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 Children of North Korea
Originally published on May 12, 2016
Kim’s Double-Breasted Jacket
A colossal mass demonstration, well choreographed to the level of ballet but with tens of thousands of participants in the centre of Pyongyang completed and sealed an important and unusual political event in this remote and isolated land of North Korea – the Party Congress. The demo has been followed by a show, so big that it could not be staged anywhere else. Magnificient fireworks, twenty thousand men and women dancing with torches in the darkness of Pyongyang night – this show I’ll remember forever. For the Koreans it was not a show, but a declaration of their loyalty to the state and the leader – or, perhaps, even for them it was just a night dance. Who knows?
A Party Congress is a rare bird in N Korea. Uncalled for many years, actually since 1980, the Congress, the top body of the ruling Workers’ Party, gathered to confirm consolidation of power in the hands of the new ruler, Kim Jong-Un, or Kim III, as Western media calls him. He was duly proclaimed the Party Chairman, the position previously held by his father Kim Jong-Il, and before him by his grandfather Kim Il-Sung.
The people were visibly excited to see the young Kim, and even passing by the tribunes they tried to linger and wave flowers and banners in his direction. Only rock stars get that much affection in the West. This is definitely a turning point: the hard bitter days are over, now things will improve.
The generation change is a tricky affair anywhere (the USSR failed it), but it seems that Kim III managed it successfully. He came to power after premature death of his father, a plump and soft-looking “Baby Kim”, with his Swiss schooling, an object of many South Korean jokes and scorn. But he has not been chosen and groomed and preferred over his two elder brothers by his father just for his kind appearance. The young Kim III pushed forward with modernisation of the country, with reshaping and rebuilding Pyongyang, with massive civil engineering projects, with improving the lot of his citizens – and with the nuclear program.
During first four years of his rule, North Korea became a full-fledged nuclear power, exploded an H-bomb last January, delivered a satellite to the orbit around the earth; living standards improved and mass housing program has been launched. Otherwise, Kim’s rule could be characterised by words “Continuity and Modernisation”.
Why the Party Congress has been assembled just now, what are the plans and ideas of Korean leadership, what can we expect from them? All the world was curious, so was I, and I eagerly (though with some trepidation) accepted their invitation. I have been exceedingly well received by these hospitable people, so I can dispel your fears: the North Koreans aren’t brainwashed zombies, but perfectly human, though they belong to a very distinct and different culture.
On a human level, they produce and drink very good beer. Whenever I had an occasion, I had a couple of beers with locals in a local pub, where all tried to offer me another mug of their perfect natural brew. The Koreans are cautious but not paranoid in their contacts with foreigners, and they are fond of beer.
There were a lot of bewildered journalists; they tried to gather what’s going on, afraid to miss a story but meeting a frustrating stonewalling. The N Koreans are indeed very secretive: to the last minute, we did not know when the Congress is about to finish, and what do they discuss. The BBC team has been deported from the country for reporting an upsetting gossip they probably invented or picked from the S Koreans.
By listening to some N Koreans and to diplomats stationed in Pyongyang, I learned that they expect that Kim will retire some of the old comrades and promote the younger lot, thus rejuvenating this unusual socialist state. Korea watchers noticed the possible rise of relatively young people who occupied lower rings of the hierarchy: Hwan Byon So, Tsoi Ren He, and the ideologist of the Party, Kim Gi Nam.
The theme of Continuity and Modernisation has been manifested even in Kim’s appearance: he appeared in a dark double-breasted jacket and an elegant light tie instead of Mao-style military wear usual for Korean officials. For the Koreans, this jacket was to remind of Kim I, his venerated grandfather, who first appeared in a very similar wear in the recently liberated Pyongyang. He was loth to appear in the Russian military uniform he donned previously, and preferred the civilian jacket.
This point has to be briefly elaborated. The Koreans are fiercely independent folk, ethnocentric to the extreme, nationalists for whom Korea is above all and the Koreans are a race apart. Actually, in this (and many other) aspect they are quite similar to the Japanese, their neighbours and former colonial masters for some forty years. But the Japanese went through seventy years of Americanization, westernization, liberalization and demilitarization after their defeat in 1945. The unreconstructed Koreans retained their national pride, so they are more similar to the Japanese of 1930s.
