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"Pyongyang’s once-empty streets are now jammed with vehicles that aren’t supposed to be there"
(hexbear.net)
https://xcancel.com/Reuters/status/2054098106136813829
Cars in North Korea??? That's not supposed to happen. It's ruining our narratives about them having dead rats for dinner. 
DPRK citizens now have access to superior Chinese EVs that amerikkkans can't have. 
This think tank is particularly biased as it was created in response to the Rangoon incident. However, South Korea itself is not a unified monolith of support for western imperialism, and thinking so is also a byproduct of western chauvinism.
Actual leftist anti-imperialist parties in South Korea have historically had more representation and support than leftist parties a lot of western nations. And that is in spite of the government banning the most popular ones every 5-10 years.
Yep, the ROK is extremely divided due to the heightened contradictions from Statesian colonialism, an unfinished civil war, and the ramifications of turning the old colonial government into a new class of chaebol. Trade unionists in the ROK are far more militant than most western countries, and labor struggle is heightened just like pro-Japanese colonialism compradors are also high.
Yep. I always tell people that SK is like a western liberal democracy but if you put it in a pressure cooker. My parents generation basically speed ran the spectrum of highs and lows of what liberal democracy has to offer and arrived at late stage capitalism 20 years before America.
My optimism about the country compared to somewhere like America is that they have a lot more worker solidarity and aren't afraid to throw a Molotov cocktail at cops. Plus they really don't have the reflexive loyalty to the liberal idea of "freedoms" , they are working under their 6th Republic after all.
Yep, I agree! The political instability isn't just because the state is especially repressive, it's because there's also a ton of struggle by the working classes against it. Then there's the massive power of the chaebol and the nihilism brought on by declining birth rates and a feminist movement struggling within this highly misogynistic pressure cooker.
My hope is that the downfall of the US Empire pushes normalization with the DPRK and increased ties with the PRC, potentially even a socialist revolution.
Oh yeah, I’m aware of the history of anti-imperialist/leftist/pro-unification groups in South Korea. I’m also sure that Reuters would not turn to them to get a quote on the state of the peninsula.
That's fair, I only commented because there is a prevalence of ignorance on this site about korea that can often compete with traditional reactionary western chauvinism.
I've personally been called a fascist just because my family is originally from Seoul, despite my mom having to flee her homeland because she was a socialist and participated in a student uprising in the 80s.
The western narrative of the Korean War basically erases the historic truth that NK invaded SK because the latter was massacring revolting leftist Koreans.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Imo while America holds the lion's share, both western powers hold blame.
The jeju uprising had a lot less to do with socialism/communism and a lot more to do with Korean independence. After the Soviets and Americans decided to spit the country in half in a shared occupation, there was supposed to be a five year trusteeship until both countries left the peninsula.
Although there was supposed to be a 5 year waiting period the United states wanted to expedite the ending of the trusteeship, which the Soviet state was not in favor of and so they did not come to agreement . After that the US called led a UN resolution for a unified independence election led by the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea.
The Soviets fearing that they would lose influence in the North rejected the UNTCOK, and so the UNTCOK election only proceeded in the south. The people of Jeju so close to the colonizing force of Japan were more resistant to colonization and were rightly afraid that the UNTCOK would solidify the 38th parallel and rebeled.
In reality both sides could have made compromises throughout the process, but we're both worried about losing influence over a strategic location. Imo it's what happens when western nations believe they have a right to occupy foreign nations.
I don't particularly have much more to input beyond what Cde. Cowbee has said, and is saying during the course of this ongoing discussion and unfortunately I'm still working and can't chip in as much as I'd like to. That said, I can see that you seem like a decently read person on post-colonial and civil war to world military intervention era Korean history based off of what I've read from you thus far, so out of respect for your own scholarly nature, I'll simply leave some academic sources that denotes my position as a DPRK supporter, Korean national liberation and reunification enthusiast, and an all-round enjoyer of my motherland's food. (Sadly I'm not including food this time but I'm always down to talk about it and gripe about the American corruption of our traditional dishes with their shitty cheese slices and cans of baked beans, and musings about why they think american cusine is just shoving truckloads of sugar into everything)
Korea’s Place in the Sun, Bruce Cumings, 1997.
Korea’s Grievous War, Su-kyoung Hwang, 2016.
Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950, Suzy Kim, 2013.
Patriots, Traitors, and Empires, Stephen Gowans, 2018.
This Monstrous War, Wilfred G. Burchett, 1953.
Cry Korea, Reginald Thompson, 1951.
