|
Wherever they crop up, it is always painful to read unironic support of Juche as a good ideology.
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2017 01:30
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 1, 2024 12:26 |
|
|
Wikkheiser posted:Yeah. B.R. Myers' argument is that "Juche" is unreadable garbo that the Workers Party invented for foreign sympathizers. The first mention of "Juche" was from a Kim Il-sung speech to the "Party Propagandists and Agitators" in 1955, which doesn't even mention self-reliance but praises the Soviet Union at length. Then the term vanished until Kim mentioned it again to some Japanese journalists in the late 60s (or 70s?) I think. And then academics overseas got carried away with it. Like, "Juche! Finally! What a mysterious Korean word! It must hold the mystery to how North Korea thinks!" I should additionally note after hosting north koreans who would later become my in-laws, they had stories which were hard to bear. In one, I had it explained to me that the most important understandings they learned about juche and kimilsungism came from statements made at the public executions of some of their neighbors in a time in which such spectacles were becoming abnormally commonplace. The crime announced before the execution (since they were apparently in an announcing mood that day, this varied) was that the mother had sullied the nation with her race-mixing. Was it ultimately the true cause for execution? Uncertain. Other cases of race mixing had been handled 'merely' with forced abortion. More likely she was being executed for the private sale of food in what had previously been an 'open secret' black market that had crossed the wrong sellers, who would have been in some way politically connected to people who could order the execution and clear up some breathing room in the black markets. Had this woman really race mixed? Who knows, it wasn't like anyone got to inspect the child carefully with some phrenology calipers or whatever before a serviceman shot its brains out. In the DPRK, nothing like this really needed to make sense, and witnesses to the execution would duck silently away afterwards, the same as all the other executions, too concerned with mere survival. But after the fact, a rather morbid observation of the nationalist texts of kimilsungism made it crystal clear that the accusation of the executioners was most certainly a profoundly referenced and grave issue in Juche ideology. The Koreans are the cleanest, purest race. Other races are biological filth. The severely advanced notion of racial superiority and the graveness and 'foulness' of race mixing, so commonplace in all levels of nationalistic teaching and ideological reinforcement, was a hard thing to overcome. Obviously not insurmountable in my family's case! But still, the extent to which Juche is ultimately a profoundly foul thing is almost helpful. It allows you to know something very crystal clear about the Marxist and Leninist types who claim to have informed understanding of the Juche ideology and will spend any time at all celebrating or supporting it, or even so much as calling western criticism of it inherently unfounded. If they believe Juche is a good, solid, or morally well-founded thing, they're ultimately morally and rationally neglectful selective fanboys for anything anti-imperialist and sufficiently associated with communism. It adamantly announces to the world that they will have similarly dubious authority on the goodness or virtue of anything else MLM-ey. quote:juche always seemed like a "leftist" version of con poo poo like Dianetics. its repetive bullshit that's written vaguely and filled with complicated sounding bullshit and buzzwords, so "smart" people will think they are clever for "figuring it out", mostly tankies. This is, I think, a better and much more pithy way to put it, as long as you mention its inordinate fascination with race purity and the Deity-ness of the Kims. Dianetics was at least a little better at covering up the horrid nuttiness for later levels.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2017 03:37
|
|
|
I have to kind of iron gut my way through the stories they have, but they are really important to understanding the hardships they still go through to this day. As a specific example: we had a korean feast day! it was a celebration! it was fantastic! the grandmother asked what each food item was, and after trying one, she burst into tears and stood facing away, just like, to the wall. Her son stood near her and consoled her and she slowly turned around and apologized for losing her composure and we kept trying to tell her she had no need to apologize, we apologize, no truly i must apologize, no you musn't apologize we apologize, etc (this goes on for a while, it's like a family apology circle. everyone can hug later but never *during* it is the best) Why did it happen? It's storytime! Guess what! It's complicated feelings! She was trying beef and she got really emotional! There were super super complex memories attached to it, because back in North Korea, eating beef was enough of an offense to get literally executed! You could have dog meat, but dog meat is apparently way not as tasty as cow. There was some dog meat available for them some of the time because her area had a quota of dog furs to send back to the state for the production of coats. Beef, on the other hand, was strictly forbidden. It was reserved for high level party officials, or anyone relatively connected enough to procure some from the grey markets, perhaps also if you were near the tourist centers and could have recycled plates. And here she was, so so many years later, and the table had beef on it. She was dining on a feast that was beyond the dreams even of the higher ups and party functionaries in her area. She was verklempt, it was like shedding a shroud of fear and austerity. So that's the story about how new grandma burst into tears because she was once a commoner who would have been executed for eating what she was just casually having at a party one day yeah refugee feelings are complicated.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2017 04:24