The Korean Communists came to power in the North thanks to the Red Army. After defeating the Japanese Army of Manchuria in August 1945, the Russians established a Communist government in Pyongyang, as was their wont in every capital they seized in the war. Their man was Kim Il Sung, at the time a Red Army mayor, and a native of Korea. [And famed guerrilla fighter against the Japanese—Ed]. But the Korean Communists did not remain in Moscow’s thrall for any length of time. By 1956, they became fully independent – and they re-wrote history to fit their ideas. In their version of history as taught in their schools and explained in their museums, they themselves liberated their country from the Japanese rule, while the Russians were of some valuable assistance.
(According to their version, they themselves defeated the Americans in the Korean war, while the Chinese and the Russians “had sent some volunteers”. This is annoying for the Russians and Chinese who bore the brunt of the war, but they understand the Korean feelings and bite the bullet without argument or complaint). [The Chinese and Russians contributed generously to the North Korean side, the Chinese with their army of "volunteers", which included Mao's own son, killed in that war, and the Russians with brave air force regiments, plus pilot training and AD training and equipment. Russian pilots often expertly contested the skies the Americans felt they owned due to numbers and superior technology. That said, it was North Korea that bore the brunt of the direct genocidal attacks by the US and its "allies", especially the air war, which included many incidents (as in Vietnam) easily classifiable as vicious war crimes. The US practiced biowarfare, for example, among other touches. This is all amply documented, but the majority of the US population remains in limbo, as usual, for reasons well known to our audience.—Ed]
Kim I in his jacket had been a potent symbol of Korean independence and of their own and unique way to their own brand of socialism. Kim III is very similar to his grandfather by portrait likeness, and even more so by his voice. The jacket of Kim was supposed to emphasize this similarity and continuity, while the elegant tie has been a tribute to modernity.
He promised to deliver “guns AND butter” to his citizens, i. e. to improve their lot while keeping the defence stance. More importantly, Kim had used the Party Congress and the universal interest it generated to call for peace with the US and his neighbours Japan and South Korea.
He said Korea is a responsible nuclear power; the Koreans will abide by the treaty of non-proliferation (NPT) as a nuclear power, meaning it will not share its nuclear military technology with non-nuclear states, and it will not use its nuclear weapons unless attacked by nuclear weapons. This is a message of peace-seeking: other nuclear states, the US, Russia and Israel do not promise to avoid using nuclear weapons even in case of a conventional attack.
“Kim sends a message of peace,” a high-ranking diplomat stationed in Pyongyang told me. “Alas, it was misunderstood or distorted by the news agencies. They quoted him out of context and provided misleading headlines, in order to demonise him.”
Kim called for nuclear disarmament, but a general one, not only for Korea. Indeed while signing the NPT, the nuclear powers undertook to strive for general nuclear disarmament and for creation of the world free of nuclear weapons. This undertaking remained a dead letter. The last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev made some steps in this direction, but the US used his idealism to increase the power gap between the two states.
Recently the US embarked on an ambitious program of total renewal of their nuclear facilities. Pentagon asked for the mindboggling sum of one trillion dollars for this program. At the same time, the US demands nuclear disarmament of N Korea referring to the same NPT they are in breach of. Since the NPT has been signed, some states became nuclear powers – Israel, India, Pakistan. What’s wrong with N Korea developing nuclear weapons? The Koreans speak of double standards and add: if other states will give up their nukes, so shall we.
A Russian diplomat in Pyongyang told me: perhaps we should accept the reality that DPRK became a nuclear power. It would not have happened if the US and South Korea did not threaten the North with war. Just a few months ago, the war in Korea seemed imminent, when the US and their S Korean allies, some four hundred thousand troops altogether, practiced the conquest of Pyongyang and elimination of the NK government. The N Koreans went ballistic, and I can’t blame them, – he said. – If we were now to land half a million soldiers in Cuba and begin to practice how to sack Washington and destroy the White House, the US fleet would come all over Cuba in a jiffy. But in Korea, the Americans just increased their involvement by bringing in a nuclear armed aircraft carrier. We definitely understand why N Korean leadership is worried.
