DPRK FAQ

So NK isn't a brutal totaliterian dictatorship?

to be honest i would have to respond yes to at least the first adjective ("brutal"), albeit not without adding that pretty much the same could be said about capitalist regimes : the social and political trends set by the capitalist market are absolute, they dictate all social norms and costums in most western societies. any dissent to these norms is punished by imprisonment under criminal law. imprisonment necessarily implies being subjected to inhumane treatment, for the carceral universe is one of the most violent and violence-generating that was ever conceived by the capital. so capitalism is also a form of total dictatorship, it allows no alternative to its own non-egalitarian and bourgeois principles. whenever capitalist systems were seriously threatened by a social uprising, they resorted to the same methods as any other authoritarian regime (see brutal crushing of several Black American political movements in 60's and 70's by the US-American police forces, or the sometimes repressive and anti-democratic response to Irish liberation movement in Ulster).

however, capitalist regimes carry out their social repression in a covert manner. instead of handing out politically motivated death penalties, they make sure that prisons on their soil remain the good old centres of criminality they always were, with suicide, murder and drug rates several fold higher than those of the overall society. instead of outright racial apartheid, they let their police forces humiliate and discrimnate poor foreign residents and immigrants (see Amnesty International annual reports on German, English, French or US police forces almost systematically mentionning a recurrent pattern of racist aggressions and human rights violations).

this is because the language of democracy, luckily, has made some strong progress on the international level. thus, today it is quite difficult for a regime to admit being the contrary of a democracy. every dictatorship nowadays seeks to grant itself a democratic makeup, through measures such as flawed elections, plus a cynical and relativist use of the concepts of democracy, which threatens to make a joke out of the idea, because of worldwide indifference of citizens to human rights and democracy - including in the capitalist west, where more and more citizens lose their interest in politics; less electoral participation etc, shows that democracy doesn't rank all too high in the average value scale of European or US-American citizens at the moment.


They don't commit genocide on a biblical scale?

genocide can be defined by a policy aimed at eradicating up to all members of a so-called primordial human community on the basis of their (supposed) communitarian identity.

i don't think the authorities of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have ever sought to eliminate the Korean people. they would have no reason for such a policy.


Their policies arn't starving millions?

this is highly debatable.

first, we don't know if the problem concerns millions or tens of thousands. while both cases would be catastrophic from the humanitarian point of view, there is simply no independent western information source available to the public and dealing with the local developments in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

second, i believe it is not the policies of the government of the Democratic People's Republic that are responsible for these problems, but rather the neo-imperialist tendencies of Washington D. C., which have achieved to isolate the country. the US-American plutocracy uses a combination of military, economic and "cultural"-communicational might as its sole bargaining chip in international politics, hence forcing the rest of the international community to follow their interventionist stance against the sovereign Democratic People's Republic of Korea, especially as far as the People's Republic of China is concerned. exerting pressure on "neutral" or "friendly" countries that do not agree with US-American plans to isolate legitimate governments, forms an admitted part of Washington's foreign policy.

the economic, diplomatic and political isolation of the DPRK on the global scale is being imposed by the US-American administration. hence the economic hardships some of the citizens of Korea are exposed to right now.


There is no Gulag archipeligo?

the infamous notion of "Gulag archipelago" was created by Alexandr Soljenitsyin in order to designate an area where the Soviet Union had established prison camps. i am not aware of similar complexes in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. furthermore, similar installations have existed in US-America, such as the concentration camps built for the Japanese-Americans during World War II, or those created to control the oppressed survivors of the genocide against native Americans. currently, US-America also has its "Gulag archipelago", consisting of an extensive network of forced labor camps, where exploited members of the working class and "racial" minorities are subject to this inhumane treatment.


There isn't a total lack of electricity?

not that i would know of. on the contrary, how can their be a total lack of electricity, when airlines continue to serve Py�ngyang's international airport, when Japanese tourists continue to visit the country, when Democratic People's Republic of Korea's national television stations continue their broadcasts, when people go to work on a daily basis, bowing before the statue of the great leader, President Kim Il Sung, along their way ?


