North Korea makes more sense when you know its roots

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/6/10724334/north-korea-history

by curtis • 11 years ago

94 52 11 years ago

vonnik2• 11 years ago

This is actually false. The leaders of North Korea fought to liberate the peninsula from the Japanese, while many of the leaders of South Korea were officers in the Japanese imperial army. For a brief moment after WWII, the North Korean freedom fighters were the good guys. No, obviously, the tables have turned. But that does not remove the stain of collaboration from the South Korean elite.

bryanlarsen• 11 years ago

Is that necessarily contradictory, though? It seems quite likely that the North Koreans opposed the Japanese to get rid of the oppressor rather than for ideological reasons. They could quite easily have internalized the ideology of their enemy while they were fighting them.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 11 years ago

The leaders of North Korea fought to liberate the peninsula from the Japanese

What "leaders of North Korea"? The peninsula was not divided until the end of World War II and the surrender of Japan.

This sounds like a fiction invented by the regime.

mikeash4• 11 years ago

Read it as "the people who subsequently became the leaders of North Korea," not "the people who led North Korea at the time."

Symmetry2• 11 years ago

The early leaders of the United States fought to liberate their country from Great Britain but that doesn't mean they weren't strongly influenced by British ideas about government and rights.

mikeash4• 11 years ago

Those leaders by and large were British. The revolution was essentially about establishing a separate cultural and political identity where there previously was none. That's different from a situation where a foreign invader conquers and occupies the land, and people who already lived there fight to throw them out.

protomyth• 11 years ago

The early leaders of the United States originally wanted the rights due them as British subjects. It turned into a full revolution later.

ramgorur• 11 years ago

stupid article, sounds like those retarded reptilian conspiracy theorist garbage.

none of those north korean government propaganda relies on racial purity or superiority, not even implicitly, the Juche ideology has nothing to do with race. The divinity of a ruler is, I think, culturally influenced. "Kim on a solar halo" does not imply a sun god.

zoner• 11 years ago

A read Mein Kampf in two different language, also I'm studying the works of Julius Evola. I have never read principles there like the death of head of the state would mean the death of the nation. There's lots of talk about hierarchy and of course, absolute power (but it means absolute responsibility too).

North Korea is rather an extremist bolshevik state, rather than fascist and also a very dangerous one, but making a parallel with Japan is not so smart. It's very far away from Yukio Mishima and so.

Symmetry2• 11 years ago

It's certainly true that you didn't see the deification of the head of state as part of Nazism or Italian fascism. But it was very much part of the imperial Japanese ideology which might or might not be fascist depending on how you define the term. So you could easily argue that Japanese or North Koreans aren't really fascists. You can even argue about whether the Nazis were truly fascist but where their own thing.

I can't say I'm particularly familiar with Yukio Mishima and his coup attempt but I imagine the ideologies have to evolve when they don't have a Kempeitai working on their side behind the scenes.

mariojv3• 11 years ago

Was the Japanese occupation of Korea really justified in racial terms?

I'm skeptical of parts of this article when it refers to Japanese imperial ideology as "fascism." It was most certainly extremely right-wing, but I think extreme nationalism + imperialism are more accurate descriptions, especially since Japan didn't join the Axis until decades after Korea was annexed.

I thought the motivation for the colonization of Korea was more resource scarcity in Japan and a desire to compete with Western powers through empire building. To justify their actions I think Korean society was portrayed as "less civilized" which is more a statement about cultural and political norms than race, although those portrayals can probably slip into a racist ideology pretty quickly.

It seems like the "official" policy was different, at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Equality_Proposal

I'm not trying to portray devil's advocate at all, just actually asking whether what the article portrays is accurate. I think the early 20th century actions of imperial Japan were abhorrent, but it's important to at least try to understand the ideology of the time as it was discussed and understood.

hitekker3• 11 years ago

I can't speak to all your points: but yes, the Japanese were racist against the Koreans.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Investigation_of_Global_Pol...

A a family has harmony and reciprocity, but with a clear-cut hierarchy, the Japanese, as a purportedly racially superior people, were destined to rule Asia "eternally" as the head of the family of Asian nations.

