Kind of amazing how many instances are blocking lemmygrad as soon as they’re created. I know that liberals really don’t like dissenting opinions but goddamn
Kind of amazing how many instances are blocking lemmygrad as soon as they’re created. I know that liberals really don’t like dissenting opinions but goddamn
I think the general consensus on this instance is that the actual execution isn’t the attrocity horror show that so many make it out to be: that capitalist dominance of media and education has either ridiculously distorted or outright fabricated many of the atrocities attributed to AES. This doesn’t mean people here like/support AES uncritically or unconditionally. However, the criticisms that will be levied against states/orgs here are going to be quite different from those of the more “libertarian” left.
I guess we disagree on that, I see no reason to make out some communist countries as hellholes (DPRK) while others like Cuba get a free pass. Other than that I consider DPRK leadership as more of a personal cult disguised with a communist state, and why communists would be compelled to defend that kind of stratification of society is beyond me
to be perfectly honest, I don’t even know why we comment on dprk. It’s extremely hard to know anything accurate about them, our 2 main sources are defectors paid off by South Korea or state propganda, which I have literally no way to tell is truthful or not (there’s also defectors who say they want to go back, but tbh I don’t really trust any anecdote).
Western media constantly makes up the most outlandish things about them (everyone has to get the same haircut or they and 3 generations of their family get sent to gulag!?!?!), and ultimately they aren’t a big player in global affairs, so I just don’t really get the point of having arguments about them. Let’s end the sanctions, and let north korean communists deal with their own problems (whether that’s using the state or not).
It is possible to know what’s happening in the DPRK, the government talks about it. There’s also English-speaking content creators who relay some of that information to the world in a language we understand.
Official documents, such as how their government and communist party (Workers’ Party of Korea) works or what Juche is, are freely available online.
You seem to assume that the DPRK would have reasons to lie, which I believe to be a remnant of essentially growing up being told the DPRK is a “hermit kingdom” and a “rogue state” (like all of us here) – in how you call defectors, for example, which implies that people had to flee Korea. There are thousands of Korean workers from the DPRK working abroad, most of them in Russia. Those that “fled” with their heart-wrenching stories actually just found a way to go to China, a bordering country.
Those that want to go back, for the most part, did not want to leave in the first place. Many left during the Arduous March, the economic crisis that affected the DPRK in the 1990s after the illegal dissolution of the USSR. This was a very difficult time for the people, and most of the anti-communist “defectors” today were kids around that time. Some pro-DPRK citizens also left during that time with the plans to come back. If I remember correctly, many went to China but were later kidnapped by the South Korean government. Some went to South Korea, and some were made prisoners of war and are still not allowed to go back home to the DPRK after all these years.The anti-communist “defectors” are a tiny minority of these prisoners/emigrants.
North Korea is itself a misnomer, the country’s name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; North Korea is not an official name but one given to differentiate it and legitimise the occupied part of the peninsula, the Republic of Korea. But there is only one Korea, and there would have only been one (The People’s Republic of Korea) had the US not intervened.
There’s only one correct line, and it’s support for the DPRK’s sovereignty over the whole of the Korean peninsula. I get why you suggest that we need to end the sanctions and let Korean communists deal with their affairs, but there’s the imperialist camp and the humanist camp in this issue. The imperialist camp wants an anti-communist Korea at any cost, they will genocide the whole of the DPRK if they have to. Saying “let them take care of their own matters” is not supportive of the DPRK’s struggle for unification.
It just seems like that isn’t a great argument to convince people to trust the DPRK to me. Like if they already don’t like the state, they’re not going to trust anything that comes from the government. I guess my point is that lifting the sanctions (and stop propping up the Republic of Korea’s government) is the bare minimum that any socialist should agree to. I only used north Korean because I wanted it to be clear that I was talking about someone from the DPRK
I am in broad, near total, agreement with you. There’s just the point about trust that I want to address.
For me, it’s not necessarily about ‘trusting’ the DPRK. It starts with recognising that we can’t trust anything Western governments or media say about the DPRK.
We know for certain that we cannot trust Western voices. (1) They have been caught in too many lies already. (2) Whether they lie or not, the world looks different from a dialectical materialist perspective, which makes bourgeois conclusions faulty even if they’re honest.
If this is correct, it means rebuilding a model of everything that capitalists have ever spoken about. That includes the DPRK, Cuba, etc.
In that case, we need to look for data and evidence from somewhere else, which happens to include official e.g. DPRK sources (although we can critically analyse Western sources and find the kernel of truth if there is one, to help us do the same to those un/official pro-DPRK sources and come to a new conclusion).
As for that conclusion, we do know some uncontrovertable facts. The US and it’s allies invaded Korea, killing millions of people. They invaded as a neocolonial project and to prevent the spread of communism. The US never left. An invading army that doesn’t leave is almost by definition an occupying force. That means the south of the peninsula is occupied by a foreign enemy.
Under these conditions, we cannot expect enlightenment in the region. As it happens, I’m convinced the north is a lot closer to paradise than Western media and officials ever suggest (not to say that it is or ever could be a paradise—I’m not a utopian socialist). For the majority of people, it may even be better in the north than in the south. But other ‘leftists’ don’t have to agree about that.
I think that recognising these details is necessary to convince westerners in general to act in solidarity with Korea to achieve the goals that you rightly say we need to achieve. We’re not going to get anywhere with lifting sanctions for so long as westerners implicitly agree that some level of occupation/action is necessary because the DPRK is XYZ.
After recognising these details, it becomes clearer that western leftists need to stop caring so much about what goes on in other countries (unless it’s to offer critical support) and focus instead on preventing their governments from conducting/facilitating the most violent empire in history. (Which I think you’re already saying?)
was reading through another thread and this massive post (no hate!) popped up in the top right corner of my screen and scared me lol. I think this aligns with my thoughts on the matter pretty closely!
Yes, I think this is foremost our job as socialists in the imperial core