How is this realistically possible
You see mein freund, they simply kicked the ball into the goal better than the other girls.
but…but! I was told the only balls in North Korea (the bad one) are rats that are over fed to rotundity from eating the children who were worn out playing soccer (with their rat balls)
Funny how they are dozens of videos on YouTube of DPRK youth performing impressive athletic feats and the majority of comments being like “ohmahgod if she makes one wrong step she’s going to be sent to gulag” or “I feel so sorry for the children who have to live under Kim Jong Un’s totalitarian rule” and none of these racists can make the connection.
Probably because western sports icons are all industry owned plants heavily exploited by the capitalist class as modern day gladiators to waste their lives away so companies can sell ads.
Pretty much every developed society has a way to get kids who show signs of precocious talent into intensive training programs. Ours tend to be run by rich pedophiles so we pretend that everyone else’s is somehow worse as a way to cope with that.
North Korea doesn’t have actual balls they only have cubes, if you point this out Kim Jong Un will pulverise you, turn you into a cannon cube and shoot you into a crowd of civilians in pyongyang
don’t even ask how they get the rats into the shape of cubes
Considering that they push trains for hundreds of kilometers everyday, every North Korean is probably ripped af.
every day is leg day when you push trains
The German brainpan is unable to comprehend
dprk always rocks at these global sport events and it makes everyone so mad
Maybe they’re really strong from pushing the trains by hand
Stay mad imperialists
DPRK stays winning, congrats to these girls!
Cw transphobia
Fixed.
Worn and old cope too. I remember a chud relative mentioning at least once (so probably more than once over the years) that the east German/Soviet Russian women’s olympics teams were all secretly men and that’s how they kept on winning during the cold war.
Do people here actually support North Korea? Or is it an inside joke?
We support North Korea because their biggest crime was not capitulating to the US after being bombed to shit
I agree. Even a ‘bad’ rule by local people is better than a ‘benevolent’ rule by a foreign country. But shouldn’t a leftwing government act more in the interest of its people, particularly the poor?
Even a ‘bad’ rule by local people
dawg literally every propaganda thing you’ve ever heard about North Korea literally happened in the South
tell me what’s “bad” about their rule now btw? that they’ll “imprison” political opponents? jesus look at what literally any other country in the world does. the U.S. has the world’s largest prison population in absolute #s as well as % of population and it has so for literally decades, far eclipsing any Soviet, Chinese or DPRK gulag you could ever imagine. Ah but they’re mostly locked up for being poor and having weed and shit, definitely not political opponents. Anyway the DPRK is evil for locking up capitalist compradors who wanna sell out the country to the highest bidder, right? Fuck you
The DPRK was literally decimated in population, like the actual fucking Roman decimation, not “oh they were really fucked up.” The U.S. destroyed any building bigger than a shed. I cannot stress to you enough how much of an incredible struggle it would be to build back from that, to the degree the DPRK has, in the time frame in which it has, even with the limited support given to it by China and the USSR. Like just look at your home and think to yourself “What would it take to rebuild this from nothing, when all construction equipment and manufacturing is also destroyed?”
Nothing frustrates me more than pointing this shit out to people, having them nod along, and them go “well they’re starving their own people” so I really hope you fucking understand what it means to have the entire country so devastated, and THEN be forced under economic embargo designed to further starve the country and prevent it rebuilding. What they have achieved is absolutely, tremendously heroic.
P.s. If you think “oh they’re a rogue state with nukes” hey idiot, have you considered they’re less rabid than your own governments and you’re just being lied to? It came out a few months ago that Trump tried to send a SEAL team into the DPRK to plant a listening device mid negotiation regarding nukes. They were immediately caught, shot up dozens of Korean civilians on what was probably a fishing boat, and fled. They were attempting to replicate a similar operation under George Bush, which was successful. After this, the negotiations broke down. People like you were told “crazy kim jong un can’t be trusted” but like can you fucking imagine if a North Korean submarine team went into the Seattle harbor and shot up a bunch of civilians, then fucked off back home with no consequences because they’re the global empire? Christ
P.p.s. look up shit like the Brother’s Home in Busan, or the police dictatorship in the South supported by the U.S. killing tens of thousands of communists PRE KOREAN WAR and fuck off forever
I agree with the content of everything you said, but why tell someone to “fuck off forever” when they are clearly open to learning?
If they came back to this information with snark then
, but the person you’re replying to sounds to me to be curious but ill-informed, just like we all were before we learned about this stuff.We need to develop surgical precision with our dunking imo. Should not be a first resort.
Doing it preemptively sets a tone of being more excited to be right than to properly educate curious minds and offer growth to the movement toward principled global socialism.