And also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperit...

It explicitly states the superiority of the Japanese over other Asian races and provides evidence that the Sphere was inherently hierarchical, including the Japanese Empire's true intention of domination over the Asian continent and Pacific Ocean.
The militarists saw everything only in a Japanese perspective and, even worse, they insisted that all others dealing with them should do the same. For them there was only one way to do a thing, the Japanese way; only one goal and interest, the Japanese interest; only one destiny for the East Asian countries, to become so many Manchukuos or Koreas tied forever to Japan. These racial impositions... made any real understanding between the Japanese militarists and the people of our region virtually impossible.

Interestingly, even Japanese propaganda asserting racial harmony itself was tinged with racism. Compare this picture of an imaginary pro-japanese chinese demonstration,

http://chineseposters.net/gallery/e27-165.php

with another picture of japanese soldiers rescuing the chinese:

http://chineseposters.net/gallery/e27-166.php

The faces of the Chinese are ugly; nowhere near as refined or as elegant as that of the depicted Japanese in the second. One could argue this is style, but in a work that's intended to be seen by huge volumes of people, this particular detail is one of many that points to overwhelming racism.

Edit: made a content edit upon further research.

emiliobumachar• 11 years ago

Great quotes, but, regarding the last point, I actually think the Chinese in the front, with more detail, look better than the pale Japanese in the other poster.

mariojv3• 11 years ago

Thank you for the information. I hadn't seen the article about the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere. Quite informative.

heja2009• 11 years ago

Japan after ~1900 very much flip-flopped in their policy between playing the anti-imperialist liberator of Asia and its first colonial power and equal to western colonial powers for some time. Of course there was a political power struggle within Japan about this direction. Defining moment was the victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, which was the first victory of a "3rd world" country against a traditional colonial power.

Likewise they partially treated Koreans as lost brothers that needed to be elevated and integrated into their empire and an inferior race that was to be exploited colonial style. Note that even the "integration" strategy showed some similarity to what the Nazis later (after 1938) did with their "Heim ins Reich" strategy (which included "reintegration" of ethnic Germans on foreign soil by territorial annexation).

In practical terms both policies were put into measures sometimes simultaneously, but the colonialism supporters grew stronger over time. The famous "Greater Asian Welfare Sphere" rhetoric was a perverted remains of the "liberator"-style agenda. (I read a history book on the topic many years ago, but unfortunately can't find a reference, sorry.)

Whether the Japanese empire of the time should be classified as fascist seems to be at least highly controversial among historians. I had the impression the majority see it as a nationalistic (and after the putsch 1936 also military) dictatorship.

mariojv3• 11 years ago

I can definitely see the flip-flop, from looking at other comments here.

ekianjo2• 11 years ago

Mmmm, highly dubious this has anything to do with Japan. I mean, it's not like every other dictatorship under the Sun that lasted long enough does not share the same aspects. Mao was still very much revered like a God in China, the same goes for Stalin in Russia - so, is this guy saying Japanese Imperialism is at the root of all of this ? Seriously?

kyllo4• 11 years ago

All of the western political ideology (Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy) that came to Korea (and China) came by way of Japan. The Japanese Empire was the first polity in East Asia to adopt and apply Western political concepts to their government. Large numbers of Korean and Chinese scholars went to Japan to study and brought these concepts (as well as the vocabulary itself) from Japan back to their native countries with them. As a result, essentially all modern political thought in East Asia was tinted by Japanese imperialist ideology.

russ0chen2• 11 years ago

I think you're forgetting about the British occupation of Hong Kong.

ekianjo2• 11 years ago

All of the western political ideology (Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy) that came to Korea (and China) came by way of Japan.

Erm... Westerners were present in China way before they even came to Japan - you seem to forget Japan has an isolationism policy for several hundred years that explicitly restricted foreign influence until the late 1800s.

If anything, China was way more exposed to any Western culture before the ships of Perry even sailed to Japan. British occupation of HK was from 1841.

And let's not forget Singapore, with Raffles as early as the early 1800s.