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:Seoul is only 35 miles from the border, so basically any meaningful incursion into the South at least threatens the area. Whether North Korea is capable of pushing beyond the border at all is dubious, but it doesn't take much. It's widely accepted among Seoul inhabitants that the DPRK has a significant quantity of artillery, just regular conventional artillery, set up within range. A lot. It's probably not well maintained, but there's enough that it will certainly do just fine. They're very dully resigned to this fact, just blandly saying 'yeah if war breaks out the north has a billion cannons pointed right at us in the city' just in sort of a shrug well-what-can-you-do sense.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2017 04:54
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:There's a pretty huge difference between what's rational for an individual country and what's best for everyone involved. It being rational for the DPRK to want nukes isn't the same as saying that it's a good thing they have them. Proliferation is explicitly a bad thing, but it's not necessarily bad for individual actors existing in a world where it's happening anyway. This is one of the more straightforward and rational takes on it. North Korea's government is an entrenched and thoroughly brutal totalitarian police state whose survival relies on absolute suppression of dissent within the country, even during times of complete economic and agricultural collapse that would normally cause the general populace to protest or rebel against an aristocratic elite that stays in power through violence despite having failed the common people. This state of affairs itself is gambled on the ruling party's capacity to project brinkmanship and maximally threaten escalations against other countries, and so the ruling party does 'rationally' work towards acquiring any tool necessary to increase their potential to gently caress everything up for everyone. Brinkmanship as a survival strategy for North Korea is easily described as an unstable condition, and the way it is being composed now earnestly suggests increasing desperation or poorer gambling odds for the ruling elite of the country. And that's earnestly not good for any sorts of relations in the entire area around them, and certainly does little to actually assist the people of North Korea itself, who already exist in a rather terrible condition under some uniquely cruel leadership. I say this wisely dispensing with the whole part where people try to pipe up with increasingly tortured defenses of Korea's corrupt autocracy and its intentional provocations, but I doubt there are many paths that look good when speaking in terms of the general welfare of anyone in the region.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2017 05:14
|
|
|
The five-nukes-to-a-country hypothetical seems explicitly sociopolitically pained, and it would take little conventional analysis to understand the incentives and rationales that would change and create new and different forms of potential instability and power brokering across the world. It provides interesting power differential changes that are most circumstantially advantageous to smaller, underdeveloped or terribly developed countries in places favorable to loose league or confederacy, but circumstantially disadvantageous to the world at large and the welfare of the entire population of earth because the opportunity for nuclear crisis, war, and resulting humanitarian disasters has now gone way, way, way up. Way, way way way way.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2017 06:05
|
|
|
Lum_ posted:Irony alert: only women are legally allowed to work in/run jangmadang (the private markets), because North Korea is ridiculously sexist and men were forbidden from shirking "real" labor. The result is that women are now the anchor of the North Korean economy and the family breadwinner and the ripple effect in society is pretty extreme. In practice it is a bit more complicated than that. I have spoken with two of my now inlaws (yay!) who ran and assisted a shopfront in a jangmadang. In these markets it was less that men are 'legally allowed' to run a private enterprise, but most men in a lot of areas are essentially conscripted and are obligated to be present for appointed labor tasks and service. Attendance is effectively mandatory, and failure to appear can have tremendous consequences. The thing is, even if you were obligated to appear for your required services, you would only get paid if your required services could be satisfactorily pursued. Many men would end up in work projects in near constant or constant stalling and they would not be able to get paid, while also not being able to use their time for gainful work or employment or literally anything that could feed them. The rest of it is social custom. Women become the defacto heads of private low-level industry because of the present bias in the division of labor. Women are almost never allowed to progress up a certain level of personal financial or business autonomy, though. Running shops and personal industry in the jangmadang is fine. Past that, you must know your place and not interfere in established and male-run organizations which rarely go beyond tokendom.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2017 05:43
|
|
|
