Pnonyang days - Village Magazine

7 2

July-August 2018

INTERNATIONAL

HE PEOPLE’S Democratic Republic

of Korea, DPRK, is almost totally

isolated from the outside world. A

few tourists are allowed in, but

only under the control of trained

guides; and very few locals are allowed out.

I had nine days: ﬁve in the countryside,

three in the capital, and one to the de-mili-

tarised zone, DMZ. Tourist accommodation

in the countryside is adequate, in the capi-

tal strangely luxurious, but the experience

was stilted as I was not allowed to wander

into the surrounding streets. Indeed, contact

with the locals was restricted to just a few

far-too-brief encounters with some English-

language students. Conversations on

sensitive topics like governance were difﬁ-

cult; and on serious questions like labour

camps, where about 20,000 are still held –

muc h redu ced f rom ear li er y ears – imp ossi ble.

Photography was also subject to fairly rig-

orous conditions.

Under Kim Il-sung, granddad, (1948-94).

Kim Jong-il, dad, (1994-2011) and Kim Jong-

un, son, (2011-), North Korea has been run

as a “socialist monarchy” where the leaders

are almost deiﬁed, adulated with ubiquitous

use of words like ‘supreme’ and ‘eternal’.

There are over 35,000 monuments devoted

to the two deceased leaders, and their pho-

tographs hang in every home. And just as

you shouldn’t lounge around in a cathedral

at home in Ireland, both locals and visitors

in North Korea are expected to pay their

respects to these statues: no hats, no sun-

glasses, bow from the waist, and so on.

The Korean peninsula was ﬁrst united in

the year 918 when the wars between various

rivals ﬁnally came to an end. It was then

frequently invaded from West and East by

China and Japan, and in 1910 it became a

colony of the latter. At the end of WWII and

the beginning of the Cold War, the USSR and

USA occupied the North and South respec-

tively, with the demarcation line – the 38th

parallel – concocted by two Americans and

no Koreans of either ilk.

The locals get a different story: Kim Il-

sung ﬁrst led his guerrillas to defeat the

Japanese, they are told, though actually he

was inconveniently and unhelpfully in the

Soviet Union for most of the war, and no

mention is made of the signiﬁcant role of

the Allies and the Paciﬁc War, let alone Hiro-

shima and Nagasaki.

Kim was a Soviet puppet, and he took over

the North in 1948, one month af ter his oppo-

site number, Syngman Rhee, returned from

exile in the US to take power in the South;

whereupon the occupying forces, both

Soviet and American, went home. One year

later, Máo Zédōng won the civil war in China

and Chiang Kai-shek took over in Taiwan,

both establishing one-party states (the

latter adopted a multi-party structure only

in 1987). Then, in 1950, North Korea overran

the South, so the mainly American UN forces

invaded and occupied the whole peninsula,

until 200,000 Chinese ‘volunteers’ drove

them back to the pre-war status quo.

Again, the locals get a dif ferent stor y. Kim

Il-sung defeated the American invaders,

apparently, and there is little mention of the

USSR, which at the time was boycotting the

UN and only supplied a few armaments, and

hardly any acknowledgement given to the

decisive contribution of the Chinese.

{There again, we get historical distor tions

as well. Britain, we are told, stood alone

against the forces of fascism in 1939

whereas, of course, two years earlier, China

had been left by itself when the Japanese

invaded from Manchuria.}

Initially, with a policy of economic self-

reliance, North Korea did fairly well and

rather better than the South. But then came

by Peter Emerson

Pnonyang days

Our man in North Korea is now home

the image

‘Conversations on sensitive

topics were difﬁcult; and on

serious questions like labour

camps, where about 20,000 are

still held, impossible’

July-August 2018

7 3

the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, so

no more aid from there; a horrible man-

made f amine – echoes of China’s Great Leap

Forward and the USSR’s collectivisation –

with an estimated toll of up to a million; and

the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994. Meanwhile,

the South became one of the Asian ‘tiger’

economies, spawning Samsung, Hyundai and

so on.

But back to the North, and today, as so

often happens in developing countries of

whatever leaning, there is poverty in the

countryside, with planting on the collective

farms often done by hand and ploughing by

the ox; while the capital Pyongyang boasts

some huge white elephants – one 100-storey

hotel is empty and unused – and there is

even a parliament, a mighty ediﬁce to house

the 675 deputies who are elected by univer-

sal suf f rage… with candidates chosen by the

government and a ballot paper which asks

“yes or no?” – {a bit like Brexit, really}. It is,

however, the ultimate rubber stamp: as per

Article 92 of the Socialist Constitution, it

meets but once or twice a year.

At the same time, a high percentage of the

budget is spent on the military. In 2011, Kim

Jong-il, who had initiated the policy of ‘mili-

tary ﬁrst’, died, and his second son, who

had been educated in Switzerland and was

then just 28 years old, took over. Which

brings us to today, and local politics are

changing…maybe. Ordinary folk are genu-

inely excited about what the June 12 talks

in Singapore between Kim Jong-un and

Donald Trump might eventually lead to, but,

for the moment at least, literally everything

is in the hands of the ‘Supreme Leader ’. This

excitement, by the way, is shared by the

large number of Koreans living over the

border in China, as well as by many

Chinese.

The problems are huge, of course, and

much bigger than their equivalents were in

the two ‘halves’ in Germany. Nevertheless,

from Pyongyang’s point of view, Kim Jong-

un is on a winner: things can only get better.

The nuclear policy means that now, even if

it were to disarm, North Korea would (prob-

ably) not suffer the fate of Iraq or Libya.

Instead, if all goes to plan, the sanctions will

be lifted, foreign investment will be allowed

in – which probably means opening up

access to the internet etc. – and the DPRK’s

economy will start to catch up with that of

the South. Later, in 2028 or thereabouts, the

currencies – both are called the won – will

be combined. While politically, the two

countries could form a federation, the

Nor th’s suggestion, or Seoul’s idea of a com-

monwealth… so it should be possible to ﬁnd

a compromise between those two

proposals.

And democracy? Well South Korea did not

have a smooth transition. President Rhee,

who once “locked up members of the

National Assembly until they voted as he

desired,”, was followed by one coup d’état

and two assassinations; today, however,

Seoul is relatively stable.

But the problems faced by the Korean pen-

insula as a whole require a more inclusive

and sophisticated form of decision-making;

if they do adopt a binary structure, even a

consociational one like the Belfast model,

they could well perpetuate the north-south

divide.

Peter Emerson is the director of The de

Borda Institute (http://www.deborda.org/),

a Northern Ireland-based NGO, which aims

to promote the use of inclusive voting pro-

cedures on all contentious questions of

social choice.

the reality

the dynasty

In 1950 North Korea

overran the South, so

the mainly American

UN forces invaded

and occupied the

whole peninsula, until

200,000 Chinese

‘volunteers’ drove

them back to the pre-

war status quo