But yeah, "everything went through Japan" ?

notahacker• 11 years ago

I think the point being made was less that many North Korean intellectuals may have studied under the Japanese and more that ethnonationalist posturing and personality cults is pretty much the first resort for dictators in economically weak newly independent states. Obviously this also includes many ex-colonies whose intellectual class studied ideology under Western liberal capitalists and mainline Christian missionaries who were largely disdainful of personality cults and ethnonationalists...

astine• 11 years ago

"All of the western political ideology (Colonialism, Communism, Fascism, Democracy) that came to Korea (and China) came by way of Japan."

This is demonstrably false. Chinese communism especially, was not just influenced but guided Russia and the Comintern. Mao certainly didn't get his ideas from Japan, and the contrasting liberal and fascist influences largely came from the West by means of Shanghai rather than Japan.

Similarly with Korea. Japan may have forced Korea to open up and dominated for nearly half a century, but Korean communism came from Russia.

xlm17172• 11 years ago

Not that it is the root of China's and Russia's cults of personalities, just specifically that it inspired North Korea's.

hitekker3• 11 years ago

This viewpoint is described in detail in the book, The Cleanest Race:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004EWETZW/ref=dp-kindle-re...

It supports the theory of North Korean racial fascism premised upon WW2 Japanese Fascism, by analyzing language (The dramatic superiority of the "Mother" word over the "Father" word in the North Korean dictionary) and historical trends (the movement of korean propagandists from south korea to north korea following the end of WW2)

topspin• 11 years ago

The Khmer Rouge also indulged notions of racial and ethnic `purity' as they persecuted Chinese, Vietnamese and others. Shall we imagine the Khmer Rouge was also some heretofore unrecognized manifestation of `fascism'? Attempts to salvage the intellectuals' opiate produces a great deal of nonsense.

awl1302• 11 years ago

This article, and especially its title, is extremely misleading. Kim Il Sung was a guerrilla fighter AGAINST the Japanese in northern China, winning accolades as a part of the Chinese communist army before taking over north Korea. Leaders of North Korea in the early days were chosen based on their loyalty to the communist party.

It may be true that the DPRK copied items of propaganda from Japan. But to say that the DPRK was based on imperial Japan is like saying the Nazi party was based on the Roman Empire (from which it lifted the eagle symbol), or worse yet, the Indo-European civilization (from which it took the swastika). Certain design elements and terminology were probably copied, but they were taken for practical purposes and had little to do with ideology.

mc32• 11 years ago

Yeah, Vox is losing credibility. This explanation sounds very forced in the face of how communism coöpted the tools of worship to retrain them on the secular state and to some degree the cult of personality.

So, it's like they, vox, want to make this explanation work, because it's plausible. I imagine if they put some effort into it, could find another half dozen plausible explanations.

MrZongle2• 11 years ago

"Yeah, Vox is losing credibility."

Serious question: did they ever have credibility? Other than being able to apparently fund a site and pay (?) writers, is there something else there I just wasn't aware of?

xlm17172• 11 years ago

I think that may have been what the article was trying to claim. The Koreans learned from the Japanese, and the Soviets simply recruited these Koreans to set up the cult of personality around the Kim family. It doesn't matter that Kim Il Sung fought against the Japanese, the Soviets installed many of the same high-ranking Koreans that were previously doing propaganda for Japan, except they were doing propaganda for the Soviet puppet regime.

georgecmu2• 11 years ago

That's what the article may try to claim, but it's factually not true. See my comment above.

georgecmu2• 11 years ago

This article's claims are true -- but only for South Korea.

Between the end of WW2 and the start of Korean war, the North has seen an exodus of landowners, former government officials, and other beneficiaries of the Japanese occupation: they left the North for the far more tolerant South. The new government, press and education cadres for the most part consisted of ethnic Koreans from China, Manchuria, and the Soviet Union, and relatively few came from Korean resistance fighters that stayed in the Korea proper. Kim Il Sung himself fought in Manchuria in 1930s and entered Korea in 1945 as a captain in the Red Army.