Hexbear users dunked on my entire family. Women. Children. The elderly. It took me days to finally make an account to tell my story. But when I write I am ignored or sometimes told “that didn’t happen; your family were probably all liberals anyway.” To present to the moderators as evidence, I had drawn the awful image of some porcine beast covered in feces that they had sent my family when they disagreed on DPRK. And not just once.
I hear their screams now in my memory. I went in to ask my sister what happened, her leaning over the family computer screen.
The Hexbear double-tapped them with another “PPB image.”
This is my story.
I was hoping someone would make this post lmao
i can only post powered by white hot rage sorry for the casualties also it can be interpreted as “fuck off forever [about this DPRK bad shit]”
Nothing frustrates me more than pointing this shit out to people, having them nod along, and them go “well they’re starving their own people”
I’ve tried having a discussion with the lib I work with who does that whole nodding along thing as if he’s listening, but then he’ll pop out something as if he thinks he’s found a profound thought; in his case he asked how large the DPRK’s military was, to which I said it was perhaps around a million soldiers (I THINK; I’m not 100% sure), to which he says we have a population of over 300 million people and our own troops are only a million, that the ratio is much higher in the DPRK, as if he thought he had an argument here. I explained to him how violent the Korean war was and the never ending hostility and how the DPRK is staying on its toes and he’s nodding along again, and honestly I don’t think anything I said reached him.
Just because someone doesn’t go “Oh wow, you’re totally right, I changed my mind!” doesn’t mean you haven’t had an impact. If you’ve believed something for decades, a single conversation with a coworker is never gonna flip that. But it might have caused cracks in their beliefs and they may be more open to other pro-DPRK arguments in the future.
Anyway the DPRK is evil for locking up capitalist compradors who wanna sell out the country to the highest bidder, right?
A comprador is like a traitor? And North Korea only jails traitors (and usual criminals)? Are people otherwise allowed to criticize the government?
I read about the bombing of North Korea during the Korean war. That’s horrible. 20% of all people died.
Also their decision to make nukes is something I fully support. During the US bombing of Iran I saw people pointing out that this is why my country has nukes. So I understand the logic. But it is a horrible way to think.
But it is a horrible way to think.
forced upon us by the united states
A comprador is like a traitor?
Yeah, it’s a term used by leftists mostly to describe betraying your country/people for the sake of foreign imperial interests.
DPRK has nukes explicitly to defend itself from invasion, and not as a tool of war like the US, where nukes are their everything-proof shield to bully other nations without fear of reprisal.
A comprador is a saboteur working to overthrow the government on behalf of a hostile foreign government. People who plan out economic or military sabotage, or who work to assassinate important figures. Imagine if Jan 6 had been planned as a coup and everyone there was armed and knew the floor plan of Congress so they could beeline to the VIPs and execute them. The people responsible for planning that would be compradors, as would all the boots on the ground.
There’s no homelessness or hunger in the DPRK. There’s universal education. What more do you expect them to achieve under their current circumstances?
There absolutely is hunger in the DPRK, it just isn’t famine level and it’s not from state neglect (the state makes every effort to feed people). It’s just a very poor country, made much worse by what the world in general and the US in particular have inflicted on it.
I think they had homelessness issues that were similar to the ones China had, having to do with limitations in the registry used to alot housing, but that’s old information and they might have fixed it.
Don’t they have people dying in famines?
Sorry if you are finding some answers aggressive, please understand that a lot of people who wander in here argue in bad faith
But from what I can tell you are genuinely interested in learning
As for famines, there hasn’t been one in the DPRK since the 90’s which was due to weather and not being able to replace destroyed crops with food imports because they had lost their largest trading partner during the collapse of the USSR
I’d also point out the hypocrisy in that much of the ‘north korea no food’ propaganda is produced by the US, a country were people are currently starving and not because there is a lack of food due to famine, but rather food is being intentionally withheld from the people by the regime, a policy more ‘evil’ than any enacted by the DPRK
So even those here who my not be full supporters of the DPRK state can acknowledge the double standards and hypocrisy that when any mention of North Korea is brought up people immediately jump to thought-terminating ‘1984 authoritarian’ clichés, yet when stuff about the US is brought up unrelated to its politics you don’t often get a mass of people pointing out the authoritarian nature and crimes of the US state that are worse than anything done by the DPRK e.g. Higher % of their population imprisoned than any other country, forced labour in said prisons, arming and supporting the perpetrators of a genocide
People are aggressive but I checked the things they are saying and so far most of them are correct. At least I am seeing a different side of the story.
since the 90’s when they a large trading partner during the collapse of the USSR
Got it.
but rather food is being intentionally withheld from them by the regime
I have read about this. And I know there is starvation in my own country even when food (at least grain) sits in warehouses. We have to do better.