Literally every defector account of North Korea's internal living situation could be discounted and you would still have considerable evidence of the state being an exceptionally brutal totalitarian police state that commits mass atrocities and imprisons nearly the entire population. That said, do not discount them. it's rather tasteless of westerners, especially white westerners enamored with anti-imperialist communist aesthetic, to refuse the validity of actual North Korean refugees when they provide an otherwise consistent story of misery and inhuman government practices. I have former North Koreans in my family. They are not paid. They will describe, fairly, an astoundingly cruel government and an immensely brutalized populace.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2017 09:02
|
|
|
I'm not going to jump on board with that assumption, and an always welcome to varied assessment of the often incorrect takes on North Korea. I also feel that the Democratic South Korean government should ultimately get the largest say by far in terms of official sanctions or protective measures against the North. Most conversations about sanctions will probably have to grapple with that the North Korean government is, in its current form, a valid target for sanctions and international censure on account of their human rights abuses, and (since it inevitably comes up) international forms of tu quoque can only impact that fact to a limited degree.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2017 09:35
|
|
|
The tale I got of North Korea is one of 24/7 state controlled media, songs of praise and glory to the leaders, this extremely dated seeming, orchestraic, operatic crooning about harvests and obedience or whatever. Then someone sneaks in a Korean romantic drama from the south, and you watch it, and you can't believe what you're really seeing at first. Entertainment-wise, there's no comparison. Files get traded in secret. This defector is one of the outcomes of stuff like that, presumably.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2017 06:32
|
|
|
mediadave posted:A reasonably interesting paper about recent North Korean TV drama and how it has changed under Kim Jong Un: I haven't gotten to watch the more recent of these personally but I had a few of them described to me. A significant push built heavily into the characters and plots is the importance of traditional gender roles and proper womanhood and it would be worthwhile to compare the ones my family has seen to ones made in the last two years to see if that's changing substantially, or if they address the private enterprise situation.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2017 23:32
|
|
|
WarpedNaba posted:Either the Elites have really loosened up, or some director's about to experience a 3am knock-knock. None of this was really new, and it was probably at least in some way or primarily a response to things I mentioned earlier. South Korean media had been leaking into the country and TV dramas and period pieces made in the south were extremely more appealing to anyone who could get their hands on them. What you could watch in the north was no comparison and it was very one-note and was overly fond of musical interlude into orchestral national musical pieces, and very absurdly overlaid lessons about proper behavior and militarism. The object intent hasn't really changed for the production except that there was probably now a sense of competition against illicit south korean media, and a desire to switch focus to family portrayal and encouragement of technological and material pursuit through diligent service to the nation. The older stuff in particular from the north was mostly just called 'quite boring.'
|
|
#
¿
Dec 4, 2017 05:49
|
|
|
"deterrence won't work against a madman" honestly seems more relevant to Trump than to any other party in this affair.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 5, 2017 14:40
|
|
|
It's been an exceptionally strange and stressful week for my family. The pessimism is starting to bleed to me but I still assume that lack of conflict is still more likely given literal decades of not-a-lot-of-conflict. Just not more likely enough.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2017 09:49
|
|
|
What fantasy miracle plan do these people think they have to prevent military retaliation? North Korea's entire existence essentially depends on the ability to make it extremely terrible for as many civilians as possible if they are attacked. That system hasn't decayed.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2017 22:31
|
|
|
How I have it told to me is that the drinking problem is very real for some very specific people. Like the junior salaried employee who must tag along with his direct management on social outings and follow the appropriate obeisances, night after night. Lots of pressure to drink related to work.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 20, 2018 02:14
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:40 million north koreans with some disease straina the world hasnt experienced yet, I know you're already being mocked for this, but which Unexperienced Diseases do you furiously imagine are apparently being housed in the DPRK?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2018 01:42
|
|
|
LeoMarr posted:Its very obviius you have a narrow minded view of how diseases are contracted. malaria is still prevailent in NK which was the point of discussing Mosquitos. Small pox lives and breeds in cramped conditiobs. Disease can spread rapidly due to the lack of gene pool diversity. Its not a conspiracy but thats a great buzzword for anything that doesnt conform to your narrow minded opinion. I dont understand what you are trying to counter here. Do you actually believe there are no diseases running rampant in NK? I halfway regret knowing I should have even asked the question. Should I be concerned about my weak genes helping bring back smallpox if more relatives get to bust out of north korea?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2018 07:53
