Famine in North Korea

"A. One of the peculiarities of North Korea used to be the existence of a clearly defined system of hereditary groups. For every North Korean his or her chances of social promotion, choice of residence, quality of job and so on was largely defined by his or her family background in this hereditary system. If your grandfather used to be a landlord under the Japanese, you would be discriminated against for the rest of your life. You wouldn’t be allowed to live in any big city and you would have serious trouble getting admitted to any prestigious college. In fact you would never be admitted at all. There used to be 51 groups. Membership to each group was defined by what the ancestors of a particular person used to do before 1945 or during the Korean war. There were privileged groups, like the descendants of the people who died during the Korean war. The most privileged group were descendants of the anti-Japanese guerrillas, members of the armed resistance to the occupation and at the same time there were groups that were reviled like the descendants of the landlords, descendants of the Catholics, of the local Shamans and the like. Of course. North Korea is a neo-feudal society, a kind of neo-traditional society. In many regards it imitates the pre-modern social structures existing in Korea in the 17th and 18th centuries and these structures are quite similar to late medieval Europe. That is, estates, hereditary rights and privileges, an absolute monarchy, many elements which are similar to pre modern societies. They do but of course it depends on whom we are talking about. If you are talking about the lucky few who reside in Pyongyang and some other major cities, they have a leisure culture. They have pop music. There are famous North Korean pop singers, completely unknown outside the country. They sing songs that are very reminiscent of the Soviet songs of the 1940’s and 50’s. Most of the songs contain references to the dear leader and have a healthy ideological message, love to the motherland, love for the party and the like. Nonetheless, some of them have beautiful melodies and beautiful tunes. There is a bit of light music now. It is even possible to use some kind of electronic music, which used to be a taboo until the late 1980’s, but not any more. There is a great deal of smuggling of cultural products from overseas, largely South Korean videos, which are very important, because everybody watches them and they see that South Korea is not what the North Korean official media informs them. That it’s not a poor country; it is really a very rich place; they are beginning to understand this by now. There is a great love of South Korean songs and pop music. If you go to the deep countryside and visit the villages it is a bit strange. When I travel to North Korea there is always a strange feeling because once you get out of Pyongyang and a few other major cities you don’t see many traces of modern civilisation. Sometimes it feels like you are back at the time when China was still ruled by the great Tang dynasty, or maybe by the Song dynasty, and you would not be surprised to see horsemen in the armour of the Genghis Khan era appearing from behind a hill. You don’t see any signs of modern technology, no phone masts, no pylons, no railways, no paved roads, nothing. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Not much, because the government has worked hard to keep them as isolated as humanly possible. North Korea is probably the only country where it is a crime to have a radio set with free tuning at your home. All radio sets sold officially have fixed tuning, a few buttons set to the wavelengths of state broadcasts. There is no interaction with foreigners, all non technical foreign publications are kept in special departments of the libraries which you need security clearance to access. It is very much isolated; people in the villages probably still believe that they are living in a prosperous place; that the entire world admires their leader; that Kim Jong Il is an extremely popular and mighty leader and the hope of the entire world. In the towns it is different. Very few people if anybody believes that anymore. Fifteen years ago many people even in Pyongyang would have had no idea about life outside the borders. They were told that North Korea was one of the world’s most successful and prosperous countries. They were told that South Korea is a country of 8 million unemployed people, where 25% of all younger women are prostitutes for the US soldiers. People in the villages still believe this stuff. In the towns they are beginning to understand that their country is quite poor and backward, but still, very few really understand how poor it is if compared to the neighbours. Not really because Ho Chi Minh was much more independent than Kim Il Sung. Ho Chi Minh began as a more or less independent political figure, of course with strong connections with the Comintern and Moscow, and to a certain extent China, but still quite independent. Eventually he aligned himself with the Russians, and sometimes the Chinese. It was a way to get money, and military and economic aid. With Kim Il Sung it was the other way round. Kim Il Sung began his political career as a Soviet puppet. In the early 1940s he was a junior officer in the Red Army. He was then selected by the Soviet authorities and essentially appointed to become leader of North Korea. But he gradually created his own power base and then he cut all lines of control that were used by the Soviets and Chinese to keep him in check. This was the story of a puppet becoming an independent manipulator. Zero It is 100% propaganda. You cannot find any other state where history has been politicised to such an extent. If you look at how they present history from the late 19th century onwards, it is such a collection of fabrications and falsifications, sometimes exceptionally shameless. One of my favourite stories is about how the liberation of Korea in 1945 is described: according to North Korean history books, it was Kim Il Sung himself, alone, who drove the Japanese out of Korea. They do not even mention Soviet and American participation. In reality, Kim Il Sung at that time was a junior Soviet officer, a battalion commander in a Soviet rear base far away from the theatre of operations. No Koreans fought in this liberation war. I’m not blaming them. It was just impossible. Real fighting was done largely by the Russians. The Americans played a secondary role, but you can’t find any references to this in North Korean textbooks. North Korea textbooks state that it was Kim Il Sung who liberated Korea, drove off the Japanese, and even played a decisive role in the Allied victory during the Second World War. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter He only trusted the people who were with him in his Soviet army unit. Wada Haruki, a famous Japanese historian of Korea, once described North Korea as a ‘guerrilla state’. In a sense this is true, until the late 80’s the country was run almost exclusively by the former guerrilla fighters from Kim Il Sung’s detachment in Manchuria in the 1930’s and in the Soviet army in the early 40’s. It was his major power base. He appointed these people everywhere. The problem was that these people were not very well educated, not necessarily very able, but they were completely loyal. The message Kim Il Sung used was: I am a Korean, a simple Korean boy with humble origins, I belong to this country, you should trust me. This was his message in the 50’s and 60’s. In the 60’s he was presiding over a very efficient propaganda and police machine that made any dissent simply impossible. This is still the case."