 error. Hmm Oh well. If you say so, VOTD
Is the entire London Review blocked on your computer? If not, you can probably do a google on "Bruce Cumings We look at it and see ourselves" to get it. It's an interesting article.
As for B.R. Myers, I haven't had time to read his whole critique, though I'd guess that when Cumings said that North Korea bore similarities to Thomas More's Utopia, he didn't neccessarily mean that it was utopian, just that there were things in it that were like what Thomas More advocated.
Oh and Unionist, thanks for the warm greetings! Nice to be here.
Oh, and I just tried one of the B.R. Myers links in VGE's post, and THAT one came up 404 for me. The link to the book review in my earlier post comes up okay.
Height differences in North and South Koreans
http://www.dprkstudies.org/2006/11/20/height-differences-in-north-and-south-koreans/
Experts worried that the height difference could be a barrier in integrating the two Koreas. "The hardships that North Koreans suffered will be portrayed in their heights, and their social status here could be easily detected by eye after unification," Mr. Chung said.
...
"They all looked like dwarfs," said Kim Dong Kyu, a South Korean academic who has made two trips to North Korea. "When I saw those soldiers, they looked like middle-school students. I thought if they had to sling an M-1 rifle over their shoulders, it would drag to the ground."
Remind - you made it quite clear in your second post on this thread that you don't have the slightest interest in the welfare of North Koreans so please refrain from post anything that doesn't contribute the disussion here.
If you're only following me around it's quite childish as well.
No actually I believe it is you who does not care about the welfare of North Koreans, as if you did, you would not be believing you should solve what you believe to be their problems, and your posts are baiting as you know full well that the agreement you signed to come here states first principles will not be refought...
So...any dialogue with you on this, and other topics, would have to be along the lines of refighting first principles, and we as babblers do not have to do that, and I am allowed to indicate your lack of first principle understanding as well as your baiting. As there is a definite pattern to your posting thread topics and your 'tea bagger' positioning on them.
but of course your moniker was the give away the minute you signed on....and posted
remind stop trolling this thread if you have nothing to add.
Van Gogh's Ear, might I suggest you research links and blogs of North and South Korean folks who are engaged in various grassroots democratic and social justice movements in both Koreas? There's a teensy bit of problematic positioning when people in the West engage in high level abstract intellectual discussions about the plight of "the other". Ya know what I'm sayin'?
And of course the global interests and history of the two separate Koreas can't be ignored.
If you're able to see this, I highly recommend it: Director Min Sook Lee's Tiger Spirit.
maysie, hadn't got to trolling yet, I was still cutting bait....and really have had enough of the gruesome 3 some
... am suitabley chastized 
and will remain...errr..restrain...ummm....refrain from making board commentary about his posts and just flag each and everyone....as we are supposed to.
[url=http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3293191]Shortest people in the industrialized world[/url] I think some Americans might be using shorter hockey sticks
[url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5023829]38 million food insecure Americans[/url] It's ridiculous considering how much lush and arable farmland there is in North America, and the citrus imported to the states and subsidized by what amounts to slave labour in Latin America.
And I imagine Iraqis nutrition has taken a hit since US-led sanctions caused the deaths of more than one million, and a million more murdered by bullets and blitzkrieg, US-sponsored terrorists with "Al-CIA'duh" launching attacks against the real anti-American insurgents since the invasion.
Thanks Maysie
That documentary looks really great - I look forward to seeing it (Long live the NFB!)
Fidel - I'm not sure why you're posting links about poverty in the USA in a thread about the North Korean people other than to try and diminish their importance. I'm aware of many of the issues concerning the poor in the USA but can we please keep this on topic of the Korean people. Nothing you posted has anything to do with this.
It's quite simple Ear, as long as a gang of corrupt thugs call themselves "communist" or "socialist", Fidel supports them by trying to derail any discussion of them or their victims. He uses the same approach in any thread about the exploitation of workers in China.
I remember a bird much like that. You'd see these birds out in grassy fields, where they'd lay their eggs, and if it turned out that you were walking close to a clutch of eggs, the mama bird would start squawking and flapping and carrying on to distract you from the eggs. This bird would do ANYTHING to keep you away from those eggs!
Fidel - I'm not sure why you're posting links about poverty in the USA in a thread about the North Korean people other than to try and diminish their importance. I'm aware of many of the issues concerning the poor in the USA but can we please keep this on topic of the Korean people. Nothing you posted has anything to do with this.
Well I was fairly sure that some of us simply arent interested in why Korea and other countries have had difficulties with trade sanctions and illegal blocking of humanitiarian aid, embargos etc over the years. And so I thought it would be something to know that the USA does not guarantee food security for all its citizens, even though the continental USA has arable, lush farmlands from one horizon to the other and taking advantage of food exports from Latin America subsidized by what amounts to slave labour. In fact, the USA is one of a minority of first world countries that does not recognize the basic human right to food.
