This post describes what type of a political system is being implemented in North Korea, like in the old USSR and old China, not socialism, and definitely not communism, but state capitalism; and what type of a leader does a state capitalism produces, a dictator ...
Death of a Dictator
In the Second World War Russia (or the U.S.S.R. as it was then),
which had been fighting Germany since the Nazi invasion of 1941, only
got round to declaring war on Japan on 8 August 1945. That was three
days after the first atomic bomb landed on Hiroshima and one day before
the second landed on Nagasaki. The Japanese empire was now squeezed
between the vast armed forces of Russia and America, and it
disintegrated. Japan had forcibly annexed Korea in 1910, but the
Japanese were now driven out. The U.S.S.R occupied the northern half of
Korea with its capital at Pyongyang, and the U.S.A. occupied the
southern half with its capital at Seoul.
Russia’s ruling clique
then favoured state capitalism, while America’s rulers favoured private
capitalism. In the south, under American occupation, Syngman Rhee (a
Korean who had studied at American universities, had spent the previous
twenty years in the U.S.A., and had westernised his name) became the
ruler, and private capitalism took over the economy. In the north, Kim
Il-sung (a Korean brought up in Manchuria, who had been an officer in
the Chinese armies and then in the Russian armies) was hastily tutored
in the Korean language, which he had largely forgotten, and was
installed in power; the economy was state capitalist. In the south
Syngman Rhee instituted a repressive and corrupt regime, jailing and
killing any who protested until he was forced to resign by a popular
uprising in 1960. In the north Kim Il-sung instituted a repressive and
corrupt regime, jailing and killing any who protested, but he was able
to rule till his death in 1994.
The two Koreas were very much
simply proxies for the great countries that had set them up and
supported them. From the first there were many raids and skirmishes
between the north and the south, and from 1950 to 1953 there was open
warfare, with the Americans (and British) supporting the south and the
Chinese supporting the north. The battles swept over the whole country:
the front line was at first pushed to the extreme south, then back to
the extreme north, and then south again. Korea experienced all the
delights of modern war: air raids, great battles, trench warfare, death
and destruction, all ranged over the whole peninsula. As in many wars
since, no one actually counted the corpses, but one estimate is that
there were two million or more Korean civilian deaths, plus of course
many Korean, and American, and Chinese, and British soldiers. (One of
the writer’s classmates at school, an enthusiastic member of the “cadet
corps”, joined the army when he left school and was killed in Korea.)
Kim
Il-sung was set up by the state propaganda machine as being virtually
divine, a being that, it was pretty strongly hinted, had created the
world. A new calendar was inaugurated, in which 1912, when Kim Il-sung
was born, was year one. When Kim Il-sung died in year eighty-three - or
1994 - his son Kim Jong-il was put into his place and ruled in the same
way as his father had done
North Korea saw itself as part of the
state-capitalist bloc, which included Russia and China. It was and is
harshly authoritarian. Dissent is met by torture, and North Korea is
third in the list of the world’s countries carrying out executions –
those condemned are killed publicly by firing squads. In 2004 a Human
Rights Watch report said that North Korea was “among the world’s most
repressive governments”: there were up to 200,000 political prisoners.
It was dubbed the world’s most corrupt country in a “Corruption Index”.
North Korea is the thirty-ninth largest country by population, but it
has the world’s fourth largest army: in a population of twenty-four
million, 1.1 million are military personnel, and 8.2 million active
reservists. It has been called “the most militarized country in the
world today”; it has the world’s third-largest chemical weapons
stockpile, and it possesses its own nuclear warheads.
At the end
of last century the state-capitalist bloc had begun to fall apart. In
the 1990s Russia dismantled state capitalism in favour of private
capitalism, and China took steps along the same road. More and more,
North Korea found itself isolated. This was bad news, since capitalism
(of whichever variety) operates most profitably by disregarding state
boundaries. On top of that, 1995 and 1996 saw disastrous floods in North
Korea, and there was a calamitous drought in 1997. The ordinary people
suffered grievously. Although detailed figures are hard to obtain in the
kind of xenophobic dictatorship that North Korea had become, some
reports say that a million North Koreans, or perhaps two million, died
of famine. North Koreans have an official salary of £1 or £2 per week,
but lucky ones can make more by trading in tolerated private markets.
The
twenty-first century saw some steps towards the modification of the
system, with private capitalism being allowed a larger share of the
economy. 2002 saw the introduction of what North Korea’s rulers called
“landmark socialist-type market economic practices”. It is hardly
necessary to say that this change had nothing to do with socialism; it
was a dilution of the previously prevailing state capitalism with some
admixture of the private variety. (And it may be significant that when
the North Korean constitution was re-written in 2009, any reference to
“communism” was dropped; perhaps a very belated concession to honesty.)
The changes of the early twenty-first century allowed foreign firms into
the country to operate “manufacturing facilities”. For example, the
“Kaesong Industrial Park” was created just north of the demilitarised
zone which separates the two Koreas; here South Korean companies were
allowed to operate, and by 2010 they employed over 40,000 North Korean
workers.
It will not surprise anyone to hear that Kim Jong-il (the
“Dear Leader” and “Our Father”) who had succeeded his father Kim
Il-sung (the “Great Leader” and “Eternal President”) in 1994 was able to
protect his own living standards during these tragic times. He had
seventeen different palatial residences scattered across North Korea. He
was fond of burgundy and bordeaux, and in some years he was the world’s
biggest buyer of Hennessy cognac – up to half a million pounds worth of
it. His chef went round the world to secure foreign delicacies. When he
visited China and Russia (in a special train – he was afraid of flying)
fresh lobster was flown to his train every day. Several of his staff
were employed to check that the grains of rice served to him were
absolutely identical in size and colour. He liked watching films and had
a collection of 20,000 videotapes and DVDs. A song glorifying him – “No
motherland without you” – was regularly piped from public loudspeakers
in Pyongyang. No dictator exists without the support of an upper class,
and in North Korea there is a small group at the top who are apparently
doing very well, and defying the world’s embargoes and sanctions by
importing luxury items through China.
It is very difficult to be
sure what was happening in North Korea and what was being said in North
Korea because the whole power of the North Korean state was brought to
bear to create insuperable barriers between the North Koreans and the
rest of the world. But so far as one can work it out the state media of
North Korea – and there was no other kind – was endlessly asserting that
Kim Jong-il was a most remarkable person. Apparently you might have
known that someone special had appeared when he was born because
according to the official sources of information his birth (which was
foretold by a swallow – I’m not sure how) was marked by the appearance
of a double rainbow and a new star in the sky. He began walking at three
weeks, and he began talking at eight weeks. (Why did he take so long?)
When
he went to university (at Kim Il-sung University, Pyongyang), he wrote
1,500 books over the three years – that’s ten books a week, or about a
book and a half every day. Book-writing was not his only achievement. He
was also able to compose no fewer than six operas, which, said his
official biography, turned out to be “better than any in the history of
music”. He also staged a number of elaborate musicals. Sport was no
problem. Some reports had him winning gold at every event in the Seoul
Olympics of 1988, which was quite an achievement, but it was the more
remarkable since – having been born in 1941 – he was then forty-seven
years old. So there’s hope for us all. Hostile press reports from
foreign countries alleging that North Korea had actually boycotted the
Games because they were still officially at war with South Korea can
safely be ignored.
Never having played golf before, he strolled on
to a golf course one day, picking up some clubs for the first time, and
on his first eighteen holes he returned a score of thirty-eight under
par – a world record by some considerable distance – having been expert
enough to shoot eleven of the holes in one. This cannot be doubted since
he had seventeen bodyguards with him, all of whom verified the feat.
Perhaps they all stood round each hole that Kim aimed at, willing the
golf ball to follow the correct political line. (As politicians and
journalists vied with each other to eulogize their leader, the stories
improved: some earlier versions of the golfing triumph gave him only a
measly five holes-in-one.)
In his spare time he invented the
hamburger; and his distinctive style of clothing “led world-wide fashion
trends”. Some state media gave the strong impression that he could
control the weather. One doesn’t know how he found time for all these
activities in addition to supervising the whole government of North
Korea, but then one finds that he never had to go to the lavatory, so
that must have given him a bit more time. When Kim Jong-il died last
December, the reader will not be surprised to hear that “a fierce
snowstorm paused” and the sky glowed red above the sacred North Korean
Mount Paektu, while the ice on a lake nearby cracked so loud that “it
seemed to shake the heavens and the earth”. At the moment of his death a
crane was observed to circle a statue of his father Kim Il-sung, before
landing on a nearby tree, “its head bowed in sorrow”.
People who
have listened to this kind of garbage all their lives (and have never
even heard, as it were, any counter-garbage) might well feel desperately
sad when such an outstanding figure dies, and that may help to account
for the pictures of mass wailing and weeping which emerged from North
Korea recently. Even those who have retained enough common sense (which
is, of course, very uncommon) to disbelieve the unbelievable might well
realize that if they were not sobbing loudly enough, the omnipresent
military and security forces might well be tempted to give them
something to make them lament in real earnest.
Nonsense knows no
national or temporal boundaries, and when Kim Jong-il died on 17
December, the Western world was all geared up for its annual
celebrations of another great man whose birth was also marked by the
appearance of an extra star in the sky and at whose death a great
darkness overwhelmed the earth (Matthew 2-2 and 27-45).
Strangely,
when Kim Jong-il died, the man who immediately stepped into his shoes
as North Korea’s dictator was his son, Kim Jong-un. He does not appear
to have done anything in particular up to now except choose his parents
carefully, although his appearance suggests that so far he has
successfully fended off famine. However, no doubt the Pyongyang
publicity boys will soon come up with something wonderful, so we wait
with bated breath.
Before we all split our sides laughing, perhaps
we should remember that we ourselves (like the Koreans) live in a
system where a small group of people own everything worth owning and
live luxuriously on the proceeds, while the great majority (who own very
little) spend their lives desperately working so that great amounts of
rent, interest and profit can be paid to this small group. Furthermore,
the media continually tell us that this system is the best that ever has
been, or ever could be, devised. Now, no one would ever believe that,
would they?
ALWYN EDGAR