No lol what. Are you permanently stuck in the 90s? The arduous march ended more than 2 decades ago.
This garbage is the equivalent of saying “tinyman square” in 2025, it’s clear that you have made zero effort to educate yourself on the country and are letting your chauvinism do the speaking for you.
I am reading about NK now. What is tinyman square?
They are talking about Tiananmen Square. As others have said, I’m sorry that some users are being assholes. There are active efforts from some of the user base to reform this behavior but it hasn’t happened overnight.
Tiennanman Square, said mockingly.
I agree that they maybe could have different priorities (Although neither of the two of us actually know about the actual situation within the DPR), and I would support a more traditional marxist leninist interpretation of how to govern. But the reason for the songun (“Military first”) policy is pretty obvious when you look at the situation in Korea. They are under constant threat of invasion and bombing and the americans killed a fourth of their population within living memory (Albeit an old living memory). They are literally constantly threatened. And further any attempt by them to engage with the outside world is stimied and sabotaged by western powers.
the americans killed a fourth of their population within living memory
I just read about it. That’s so horrible.
I agree. Even a “bad” rule by Hamas is better than a “benevolent” rule by a foreign country. But shouldn’t a leftwing government act more in the interest of its people, particularly the poor?
Non-snarky answer:
I support the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) because they have consistently shown to be the AES with the most correct stances on geopolitical relations. They have been consistently supporting Palestine against Israel, sending military support during the 6 day war. They have helped Russia denazify Ukraine militarily and have sent remittance workers to help rebuild kursk. They maintain a friendship with China. They also have friendly relations with a majority of the global south as well as relatively “typical” relations with some EU nations (specifically Germany) but that might change with the assist to Russia. There are videos online of Indonesian diplomats recording videos of biking in the capital Pyongyang.
MYTH: It is the DPRK, or more specifically, the cult of personality of the Kim family that keeps Koreans trapped and unable to learn about the outside world.
TRUTH: It is through the efforts and influence of the US that the UN Security Council blocks Koreans from the north to leave the country. Sources:
- https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/s/res/2397-(2017)
- https://usun.usmission.gov/fact-sheet-un-security-council-resolution-2397-on-north-korea/
Highlights:
- “By reducing this cap to 500,000 barrels, North Korea’s import of gasoline, diesel, and other refined products will be cut by a total of 89% from summer 2017” [2] Imagine if everyone in the US had to share 10% of the total available refined petroleum products (gas, diesal etc.). Now imagine if that were a Global South country where a majority of people live in the countryside. This is not a mistake, it is a deliberate attempt to destroy Korean society and create instability.
- “Requires countries to expel all North Korean laborers earning income abroad immediately but no later than 24 months later (end of 2019)” [2].
- “Exempts the repatriation of North Korean defectors, refugees, asylum seekers, and trafficking victims who will face persecution and torture when repatriated by the North Korean regime” [2].
From https://apjjf.org/Charles-K-Armstrong/3460/article
“North Korea’s considerable economic achievements since liberation were all but completely wiped out by the war. By 1949, after two years of a planned economy, North Korea had recovery from the post- liberation chaos, and economic output had reached the level of the colonial period. Plans for 1950 were to increase output again by a third in the North, and the DPRK leadership had expected further economic gains following integration with the agriculturally more productive South after unification. According to DPRK figures, the war destroyed some 8,700 factories, 5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals and 600,000 homes. Most of the destruction occurred in 1950 and 1951. To escape the bombing, entire factories were moved underground, along with schools, hospitals, government offices, and much of the population. Agriculture was devastated, and famine loomed. Peasants hid underground during the day and came out to farm at night. Destruction of livestock, shortages of seed, farm tools, and fertilizer, and loss of manpower reduced agricultural production to the level of bare subsistence at best. The Nodong Sinmun newspaper referred to 1951 as “the year of unbearable trials,” a phrase revived in the famine years of the 1990s. Worse was yet to come. By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans. Only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine.”
The DPRK has weathered greater challenges than any western “marxist” group, and yet you feel like treating this like a joke only demonstrates your racist brainworms. It goes back to the western marxist tendency to obsess over defeat and to endlessly criticize those actually putting in the effort to resist.
the AES with the most correct stances on geopolitical relations
AES?
the UN Security Council blocks Koreans from the north to leave the country
I did not know this. But can’t Russia or China veto UN Security Council resolutions?
Now imagine if that were a Global South country where a majority of people live in the countryside.
