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.

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!

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.

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.

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)…