They havn't made scores of border incursions over the years?

do you truly measure a government's commitment to international peace and security by the amount of low intensity cross-border incursions carried out by some units of their armed forces ? if the respect of international law and customs is to be the main indicator of an country's peacefulness , then by your standards, US-America should definitely be considered more warmongering than the DPRK, given the USA's long record of arrogant indifference towards international law. then why does the US-administration block every attempt at fair and neutral international prosecution of alleged US-American war criminals ?


They havn't killed hundreds of ROK and US troops along the DMZ?

i can easily return the question : are you aware of the number of innocent DPRK troops martyred along the DMZ, in the air and at sea, under the fire of combined capitalist armed forces ? but since US-American military propaganda determines the numbers of casualties among enemy forces as being always at least ten times higher than own causalties, you are invited to follow the statistics from the imperialist's side to be convinced that they certainly decimated more innocent lives on the Northern side of the border than the opposite.


They don't constantly threaten the South with nuclar holocaust?

the threat of a nuclear attack can be either clearly suggested or offically declared. one of the caracteristics of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is that it generally refrains from winded or twisted government declarations. hence the relatively direct tone of these threats. however, US-America de facto threatens the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as well with its huge arsenal of WMD, which are deployable within minutes against the innocent DPRK. this terror is achieved without necessarily resorting to direct verbal threats, yet the very presence of these US-American weapons in such numbers, and their capacity and programmation to strike the DPRK constitute sufficient threats.


They don't practice international drug laundering?

i have to ask, who is "they" in this case ? for instance, there are plenty of cases where German, French, US-American or British police and customs officials, even local politicians, participated in very profitable, huge drug laundering activities. is that to say that "Germany", "France", "US-America" and "the UK" are "drug laundering countries" ?

as for information about internal structures of North Korean security agencies, i doubt the western media could ever provide reliable and extensive data, maybe except for some Japanese publications, and until now, there is no precise documentation, let alone evidence, about the links between international drug traffickers of North Korean origin and the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.


Kim has nothing but peacfull intentions?

may i challenge you to demonstrate the contrary ? General Secretary Kim Jong-Il has no warmongering intentions. the aim of re-unifying the Korean Peninsula into a strong People's Democracy, is no less legitimate than West Germany's former claim to represent the whole of Germany, and its constitutional principle seeking to annex the Democratic Republic of Germany. Korea constitutes one nation, and it is the Democratic People's Republic's right to claim sovereignty over the peninsula, since it represents the historically legitimate government of Korea, which was illegally attacked by a coalition of imperialist forces in order to provoke regime change, and this since the early beginnings of the victory of the Juche Idea in Korea. plus, the supreme aim of unification does not necessarily have to be achieved through violence and force. for more than 50 years, the DPRK has refrained from implementing this legitimate objective by force, i see no reason why this should change, except in the case of a renewed imperialist aggression of the proud Korean people.

as for the intentions of the enemies of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, namely the current US-American dictatorial regime, they are everything except peaceful, as proven by at least two spectacular wars of aggression during the last two years... also, we can compare the number of international areas where the US-American plutocrats have deployed armed forces, and those marked by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's military presence : the ratio would be ridiculous. while the DPRK is merely defending its soil against the imperialist aggression, the US-American forces are deployed in an incredible amount of countries on all continents, massively interfering in local and regional conflicts. conclusion : DPRK is objectively more peaceful than the US-America, and poses a reduced threat to world peace and security compared to the imperialist superpower.


The refugee exoducs is caused not by Kims insane eceonomic/social/agricultural policies but by the US?

i'm not sure it would be very useful to determine which one of these two factors is most responsible for the exodus. as a matter of fact, both factors do play an undeniable role. i agree that the economic, social and agricultural policies of the DPRK could have, at different occasions in the Republic's young history, engaged into more productive paths. however, calling them insane would be an exaggeration i believe : the present economic and social situation of the DPRK is not solely due to past policies, but also to the international isolation of the DPRK imposed by US-America.

furthermore, there is evidence on the relationship between the CIA and certain US-American humanitarian agencies operating in the region. there is also a massive propaganda campaign designed to encourage mass exodus from the DPRK.

to determine which of these factors motivated more refugees to leave the country illegally, one would need to carry out extensive sociologic and anthropologic field-work and research. for the moment, i'm not aware of any such project carried out by credible scientists, hence i won't be able to respond to this one i'm afraid.