I live in one, I don’t have to imagine.
I read about the bombing of North Korea. That was horrible, I agree.
AES?
“Actually Existing Socialism”. It’s a term that emphasises that a state project is currently socialist rather than some hypothetical (usually) western idealised socialism. So when people in, say, the UK are criticising Cuba or China or some other state it is worth bearing in mind that they are doing so from within a capitalist and imperialist system and what they are criticising is a socialist movement and should be analysed with that in mind.
Got it, thank you.
no problem
But can’t Russia or China veto UN Security Council resolutions?
Russian Federation was very much, before the SMO in Ukraine in 2022, entangled with following the western line on international issues. Similarly, China’s reform and opening up and ascdency to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 had relinquished its foreign policy lines to nonintervention and liberalism (it also felt threatened by the DPRK nuclear buildup).
The imperialists believed that the fall of the USSR would strangle all other socialist nations. In Korea, when the north experienced a famine due to weather catastrophes, the US waited to see if this would induce regime change. Millions of famine related deaths later, it did not.
Today, the DPRK enjoys the mutual military and economic cooperation with Russia and China has also had a steady friendship with Korea, allowing remittance workers to settle in the border between the two countries for labor and travel opportunities (there’s also special economic zones with Russia) Russia is not enforcing the embargo and neither will China when it comes to those instances.
This doesn’t mean the sanctions and embargo on Korea do not still harm it. But that the DPRK can navigate around these challenges and find solutions to come out the other end.
Also the image of the DPRK during kim jong Ill’s period from 1990s to 2011 is one where the imperialist stereotype and dehumanization campaign against the north was at its earnest (as NK was named in bushes “axis of evil” speech). Your views are a product of that period.
the fall of the USSR would strangle all other socialist nations
This actually happened in my country. More and more we are ‘socialist’ only on paper.
1·6 days agodeleted by creator
Yes we do support the legitimate government of the Korean peninsula against American Controlled Occupation Forces in the south.
It’s mixed in that most people here will acknowledge that the DPRK is a socialist country earnestly pursuing socialism, but will give you very mixed answers about what they believe is the correct pathway to that and whether Juche theory is good or not.
If that’s shocking it’s because you haven’t deliberalised and don’t actually understand anything about the country other than what liberal media has said, which by now after 2 years of genocide in Palestine you should know tells relentless lies when it supports one side over the other. Put this topic into a mental “I don’t know enough about it folder” and just give it some space to learn about it over time.
Yes, I read more about North Korea yesterday. I can sort of see why they behave like that.
Behave like what? The western media depicts them as some horrible “rogue state” while supporting Israel as it performed genocide against the Palestinians. The DPRK openly supports Palestine, does not recognise Israel and has maintained that position for many decades. Some of the weapons we see the resistance use? They come from the DPRK.
Why are they a “rogue state” ? Because they’re sanctioned? Because they test weapons they need to defend themselves? The US performs many more weapons and missile tests than the DPRK performs every year but nobody reports on the latest aggressive action of the US launching missiles into the sea/desert because it’s completely normal for sovereign states to do this.
You must view all reporting about the DPRK through a lens of understanding that the Korean war never ended, that the South is occupied by the US, and that fundamentally means the US is at war with the DPRK and always has been. All the absurdist media reporting you’ve seen over time is effectively war propaganda. By now I’m sure you realise at least some of it is totally made up, such as the absurd “everyone has to get the same haircut” or “he straps people to the front of antiaircraft guns” or “jeans are banned”, all of which are provably false or have fundamentally no evidence beyond “we said so”.
You don’t have to like this country to be a marxist, but adjusting from the popular lack of understanding about it to a more neutral “I actually have very bad information about it and will reserve judgement” is a good idea. To put this in perspective I’ll challenge what you think everyday life there looks like by pointing out they have a smartphone ownership at over 70% of the population, a fact that sometimes surprises people compared to how they imagine the country.
Behave like what?
Being very hard-line. I live in a ‘neutral’ country. So most people who know about Vietnam or Cuba have a positive opinion of those countries. But North Korea is seen as extreme, as putting its military ahead of its people’s well-being. But if it is because they feel constantly threatened by the US, then I can understand why they behave that way.
I actually have very bad information about it and will reserve judgement
This makes sense.
But North Korea is seen as extreme, as putting its military ahead of its people’s well-being.
Ahhh I see. Well they’re still at war, understand that their adversary is the US not just the ROK, and 1 in 5 of the population being killed will make you take that extremely seriously.
We don’t have official figures yet but it’s pretty likely that what we’ve watched happen in Palestine is in fact less than what was done to Korea. Not that it’s a competition, but just to put into perspective just how horrible it must’ve been.
