The Guerilla Dynasty

"A. The historical origin of this North Korean system was determined by a few important internal and external factors. Firstly, of course, there was the impact of the Soviet Stalinist Communism. The Communism North Koreans came to know in the 1930s and 1940s was essentially Stalinist. Then there was the very significant influence of Mao’s China. There was also the powerful legacy of nationalism, which in many ways developed in the image of Japanese nationalism. Japan was, after all, the first country in East Asia to develop the modern Nationalist outlook. During the colonial period this nationalism was much enforced on Koreans. Yes. I would say that Korean nationalism, if you look carefully, has a stamp: “made in Japan during the reign of Emperor Meiji”. In many cases the Japanese national symbols were replaced with Korean national symbols, emphasis on the Japanese nation and its pure blood was replaced with emphasis on the Korean nation and its pure blood. The structure of the world-view was very similar. It is not really controversial because there are Korean historians who are doing this comparison right now. Essentially we can say that the Japanese brought modernity to Korea; basically most of the modern institutions were established in Korea by the Japanese. These institutions were more or less carbon copies of Japanese institutions, it could not be otherwise. In the 1930’s there was a programme of deliberate nationalist propaganda in Korea, and from the late 30’s there was a form of ethnocide, a deliberate attempt at enforced assimilation to destroy Korean culture and identity, to merge the Koreans into the Japanese. There was this tidal wave of Japanese nationalist propaganda beginning in the late 1930’s. Very few. This is a major difference with East European countries, the former Soviet Union or China. Right now there is no organised opposition movement inside North Korea, there are some dissenting individuals but no groups and no activists. It is like Mao’s China in the 60’s or the Soviet Union under Stalin in the late 1930’s, when it was unthinkable to have an opposition group; it would have been a very painful form of suicide. North Korea is still in that stage. Outside North Korea there are some dissenting groups apart from those that exist in the South. But they are surprisingly weak and few in number, not at all influenti There are about 16,000 North Korea defectors in the South, but usually they don’t have much interest in politics. They are mostly there for economic reasons, because the South is a place where they can eat rice every day. For the average North Korean a country where you can eat rice three times a day is a paradise. They escape to the South, find low paid, low-end jobs, and are not interested in politics. This is a major difference, not always appreciated, between North Korean emigree communities and the defectors in East Europe and the Soviet Union during the cold war. A typical North Korean defector is not politic"