• hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    35·
    6 days ago

    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:

    1. https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/s/res/2397-(2017)
    2. 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.

    • goldroger [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      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.

      • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        14·
        6 days ago

        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.

      • hello_hello [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        6 days ago

        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.