The US lives on their doorstep, propping up a puppet regime in the south that is on its fifth republic in 50 years. The north and south would’ve reunited by now if it weren’t for the fact that the South is not sovereign, every time the discussion happens the US demands a seat at the table, and prevents it from happening because it’s not in their interests.
Why do you think its an inside joke? Do you think the DPRK should not be supported?
The leader of North Korea is the son of the previous leader. And the people are very poor. Overall they are behaving more like a kingdom than a democratic country.
We have Dynasties that pass wealth and power throughout generations in the west too. Do you think in f.ex Europe we pick our own leaders? We only get to select from the choices they gives us and those choices aren’t gonna be random workers who earned their positions through truly democratic process, in my dreams maybe.
I live in EU. When I go to get some groceries in a store the voice in the speaker phones tells me that my country can’t feed thousands of families, they been telling this every year during holiday seasons, especially, while I look at rich people build stupid shit and ride in luxury cars. Do you have any idea how much it hurts living in this Dystopia? I can hardly keep my shit together.
Just to add to this: in the West we have hundreds of legit royal/aristocratic familial dynasties, all colluding with each other to maintain their wealth and status in society. Not to mention the corporate dynasties.
Compare that to a singular Mount Paektu bloodline that isn’t even linear (Kim Jong Nam got fucking got for associating with the CIA) and there are more than a few relatives/members of the Mount Paektu family that are either anonymous or have left the country.
Oh god I was just reading the Wikipedia article on Kim Jong Nam. Are there any good sources on it? I refuse to believe he was assassinated in that loony toons-ass way and no one else was exposed to the VX, not even the two women who splashed it on him, especially since they “didn’t know”
Unfortunately no. But him getting assassinated would benefit DPR Korea since he was a real life caricature of what mass media presents KJU to be. Its hard to gleam a motive from any antagonistic forces who would all want a line on a man close to the paektu family (though KJN, like most northern expats, was never actually informed on the day to day operations since he spent most of his time in Macau gambling his family’s wealth away).
I’d like to believe KJU signed off on having him killed and wanted to do it in a bizarre way to be more clandestine or whatever.
It’s not that I don’t believe he was assassinated, I really wouldn’t know either way. But Wikipedia claims that VX (which is fatal with skin exposure in the tens of milligrams range!) was used, split into two components, one of which was soaked into a handkerchief that one assassin held over his head and the other was “splashed” on him by a second assassin. Neither woman was convicted of murder and it was accepted by the courts that they thought it was a “prank”. He was supposedly immediately supplied with first aid including having a “resuscitation device” strapped to his face (y’know, where the VX supposedly was?)
Yet in all of this apparently no one other than Kim was exposed. Not the woman holding a handkerchief soaked in compound A while compound B was splashed on it. Not any of the medics treating him. No bystanders. In a busy airport. Absolutely unbelievable.
And the people are very poor.
That’s true for every country on earth other than China or some European countries. Why do you think it’s the case in North Korea?
The leader of North Korea is the son of the previous leader
how much political authority does he actually have and how much is symbolic and resulting from him being the son of the son of the literal unifier George Washington type hero figure? How much political authority does the King of England have? Oh, actually the King of England could technically do whatever the fuck he wants, politically, the laws are on the books. It’s fine though, he just sits in lavish luxury supported by the British state and definitely doesn’t influence politics through any means whatsoever, not like those DASTARDLY asiatics
just a cursory glance at the DPRK legislature page on wikipedia shows more ideological diversity than any western legislature, they have a whole squadron of fucking social democrat capitalist shitheads, the West wouldn’t even allow a single Bernie Sanders as president and has been shitting its bricks over a SocDem being mayor of NY
Oh wait, does North Korea have a parliamentary system? In that case I can understand keeping someone from the Kim family as a ceremonial President. Wikipedia says they have a Premier, who is the Head of Government. Is that like their Prime Minister?
https://kfausa.org/dprk-constitution/
You could also read it directly from Koreans themselves, but umm, I guess not.
Wikipedia says
Chill out, they are clearly just trying to understand. This sniping is totally counterproductive and anti-social.
I think the aggression is warranted considering their original comment was under a post congratulating the DPRK’s womens soccer team. The tone of which was smug and accusatory.
The international dehumanization of DPR Korea has been one of the most severe, nearly incomparable to any other nation today.
But I’ll stop, since I’m sure they got the message.
Edit:
The leader of North Korea is the son of the previous leader. And the people are very poor. Overall they are behaving more like a kingdom than a democratic country.
