Pen/Insular_Notes

I thought I’d post this piece I just wrote over at Frog in a Well as some readers here might be interested:

“Selling yourself” - one of those phrases we use in a somewhat metaphorical sense, but which nonetheless has a more literal meaning than we probably give it credit. In modern capitalist society, where pretty much anything can be commodified, we regularly sell our labour to others. To put this another way, we alienate part of ourselves in order to get the cash that we need to sustain ourselves. But in precapitalist societies such as Chosŏn, it was possible not just to sell part of oneself on a temporary basis but to sell oneself whole, to alienate one’s own body in perpetuity.

I recently came across some information about the Chosŏn practice of ’self sale’ (chamae 自賣) in volume 3 of the brilliant Chosŏn sidae saenghwalsa (History of everyday life in the Chosŏn dynasty) series, in the section on ‘famine foods’ (구황식품, 굶주림을 해결하라, pp. 196-217):
(more…)

I should have got around to linking to this a couple of weeks ago: Pak Noja was kind enough to post at his blog a rambling and not particularly coherent response I wrote to his series of articles on the early years of the Russian Revolution and the role of Trotsky in particular. The original pieces he wrote concern Trotsky and the problem of conscription, learning from the Russian Revolution and Shliapnikov and Trotsky and are all in Korean, so unfortunately unless you read Korean you won’t be able to understand what I’m on about in my response (in English). And Noja’s response to my response (in Korean) won’t be of much use to you either. But I thought I’d post this up anyway in case there are any bilingual readers out there with an interest in the debates surrounding the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.

I must admit that I hadn’t even realised that South Korean soldiers were stationed in Afghanistan, but now one of them has taken a bullet for war hero Dick Cheney. Here’s Hankyoreh’s report (in Korean) on the bombing at Bagram torture centre near Kabul and here’s something from the BBC that mentions that one US soldier and one South Korea soldier were killed by a suicide bomber who, according to the base commander “attacked the local population” (figure that one out).

Ah… what a cosmopolitan modern world we live in: a South Korean soldier is killed by an Islamist resistance fighter at a US-run airbase and torture centre built by the Russians.

By complete chance I just came across this brand spanking new book in the library. It looks like seriously hot stuff.[*]

Marxist Perspectives on South Korea in the Global Economy
edited by Martin Hart-Landsberg, Seongjin Jeong and Richard Westra

It would be worth grabbing from the nearest library for the translation of Jeong Seong-jin’s ‘Trend of Marxian Ratios in Korea, 1970-2003′ alone, but many of the other articles look fascinating too, especially (for me at least) the historical section, which contains, ‘Land Reform and Capitalist Development in Korea’ by Jang Sang-hwan and ‘A Critical Reappraisal of the Park Chung Hee System’ by Kim Soohaeng and Park Seung-ho.

What we need now is a similar work on the history of capitalist development in North Korea - there’s some good work out there in Korean. I’d love to translate some of that stuff (and some more of Jeong Seongjin’s articles), but that will probably remain in my mental ‘one day’ category for the foreseeable future.

[*]For those who like hardcore Marxist economics replete with tables, charts and unfathomable equations.

This is really an update to my last post, but I just wanted to point readers toward two excellent recent pieces on the new ‘Beijing deal’ between the US and DPRK. One is by the very reliable Gavan McCormack, whom I’ve featured here before, the other is another regular here: Kim Ha-yong of All Together (only in Korean unfortunately). Interestingly, both of them opt for a similar analysis to the one I made a couple of days ago: that this deal has much to do with Washington’s designs on Iran:

McCormack:

How is such an apparent Washington change of heart to be understood? The fundamental factors would seem to have been the US Republican debacle in the Congressional elections of November 2006 and the continuing catastrophe of Iraq, together with the increasingly sharp focus of the Bush administration’s attention on Iran, and the growing likelihood that the Middle East war would be greatly expanded.

