State capitalism with neoliberal characteristics?
There is an excellent analysis article on North Korea in this week’s Socialist Worker. Written by Kim Ha-young and translated (slightly woodenly I must admit) by yours truly. Here she is on North Korea’s embryonic neoliberal tendencies:
Food shortages and infant malnutrition continue. Young South Koreans are as much as 15 centimetres taller than their counterparts in the North. The lives of ordinary people have got even worse since the North Korean government “reformed the state economy according to profit-making criteria” in July 2002.
Services formerly supplied free of charge now have to be paid for, subsidies for education and childcare have been abolished, and piece rates have been introduced in all workplaces.
While wages increased to between eight and 20 times their former level, workers have suffered greatly, particularly in the cities, as soaring inflation has seen rice prices increase to more than 500 times their former level.
Although it is often claimed that North Korea has refused to open up, this is not true. The North has wanted to pursue friendly relations with the US and Japan. It has also been keen to join the World Trade Organisation and the Asian Development Bank.
It was reported that Kim Il Sung’s son and successor Kim Jong-il told Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2002 that he wanted “to sing and dance with Bush until I go hoarse”. North Korea has even said that it would not object to US soldiers remaining on the Korean peninsula.
“Excellent analysis article”? Well, it looks like a usual set of leftist stupidities, peppered with some shameless lies, also usual for this type of people. My favourite choice: “North Korea is just as repressive and exploitative as the former military dictatorships of South Korea that received US patronage.” One has to be remarkably shameless (or brainless) to put on equal footing a dictatorship which tolerated the existence of opposition leaders and killed, may be, few hundred opponents while keeping the world’s fastest economic growth with a dictatorship which slaughtered few ten thousand while ruining economy (and a vst majority of the victims were not even guilty for challenging the regime in any way, they just happenned to be in wrong place in wrong time). This is like saying “Honnecker’ss rule in East Germany was just as repressive and exploitative as Hitler’s rule”. Both Honnecker and Hitler were dictators, like Park and Kim, but the scale of brutality was vastly different and attempts to put them on equal footing can be only deliberate and cynical exercise in lie and distortion.
There are also lies about US-Japan alliance, as if China is a helpless victim is another example of deliberate distortion and manipulation. But nothing especially new: to be a real leftist one should lack either brain or heart (or to be very young, so naivety replaces stupidity)…
Comment by passerby02 — October 17, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
That was a pretty pointless and ad hominem contribution I must say. I also see that no actual examples of lies are provided.
On the other hand, the idea that only a few hundred people were killed by South Korea’s military dictatorships is untrue (ask anyone in Kwangju) and North Korean economic growth prior to the mid-70s was so remarkable (and record breaking) that Park Chung Hee effectively decided to copy them and take the state-led development path himself. (If you want to claim that the stats are all bull check out Yang Mun-su’s book on the North Korean economy which gives a good overview and comparison of many different stats on the North Korean economy).
Of course you will probably understand what I’m saying as being pro-North Korea, but I can’t be bothered to explain myself any more as there’s probably not much point.
Comment by kotaji — October 17, 2007 @ 4:14 pm
nice article.
re: passerby02’s comment. The South Korean government, since 1945, has killed far more than a few hundred. Even before the start of the Korean war USAMGIK and the South Korean rightists killed tens of thousands in Cheju. Thousands were beaten, jailed, or tortured under PCH - including opposition politicians - as were their families. As kotaji says, have a look at what happened in Gwangju in 1980 to see the ROK’s attitude to beating, torturing and killing its citizens.
Comment by stat — October 31, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
Usually I am not in a mood of arguing with people whose biases are so clear.
Nonetheless,
1) Stat is right: until 1953 both North and South were very good in killing its people. Equally good, if the word is applicable. But we were not talking about those times, so Stat’s point is plainly irrelevant.
2) The statements about North Korean “rapid growth” in the 1970s are widespread, among people who were not there. I was, as a matter of fact, and for a long time. The North Korean economic growth came to a halt around 1970, and the period of remarkable growth lasted 1955 and 1965 when country receiving large amount of the Chinese and Soviet aid. Once this aid was scaled down, the growth stopped, and by 1980 the Soviet bloc embassies estimated was that the actual growth rate was very close to zero at that time.
3) Re Kwangju. Well, if you want to believe in “many thousands”, you are free to believe. One does not argue with religious convictions, you know… People on the Right will tell the same exaggerated figures about Tiananmen or Russian famine of the 1930s. Big figures help to win an argument, especially a political one.
However, one should aim higher: why not ten thousand? Or “Twenty Thousand Helpless Victims Burned Alive by the Blood-Thirsty Military Monsters”? This is how propaganda is made, as you surely know (your teachers must have been good at that).
The real body count is: few hundred or PERHAPS few thousand killed in the South during the entire length of the military rule against at least one hundred thousand killed in the North directly (execution and torture) and half to one million killed indirectly. So, my analogy between Hitler and Honnecker is very appropriate. You chose to ignore it, of course.
Anyway, be ready for very unpleasant discoveries after collapse of the KFR in the North. Things there are bad there, far worse than most people believe. But so far, you might believe in your “progressive” (really, quite reactionary and sometimes unbelievably murderous) orthodoxy. All the best!
Comment by passerby02 — November 26, 2007 @ 5:20 am
Anyway, be ready for very unpleasant discoveries after collapse of the KFR in the North.
Perhaps the single biggest reason to ignore right wing pinheads is that this is the best and only idea they have: either this unforgivable aberration will go on its own or it will go because we’ll bomb it away, but surely it cannot possibly adapt and stick around for a few more decades, you know, like it is doing.
Comment by kei & yuri — December 9, 2007 @ 7:46 pm