Also sorry but this is the shit liberals IRL around me say with zero shame or excuse and I have to be civil to them or else they’ll ostracize me.
The second head of state of Cuba was Raúl Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro. The Cuban people are very poor. Overall they are behaving more like a Kingdom than a democratic country.
Isn’t the poverty in Cuba because the US won’t let other countries trade with Cuba? And they have still done a lot of great things, like in medicine and disaster management.
Isn’t the poverty in Cuba because the US won’t let other countries trade with Cuba?
Isn’t the poverty in Cuba because the US won’t let other countries trade with Cuba?
They also do this to the DPRK
Yes, I just read about the UN resolution in another comment.
it is ridiculous to assume fraud because the dprk won an athletic competition. And the dprk deserve “support” in the sense that our mindless aggression and distrust of them is grossly unfair.
I am not saying the NK team cheated or anything. I am just surprised that people here support North Korea’s government.
And the dprk deserve “support” in the sense that our mindless aggression and distrust of them is grossly unfair.
This I fully agree with.
Mate does it occur to you that quite literally everything you know about the dprk is U.S fed propaganda designed to completely dehumanize and otherize an entire country of normal people?
I live in a ‘neutral’ country. I think our government actually has okay relations with North Korea.
I’d be surprised if your nation’s media isn’t infested with US empire enabling propagandists. It’s kind of our specialty.
I am just surprised that people here support North Korea’s government.
You’re probably approaching this from the wrong angle; we would all here be entirely ready to be critical of any shortcomings in the DPRK AFTER they’re allowed to live and prosper; they’re under sanctions and literally by UN law no one can hire DPRK workers, hence no possibility of work visas. They’re being choked by
and support for the people means supporting the government. American war criminals who slaughter the civilian populations around the world understand this extremely well, as Curtis LeMay (decorated airforce war criminal general) said: If you are at war with the government of a people, then you are at war with the people. When America invaded Iraq, Saddam literally distributed weapons to the people so they could fight back during the invasion; a similar thing is happening today in Venezuela with Maduro arming and training his people.Ask yourself this: As much as we all hate Trump, if we were going through an existential war that killed 20% of the population and leveled the entire country, and prevented anything from coming in to help rebuild (so a cutting off of oil, manufacturing and production equipment, tools, etc etc), and then you were placed under heavy sanctions and people are being starved to death, with the perpetrators doing military drills to simulate invading you, and every litte thing, EVERY LITTLE THING, you do that seems positive is immediately maligned as government propaganda or a tool of control (for example when the DPRK opened up a water park and everyone was saying the people in it were forced to go or forced to pretend to be happy), and any attempt at diplomacy or peace with the perpetrators is used as a weapon against us to potentially invade again and finish the job, again, any attempt at diplomacy or peace with the perpetrators is used as a weapon against us to potentially invade again and finish the job, do you think NOW is the time to be critical of the government? Imagine if everything the people knew about us was nothing but propaganda manufactured either by the perpetrators, by a hostile neighbor that serves the interests of the perpetrator, or news set up by the intelligence agency of the perpetrator; nobody hears a word from us because of this, and if you try to tell people they just say you’re propaganda by the government.
Let them first have a fair chance like literally most countries around the world and then we can be critical; currently we’re watching a country struggle (and managing decently) to stay alive and you think we’re not going to support them? Not supporting the DPRK’s government at this time IS support of harm to their people by our government.
Curtis LeMay’s quote so you can understand:
“There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.”
A more recent example of what opposing the local government looks like is the Iraq war; our government killed hundreds of thousands of people, maybe a million, most of whom were civilians. If you oppose the local government in a time of existential conflict, whether it was your intention or not, you are picking the other side in the conflict.
EDIT: For further context consider Iran; after Israel’s bombings, many of the anti-government people decided to support their government; and why? Israel ONLY bombed five hospitals and several apartment buildings; in the Korean war, our government literally razed the country to the ground; another quote from Curtis:
“We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population?”
People were literally hiding in caves; that was literally their lives during that ‘war’. I promise you, whatever the people of the DPRK may think of their own government, I promise you, they think worse of ours and would stand by their government against us. You AREN’T standing with the people of the DPRK if you don’t stand with their government.
I’m not from the US, but I get your point. I read about the bombings and embargo just now.
It surprises me that people still take western state department anti Communist propaganda as absolute fact and refuse to even consider the possibility that capitalist imperialist governments have an incentive to lie
Whether or not we “Support” the DPRKs internal policies is ultimately irrelevant. The only thing I have the slightest voice in is how my own government and the people around me act towards the DPRK, and there I believe it is important for us to point out that the DPRK are not the aggressors and that basically everything said about them is ridiculous.
anyone who’s an enemy of the united states is a friend of mine
Every country deserves to have something to celebrate.