Kim Ha-yong [my translation]:

According to a report in the Washington Post, Dick Cheney’s National Security Advisor, John Hannah recently told a meeting that the Bush administration sees 2007 as the ‘Year of Iran’. This means that an attack is a very real possibility. In this situation, the US does not have the reserves to divert some of its forces to the North Korea problem. This is the reason that it has chosen compromise. But the change in the Bush administration’s North Korea policy should not be exaggerated. The US has not moved from a position of ‘war’ to one of ‘dialogue’ with regard to the North…

I can’t say that I’ve been reading any of the more NL/Juche oriented news sources in South Korea, but I would assume that their position is that it has little to do with Iran and everything to do with plucky North Korea’s standing up to the US.

The latest US-DPRK nuclear deal is one of those times when the first question that comes to mind is what is really going on here? The press has a fairly predictable array of explanations for this quite sudden and seemingly unexplained turn of events. This analysis piece in the New York Times, for example, argues that both Bush and Kim Jong-il are in trouble and needed to find a way out. It also claims that the nuclear test turned out to be a “strategic mistake” for the DPRK because it angered the Chinese government, which I actually think is wishful thinking on the part of the NYT.

On the other hand, the irrepressible Kim Myong-chol (Kim Jong-il’s unofficial spokesman) somewhat predictably sees it as a famous victory for the “legendary leadership” of Kim Jong-il.

The most significant fact about the six-party talks that ended this Tuesday is US President George W Bush waving a white flag, offering to allow the DPRK to retain its nuclear arsenal as it is. It means the shared recognition of the five parties and the DPRK as a nuclear-weapons state and the US notice that it would lift its financial crackdown on the Korean state.
…
The spectacular five successive victories over the US administrations leave no doubt in the eyes of the 70 million Korean people and the world public that Kim Jong-il is another legendary Kim Il-sung, a peerless national hero and iron-willed, brilliant commander of Korea, and is favorably compared to Jumong, founder of Koguryo with a history of at least seven centuries, and Dankun, founder of ancient Korea 5,000 years ago, whose territory covered most of what is now northeastern China and much of Siberia.

[By the way, I like the cheeky bit of Korean ultra-nationalist irredentism thrown in as a little poke in the eye for those disloyal Chinese.]

Aside from his raving, Kim is basically right though, the US did back down. So the question remains why and why now? This is where I have a bit of a horrible feeling because I think it might have something to do with Iran. It seems ever more likely that the Bush administration (led by Cheney) will carry out some sort of attack on Iran before the president leaves office, possibly even this year. So, the neocons have chosen the enemy they have wanted to confront for so long and decided, for strategic reasons, to buy off the other one. Obviously, there is nothing to say that this latest deal will last very long, but there does seem to be a sense that the Americans want it to work and that, strangely, makes me even more worried.

It’s done. I submitted my PhD thesis this week and left its fate in the hands of my examiners. Not much else to say really other than it feels good.

And happy pig year! I hope this really is a lucky year.

올해 돼지 꿈 많이 꾸세요!

As a wonderful illustration of Tony Cliff’s insight that a state capitalist social formation is very much like a single, massive capitalist enterprise, it turns out that North Korea has something that every modern capitalist company must have: an intranet. According to this Economist article (via Marmot), it is called Kwangmyong and even has online dating, of a sort.

I wonder whether it has features that every good intranet should have, like perhaps a company staff survey, a motivational message from the CEO (actually I’m sure it has plenty of those) and maybe even its own (non-collaborative) wikis providing on-the-spot guidance from management.

I have a confession to make dear readers. I went to see Korea v Greece at Craven Cottage (home of Fulham FC) last night. To be honest it wasn’t a great game and neither team looked up to much, but it was fun nonetheless and I managed to retain a suitably internationalist distance and not start singing 필승 코리아! ^^

Actually, after a very chilly and lacklustre 60 minutes or so, things did warm up a bit halfway through the second half, first with the crowd and then with the Korean team. And then came Yi Ch’onsu’s superb free kick, straight in the back of the net from a wicked angle.

The most exciting moment of the evening came in injury time when there was a pitch invasion by what looked like two Greek anarchists, complete with black hoodies. Of course they could have been absolutely anyone as I couldn’t read the banner they held up in Greek. Shamefully, I didn’t get any pictures of that, but I did spot this time-traveling Korean soldier in the crowd.

UPDATE: I just noticed that the Korea Times had a reporter on the scene.