This response is important because Russia and China supported the UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on N Korea. Now, apparently, the Russians have second thoughts. The relations between Russia and N Korea never were cordial: N Korea has been too independent for Moscow likes. Still, they were cool but friendly. The Russians supported the sanctions at China’s request. The Chinese supported the sanctions to ingratiate themselves with the US and with S Korea, an important business partner. There is an additional factor: possible unification of Korea.
At the Party Congress, the young leader of N Korea had called upon his S Korean counterpart: let us renew the old idea of uniting two halves of Korea, in one federated state. Germany and Vietnam had already united, we also can do it. The regime difference is not a hindrance: Communist China has reunited with capitalist Hong Kong under the slogan “one country – two regimes”.
The process of unification actually started in year 2000, when the S Korean president Kim Dae Jung visited Pyongyang and met with the N Korean leader Kim Jong Il. He had received that year’s Nobel Prize for Peace. They established a free trade zone, the trains crossed the DMZ border, visits and family reunification began. But the US, the occupying power of S Korea, hated the idea. The S Korean presidents supporting unification have been found dead or jailed. The present S Korean president is definitely against unification. In S Korea, one goes to jail for saying a good word about the North. It is considered “hostile communist propaganda”.
The Chinese do not mind this. Yes, in the Korean war they fought for the unification of Korea, but that was then. Now they do not need a strong and independent-minded neighbour, while united Korea with its Samsung, Daewoo, H-bomb and 80 million population will be definitely a very strong country. For Russia, this is not a consideration. Even an extra strong Korea is not a threat for them. They agreed with China and the US because they support the NPT. But perhaps this is the time to change some rules, they muse.
 Israel Shamir, Russia-born and of Jewish descent currently a Swedish citizen, is an irreverent and iconoclastic geopolitical writer who manages to piss off almost all sides of the equation, especially the ZioWest, of course, which demonises him and never tires of publishing defamatory descriptions of Shamir, whom many Israelis regard as a bete noire and renegade Jew. A prolific author, some of his books can be seen on this page.
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 the establishment media is an enabler of endless wars and illegitimate oligarchic power
By Deirdre Griswold
WORKERS WORLD
How many times have we been told that the U.S. is an “open” society and the media are “free”?
Usually, such claims are made when criticizing other countries for not being “open,” especially countries that don’t follow Washington’s agenda.
If you live in the United States and depend on the supposedly “free” and “open” commercial media for information, you would without a doubt believe that the Chinese government massacred “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of students in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. That phrase has been repeated tens of thousands of times by the media of this country.
But it’s a myth. Furthermore, the U.S. government knows it’s a myth. And all the major media know it too. But they refuse to correct the record, because of the basic hostility of the U.S. imperialist ruling class to China.
On what do we base this assertion? Several sources.
The most recent is a WikiLeaks release of cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to the State Department in June 1989, a few days after the events in China.
Second is an assertion in November 1989 by the Beijing bureau chief of the New York Times, an assertion that has never again been referred to by that newspaper.
And third is the account of what happened by the Chinese government itself, which is corroborated by the first two.
WikiLeaks censored
Only one major Western newspaper has published the WikiLeaks cables. That was the Telegraph of London on June 4 of this year, exactly 22 years after the Chinese government called out the troops in Beijing.
Two cables dated July 7, 1989 — more than a month after the fighting — related the following:
“A Chilean diplomat provides an eyewitness account of the soldiers entering Tiananmen Square: He watched the military enter the square and did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops which entered the square were actually armed only with anti-riot gear — truncheons and wooden clubs; they were backed up by armed soldiers.”
A following cable stated: “A Chilean diplomat provides an eyewitness account of the soldiers entering Tiananmen Square: Although gunfire could be heard, he said that apart from some beating of students, there was no mass firing into the crowd of students at the monument.”
It should be remembered that Chile at that time was ruled by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who had come to power in a violent, anti-socialist, U.S.-supported right-wing coup, in which thousands of leftists, including President Salvador Allende, had been killed. The “Chilean diplomat” referred to would have been no friend of China.
Not one U.S. newspaper, television or radio outlet has reported or commented on these cables released by WikiLeaks nor on the Telegraph story about them. It is as though they fell into a bottomless chasm.
Is it because the media here don’t believe the report is credible? Hardly.
They knew the truth in 1989
The New York Times knows it’s credible. Their own Beijing bureau chief at the time, Nicholas Kristof, confirmed it in an extensive article entitled “China Update: How the Hardliners Won,” published in the Sunday Times magazine on Nov. 12, 1989, five months after the supposed massacre in the square.
At the very end of this long article, which purported to give an inside view of a debate within the Chinese Communist Party leadership, Kristof stated categorically: “Based on my observations in the streets, neither the official account nor many of the foreign versions are quite correct. There is no massacre in Tiananmen Square, for example, although there is plenty of killing elsewhere.”
Even though Kristof’s article was harshly critical of China, his statement that there was “no massacre in Tiananmen Square” immediately drew howls of protest from China bashers in the U.S., as reflected in the Times’ letters column.
Had there been fighting in Beijing? Absolutely. But there was no massacre of unarmed students in the square. That was an invention by the West intended to demonize the Chinese government and win public sympathy for a counterrevolution.
The turn toward a market economy under Deng Xiaoping had alienated many workers. There was also a counterrevolutionary element trying to take advantage of popular grievances to completely restore capitalism.
The imperialists were hoping the struggles in Beijing would bring down the Chinese Communist Party and destroy the planned economy — similar to what was to happen two years later in the Soviet Union. They wanted to “open up” China, not to truth, but to the looting of the people’s property by imperialist banks and corporations.
After much wavering at the top, the army was called out and the uprising crushed. China was not broken up like the Soviet Union; its economy has not imploded, nor has the standard of living declined. Quite the opposite. Wages and social conditions have been improving, at a time when workers elsewhere are being forced backward by a severe capitalist economic crisis.
Despite deep concessions to capitalism, foreign and domestic, China continues to have a planned economy based on a strong state-owned infrastructure.
Note: This site carries an archive of hundreds of articles and videos on China by dependable voices—Jeff J. Brown, Godfree Roberts, Andre Vltchek, Brian Berletic, and other contributors of equal merit—so be sure to run a search to explore this material whenever you need information on this complex and extraordinary country. In particular, we recommend our fraternal site, CHINA RISING RADIO SINOLAND, helmed by our associate editor Jeff J. Brown.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
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Paul Edwards
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
 America's La La Land is blissfully protected by a no-fly zone where truth can never enter.
The concept of a No-Fly Zone was formulated by the USA. It describes the act of totally sealing off an entity to protect it from threatening intrusion by a hostile agent. America has used it, or tried to, on a couple of nations with some success, but where it has been refined to perfection is in the U.S. itself. Our Empire, in mortal fear of exposure, has erected a hermetic, impenetrable No-Fly Zone over the grotesque mass of shameless, sickening, infantile bullshit that constitutes its Exceptionalist propaganda.
This informational No-Fly Zone is now being tested by what The Empire calls the “war” in Ukraine. Its efficacy is proved by the “news” on all mainstream media. No independent thought, no factual information, no honest relation of events, and above all, no unbiased, sound analysis of the actual motivation of this “war” is allowed or even admitted to exist. The Empire’s fairy stories, absurd and poisonous, are the only stories Americans—rendered appallingly stupid and bovine or, at minimum, childishly gullible and amoral—are fed and, predictably, they have wholeheartedly embraced them. A mental No-Fly Zone is impermeable; reality cannot penetrate it. It has to be truth-proof in order to protect the wholly bogus, dimwitted self-justification underneath it.
In the Ukraine fable, it began its function by denying malevolent expansion of the NATO contraption to Russia’s borders, when the U.S. had solemnly promised not to do that. NA, after all, stands for North Atlantic. Did it anyway. Then, when Putin—our eternal Beelzebub—told the U.S. that the deceitful NATO push to its borders, and its arming Nazi Azov Battalion and Right Sektor attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk was not acceptable, and asked for mutual understanding to provide security guarantees for all parties, he was dissed and insulted by our vacuous imbeciles.
At that point, Putin began to employ the old vaudeville technique for getting through to a dense audience, quote: “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna do; tell ‘em you’re doin’ it; and tell ‘em you did it.”
He stated what Russia would do. It would go in on a temporary basis, destroy Azov, Right Sektor, and the Ukrainian Army they controlled, along with their bases and supply dumps. It had no interest in “taking” Ukraine which could only be a burden, nor in running their government, if any. Nor would it occupy territory beyond what assured their objectives. Russia, largest nation on earth, has no wish to expand, no imperial ambitions, but it will not permit threats to, or assaults on, its territory without severe consequences to the aggressor. Russia already has a “No-Fly Zone” over Ukraine and will treat defiance of it as an act of war.
The American Mental No-Fly Zone must successfully keep our deeply ignorant people from access to dangerous information that would counter the moronic pap they are fed, and encourage rigorous thinking by exposure to realities. There is nothing new in this, but the degree to which it’s now imposed is unprecedented.
Russia, Putin said, has now done what he said it would do. The Ukrainian Nazi army is destroyed and their whole supply chain with it, yet America’s desire to keep the “war” going continues by proxy. What remnants of sanity remain to our Power Clowns—the senile boob, President Winken, and his two jesters, Blinken and Nod—have dimly realized that their No-Fly Zone is better used at home on us than in a setting in which they stand to get a good country ass-kicking and even, if they choose, a nuclear war.
The American Mental No-Fly Zone must successfully keep our deeply ignorant people from access to dangerous information that would counter the moronic pap they are fed, and encourage rigorous thinking by exposure to realities. There is nothing new in this, but the degree to which it’s now imposed is unprecedented. Americans, it has to be said, appreciate Mental No-Fly Zones, particularly when, if they allowed themselves to comprehend the magnitude of the evil their country has done around the world since, say, WWII, it could make some demand on their saurian moral consciousness. They much prefer being told who they have to hate, and how much, to doing an honest inventory on themselves and on their sick, deceitful, malevolent country.
Meanwhile, embedded within the bullshit cocoon, our yokel Congress has many unhinged voices among its bizarre zoology demanding both that the “war” continue to the last Ukrainian, and that the brunt of it be shifted onto the unwilling backs of civilians, since the hooligan Nazi outfits are mostly already dead. Mariupol was their HQ and last stand, where they shot captive Ukrainian civilians to death for trying to evacuate to safety.
Our contemptible elected Hillbillies—those deeply stupid hick parochials—are cheerleaders for mayhem of the “let’s you and him fight” school, and chief mourners of the dead Moms and kids that, in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan never bothered them. These knuckle-draggers are also salivating to get NATO aircraft into Ukraine to ignite a European and, likely, a world war. You have to wonder when, on a graph, the rising line of puerile, sandbox American propaganda will cross the declining one of American intelligence. How blatantly fatuous and dishonest does our national propaganda have to get before those not braindead awake from their comfort coma and realize they themselves are the true, pathetic victims of the most vicious economic system in the history of the world. It was American Capitalism’s rabid lust for world hegemony and control that set off the Ukraine fiasco.
The crisis we face is grim. America’s arteries have hardened. Capitalism ‘R Us, and our ruling clique will take us to terminal disaster with the full consent of our sad, cognitively conquered people. They are trained to worship a system that vacuums all the good that should be theirs into the offshore accounts of their owners, and to cheer as they are mortally abused by them.
The pain and pathos of Ukrainians is no less to be regretted than that of Iraqis, Afghanis, and Yemenis. And no more. Sadly, Americans have been drained of real empathy and schooled to mimic it only when The Empire approves. This excision of that natural human faculty is arguably U.S. Capitalism’s worst crime.
 Associate Editor Paul Edwards is a genuine Renaissance man, gifted with many talents and participant in many events and struggles of our tormented times. Our colleague Jeff Brown, who did a fine interview with him, sums it up thusly: “Paul’s life story is worthy of a biography: a rebel youth growing up, traveling and working around the world and then a long career as a Hollywood writer. Through it all, he has never lost his lifelong wrath against US imperialism and global capitalism, while seeking social and economic justice for humanity’s 99%…”
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
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Glenn Edward Greenwald is an American journalist, author and lawyer. In 2014, he cofounded The Intercept, of which he was an editor until he resigned in October 2020. Greenwald subsequently started self-publishing on Substack. In 1996, Greenwald founded a law firm concentrating on First Amendment litigation.
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