|
|
|
Bip Roberts posted:I don't think North Koreans are all subhuman plague carriers like LeoMarr does. Phew, bodes well for me! Of course, leomarr had only briefly quoted/mentioned some things which did feature in conversations I had about the north that are for actual real, which mostly boils down to diseases of opportunity from poor living conditions, poor healthcare, and recurring famine issues. A LOT of intestinal parasites in some regions, like what that recent defector had.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2018 09:21
|
|
|
fishmech posted:You keep rambling on as if the reaffirmation of the previous status quo except North Korea remains under more sanctions is some sort of radical change. Why is that? Honestly a lot appears to be changing right now, even if a lot of it is tentative and subject to further scrutiny. It's just bad timing to have made a stand for the idea that nothing's actually happening, especially given the new field of potential concessions and diplomatic connections that are being made this week alone.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2018 05:23
|
|
|
Dapper_Swindler posted:so why the gently caress are the feuding so bad right now. like i get it, hellworld and everyone is trying to go nationalist while america shits itself and giggles in the corner. i know abe is a nationalist and SK and japan dislike each other because of the last 100 or years plus. is this because trump blew up that asian trade deal? genuinely I think the major factor in bringing these situations about is that as weird as south korea often is, the japanese right wing continues to be helmed by a wide base of people who are just really still an extremely insufferable group of insane culture purists and turbonationalistic misogynists who act like it would literally kill them to do anything like admit that the occupation of korea was bad and they did many imperial atrocities, and perhaps let's not be assholes about it, or take situations regarding that and make OTHER things, like simple defense pacts, and make that poo poo awkward as well. any dealings with japan, even regarding extremely concerning potential instabilities emerging from whatever's going on in the DPRK at any point in time, are bathed in the background radiation of that kind of crap. it is very hard to just not care, and go along with it
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2019 04:53
|
|
|
Fallen Hamprince posted:In non-nukes NK news, Kim Jong-Un wrote Juche out of the constitution, in a move sure to deeply wound some of the worst twitter accounts in existence. Friendship with Juche, a hypernationalist screed irrelevant to the actual structures of power in the militant, authoritarian dictatorship is ended. Now Great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism, a hypernationalist screed irrelevant to the actual structures of power in the militant, authoritarian dictatorship is my best friend.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 5, 2019 00:41
|
|
|
Technically, they're transitioning from an ultranationalist totalitarian monarchy to an ultranationalist totalitarian monarchy. There's little sense of a transition from any one thing to another outside of relatively unremarkable rebalances of apparatchik management and acceptance of the presence of jangmadangs and informal black economies. If only just, as far as I know. Everything else, including the termination of juche, is irrelevant to what systems of governance and power were or will be in play, because things like juche were just useless ultranationalist messaging that never realistically identified the constraints or purpose of power in the nation's government.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2019 22:11
|
|
|
OneEightHundred posted:This is aging pretty well though. Strangely, yeah. And I can't help but wonder what the events of the year sooo far are going to do to complicate US/SK
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2020 17:09
|
|
|
Charliegrs posted:So the Corona virus has made it to South Korea and it's probably only a matter of time before it makes it to North Korea. When it does it's probably going to be really bad. NK probably doesn't have a great healthcare system and the government is even more paranoid and secretive than in China. The north doesn't come off to me as having the same inbuilt urban concentrations or high transportation connection elements necessary to help these diseases really break out and thrive as hard as they can in other places. If it does break out in a big way there, though, a genuinely much higher percentage of people will die than usual. Healthcare rationing is already pretty substantially steep between the relative haves & have nots, and large portions of the populace could have health hazards like "their system's already pretty weak on account of all the intestinal parasites" -- bad factors that go into comorbid territories.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2020 09:50
|
|
|
I started paying attention to this about the time some specific things like "China dispatched medical experts on request to provide advisory assistance" came out. It has all the hallmarks of KJU having straight up kicked it, or he's in a coma, or he's gravely medically impaired or something and the structures of the dictatorship are trying to figure out how this is going to have to play out. As usual, there's so much guesswork that the're always other potential outcomes like it all being fake
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2020 19:43
|
