Book Review: The Cleanest Race

The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans see themselves and why it matters.- B.Z. Myers

This is a magnificent book that brings a genuinely fresh perspective to a secretive country.

The great philosopher Eric Hoffer once said that "Mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in God, but never without belief in a Devil"-and in North Korea the Devil is the non-Korean world. The regime derives it's legitimacy not from material success (it acknowledges that the South is wealthier) but from having a strong protector and nurturer to keep impure foreign un-Korean influences at bay.

Myers' argument is that far from being a Stalinist redoubt with a fierce adherence to Marxist-Leninism or a society influenced by traditional Confucian beliefs- the North Korean ideology is about the purity of their race and it is derived to a large extent from the Japanese emperor cult that ended in 1945.

Using sources like North Korean novels and museum exhibits he demonstrates how the regime's propaganda exults Koreans as inherently superior to the other races of the world- not because they are stronger or more intelligent but because they are "purer" and have a childlike innocence that others do not.

Myers dismisses the notion that the leadership don't believe in their own propaganda. The contempt for foreigners and belief in their own inherent superiority does explain much about the behaviour of the regime- the rude demands for aid, overt contempt for even supposed friendly countries, aborting the babies of North Korean women who've been to China and the willingness to cheat in any deal with international negotiators.

The implications of such an ideology are interesting- firstly negotiating to reduce tensions with North Korea is futile because without an external threat there is no justification for the regime's continued existance.They do not make provocotive moves to get aid but to bolster the regime when its neighbours inevitably respond with the cycle of outrage, condemnation, more talks and finally more aid. The best response would be not to simply ignore their actions.

Secondly evidence of a strong and successful South Korea that preserves it's national identity is a real threat to Pyongyang.

I am not sure I believe all Myers' arguments- the Communist influence may be less than is widely believed but it is there (farm collectivisations are a very Soviet idea not one derived from Imperial Japan). However assuming that that the evidence he presents is not cherry picked then the case that North Korea has made extreme paranoid racism it's national ideology is compelling.

Genocide, Gulags- No Bad Thing

If this is what is behind the Times's paywall then I am glad that I never see it. Writing about North Korea, Simon Winchester pays tribute to Korean uniqueness:

North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.

This is a regime that has let millions of people starve to death and runs gulags which whole families get sent to.

Winchester is an idiot, but he is repeating the argument of a more notable idiot, the North Korean apologist Bruce Cumings,  whose own version of the argument is skewered brilliantly here:

It seems to have slipped the professor's notice that many countries manage to stay independent without dragging children off to gulags, and that North Korea is a place where a lot of characteristically Korean behavior—speaking bluntly, for example—is punishable by execution.

He also makes the point that North Korea has been highly dependent on support from outside to prop up the Kim dynasty so is about as far from representing an independent Korea as it is possible to get.

Kim Jong-un Will Probably Be Crazier Than His Father

The new leader of North Korea is 28 year old Kim Jong-un.

When the US constitution was written a lower age limit of 35 was put in place for the holder of the office of president. This was partly because as the founders looked through history they noticed that the most completely crazy, paranoid and murderous rulers were often those who took office at a very young age.

Roman emperors are a good case in point- most of the really terrible emperors were those who took power at a very young age. For example this list ranks the five worst emperors and I have added their age at ascension in brackets:

1. Caligula (25)
2. Elagabalus (14)
3. Commodus (19)
4. Nero (17)
5. Domitian (30)

The list is obviously subjective but broadly indicative of how things are seen. Getting absolute power while still young and full of the desires and immaturity that goes with that tends to be a very bad thing. In the case of Kim Jong-un he is part of dynasty that has held absolute power for 70 years and has grown up in an environment where questioning his authority is tantamount to treason.

This is not an environment in which openness and responsibility are likely to be nurtured.

Dictator Lemon Party*

Amy Winehouse joined the "27 Club" when she died at the same age as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin & Kurt Cobain. Which means that Kim Jong Il has joined the "69 Club" of dictators along with Saddam and Gadaffi.

* If you don't know what Lemon Party refers to, then do not google it.

Culture Clash

The BBC recalls the last time North Korea were at the World Cup, in England 1966.

North Korea played all three of their group games at Middlesbrough's Ayresome Park ground and when they travelled to Liverpool to take on Portugal, thousands of Teessiders followed.

In 2002, Pak and the other six surviving members of the squad returned to parade around Middlesbrough's new Riverside home ahead of a match against Leeds while Boro's ladies team are planning to tour North Korea in the autumn.

"They came up to Middlesbrough and because of their attitude were embraced by the local population," said Bonner.