If Korea can't provide food security for its citizens for whatever reasons, ie. dr evil isn't running things right, then why are there one-billion other people who are chronically hungry around the democratic capitalist third world? The FAO says 85% of those countries are exporting food to "the market" and abiding by free market diktats of the WTO. IMF etc. So what seems to be the problem in those countries trading freely with "the market"? Why are there more than 50,000,000 dying of starvation and related diseases every year around the democratic capitalist thirdworld? Can someone explain that free market phenomenon for us? And step on it. You could prevent what is an annual free market-induced holocaust with your reply.
If Korea can't provide food security for its citizens for whatever reasons, ie. dr evil isn't running things right, then why are there one-billion other people who are chronically hungry around the democratic capitalist third world?
Because shitty leadership knows neither left nor right.
Take Korea out of the equation. You still have nearly one-billion chronically hungry people around the demokratic kapitalist thirdworld, and tens of millions dying every year of the kapitalist ekonomic long run. So who's ignoring the larger problem with world hunger to focus on a tiny country the size of Mississippi in a mainly mountainous region of the peninsula and probably for the sake of political expediency rather than genuine concern for hungry people? I think it's appalling. And I think we have nothing further to discuss,
Fidel
You use the words poor, food and slave labour but it's obvious that all that really matters to you is POLiTICS. Please stop pretending to care about the hungry or imprisoned people in this world because your hypocrisy smells revolting and your exploiting of people's suffering to bolster your narrow political view is shameful.
Any real socialist living in North Korea or China would be shot or jailed.
Youre right Joey. Say the words!
Dr Evil ? - again why do you feel that you have to diminish the suffering that the people there are experiencing by making jokes? yes people around the world are hungry and imprisoned but why can't Babble have one thread were we think and discuss the unique issues of the people living in the strangest totalitarian state in the world.
So tell us what you know about North Korea. I've got a minute.
You find the imprisonment and murder of socialists funny, do you Fidel?
i'm sorry if my frustration is showing - I'll leave it to you Joey as I admit - I'm just trying to learn more from a south korean friend who recently moved to Canada and knowledgable babblers.
bye for now
... There's a teensy bit of problematic positioning when people in the West engage in high level abstract intellectual discussions about the plight of "the other". Ya know what I'm sayin'?
Please do remember this......
Here is what a [url=http://gowans.wordpress.com/category/north-korea/]Canadian socialist[/url] wrote in response to a former representative of the US NED, Vin Weber , and his comments concerning North Korea recently:
As a member of the US foreign policy establishment, Weber ought to be careful about talking of hell on earth, for Washington is among the principal authors of unnecessary torment in this world. Iraq, site of the greatest contemporary humanitarian catastrophe, is a hell on earth, and it was created by the United States, for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with what Washington said motivated the country’s Iraq sanctions policy and invasion. What did US B52 bombers create in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia if not hell on earth? And what condition prevailed after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and the fire-bombing of Dresden?
Hell on earth in north Korea didn’t begin with the US demolishing every building over one-story, but it did nothing to relieve it. The torment didn’t end either when Washington practiced nuclear terrorism by deploying battlefield nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula or when in 1993 it announced it was targeting strategic nuclear missiles on north Korea, a country which, at the time, had no nuclear weapons.
The NED’s role in overthrowing communism played its own part in creating hell on earth in north Korea by bringing about the collapse of the country’s markets. Decades-long sanctions have also made life tougher, precisely as intended by US policy makers. And unremitting military pressure from the United States, a military behemoth, has forced north Korea, a military pipsqueak, to channel a punishingly high percentage of its meagre resources into self-defense, depriving the country of the capital it needs for productive investment. If there is a hell on earth in north Korea, it exists because the United States has created one, deliberately, systematically, and with the intention of crushing a top-to-bottom alternative to Third World dependency on the United States.
Fidel I don't claim to be an expert - my interest was peaked after meeting a preson at my work and having conversations in the lunchroom about real people. Watching the doc opened my eyes more, Abstract ideas weren't what made me start this thread, I was thinking of people as human as us just trying to live
I've met people from Asia, too. And what they've said to me doesn't sound anything like the propaganda machine we're exposed to 24-7 here in North America.
My wife and many of our friends lived through the hell of Mao's cultural revolution. Many of their relatives and friends did not survive. From what we have read of North Korea it sounds exactly like what they endured, but I guess they're all lying tools of the US, right Fidel?
I worked for three years with a husband and wife from China. And they don't blame Maoists for kicking the US and British-backed nationalists out of the country in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek and his gangsters murdered ten million Chinese. And Mao offered to step down from power. The people refused his resignation. If you want to see a democratic capitalist hellhole, try India. I've met people from India who've told me that people spend their whole lives in search of justice of any kind in democratic capitalist India. And they never find it. According to economist Amartya Sen's figures, democratic capitalist India continues to produce as many skeletons every eight years as what communist China did in all its years of shame, from 1958-61. China was behind India in 1949 wrt every kind of social statistic. And by 1976, the year of Mao's death, China's infant mortality rate was better than the same rate in India today. Chinese life expectancy was doubled in Mao's time. Yes you can learn a lot from Asian friends for sure.
Poverty in China and India is being reduced (only in absolute terms, to be sure) but there's reason to think that's not so in North Korea - there isn't the economic growth that would allow it. In short, other countries are making progress while North Korea isn't.