The politics and ideology were built on Soviet blueprints under Soviet supervision [1]. Soviet influence can still be seen in the Party jargon and the formal political language [2].

It wasn't until the late 50s that Kim Il Sung won the political infighting and secured his hold on power, simultaneously breaking out from under Soviet and Chinese control and introducing the ideology of self-reliance and isolationism.

In South Korea, however, Rhee Syngman did not have the choice of importing unsullied cadres (e.g. a vanishingly small percentage of American Koreans in 1940s had higher education), and so did had not much choice but to rely on the Korean collaborators [3]:

Rhee himself had been an independence activist, and his relations with the Chinilpa Korean elites who had collaborated with the Japanese were in the words of the South Korean historian Kyung Moon Hwang often "contentious", but in the end an understanding was reached, whereas in exchange for their support, Rhee would not purge the elites. In particular, the Koreans who had served in the colonial-era National Police, whom the Americans had retained after August 1945 were promised by Rhee that their jobs would not be threatened by him. Upon independence in 1948, 53% of South Korean police officers were men who had served in the National Police during the Japanese occupation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terentii_Shtykov

[2] http://www.nknews.org/2014/08/north-korean-dialect-as-a-sovi...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rhee

qsymmachus• 11 years ago

It does not follow that because Kim Il Sung fought against the Japanese, he was not influenced by Japanese ideology.

Before you dismiss the article's argument out of hand, take a look at "The Cleanest Race" by B. R. Myers, which is a much more informed articulation of the same thesis (and a very interesting read to boot).

awl1302• 11 years ago

True. But the article is not stating that he was influenced by Japanese ideology, it is stating that he based his ideology on it. Which is a radical idea. I have not read BR Meyers but I have read Lankov, Cumings and other more well-known and experienced scholars of DPRK who differ significantly with Meyers. It is an interesting theory and I'm sure it will sell books but not the accepted theory by any large group in ROK, Japan, US and certainly not DPRK.

stcredzero2• 11 years ago

What I understand about the Juche ideology, is that the exceptionalism of the Korean nation/race is a fundamental part of it. Much as it was in Japan, "racial purity" was actually a traditional component of status in Korea. Such ideas are found in fascism, but I think basically everyone had such ideas in their culture/society as a matter of course.

I was born in the US, but my mom's side of the family is actually from North Korea. My grandfather somehow managed to prosper as a Korean, even in the Japanese occupation educational system, and became a doctor. He was even an entrepreneur, making money off of what we'd now call "micro-lending". So when the communists came to power, grandfather could easily predict that the communists weren't going to like him very much. (My mom and her younger brother were smuggled south in a freighter in a pitch black compartment.)

When you next watch "Game of Thrones" keep this in mind: The morality portrayed was basically the morality of the real world up until the 1700s, and then it only slowly started to improve. It's going to be a long process. We're still at it.

oxryly12• 11 years ago

Also applies to all of Star Wars, which I struggle to reconcile with how much I enjoy (most of) the movies.

arafa• 11 years ago

Some of the claims in this article are rebutted by the book A Kim Jong Il Production (http://www.amazon.com/Kim-Jong-Il-Production-Extraordinary-K...), an excellent read. There is a lengthy discussion on how the book was sourced and a dedication to fact-checking and information accuracy. In it, they describe how many people inside actually do recognize their situation and how they're forced to act against how they feel. The crying at Kim Jong Il's funeral, in particular, is addressed and the book mentions how North Koreans that didn't look sincere enough in their grief faced punishment.

Htsthbjig• 11 years ago

Wow, this man is convinced that North Korea is a far right country.

For me right has a total different meaning from Japan culture. In fact left and right comes from France cultural system.

It looks like this man personally attributes everything bad to right.

Being an authoritarian regime is right(for this man), but the soviet Union was authoritarian, like any other communist regime, fro Castro to Chavez.

Being xenophobic now is right too so with this Sleight of Hand Khmer Rouge were not left, but far right too.

For me "right" means the political group that favors free markets, free men and bourgeois class, nothing to do with Japan before WWII.

North Korea makes more sense when you know its roots

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