Teesiders and North Koreans, that must have been a real culture shock, one the one hand there were people who lived in a socialist fortress where every activity was dictated to by an all powerful state who controlled the entire economy and on the other hand the North Koreans.

Korea Advice

I'm inclined to agree with this- China should be encouraged to invade North Korea. North Korea's unprovoked attack on a South Korean naval ship is as blatant an act of war as anyone's ever seen and it is hard to see how North Korea will be dealt with in the long term without all out war.

It may be difficult to see what China gets out of it, but the DPRK must be destabilising. Perhaps a US withdrawal from the Korean peninsula and Japan would be a carrot to dangle in front of them in return for sorting out the North.

Career Options- Human Torpedo

In the recession it always pays to keep an eye out for new and potentially lucrative new careers. So it is interesting to read that North Korea has been using "human torpedoes" to sink South Korean ships.

By definition this immediately creates a vacancy which if you strive hard enough you can fill. There are many advantages to this line of work:

• The swimming is good exercise.
• The work is challenging and varied.
• It is a job for life.

In truth no job is just about the positives and there are downsides to being in a "crack squad of human torpedoes"*.

• The pension plan is rubbish.
• When people hear that you are a human torpedo, you are likely to be chased out your home by an angry mob chanting "No 'Pedos"

* A crack squad? As opposed to what bog standard human torpedoes?

Korea's 2nd Greatest Golfer Wins Something.

I don't see why anyone is impressed that a Korean has won one of golf's majors for the first time. Haven't we known that the Koreans have an aptitude for the sport ever since Kim Jong Il sank 11 holes-in-one in his first ever round of golf!

Not Good Losers.

North Korea has qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 1966, by drawing with Saudi Arabia (a relative oasis of freedom). At their last World Cup outing North Korea famously beat Italy before going out in the quarter finals to Portugal after being three goals up at one point.

Usually when a minnow puts in a great performance like that the team is feted and they usually get some kind of official recognition. This isn't how it works in North Korea though, according to Kang Chol-hwan's "The Aquariums Of Pyongyang". when the team got back most of them were promptly sent to the concentration camps because their defeat to Portugal was put down to the teams decadent capitalist late night celebrations after beating Italy.

Leadership Qualities.

Never let it be said that the North Koreans don't know what to look for in a leader, obstinacy and alcoholism:

All the sons were educated at the International School of Berne in Switzerland. According to Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese who worked as a sushi chef to Kim Jong Il and knew the children well, it was obvious that Kim Jong Un would eventually take over. “The older brother, Jong Chul, had the warm heart of a girl,” he told The Times. “The younger prince, Jong Un, was a boy of inner strength.If power is to be handed over, then Jong Un is the best for it,” Mr Fujimoto said. “He has superb physical gifts, is a big drinker and never admits defeat.”

He sounds like Ken Livingstone.

Unusual Historic Interpretations.

In the Korean Peninsula the North Korean state clearly views every American move as a possible precursor to an attack. The same is true of the South Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese Governments and their ally, the US. Given the history of the Korean War this is hardly surprising; a popular Socialist interim-Government was attacked by an American backed anti-Soviet force and much of the Peninsula was laid waste.

WTF!?

Given that the USA had begun reducing it's presence in Korea prior to the war and in the early stages they and the South Korean forces were nearly driven off the peninsula it seems hard to come to the conclusion that they attacked the North.

I'm not sure what evidence there is for believing that the NK regime was initially popular either.

North Korea.

Is my reasoning wrong here:

• North Korea is a very poor country.
• Nuclear programmes are extremely expensive.
  
• North Korea menaces its neighbours to extort concessions to alleviate their poverty without reforming their economic system.
• They aren't particularly bothered by international condemnation.
  
• The concessions that they believe they will receive must be greater than the cost of a nuclear programme.
  
• Therefore refusing to make any concessions or enter any negotiations with North Korea would hasten their collapse.

Therefore we* shouldn't respond to the North Korean nuclear explosion.

* I say 'we' but the UK doesn't matter that much in that part of the world, it is the USA, Japan, South Korea, China & Russia who matter.

Update: Of course I should bear in mind that there is a possibility that they are as insane as they appear, take this for example:

May 24, 2009: It has been revealed that Choe Sung Chol, who was in charge of North Korean relations with South Korea, was fired and executed last year. The new South Korean government has reversed a policy of giving North Korea lots of goodies with no strings attached. South Korea now wants North Korea to halt developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. North Korea takes this as a hostile act and an attempt to overthrow the communist police state in North Korea. Choe Sung Chol was apparently held personally responsible for the new South Korean government coming to power, and killed for this failure.