The Hidden History of the Korean War 1950-1951, I.F. Stone, 1952.
North Korea: Another Country, Bruce Cumings, 2004.
Hopefully you find something here that catches your eye and you give it a read.
Thanks, I'll add them to my reading list! I would like to clarify that I too am a supporter of the DPRK and the Soviet union, it's just not unlimited uncritical support.
Lol, yeah.... I'm in the same boat. My mother and uncle participated in the Gwangju uprising and had to leave the country in the 80s. So my taste in Korean food is really traditional, my little cousins in Korea say I eat like an old man.
This is too real. I get called a boomer by my little cousins too. I just think you shouldn't be out-america-ing the americans by doing shit like taking corndogs, covering them with deep fried mozzarella, then rolling it all in sugar, among all the other terrifying korean streetfood innovations that grace Gwangjang Market. Some pork head pyeonyuk slices with a bit of saeujeot on top is more than good enough!
Honestly should be a hate crime.
I basically become Rhee level reactionary if someone tries to get me to eat "rose" tteokbokki.
Pyeonyuk or jokbal is s tier too drunk food. Hit me with that knuckle or face meat and I'm good for another bottle!
How do you keep track of books? I have a text file where I dump all books I find that seem interesting, like copy-pasting these 8 lines in there. But I was wondering if you had some better way of keeping track of things.
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I just have ~100 pages open on my web browser, lmao
I use my faulty meat computer to remember the gyst of things, alongside keeping too many tabs open on both my phone and desktop and favoriting website links and comments and posts here on hexbear.
As you can infer quite quickly those are very not good and very unreliable ways of saving information. A misclick can wipe out all your tabs and internet history in an instant. Internet pages can go dead. Hexbear accounts that post amazing information decide to delete their accounts and take all the data with them to their digital graves, etc. Honestly I think I've forgotten and lost more info than I can even remember. Also I think my workplace is like legit degrading my mental capacities and I'm slowly going senile. No I am not old
So I'm trying to do what you do and keep info on a text file that I keep on my desk top with back ups in my email, in the gooble cloud stuff, and on an exterior hard drive. I'm still bad at keeping them organized and up to date though.
I was hoping you had something smart. I close every tab so I'm sure I've lost a few things too. I half remember a thing I have no idea if came to me in a dream or actually in a book. So I thought it be a good idea to try and note down everything going forward.
Gotta copy out the comments and posts you really like, I've been doing that exactly to preserve them. ~~Also download a copy of every single comment made by ReadFanon~~
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I wish I did
Hi me, I'm you
The big ommissions here are that the Soviets were not occupiers and were far less involved than the Statesians, and the Statesians had declared the People's Republic of Korea illegal, and had set up an occupying government called USAMGIK, and then set up the ROK, leaving many of the compradors from the era of Japanese colonialism in power as the new stage and chaebol.
In the North, the democratic processes consolidated around the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, and the WPK in particular. The PRK was not dissolved in the north, and instead transitioned to the modern DPRK. The Soviets did not force the communists into power like the Statesians had forced the new capitalist government into power in the south.
Just because they weren't as bad as the US or the Japanese does not mean they weren't occupiers. They held military control over the north and disbanded the local branch of the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence operating under the leadership of Cho Man Sik. And then created the Assembly for the Provisional Committee without any Korean input. Going as far as to write the 1st version of their constitution.
The independence of the PRK in the south and the north both ended in 1945 after the trusteeship was agreed upon in the Moscow conference. Cho Man Sik was arrested and disappeared because he did not agree with the trusteeship and Shtykov chose Kim il Sung, a relatively unknown character outside of Manchuria over the logical choice of Pak Hon-yong, who had long been known as one of the fathers of communism in Korea.
They didn't have to force communism in power, communism had already been developing by itself in both the north and in the south. What they did do is assert their influence to control how it developed.
My argument wasn't that America wasn't worse, it was that the Soviets also asserted their influence over a foreign nation and that had negative outcomes that we still have to deal with today.
The soviets were loosely involved with the north, and did not choose for the northerners how to govern nor dictate their direction. They served as a stabilizing and advisory group, which was beneficial on the basis of the wide communist sympathies across the entire peninsula. It was the Statesians in the south that went against the grain, occupied the south, and handpicked their leaders. Kim Il-Sung was also not an unknown, and was picked by Korean resistance leaders.
Ultimately, today, the DPRK is an independent indigenous state, while the ROK is still colonized by the US Empire. The soviets left the north as was always intended, while the US Empire maintained a permanent presence and explicit control over their military. To call them both occupiers erases that fundamental difference and erases the autonomy of Koreans in the north that ultimately did choose how to chart their own path, which is sadly not the case for the south (yet).
And what happened to Cho Man-sik?
The Soviet civilian administration was more than an advisory group,they were the official ruling administration until 1948.
Again, no one has claimed the south wasn't being ruled by a fascist regime installed the US.
He didn't arrive in Korea until 1945 and was mostly known by other Manchurian Koreans who survived the Minsaengdan incident. He was empowered by the Soviet faction to create the North Korean Branch Bureau which broke away from the CPK Central Committee.
Again, not what we were arguing about.
It's called nuance...... No one is arguing that the north didn't have more independence than the south. However, to claim the Soviets didn't assert a massive amount of influence and limit the autonomy of North Koreans is just ahistorical and whitewashes the history of European chauvinism and the destructive interventional history of Europeans in asia.
It also omits the hubris of the western powers believing they had the right to divide Korea in half during the Moscow conference in defiance of the protest of Korean representatives from both the left and right.
Did the Soviets have influence? Yes. Were they "occupiers?" No. Nobody is arguing that the soviets did not have any influence whatsoever, and it seems we are both getting caught up in the difference between "occupation" and "influence." This difference is perhaps most stark in your insistence that the Soviets and the US Empire both were guilty of European chauvanism, when it's abundantly clear both in theory and in practice that the US Empire was (and is) an actively imperialist country while the soviets treated the National question extremely seriously, and fought to abolish colonialism. This is why the north and the south had such different levels of autonomy.
I would agree that we're both caught up in the difference between occupier and influence. However, I think it's an important distinction. My argument hinges on the fact that both the US and the Soviets decided to occupy the peninsula during the Moscow conference despite the pleas from the representatives elected by the people of korea.
Now I do think there is a distinction between the two countries behavior in that an occupation is by definition a temporary status. The Soviets occupied North Korea for less than five years while the US have defacto colonized South Korea.
I wouldn't claim that the Soviet union colonized, annexed, or even invaded North Korea. However, I do think they occupied a country that did not want to have their independence stripped away via initiating a trusteeship with another great power.
When we compare the aims and actions of both countries, it's clear that the Soviets genuinely wished to help establish a state for the Korean people, and that they did not intend for the division to be permanent. The US Empire in fact was the one to split the peninsula. As you said, the Soviets were active for less than 5 years in the north (beyond the eventual trade and fraternal relations). Occupation to me implies that they were unwanted and staying anyways, neither of which are true for the soviets while both are for the US Empire.
I think it's reasonable to critique the level of influence the Soviets had, but such a critique cannot be made to equate the role played by both the Soviets and the Statesians. They had entirely different methods, aims, and actions. In reducing both to "occupiers," you make it seem that the Soviets too wished to establish a colony, when this has proven false. In fact, it was the Soviet Union that insisted that the trusteeship be short, and it remains true that the Soviets upheld their commitment to aiding the establishment of a Korean state by and for Koreans.
To simplify this to the same western chauvanism that the US employed in colonizing the ROK minimizes the gulf between how the two countries treated Korea.
I would heartily agree.
I don't think splitting the state was their original intention, nor that they were solely or even mostly responsible for doing so. However, I think it's ahistorical to claim that they did not participate in the actual splitting of a nation.
They did institute a trusteeship which they were expressly asked not too by the elected representatives of Korea.
At no point have I equated the roles played by the Soviets and the US, and have in fact claimed the opposite to be true in nearly every response.
There is a difference between an occupation and a colonization. I would categorize the US as more of a colonizer, as occupation force eventually leaves.
I don't think I ever attempted to conflate the two western countries to be equal in anyway. Just because they exhibited some similar characteristics such as western chauvinism in their decision to divide a nation between each other does not mean I think their motives or methods are the same. If anything I feel you are conflating any criticism of Soviet interaction with Korea as a tacit approval of US colonialism.
I understand your points and largely agree, my point is more that the way you framed it did make it seem like they were equivalent, which we came to a better understanding of your point through further dialogue. That's my point.
My apologies, that was never my intention. I would never want to equate the actions of the US government with the Soviet union in Korea. The two are systemically and undeniable on different scales of intentional and unintentional harm.
It's a difficult topic to speak about in general, as the vast majority of people criticizing North Korea are doing so in an uninformed or disingenuous way, but I do think that critical evaluation of the events can lead to fruitful discussions of revolution in the modern age. Especially in regards to leftist dialogue between the east and the west
Thanks for the chat, it's rare to have an informed dialogue with people about my motherland.
No problem!