I promised some time ago a post on North Korea, or rather on Bruce Cuming's book of that title, and finally here it is.
First, a digression. I went to North Korea in 1998—there's an article I wrote about the trip for the Guardian Weekly here—and it was, and no doubt still is, the most fascinating, if spooky, place. I doubt I'll ever forget the television news, with the presenters' frenzied enthusiasm, or the way in which I became invisible in the streets of Pyongyang, even the simplest of eye contact seeming to be forbidden, or perhaps too frightening, for the inhabitants.
Cumings is no apologist for the regime—he describes Kim Il Sung at age 68: "he was a cross between Marlon Brando playing a big oil mogul in a film called The Formula, walking with feet splayed to handle a potbelly and hands amidriff thus to pat the tummy, combined with the big head on narrow shoulders, and the blank, guttural delivery of Henry Kissinger." (p. 148)
Yet he makes the obvious, but often missed, point, that the regime can't be quite so dysfunctional as American and South Korean propaganda would suggest, since if it were, it could not have survived.
He says, yes, there probably are, as Amnesty International reports, 100,000 political prisoners. "Does this system promote human freedom? Not from any liberal's standpoint. But from a Korean standpoint, where freedom is also defined as an independent stance against foreign predator—freedom for the Korean nation—here, the vitriolic judgments do not flow so easily. This is a cardinal virtue among a people that has preserved its integrity and continuity in the same place since the early Christian era." (p. 151)
So what is Kim Jong Il really like?
... not the playboy, womanizer, drunk, and mentally deranged fanatic "Dr Evil" of our press. He is a homebody who doesn't socialize much, doesn't drink much, and works at home in his pajamas, scribbling marginal comments on the endless reams of documents brought to him in gray briefcases by his aides ... He is prudish and shy, and like most Korean fathers, hopelessly devoted to his son and the other children in his household—vastly preferring to sequester himself with them, rather than preside over the public extravaganzas that amaze visitors to the DPRK. ... The Dear Leader has tired of all the absurd hero worship, too; he told a visitor, "All that is bogus. It's all just pretence." [p. 163]
As for what being an "ordinary" North Korean might be like, Cumings quotes Anthony Namkung, "who attended an evangelical Christian missionary school: 'It helps in understanding North Korea if you have lived in a fundamental Christian community ... Just like the North Koreans, we believed in the absolute purity of our doctrine. We focused inward and didn't want to be tainted by the outside world.'" (p. 173)
Article comments
1 - SFC Ski
"Cumings is no apologist for the regime ..." Everythihng you cite from his book seems to say otherwise.
2 - Natalie
I would say he explains the regime - offering a convincing account of how it turned out like it has, in large part due to the actions of the US (as per Saddam Hussein, etc, etc ...) but the North Koreans wouldn't like many parts of his account, as for example the description of Kim Il Sung that I quote.
3 - todd
Is discussing the role of the Versilles Treaty, hyperinflation and moral breakdown as factors which led to the democratic election in Germany of Adolf Hitler "apologizing"?
Every people has buttons which leaders learn to push to get their support.
For the US, one of those buttons is the word "terror". Pushing it has worked well for the Bush Administration so far.
So what buttons is Il pushing to keep the people trapped in such squalor and misery?
It might be helpful to find out before we nuke them.
4 - Bennett
Nice review Natalie. Thanks for a new look at an old situation.
5 - JamesC
Yet another "Blame America" review. Time for a reality check. Nuclear weapons in Korea, as they were in Europe, served as a deterrent to a Communist invasion. And they worked quite well, too.
Read Barbara Deming's last two pieces in the LA Times (7/3-7/4). North Korea is dysfunctional. They cannot even feed themselves, and the country's infrastructure has fallen apart at the seams. Only an Orwellian police apparatus keeps KJI in power. No one else is to blame other than the ruling Kims themselves.
6 - JamesC
Yet another "Blame America" review. Time for a reality check. Nuclear weapons in Korea, as they were in Europe, served as a deterrent to a Communist invasion. And they worked quite well, too.
Read Barbara Deming's last two pieces in the LA Times (7/3-7/4). North Korea is dysfunctional. They cannot even feed themselves, and the country's infrastructure has fallen apart at the seams. Only an Orwellian police apparatus keeps KJI in power. No one else is to blame other than the ruling Kims themselves.
7 - Natalie
Neither Cumings nor I makes any claim for the health of the Pyongyang regime - we're just trying to understand how it got that way.
8 - godoggo
The LA times series was excellent, although unfortunately they pretty quckly make their online articles available only for a fee (I didn't bother to check).
Here's a very good article from the Spiegel a few months back about a book (which still doesn't appear to have been released) that is, like the Times Series, based largely on interviews with refugees in China and South Korea.
I can't stop rereading those last 30 pages about the North from Lonely Planet's Korea guidebook. Fascinating stuff, although I can't say that I'm much inclined to check it out for myself.
9 - godoggo
"I didn't bother to check" meaning that I didn't check to see whether either article is available for free.