Imagine if we shot David Miliband everytime a foreign country adopted policies we opposed.

Various Stuff.

• Germany's Der Spiegel gives a round up of the reaction of German papers to the British expenses scandal! It's a bit embarrassing that they are talkng about it but they do make the point that the disillusionment with politics isn't a specifically British problem. Therefore the various suggestions for changing our constitution to a more continental style with PR and all that might be worthwhile they aren't the root cause of the dissatisfaction. (Link via Blognor Regis)
  
• I was going to comment about this article which berates Tony Blair for not treating Al Qaeada with the same respect that the crusaders showed to Salidin, but I'll just link to Mick Hartley's post instead.
• I was also going elaborate on previous comments about the BBC, but Minette Marrin's article says exactly what I was going to say.
• With all the Korean stuff, both the Nork Nuke & the suicide of the South Korean president who did so much to appease the North, this Korean focused blog is worth reading.
• Michael Burleigh's article on how the defeat of the Tamil Tigers disproves the maxim that you can't beat terrorism with force.
  

Doubles Trouble

Kim Jong Il is dead, perhaps:

Is Kim Jong-il for real? The question has baffled foreign intelligence agencies for years but now a veteran Japanese expert on North Korea says the “dear leader” is actually dead – and his role is played by a double.

The expert says Kim died of diabetes in 2003 and world leaders including Vladimir Putin of Russia and Hu Jintao of China have been negotiating with an impostor.

Interesting if true, although since the Iraq war I'm sceptical about claims of dictators having lots of body doubles. The much rumoured Saddam doubles never showed up, except for one.

{Via}

Libertarians & Psuedo Libertarians.

Although in most aspects of public policy I want the government to have a much reduced role, central government in particular, I am slightly wary of self professed libertarians. In part it is for reasons I explained here but that isn't the only reason.

Many of those considered to be libertarians are not opposed to a powerful government in principle, just to pluralistic and democratic governments in particular. Not all libertarians are like this, some like Milton Friedman or PJ O'Rourke are entirely consistent in advancing liberty but others who don the mantle of libertarianism are nothing of the sort and are psuedo-libertarians at best.

Take the prominent US writer Lew Rockwell, who is generally associated with libertarianism and has a long term association with Ron Paul. Today he shares his deep thoughts on the Korean War:

When the Syngman Rhee regime in South Korea, which launched the war on the North in cahoots with the Truman regime here, also murdered at least 100,000 of its own people, with US supervision and approval. Truman's Air Force then drowned more than a million civilians in the North by deliberately bombing the dykes. Today, despite a militarist regime still supervised by US occupation forces, the South Korean people want peace, trade, and travel with the poor people of the North, no matter how rotten their socialist government. The US occupation prevents this. US Out! (Thanks to Ralph Raico and Antiwar.com

If he is aware of a single credible source that backs up the idea that it was South Korea that launched the war then he is keeping it to himself. At the start of the war the American and South Korean forces were so unprepared that the surprise attack managed to drive them all the way down the peninsular where they had to mount a desperate last stand just to cling on in Korea which makes no sense if they were the ones who launched an invasion. However rather than relying on reputable historians or using his brain, Rockwell prefers to simply parrot North Korean propaganda that is laughably dishonest. For someone who professes a distrust of all powerful states this is rather surprising behaviour.

It is true that Syngman Rhee was a despicable man who led a vile regime, but the fact that after just a few weeks of Communist rule most Koreans decided that he represented the lesser of two evils tells its own story.

Are You In North Korea?

At the end of this report about flooding in North Korea the BBC has a form which asks:

Are you in North Korea? Have you witnessed the floods? Have you been in touch with people in the affected area? Send us your comments using the form below.

I'm guessing there won't be a huge response to that.

We Paean North Korea.

One last (I hope) post about the recently released hostages. They have been criticised in some quarters for the 'confessions' they made, personally I don't see the problem because everyone knows that obviously coerced statements are fake, but wouldn't it have been nice if they could have done something similar to what Lloyd Bulcher, commander of the USS Pueblo, did when he and his crew were captured by the North Koreans in 1968:

Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, Commanding Officer of the Pueblo was tortured and put through a mock firing squad in an effort to make him confess. Eventually the Koreans threatened to execute his men in front of him, and Bucher relented. None of the Koreans knew English well enough to write the confession, so they had Bucher write it himself. They verified the meaning of his words, but failed to catch the pun when he said "We paean the North Korean state. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung."