now the DPRK can enjoy a little rest for now
its funny because in the debates biden wanted to invade the DPRK and didnt care if they nuked south korea in retaliation and he also called trump weak for not being harsher on kim
"America is Back" sounds like the title to a snuff film. . . .
Which, I guess it is.
Sunrise in America looks a lot like falling bombs everywhere else. America delenda est.
If they invade then I hope they nuke seattle so I can die either fast, or slower but laughing at Joe.
here, its from the second debate Trump somehow has the best take, the DPRK has nukes and they will use them if attacked and diplomacy is the best option, Biden misses all of this and says that the best way is to threaten Kim with a military intervention like it has for the last 70 years
That's a better policy answer than Joe gave at any point and it's better policy than Joe has ever advocated.
Trump has awful foreign policy, but he's better on this.
uncritical support for the DPRK in its heroic struggle to liberate occupied Korea from the genocidal American empire
and the new president scrubbed all mention of the words “socialism” or “communism” from the new constitution through a shadowban shortly after becoming president.
Source would be good for this if you could.
There is no possible source, and it's not like their constitution is a secret, you can go to naenara and read the English translation.
Here I copy-pasted the first chapter for convenience. It mentions socialism literally in the first article, as well as:
- Revolution
- Imperialism
- Soviets
- Democratic Centralism
- Universal secret suffrage with recall
- Exploitation, materialism,
- Dictatorship of the people and the goal of the proletariat as the only class
- Alliance of workers, peasants and intelligentsia
- Human rights
- One-party state, and
- The Mass Line:
CHAPTER I. POLITICS
Article 1. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is an independent socialist State representing the interests of all the Korean people.
Article 2. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a revolutionary State which has inherited the brilliant traditions formed during the glorious revolutionary struggle against the imperialist aggressors and in the struggle to achieve the liberation of the homeland and the freedom and well-being of the people.
Article 3. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is guided in its building and activities only by great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.
Article 4. The sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea resides in the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and all other working people. The working people exercise State power through their representative organs–the Supreme People’s Assembly and local People’s Assemblies at all levels.
Article 5. All State organs in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are formed and function on the principle of democratic centralism.
Article 6. The organs of State power at all levels, from the county People’s Assembly to the Supreme People’s Assembly, are elected on the principle of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot.
Article 7. Deputies to the organs of State power at all levels have close ties with their constituents and are accountable to them for their work. The electors may recall at any time the deputies they have elected if the latter lose the trust of the former.
Article 8. The social system of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a people-centred system under which the working people are the masters of everything and everything in society serves them. The State shall defend the interests of the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and all other working people who have been freed from exploitation and oppression and become the masters of the State and society, and respect and protect human rights.
Article 9. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall strive to achieve the complete victory of socialism in the northern half of Korea by strengthening the people’s power and vigorously performing the three revolutions–ideological, technological and cultural–and reunify the country on the principle of independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity.
Article 10. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is underpinned by the politico-ideological unity of all the people based on the worker-peasant alliance led by the working class. The State shall revolutionize all the members of society, and assimilate them to the working class by intensifying the ideological revolution, and shall turn the whole of society into a collective, united in a comradely way.
Article 11. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall conduct all activities under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
Article 12. The State shall adhere to the class line and strengthen the dictatorship of the people’s democracy so as to firmly defend the people’s power and socialist system against all subversive acts of hostile elements at home and abroad.
Article 13. The State shall maintain the revolutionary work method of going among the masses to find solutions to problems by implementing the mass line and of giving full play to the spiritual strength and creativity of the masses by giving precedence to political work, work with people.
Article 14. The State shall determinedly conduct the Three-Revolution Red Flag Movement and other mass movements so as to accelerate the building of socialism to the maximum.
Article 15. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall champion the democratic national rights of Koreans overseas and their rights recognized by international law as well as their interests.
Article 16. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea shall guarantee the legal rights and interests of foreigners in its territory.
Article 17. Independence, peace and friendship are the basic ideals of the foreign policy and the principles of the external activities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The State shall establish diplomatic as well as political, economic and cultural relations with all friendly countries, on the principles of complete equality, independence, mutual respect, non-interference in each other’s affairs and mutual benefit. The State shall promote unity with people all over the world who defend their independence, and resolutely support and encourage the struggles of all people who oppose all forms of aggression and interference and fight for their countries’ independence and national and class emancipation.
Article 18. The law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea reflects the wishes and interests of the working people and is a basic instrument for State administration. Respect for the law and strict adherence to and execution of it is the duty of all institutions, enterprises, organizations and citizens. The State shall perfect the system of socialist law and promote the socialist law-abiding life."
@fuckthepolice what do you have to say for yourself bucko????
Plus Kim himself has a bunch of quotes that mention socialism. You can read them on Wikiquote or whatever.
I copied and pasted it from the DPRK's own translation at (warning: you probably should not click this link without a VPN if you're in the Republic of Korea) http://naenara.com.kp/index.php/Main/index/en/politics?arg_val=constitution
The articles you've been linking are from 2009, and the constitution in Naenara is the August 2019 consitution. You can tell (among other things) because it says 'Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism' instead of 'Juche', and because (sadly) the Taean Work System is officialy gone.
I don't see the point of reading third-hand articles about their constitution instead of just reading the constitution itself. It's laughable that it can be a hot topic in the West whether or not the DPRK calls itself a socialist, revolutionary state, when they say so in every opportunity. They did remove, in 2009, the 3 mentions of communism they had. These were in the sections on the economy and culture, not in the first chapter I copied above.
I've only seen you link this article: https://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSEO253213 which says September 28, 2009. Is there another one I haven't seen?
Naenara is the website of the foreign languages publishing house of the DPRK. It's controlled by the Worker's Party of Korea. They also have http://www.korean-books.com.kp/en/
You should be extremely careful with Wikipedia: there's an edit war going on in the DPRK articles, with about half of them locked and policed by the admins to only include imperialist sources, including non-existent and fictional works in order to paint the DPRK dirty (notably, the songbun article), while other, smaller articles are free and have much better sourcing, mostly written by the user Jack Upland like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_North_Korea .
North Korea is also governed by the Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System, which some claim have come to supersede the constitution and in practice serve as the supreme law of the country.
This is one of the fictional articles. No such document exists in Korean, there's a similar one from an old speech by Kim Jong Il (I think) that you can find in korean-books but the content is completely different from what is claimed.
I realised I had nothing saved on this so I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get of the bottom of it. In the end I concluded the principles exist, although I was unable to find a list of these principles that was not published by the CIA and it's unclear how they are relevant in modern Korean society.
What confuses me is, why hide it so much? Even though the principles seem to be taught at school in DPRK, the speech where KJI supposedly codified these principles is in volume 4 of his collected works, which is not translated to English and I cannot find in Korean either on the Internet. I found two reviews of his collected works in korean, and the authors mention that they could not get volume 4. There's a South Korean website with the full text of KJI collected works, and the table of contents for volume 4 is censored and there's a note 'if you really need the full text, call this number'. Why does this happen, it's weird.
My research went way, way, way beyond the character limit so here's a link to it if you're interested: https://rentry.co/dk2ey
It's partially true (but I still upvoted you, cause it's more wrong than right). From what I've read, many of the "prison camps" mean that you and your family are sent out into a remote forest with 100lbs of rice for a few years. From there, you're kinda left to your own devices with the other convicts. The guards are around sometimes, some are pricks, some are helpful. Once your sentence is complete, you're considered rehabilitated. You start at the bottom, but you can even return to upper-tiers of social life after some time with some networking and a bit of bribery here and there. Source: The top of my head from what I remember from the book North Korea: Another Country, I think it was in Chapter 5 or 6.
Caveats:
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The idea of an entire family sent to "prison" may be offensive to western liberal values, and even socialist values, but we must remember that the DPRK has both a traditional/conservative culture, and that they necessarily spend an inordinate amount of money on their military due to imperialist threats. Hopefully if they were given the opportunity, they could develop a more humane judicial system (on the path to abolishing it down the line ofc).
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I'm sure this doesn't apply to all prisoners, this is just one case that I had read about, and it would explain where the propaganda about "multi-generational" punishment comes from. I would guess that violent crimes are dealt with more strictly, but I'm not an expert by any means.
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The book that I cited explains in the same chapter that the researcher (a western professor of Korean history) has not found any indication that the judicial practices of the DPRK exceed or even match the issues that are present in the United States (but we already knew that, I hope).
The idea of an entire family sent to “prison” may be offensive to western liberal values, and even socialist values, but we must remember that the DPRK has both a traditional/conservative culture, and that they necessarily spend an inordinate amount of money on their military due to imperialist threats. Hopefully if they were given the opportunity, they could develop a more humane judicial system (on the path to abolishing it down the line ofc).
That's a ridiculous rationalization for an insane policy.
It's not a rationalization at all, it's just a material analysis of why the things are the way they are. If I am a citizen of their country, I would be outspoken against the current state of things. As a westerner, I don't feel like I have any such standing to do so except in certain situations and with a certain tone. Nothing in my post is intended to deem "DPRK good" or "DPRK bad" because that's not a meaningful way of understanding things imo.
it’s just a material analysis of why the things are the way they are
Saying they wouldn't do it if they had a lower military budget is material analysis?
I think that's just making an excuse.
As a westerner,
As a human being I have every fucking right to call it barbaric, and arguing anything else is fucking stupid overly woke idiocy.
Saying they wouldn’t do it if they had a lower military budget is material analysis?
Where did I say that? I said I hope that they would, but I am not a citizen nor a member of the majority party of the DPRK, so I really don't know.
As a human being I have every fucking right to call it barbaric, and arguing anything else is fucking stupid overly woke idiocy.
What does that materially do for the people who live in the DPRK when you call it barbaric and leave it at that? Considering that most of us live in countries and cultures that are eager to fuck up the people living there even more, you're probably contributing to an environment that will allow that to happen. Chapo.chat might be an appropriate place to have a critical discussion of the prison policy of the DPRK, but I think it's worth treading lightly.
DPRK giving off VVITCH vibes with their prison sentences. That's definitely a holdover from feudalism.
Yeah, I personally don't consider them part of the global struggle to achieve socialism/communism right at the moment, but they obviously are nonaligned/non-capitalist which is cool. My hope/impression would be that they would be happy to move along with the rest of the world if it were predominantly socialist.
They're in a much better place to build socialism than most countries.
I don't fully agree, they are too small, underdeveloped, and directly targeted by imperial forces. They are largely unburdened from the forces of capital internally, but they are heavily burdened by capital when dealing with foreign affairs. It sucks that they need to spend so much on their militarization and nuclear program in lieu of infrastructure development, prison reform, and agricultural development (they've had an issue with flooding that caused severe famines in the 90s). However, if they didn't focus so much on defense, they would not exist as a country at all.
In the past decade, they've made huge strides in development. They're putting a lot into the military, but if you look at their tech, a lot of it is designed and assembled in the DPRK. Look at the 2016 and 2020 military parades and tell me there isn't something happening. They'd need massive investment in infrastructure and education to design some of those platforms.
True, I don't disagree that they are building something, I just am not sure how much of a role it will play in building socialism around the world. I think that having a nuke may give them enough security to start directing resources toward internal development though, not to mention they could work with China as they develop their own IP as well (but I know that relationship isn't always as stable as it's most people think).
Edit: just watched the parades, and damn there's definitely a contrast
Yeah, I'm not a fan of military stuff really, but it's definitely a good sign that they're capable of producing their own hardware now and not reliant on old Soviet surplus. Means that they're actually proletarianizing and moving forward.
Source: The top of my head from what I remember from the book North Korea: Another Country, I think it was in Chapter 5 or 6.
Here's some fun info on the author of that book:
Cumings wants to humanize not only North Korean women, but North Koreans in general. Presumably, as a Westerner fortunate enough to have already entered the previously mentioned “world of profound difference,” he thinks and behaves just as, if not more, empathetically and respectfully toward North Koreans as anyone else. His characterization of his experience at the North Korean Museum of the Revolution, however, perfectly encapsulates the contrast between Cumings’ non-stop moralizing and his condescending tone throughout North Korea: Another Country. Commenting on one exhibit of gifts given to Kim Il Sung by foreign dignitaries, Cumings writes,
“My guide, a young woman whose English was less than fluent, paused in front of a glass-encased chimpanzee, and began to instruct me in a sing-song voice that ‘the Gleat Reader’ had received this taxidermic specimen from one Canaan Banana, vice president of Zimbabwe. I dissolved into hysterics and could not stop laughing as she continued to intone her mantra without dropping a single (mangled) syllable.”
Cumings is considered a “progressive” academic. His ostensible liberalism and unique ability to “transcend” his own experience does not make him a less dogmatic, petty person as demonstrated by his paragraph-long mockery of a North Korean woman’s English accent—obviously not up to his standards. Finally, Cumings presents himself as a person and a historian of Korean history (unable or unwilling to speak Korean fluently) who considers Korea and the United States equals culturally and socially, and in an ideal world, politically as well. Following the “cultural exchange” Cumings describes at the Museum of the Revolution, though, who had the privilege of publicly ridiculing and contributing to negative public perceptions of the “Other?” The young, female North Korean tour guide? Or Cumings, an older white guy with a comfortable job at a prestigious American university?
So this guy is just doing a white savior complex and likely has huge misunderstandings from not speaking Korean well himself.
Yeah I'm extremely aware that the guy is a huge liberal from the tone of the book, I don't take him uncritically as an authoritative source (although I more or less did here, I admit). One thing I really like about the book is that he's constantly having to admit that the US/ROK were the "bad guys" (as much as he expressly dislikes the DPRK and communism). I usually note all of this whenever I bring the book up, but I didn't do so here cause laziness or whatever.
But yeah, those criticisms are valid, if a tad harsh (he's extremely fair to the DPRK for a lib IMO). If you have more/better resources about the DPRKs internal workings I'm always looking to inform myself, it's one of my favorite topics.
Edit: forgot to mention, but obviously he makes a huge ass of himself making fun of the guides accent. Don't know what that's about tbh, but I guess he can fuck off.
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the new president scrubbed all mention of the words “socialism” or “communism” from the new constitution through a shadowban shortly after becoming president.
No it didn't. Why don't you go and actually read it?
This place is starting to feel like the old CTH again, with ignorant libs chiming in to attack AES.
I hope I don't get banned for saying this about the DPRK but here goes.
Kim got a yee-yee ass haircut
Advanced-Encrypted-Socialism, socialism that can't be hacked by the CIA. :kim:
What amazes me is how many libs seem to have the memory of goldfish and act all amazed and like the DPRK and Iran are somehow being all beligerant and insane in developing nuclear capabilities.
Fuck's sake not 20 yrs ago the US declared Iran, Iraq and DPRK the axis of evil, invaded Iraq leading to millions of deaths. What the fuck do they think Iran and DPRK are gonna do? Sit on their thumbs or take a shot at the only possible chance they have of ensuring the same thing doesn't happen to them?
Americans have a stunningly poor ability to consider these situations from the position of the victims.
I think they kinda see themselves as victims. I see this a lot. This idea that the IS is somehow the only thing holding back total evil. Sorta like white man's burden crossed with superhero comics. I guess that's how they justify atrocities they commit.
Stolen and paraphrased from the Michael Brooks Tribute convo between Cornell West and Slavoj Zizek:
"They hold the story of Moses in their hearts and claim they are the Israelites, not stopping for a moment to consider if they are the Egyptians."
Yes. They also don't see themselves as shining knights or paragons defending the world order, like we often mock them. They actually see themselves as Jack Bauer. Complex, morally grey anti-heroes who are slightly better than the alternatives.
yeah in the 2002 bush just told the world he was gonna invade the axis of "evil" countries and a few months later they added 3 countries more, gadaffi in 2003 thought he was safe after Libya gave its WMD then Obama took power and bombed libya until everything that gadaffi built was destroyed, Syria keep its WMDs and then the US just funded a civil war against them
the only deterrence that helps against the US is a nuclear arsenal
Yeah exactly. Even if you don't like DPRK ir Iran it's very very clearly in their best interests to build nukes.
If some bastard told everyone that me and a couple of my neighbours were evil and they were gonna drive me out my home and kill me, then drove one of my neighbours out and butchered half their family I would get tooled up as fast as I could.
yeah of couse, even if Iran has banned like 9 diferrent socialist parties and i dont agree with some policies of the DPRK there is no way i wish they end up like Libya with its slave markets and eternal civil war
Another good example is ghadaffi signing an agreement not to build nukes in like 2003, then 8 years later getting killed in the street. What do you expect other countries to do if you act like that
which covers most of Earth’s land masses except South America, the Caribbean, and the majority of Antarctica
All 4 scientists in the Amundsen Scott research station right now
i think 5 years ago they could hit hawaii or samoa and the western press was saying that in a few years they could hit the coast of california
It's just some NGO type thing that publicizes a bunch of different stuff I think.
I remember reading this and being fucking happy.
That was from my lib days and I remember being so scared lol
Good. They can no longer make the argument that they are a crazy psychotic country.
If they were, America would be nuked. It has not been and it will not be. Not unless it is in defence anyway.
Hasn't there already been a large amount of conventional artillery pointed at South Korea's largest city this entire time?
Or does the US military ignore the potential destruction of a city of millions because it's collateral damage? To a normal person, that should have already made invading the DPRK a non starter.
pretty sure that is the reason we didn't invade them before they had nukes