And sport is a pretty benign thing, aside from FIFA being perhaps the most corrupt organization in the multiverse.
Being able to win on a global stage, especially when you don’t have rich-nation resources, implies they earned it with hard work. Everyone Loves underdog sport stories. (Think the Jamacian bobsled team)
We can celebrate football today, and their inevitable retaliation against Japan for turning the penninsula into a puppet state later.
Of course, the players and their staff deserve congrats.
There are news website hosted in DPRK which are accessible internationally. The main 3 are KCNA, Rodong Sinmun, and Minju Joson. KCNA is the main news agency. Rodong Sinmun is the newspaper of the Worker’s Party of DPRK. There are a few others. DPRK controls the .kp TLD, so every website that ends in .kp is hosted in DPRK.
These websites post a lot of articles about building projects in DPRK. KCNA also publishes DPRK government press statements.
Although these website have English versions, the Korean version of Rodong Sinmun has additional articles. I use a translator to read the Korean version. The Korean version of Rodong Sinmun has many articles on international news. I’ve seen Rodong Sinmun do reporting on the ongoing ICE raids in the US, the genocide in Gaza, etc.
http://www.minju.rep.kp/home/index/first/0/en
http://www.dprkportal.kp/guide (dprk website list)
There’s also a DPRK television channel which can be viewed internationally, KCTV. There’s a live stream of KCTV at the link below. KCNAWATCH (owned by NKNews) is a US company which is anti-DPRK.
Interesting. Thank you!
I have a minority position but like talking about this subject:
The DPRK is plainly anti-Marxist by their own account, though we can learn a lot about centralized production (something important to Marxism) from their experiences.
They are also plainly not very democratic in that the Supreme People’s Assembly, their closest analogue to Congress (though it is worth noting that their government structure is different from the traditional western one), has never in its history reported a split vote or even a strongly contested vote that I’ve been able to find, meaning it’s a rubber stamp machine. I think their elections outside of the SPA (which are trivialize by the above) are much more genuinely democratic though, and the government has consistently been making reforms in the direction of diffusing authority, in addition to recently making positive reforms to their election procedure.
The DPRK is a historically progressive force, meaning that its influence on the world overall pushes the world in a positive direction, so it’s successes that are in line with that propensity or that can be a platform for that propensity (like here) are to be celebrated. It is not at all how I think a government should be operated, but I still think it’s better than the US colony to its south and I hope it succeeds in its reunification efforts (which Kim has gone kind of sour on,
but he is actually not supported in this by much of the rest of the government!)Edit: oh yeah, and it’s worth noting that most of the stories we receive about the DPRK from the capitalist press that aren’t the sort of thing the dprk also reports are plainly lies. Like, whether it’s the stuff about unicorns and the Kim’s not pooping or about them wrongfully imprisoning Americans or Laura Ling or whoever (they were arresting criminals and generally let them go on a reasonably short timescale)
Your evidence of their “rubber stamp” system could also be evidence of a system which is more efficiently oriented where proposals only come to that level once they are already so well thought out and we’ll worked out that disagreement isn’t necessary. Or that the disagreement first is worked out at other democratic levels before the rubber stamps just check it for validity/achievability. It’s exactly what I would expect to happen as communism shifts away from elected assemblies as we know them to something more of a “check that it integrates well with the rest of the laws” towards the nebulous “statelessness”.
I don’t think DPRK is completely there, but rubber stamping usually also has some reason for existing, and your assumption that it’s a negative thing is just that: an assumption
This is just making rationalizations. Is it possible that there is some justification? Sure, but you would need to actually do something to substantiate that rather than just say that an explanation could exist somewhere deeper inside of the DPRK bureaucracy.
Obviously I am not saying that there needs to be constant disagreement, that shouldn’t be a question, but if you can point me to even one single contested vote in its decades of history, that would be new to me, and given any frame of reference I have (and I’m not an expert but I’ve repeatedly looked), the simplest explanation is that it’s anti-democratic. Feel free to introduce a new frame of reference.
The DPRK, besides repudiating Marxist principles, does not have statelessness on the table. There cannot be a one-nation stateless society unless perhaps it exists in genuinely complete isolation rather than the present incomplete strangulation. Speculating on statelessness when the state is still very present and, from the optimist’s perspective, has even more work to do with the SEZ, doesn’t seem helpful to me.
