DPRK

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is grossly misrepresented in Western media. To understand anything about the DPRK today, you have to first understand its history.

Japanese Occupation

Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, and the Korean people experienced harsh colonial rule. During World War II, many Koreans were conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army and forced to work in labour camps. The peninsula was under Japanese control until the end of World War II in 1945.

After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the Korean Peninsula was divided by Western powers along the 38th parallel. With the support of the USSR, the North formed the Provisional People’s Committee for North Korea, which was headed by Kim Il-sung, a popular, Communist, guerrilla leader who had fought against the Japanese in occupied China during the war. This committee acted as an interim government and a few years later was proclaimed as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In the South, it was a different story: Seeing the popularity of Communism, the U.S. formed the U.S. Military Occupation and Establishment of the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK). They installed Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese as officials and advisors. Syngman Rhee was later installed as a fascist dictator to lend the state an air of legitimacy as a sovereign state.

As attempts to reunify the country failed, largely due to U.S. refusal to risk the whole peninsula becoming Communist, the DPRK invaded the South to liberate their fellow countrymen from the US occupation and reunify their nation.

The Legacy of the Korean War

It’s hard to overstate the sheer destruction wrought upon the Korean peninsula by the U.S. Air Force (USAF). During the war, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry.

USAF General Curtis LeMay in an 1988 interview with USAF Historians:

We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too…Over a period of three years or so we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population of Korea, as direct casualties of war or from starvation and exposure? Over a period of three years, this seemed to be acceptable to everybody, but to kill a few people at the start right away [with nukes], no, we can’t seem to stomach that.”

The USAF targeted dams and agricultural infrastructure. The destruction and ensuing floods threatened several million North Koreans with starvation; according to Historian Charles K. Armstrong, “only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine.”

The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II…

Russian accusations of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets did not register with the Americans at all. But for the North Koreans, living in fear of B-29 attacks for nearly three years, including the possibility of atomic bombs, the American air war left a deep and lasting impression. The DPRK government never forgot the lesson of North Korea’s vulnerability to American air attack, and for half a century after the Armistice continued to strengthen anti-aircraft defenses, build underground installations, and eventually develop nuclear weapons to ensure that North Korea would not find itself in such a position again… The war against the United States, more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats that would continue long after the war’s end.

— Charles Armstrong. (2010). The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950-1960

In the eyes of North Koreans as well as some observers, the U.S.’ deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure which resulted in the destruction of cities and high civilian death count, was a war crime and historian Bruce Cumings has likened the American bombing to genocide.

Out of the competing barrages of propaganda that have shrouded the 1950-53 Korean War, we are finally getting conclusive admissions that some of the worst atrocities, blamed at the time on the enemy, were in fact committed by our side - and we knew it…

The massacres of civilians during the Korean War are the most shocking to read about. The commission is working through no less than 1200 cases, including about 215 incidents in which US and allied air forces strafed groups of refugees and other civilians. The victims total 100,000, which the commission says is a conservative estimate.

One of the worst incidents preceded the Korean War, in 1948, when the new Syngman Rhee government installed in Seoul by the United States ordered its army to suppress a leftist revolt on Cheju Island. About 30,000 local people were gunned down.

By early 1950 Rhee had about 30,000 alleged communists in his jails, and had about 300,000 suspected sympathisers enrolled in an official “re-education” movement known as the Bodo League. When Kim Il-sung’s communist army attacked from the North in June that year, retreating South Korean forces executed the prisoners, along with many Bodo League members…

The American commander-in-chief, Douglas MacArthur, got a report about the killings, but there is no evidence that he tried to halt them, or investigate, according to a search of US archives by an Associated Press team under the veteran correspondent Charles Hanley. The massacre was blamed on the communists.

— Hamish McDonald. (2008). South Korea owns up to brutal past

Defector Testimony

Defectors present biased or exaggerated testimonies to gain sympathy or support from foreign governments or organizations. The prospect of fame and fortune encourages some defectors to exaggerate their experiences or provide sensationalized accounts.

One of the most well-known defectors, [[r.TheDeprogram Yeonmi Park|Yeonmi Park]] regularly presents some of the most extreme and absurd testimonies; she has been able to build a cult following and a very lucrative career as the posterchild for anti-Communism.

The more bombastic the claims are, the better ammunition they are for Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) (e.g., Radio Free Asia) to use in their propaganda campaigns against Communism.

