How did North Korea end up having Kim Il Sung as its leader? Why did the Soviet Union and China support a quasi-fascist ethnostate? How come more communist leaders like Pak Hon-yong didn't lead North Korea?
How did North Korea end up having Kim Il Sung as its leader...
Gavin Gonzalez
Luke Brooks
...
Carson Cruz
Chase Lee
I'm not arguing that the DPRK wasn't at least partly socialist (prior to Kim Jong Il's privatizations at least), but it's pretty clear the ideology of Juche borrows quite a bit from the Japanese style of fascism
Wyatt Hill
How is this "pretty clear"?
Austin Nelson
The focus on a societal ideal and a strong nation is stronger than the focus on workers' control of the means of production.
Tyler Reed
It's hard to focus on building socialism when the entire world is trying to destroy you.
Tyler Fisher
Ethan Perez
Brandon Johnson
if only this board had some kind of thread on North Korea
Cooper Jenkins
shoo shoo back to leftpol
Adrian Peterson
Jackson Morgan
The only reason he got the job was because he was the most loyal to the soviets. He actually played a fairly minimal role in resisting the Japanese despite what north korean propoganda would have you believe.
Chase Sullivan
He got elected by the councils of the People's Republic of Korea (1945).
Purely by military efficiency, yes, but he already was a huge symbol for the Korean resistence in World War II. The personality cult and his name stem from that time.
William Cox
North Korea isn't entirely an ethnostate, but their propaganda does focus on Koreans as a race and their ultimate goal wrt reuniting with SK is the unification of Koreans as a race. This is how the propaganda depicts the conflict - Koreans are an innocent, childlike kind. Americans, the Japanese - wily races, eager to corrupt the pure Koreans. If the Chinese aren't on there, it's purely because the Chinese were willing to ally with them and support their self-determination - a lot of the adoption of communism* was about attaining this support.
With regards to fascism, I think 'quasi-fascist' is accurate. They aren't fascist, but took influence from the fascist Japanese and maintain legitimacy with military strength and some sense of national/racial identity. Their leaders all come from one family, and the dead ones technically never stop being the official current 'leader.' If it were a socialist state, it would have turned capitalist or failed by now because the dire economic conditions could not support a workers' state with freedom (not bourgeois democracy but political liberty) and decent living standards.
All this said (without answering any of OP's questions), fuck the USA for trying to stop any of this. America makes it worse, and giving up on the nuclear program would be suicide for the Kims. DPRK still offers the advantage, too, of having made an alliance decision which didn't result in constant massive military occupation by American soldiers. I hope NK gets nukes and they keep them. I'm less afraid of Kim than I am the accelerating ongoing march of authoritarianism in Americastan.
Nolan Harris
t. read The Cleanest Race and thinks xe knows what's xe's talking about
fuck off pseud
Liam Ramirez
The Cleanest Race, which is probably where you get your information from, is misinformed. I don't know how well Myers speaks Korean but minjok translates to nation, not race. Pic related is a speech by Kim Jong Il using the word and it's English translation by the DPRK.
Owen Russell
sounds kind of ethnostatey to me
Landon Ramirez
Japan is an ethno-state, Slovakia is an ethno-state. There is no inherent value in diversity unless you are consciously restricting it by filtering people out based on ethnicity - and the DPRK doesn't do that. The result of the DPRK being ethnically homogenous is caused by it being isolated and bullied by the international community.
You can find black teachers in North Korea.
Christopher Long
Because North Korea is China's irregular force, so to speak. It's easy to be the sanest adult in the room when you're giving more or less tacit support to a total brat.
Speaking about blacks. One black cuban diplomat almost got lynched i Pyongyang.
Wyatt Gutierrez
Minjok can be translated as either, but it IS specifically linked to the concept of a tripartite link of ethnic/racial identity, the necessary identity of a people, and its national representation. This is more than some platitude or accedence to a national body as such, it is a specifically charged word whose concept originated in the bourgeois intelligentsia of Occupied Korea as an ethno-nationalist concept for resistance against Japanese aggression.
Myers is absolutely full of shit, but this synchronic linguists contention "Oh that's not what it says, you've merely misconstrued this to favor a specious argument" doesn't work here
Christopher Russell
One could argue that the western word "nation" is tied to an ethnic concept as well, as it is frequently used by the aforementioned bourgeois intelligentsia in such a way. At no incident in Western history, Nazi Germany being the exception, did the military-industrial complex shout "For your race!" in its agitation. Nation in Marxism however would only relate to a historical community of people.
Marxism, distinguished from other social sciences, uses a lot of terminus technici", which means social terms with a specific scientific distinction, such as class not being a vague hierarchy but a specific relationship to production. So, even if you'd argue that Juche was a deviation from Marxism, it certainly was stemming from it. I'd argue that in North Korean political literature, terms would also be used as terminus technici, so when Kim Jong Il uses minjok'' as "nation" it probably does not have a racial aspect to it despite its potential to be used like this.