|
|
I hate living in the universe where I had every reason to doubt it during the period of any CNN speculation but then TMZ goes "haha he dead" and suddenly now I wonder
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2020 20:38
|
|
|
At least he's not wrong to suggest that the more grossly ignorant we are, the more likely we are to do something dumb like send in "North Korean WMD-Elimination Tom Clancy Squads"
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2020 03:12
|
|
|
Grouchio posted:I wonder what Kim wants this time. Actually a bit anxious to find out what the preparatory antagonism is for. Like, it'll probably work and there won't be substantial acceleration, but each time this cycle starts up I get fretful messages from family.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2021 00:25
|
|
|
WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:It's not prepatory. This is a response to DCs language changing to "denuclearize NK" from "denuclearize the peninsula". It would be very out of character and trend with them if it was not preparatory in advance of trying to set up better material trade conditions. The pandemic has been horrific on what measurable commerce of the nation exists to publicly observe and quantify, the damage is not really fully known, and I will not be surprised if this is the run-up effort to attempting to open more manufactured goods or grey market trade.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2021 17:58
|
|
|
Things have gotten very strange recently in North Korea, even by the standards of "this place that constantly has half-formed rumors coming out about things being weird" It is very possible that the coronavirus was a bit too much setback and stability slide for the ruling class to handle well enough for their comfort. Some famine may be kicking up again. Either way it appears a loyalist contraction and/or leadership purge is occurring. Again.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 05:08
|
|
|
WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Tell me about Kim looking emaciated. wtf is that angle? Your guess is as good as mine. If any intelligence agency knows, they are not talking. Everyone else is just guessing based on the visible weight loss inbetween his appearances. "Emaciated" is their stretch verbiage. It fuels some clockwork click bait and not much else. Kim likely does have some potentially severe health issues, and they have never compelled him to manage his weight in the past regardless, even though they *probably* were behind at least a percentage of his lengthier disappearances. A wake up moment from an acute health event leading to better health tendencies? The onset of greater health issues where weight loss from severe illness starts to become apparent? Him eating healthier and working out due to being tired of being obese from a diet of unworldly decadence inherited from his upbringing in what had ultimately already become an obscenely indulgent authoritarian monarchy? He got hip to the common folks and their cool new methamphetamine habits? Again, if anyone outside the inner circle of his ruling apparatus knows, they aren't talking.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 06:05
|
|
|
WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Normally western media on NK is all horseshit or half of a half of truth, but are his people actually worried about him due to the weight loss? Seems insane but I've seen more than a few articles staying this. In this case it is Pyongyang itself which was spearheading messaging on his weight. quote:North Koreans have been worrying tearfully about leader Kim Jong Un’s “emaciated” condition, state media quoted a local resident as saying, in a highly unusual broadcast that provided rare acknowledgement of foreign speculation about Kim’s weight loss. quote:“Our people’s hearts ached most when we saw [Kim’s] emaciated looks,” North Korean state TV cited the unidentified man as saying on Friday. “Everyone says their tears are welling up in their eyes naturally.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/29/slimmer-kim-prompts-heartbreak-in-north-korea State media playing up his weight loss as hardship before any significant international scrutiny can begin, angling it as evidence of his devotion and hardworking toil (  ). It's just one of the strange things happening right now, not at all the strangest, that points to instability. Probably indicating that their agriculture is desperately off the rails again and significant famine has already once again set in.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2021 13:21
|
|
|
Koramei posted:Well this came out of nowhere Essentially a mercy release due to health status, as I hear it
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2021 17:23
|
|
|
This is heartbreaking. Itaewon's street and alleyway makeup creating human bottlenecks and a horrifying crush. Lots of narrow or angled alleyways. There's rumors about individual events causing a surge of people but it might have just been otherwise disorganized street overcrowding. The videos of people trying to resuscitate victims and waiting for medical support is hard to see. So many people helping is good, but all of it is so senseless.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2022 22:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 1, 2024 12:26 |
|
|
Charlz Guybon posted:Lol, the Jajangmyeon served at that restaurant serving as a front for CCP secret police is the most pathetic I've ever seen. I remember first seeing this and thinking that it was an absolute crime, and that at least when it was the mob you got the occasional amazing pizza or italian joint, but the best china can do is ... this
|
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2023 03:02
|
|