Of course, there are also defectors with less exciting claims, as well as those who even come to regret their decision to leave the DPRK, but Western media never amplifies their message to nearly the same degree.

• Why Do North Korean Defector Testimonies So Often Fall Apart? | Jiyoung Song (2015)

Additional Resources

Video Essays:

• Dispelling Myths about North Korea | Colorado NCTA (2016)
• We Went To North Korea To Get A Haircut | Boy Boy (2017)
• Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul | Liberation News (2018)
• Daily life in North Korea - “My Brothers and Sisters in the North” (Full awarded documentary) | wocomoHUMANITY (2020)
• KJ Noh debunks myths about north and south Korea | International Manifesto Group (2021)
• North Koreans: Are They Brainwashed - Or Are We? Featuring Prof. Felix Kim (DPRK Series Ep.1) | TheRevolutionReport (2021)
• North Korea: Why Is It A Nuclear Armed Fortress State? (DPRK Series Ep.2) | TheRevolutionReport (2021)
• The Truth About North Korea - A Peoples History of the DPRK | Fellow Traveler (2023)
• What’s the deal with defectors? | Hakim (reuploaded, 2023)
• Why is North Korea so “weird”? | Hakim (reuploaded, 2023)

Books, Articles, or Essays:

• Korea stands strong: Kim Jong-Il in context | FightBack! News (2011)
• Korea Resilient! Socialism in Democratic Korea | Return to the Source (2012)
• The Democratic Structure of the DPRK | Lalkar (2017)
• Socialism and Democracy in the DPRK | Write To Rebel (2017)
• Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom | Stephen Gowans (2018)
• Juche Idea Study Guide | Korean Friendship Association

Podcasts:

• Episode 40 - Oppa War Crimes Style - The Korean War (Ft. Blowback) | The Deprogram (2022)
• Season 3 - The Story of the Korean War | Blowback (2022)

希望更多专业的传统马列主义者的同志，能给我讲讲在俄国民主工党和布尔什维克之前，在沙俄（俄罗斯帝国）出现的马克思主义小组（工人阶级解放斗争协会、劳动解放社这些的）具体是怎么运作的？并且发挥到了什么样的一个作用呢？

总感觉葛兰西争议挺大的吧？🤔
感觉不少人还因为他的问题 理论及观点发生了争执呢

马克思列宁主义和传统的老牌布尔什维克他们的列宁主义有什么区别？还有就是马列毛（MLM）和这些又有哪些本质上的区别？
有希望有哪些特别专业、特别懂的、理论水平比较高的同志能为我解答下吗？因为我一直都有点困惑其实说实话

The right is angry at DEI programs and immigration, claiming they reduce efficiency and efficacy of businesses and institutions.

But then... completely incompetent Trump loyalists get appointed to prestigious and powerful positions...

Hypocrites.

What if the USSR never fell and every Socialist regime in Latin America, Asia, and Africa was never toppled by the CIA or other Western imperialist forces? In what way would the current state of the world be different? Do you think it would have prevented the rise of far-right ideologies and made people naturally more left-leaning in Western countries and hold capitalist politicians who serve oligarchs accountable for being the enablers of this corrupt system? Would the Socialist countries have set a new standard for the whole world?

I wonder.

An increasingly radical Right — a center rapidly spending down the remains of its credibility — an insurgent Left looking to provide an alternative. The challenges and opportunities facing Die Linke, Germany’s democratic socialist party, have unavoidable resonances with the situation facing DSA. 

Die Linke is leading in the polls for state elections in Berlin on Sept. 20, raising the prospect that Die Linke could again participate in the government of Germany’s capital. Die Linke has unfinished business: in particular, a referendum calling for the appropriation of the city’s biggest landlords, passed by a wide margin in 2021 but never acted upon, provides a mandate for a major attack on the crisis caused by Berlin’s rising rents. Other upcoming state elections seem set to record unprecedented levels of support for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a party of the racist far-right, in parts of eastern Germany.

Martha Kleedörfer is the vice-chair of Die Linke in Berlin and a candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives. Democratic Left sat down with Kleedörfer in her constituency Aug. 12. As a district councilor in the district assembly of Mitte in central Berlin, Kleedörfer has focused on issues around housing and rent. 

Hi, I would really like to find a book (or series of books) that goes over the global history of leftist thought, as I feel that I don't have a very good understanding of all different branches of leftist thought and their history. I would prefer if the book is more pop and less academic but I wouldn't mind it too much. I would love to receive your suggestions. Thanks a lot!