You are also just rationalizing, that’s what I was responding to. I could’ve shifted to ways that we know their system works that could explain it, but I wanted you to just realize that you were doing it. You are rationalizing with an assumption that I reversed: namely, that constant agreement within a political is a sign of undemocratic principles. I think this is a bad assumption
Frequent agreement is fine, but uniform agreement across decades is not the same thing.
Why would it be if all disagreement is worked out before this vote ever takes place? Then it’s just like signing an already hashed out contract.
Tell me about the decision-making.
Also, just to have it stated: I am a losurdoist about statelessness. It seems like a major utopian mistake of Marx to really believe this. The state as its current function can be aufgehoben through new functions, but it has more functions than just class struggle for the ruling class that won’t go away. Defense of the revolution might never end, though it will change in form to something much less violent and negative. So I don’t think the DPRK is anti-marxist but it also is not attempting to throw away the state. I was just speaking in hypotheticals that most leftists understand to explain the rationalization you made and how it could be otherwise.
I think in the Marxist account the state is whatever is functionally the mediator of class struggle and it’s not like there would no longer be a government in Marxist communism (something that some anarchists express disdain for), it’s just that the character of a government that is no longer the mediator of class antagonisms is very different. Marx also never suggested that history would end, though he clearly implied it would reach a stage where it proceeds on very different terms. He would probably agree that the revolution would need to be defended forever because you can’t just not have politics (even if a lot of the mainstream functions of the government, the “administration of things” becomes sort of depoliticized), but as you say it would require very little violence.
But I wasn’t calling the DPRK anti-Marxist because it opposes being dissolved into an international body (though afaik it does and therefore it is), I was talking about them railing against basically every conceivable aspect of historical materialism.
As Losurdo puts it, Marx sometimes didn’t imply an end to the state saying “the falling away of the state AS SUCH” and other times clearly implied it would go away entirely saying “the falling away of the state” and then discussing the ways that no state power would be needed. It seems Marx just slipped sometimes into that line of thought, but I don’t judge the main body of his work for that slip (the historical materialism and analysis of capitalism)
But what do you consider ways that the DPRK rails against historical materialism? I’ve never heard this claim, genuinely!
But what do you consider ways that the DPRK rails against historical materialism? I’ve never heard this claim, genuinely!
https://espressostalinist.com/2011/11/01/bill-bland-the-workers-party-of-korea-and-revisionism/
Bland was wrong on plenty of things and I’m not endorsing his Hoxhaphilia, but I like this as a collection of quotes.
which Kim has gone kind of sour on, but he is actually not supported in this by much of the rest of the government!
Can you cite where you learned about this? I’d assume the destruction of the reunification monuments and the responses that the DPRK recently made towards the US drills and the refusal to meet with ROK diplomats would mean that the anti-reunification position is the central position.
I checked and have struggled to find it. I might have been remembering cases that turned out to be institutional inertia, since this change has happened over the course of a few years.
I understood about 20% of that, but thank you.
I would be happy to try to explain the rest of it in a more comprehensible manner. Can you tell me what you did understand or if there was any easily-identifiable point of confusion?
No problem. I got a lot of replies yesterday and it was a bit too much. From your comment and what others have said, North Korea went through a very intense bombing by the US, and so its leaders fear that they will be attacked again. So they have taken an over-centralized, ‘military first’ approach. This is also why they have nuclear weapons. For North Korea to focus on its people’s well-being, the US etc. have to first stop threatening them. Is this broadly correct?
That’s more what other people were talking about, but yeah, I’d say that’s broadly correct.
The one correction that I would make is that the DPRK is already quite concerned with its people’s well-being, and makes an effort to make sure they have food, housing, healthcare, employment, etc. that already exceeds what most countries do relative their resources, including sacrificing a great deal of their hypothetical economic productivity to make sure that they produce enough food (and other basic needs, but especially food) such that being completely cut off from the world (a reasonable fear imo given their history) would not result in a severe famine. That’s why so much of their economy is agriculture, something western sources don’t deny but rarely mention.
The DPRK does still have a malnutrition problem, not famine but still malnutrition, but I don’t think it’s from government neglect just like I don’t think its widespread poverty is a matter of government neglect. The government and country are poor and the Kims aren’t sitting on a magic wand to make it go away (though you could argue China and Russia had been sitting on one because of the veto power they didn’t use when the DPRK was sanctioned). If the DPRK wasn’t sanctioned, even if the military threats remained just the same, you would see a massive transformation.
But I agree certainly that if they were less threatened, they could spend more resources on other things and that would generally be to the benefit of their population, and I would also say that you would be much more likely to see more rapid social political reforms if they were less threatened by external forces.
Got it, thanks!
Lib detected
They’re asking questions in good faith and responding openly. This shouldn’t be the first response to people asking questions.
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