Jason McCullough
01-22-2005, 12:14 PM
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17721
Interesting Kristof review of two new books on North Korea.
Bradley Martin's book, which took him twenty-five years to write, helps to resolve any uncertainty. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is, from all I have read, simply the best book ever written about North Korea. Relying largely on extensive interviews with defectors, Martin portrays North Korean life with a clarity that is stunning, and he captures the paradoxes in North Korean public opinion —people often revered their "Great Leader" at the same time that he was horrifically mismanaging their country and brutalizing their countrymen. Some will think that Martin is too soft, and others will think him too harsh, but his analysis matches what I've seen on my own trip to North Korea (before I was banned for life) and in my own interviews with North Korean citizens and defectors in China and South Korea.
Martin's work is sobering—he quotes one North Korean defector after another who says that a new Korean war is entirely possible, and that many North Koreans would welcome a war in hopes that it might end their miseries. And while American policy toward North Korea seems based on the idea that just a little nudge and the entire dictatorship will come crashing down, he doesn't believe it's that fragile. I fear he is right.
Particular freakiness:
More remarkable, it turns out, Kim's father was a Christian. Korea was fertile ground for Christianity in the early twentieth century, partly because Christianity was a way to quietly express defiance of the Japanese colonial rulers who had formally annexed the country in 1910. Kim's father attended a school founded by missionaries, and later attended church regularly; he was also a church organist. He taught Kim Il Sung to be an organist as well, and the boy attended church throughout his teens. "I, too, was interested in church," he once wrote, but later "I became tired of the tedious religious ceremony and the monotonous preaching of the minister, so I seldom went," although he acknowledged receiving "a great deal of humanitarian assistance from Christians." Still, after taking power, Kim completely wiped out Christianity from his country, keeping a couple of churches for show but staffing them with actors and actresses to impress foreign visitors with his tolerance.
Ironically, in view of his ideological extremism in later life, Kim was initially accused by other guerrillas of being a "rightist deviationist," and he complained that some guerrillas were too ideological and not pragmatic enough. Yet Kim genuinely did fight hard against the Japanese at a time when many Koreans (including many future South Korean officials) were quislings of the hated occupiers. Those nationalistic credentials gave Kim Il Sung an authenticity and moral authority among Koreans that leaders in the South lacked, and that is one reason why many ethnic Koreans in Japan (even those from the southern half of Korea) have sided with North Korea rather than with South Korea. They weren't Communists; they were nationalists. Some moved to North Korea in the 1960s, thus ruining their own lives and those of their families.
Russian labor camps that people fight over working at, a real religious cult based around the former President; fucked up.
Interesting Kristof review of two new books on North Korea.
Bradley Martin's book, which took him twenty-five years to write, helps to resolve any uncertainty. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is, from all I have read, simply the best book ever written about North Korea. Relying largely on extensive interviews with defectors, Martin portrays North Korean life with a clarity that is stunning, and he captures the paradoxes in North Korean public opinion —people often revered their "Great Leader" at the same time that he was horrifically mismanaging their country and brutalizing their countrymen. Some will think that Martin is too soft, and others will think him too harsh, but his analysis matches what I've seen on my own trip to North Korea (before I was banned for life) and in my own interviews with North Korean citizens and defectors in China and South Korea.
Martin's work is sobering—he quotes one North Korean defector after another who says that a new Korean war is entirely possible, and that many North Koreans would welcome a war in hopes that it might end their miseries. And while American policy toward North Korea seems based on the idea that just a little nudge and the entire dictatorship will come crashing down, he doesn't believe it's that fragile. I fear he is right.
Particular freakiness:
More remarkable, it turns out, Kim's father was a Christian. Korea was fertile ground for Christianity in the early twentieth century, partly because Christianity was a way to quietly express defiance of the Japanese colonial rulers who had formally annexed the country in 1910. Kim's father attended a school founded by missionaries, and later attended church regularly; he was also a church organist. He taught Kim Il Sung to be an organist as well, and the boy attended church throughout his teens. "I, too, was interested in church," he once wrote, but later "I became tired of the tedious religious ceremony and the monotonous preaching of the minister, so I seldom went," although he acknowledged receiving "a great deal of humanitarian assistance from Christians." Still, after taking power, Kim completely wiped out Christianity from his country, keeping a couple of churches for show but staffing them with actors and actresses to impress foreign visitors with his tolerance.
Ironically, in view of his ideological extremism in later life, Kim was initially accused by other guerrillas of being a "rightist deviationist," and he complained that some guerrillas were too ideological and not pragmatic enough. Yet Kim genuinely did fight hard against the Japanese at a time when many Koreans (including many future South Korean officials) were quislings of the hated occupiers. Those nationalistic credentials gave Kim Il Sung an authenticity and moral authority among Koreans that leaders in the South lacked, and that is one reason why many ethnic Koreans in Japan (even those from the southern half of Korea) have sided with North Korea rather than with South Korea. They weren't Communists; they were nationalists. Some moved to North Korea in the 1960s, thus ruining their own lives and those of their families.
Russian labor camps that people fight over working at, a real religious cult based around the former President; fucked up.