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| PYONGYANG WATCH – When the statues are toppled |
| 2003-04-16 |
| EFL, somewhat Our last column (How 'shock and awe' plays in Pyongyang, April 12) looked at how the Iraq war, and the fall of Baghdad to US forces in particular, is likely to be perceived in Pyongyang, focusing mainly on the international dimension and the nuclear issue. But those potent TV images - surely hidden from North Korean viewers - of Saddam Hussein's statues being felled and desecrated, with their echoes of Eastern Europe 1989, also raise the question: Could it happen here? Will we ever see joyous and frenzied North Korean mobs meting out the same treatment to statues of Kim Il-sung, and all the portraits of him and Kim Jong-il? (Come to think of it, there are few if any actual statues of the Dear Leader. His role is more that of high priest of his father's cult.) 
I've long wondered how North Koreans really see the state they're in. Another way to put this is in terms of two great mid-20th-century literary dystopias, each presciently but differently imagined by English writers. Is North Korea George Orwell's 1984, or is it Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? The difference, you may recall, is that in the latter people are programmed to believe; whereas in Nineteen Eighty-Four everybody knows they live under a Big Lie. North Korea does a remarkable job of presenting itself as a Brave New World. All those shiny happy people praising the Leader: grinning lipsticked munchkins warbling to accordions, or the serried ranks of human cartoons in mass games like last year's Arirang. This is quite a contrast from the cynicism that in the old Eastern Europe was never far below the surface. Forty years ago, an early British visitor to North Korea, economist Joan Robinson, reckoned that "no deviant thought has a chance to sprout". A society closed off from the wider world, with universal nursery education, had an unparalleled opportunity to capture and mold its citizens' hearts and minds. Has it worked? I wonder. Especially now, there are contradictions aplenty. For one thing, even if they don't know how well South Koreans or even Chinese now live - and I suspect many do know - North Koreans have seen their own living standards fall catastrophically, from industrialization to famine, just when Kim Jong-il succeeded his father Kim Il-sung. Don't they make a connection? Or do they really buy the official excuse, that this is all the fault of cruel nature, fickle allies, and imperialist blockade? The famine has undermined the Kim regime's legitimacy in another way too. Where the state used to provide, now many - maybe most - people must fend for themselves, buying food in private markets. The state must grudgingly tolerate these, but it still refuses to give market forces free rein as in China. Add in last July's half-baked reforms, and it's hard to imagine that most North Koreans don't harbor criticisms of their rulers' failure to provide (while the elite live well), even if it's unsafe to speak out. Another factor is that North Korea classifies everyone into three categories - loyal, wavering, or hostile - with up to 50 subdivisions. This determines everything: where you live, what you eat, what job you do, whether you can go to university, and more. Defectors confirm what is hardly surprising: that this is hugely resented as grossly unfair, based as it is on ascribed guilt (eg having grandparents who were landlords, or relatives in South Korea) rather than anything you yourself have done. With more than half the population classified as wavering or hostile, why should they be loyal to rulers who mistrust them? The extreme and arbitrary cruelty of the gulag, where whole families are sent, similarly breeds hatred. Will the worm ever turn? Over the years there have been occasional reports of unrest, usually military, but none has been fully confirmed. If any risings did occur, they evidently failed: Kim Jong-il is still there. Iraq, after all, has shown how an unpopular but brutal and well-organized regime can crush resistance and cling to power. In that poignant and pointed TV image, even pulling down Saddam's statue, let alone the man himself and his rule, needed a big helping hand from an American tank. Whatever Kim Jong-il's nightmares, somehow I doubt if we shall ever see tanks of the USFK (United States Forces, Korea) - or even South Korean - rolling down Pyongyang's broad avenues. But there are other ways to separate a people from their rulers. Doug Shin, a US-Korean activist, plans to send thousands of tiny radios by balloon across the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea. Sounds crazy to some, but hey, why not give it a try? |
| Posted by:Tadderly |
| #1 plans to send thousands of tiny radios by balloon across the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea Nice idea except little Kimmie has radio jammers planted every where. He's not paranoid, it's just that everyone is out to get him. |
| Posted by: rg117 2003-04-16 19:23:43 |