I'm not an expert on Asian languages or the translation of Marxist writings into Asian languages (about one could probably write a book), but that'd be my take on it.
Joseph Hughes
Didn't mean to write the middle part all in italic, screwed up there, now this shit reads condescending as fuck lmao
Adrian Ramirez
Its a pertinent point that you raise. From whence emerges this, now wholly vacuous, conception of the nation and the relation of the valent or signified to it. It's only the specific historicity of this concept that threatens congruency with ethnic antagonism.
I'd say, distended from simply a scalar representation and meter of factors of economic production, one must equally orient a relation or critique of the ideology within its body politic, as well as its economic development. I've no particular complaint to file on this matter, however.
I think most interestingly of all the matters in the great breadth of this exchange and interrogation of the North Korean state ideology is the linguistic contours of the Korean language.
Nathan Baker
Is 民族 the Chinese characters for minjok? That's what wiktionary seems to suggest.
I don't know the first thing about Korean, but 民族 (minzoku) is a Japanese word as well, which is also sometimes translated as "race." I'm not a native Japanese speaker but the nuance of the word is along the lines of "culture" or "people" to me; like it'd be used by National Geographic to describe "the Saami people" and their customs, or to talk about the self-determination of "native peoples" etc. There's definitely a folksy vibe to it in Japanese at least.
Xavier Foster
民族 Is ethnicity, so for example 中华民族would be "ethnicities of the Chinese people", where Chinese refers to those with Chinese citizenry
It's a old thing that goes back to the ages of Chinese empires iirc
Adam Perez
Leo Campbell
It's a unity of those translations. A subject of certain distinction that could be signified within minjok is necessarily interpolated. It's a category of essentialism, or that is what seems to be suggested by its historical context and component parts
Brandon Scott
>>>/leftpol/
Mason Sanders
That place is dead lol
Thomas Perry
good
Juan Lopez
In short there were four factions in 1940s korea:
The "partisans": Kim il sungs lot
The yanan faction: pro chinese, fought with mao during 1930s
The soviet koreans: Koreans from the USSR who often served in the army and were deployed there post 1945.
The domestic group: resistance fighters, worked with broader nat movement, ran cells in south.
What happened is that the civic group died in the korean war as they ran rebellion ops in the south or just after as they were the easiest to purge. After the war the yanan clique and moscovites tried to overthrow kim (with soviet and chinese backing): who was running a family regime at this point, and failed. They were counter purged and boom: Kim domination.
Further reading: en.m.wikipedia.org
en.m.wikipedia.org
Nolan Butler
Eh it is common for multi ethnic entities, russian has seperate words for an ethnic russian and someone from russia: you can be the former without being the later and vice versa.
Gavin Anderson
Jucheists and their sophistry are worse than anarcjo-capitalists.
Easton Diaz
Thank you. This is what I was looking for
Levi White
Jason Gray
Joshua Morris
I see this is the newest buzzword in reddit.
Alexander Ramirez
Before WW2, it was completely normal for countries to be racially homogenous and to want to keep it that way. North Korea didn't change, the west did.
Sebastian Gomez
[Laughs in kresly]
James Phillips
Thank Hitler for changing that right?
Henry Murphy
Soviet and Chinese leadership were pragmatic about their satellite states. Any dictator that supported communism was better than a NATO country on their borders.
Kayden Peterson
If a single generation in their lifetime sees more fruits of ethnonationalism than of socialism, then what's the point? Excuses that could extend for hundreds of years is absolutely useless.
Brayden Moore
It makes sense why they supported Kim once he got to power, but it's too bad Pak Hon-yong (who was actually a communist) didn't get to power
Austin Harris
Sorry losers, the entire purpose of socialism is preserve the line of Tanngun. Kiss my ass.
Wyatt Perry
You should read this book. It would help explain NK's relation to the USSR and how what you're talking about isn't inherently fascist and how those things relate to Marxism-Leninism.
Carson Turner
NK has simply realised that ethnic nationalism is more cohesive and realistic than laughable ideals about internationalism and democracy.
Christopher Wood
Because he was elected by the people after the Second World War. Since he had been the leader of the resistance and the chairman of the provisional government, he was very popular. It's similar to Ho Chi Minh, really.
Stop watching american TV.
Because he was not elected as such.
Robert Gonzalez
And don't think I didn't notice that tumblr filename, either. Faggot.
Luis King
Not surprised. Just goes to show why democracy is a failure. Don't get me wrong tho, I'd support the DPRK over the US any day
Thomas Howard
Based BPP poster thank you but please provide sources