I am happy for the people of North Korea as rumours of the tentative introduction of a market economy by their leader, Kim Jong-il are leaked from diplomatic sources. Rice is no longer to be fixed and rationed but its price is now allowed to float and be bought and sold on the free market. The resultant rise in price to reflect economic reality has also prompted wage increases for many of its citizens. Whether this is a shift of policy borne of ideological change or one of pragmatism as a hungry and rebellious people begin to murmur is hard to tell. Certainly an openness to a previously shut out world was symbolised in October 2000 with the visit of the then American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Shades of Mao and Nixon, one thinks, but Chinese reform first required the death of Mao and an unsightly power struggle.
What is obvious though is that for nearly fifty years since the Korean War, these people have suffered tremendously. First under the barrage of that three year Soviet-American conflict, and then under the mismanagement of an economy by its founder, Kim Il-sung. Famine, poverty and a complete lack of liberty have been the bywords of a nation which has relied heavily on Western aid as one man-made or natural disaster followed another and the military soaked up a huge slice of the country’s meagre GDP.
As the country defaulted on all its loans in 1980 (except for Japan), one wonders how much this oppressive government has been propped up by Western dollars and State bags of grain and medicine? It seems that the prospect of North Korea collapsing and politically destabilising the region was a worse scenario to the CIA and military planners of the Pentagon than liberating its emaciated populace. How often have we heard that sorry tale of Statist priorities before? Are not the tender mercies of the State cruel?
As North Korea’s leaders looked enviously on South Korea’s prosperity and joint-hosting of the FIFA soccer world cup, food was further extracted from starving mouths as the government tried to upstage this by holding a lavish festival in honour of their founder’s birthday. No one here noticed it and it is unlikely the North Koreans were told there was a World Cup going on just over the heavily guarded border. A bit pointless, one may then deduce, but this is a country which comes closest to George Orwell’s Nightmare State with the jackboot endlessly stamping on a human face. Any light relief, even a festival perpetuating the personality cult of political idolatry in extremis is welcome by a wearied people.
Political idolatry finds its zenith in North Korea. The usual suspects are there, endless murals and gargantuan pictures, which flatter to deceive. Propaganda pictures of the “Dear Leader” giving advice in an omniscient manner to plumbers, soldiers and engineers symbolise perfectly the centrally planned economy whilst the blare of the sirens across Pyongyang marshals the workers.
Three times it shrills, 7am, noon and midnight as citizens are commanded to work, eat and sleep. A band emerges at 8:15am to play rousing revolutionary songs as workers shuffle blankly to work across vast boulevards which are devoid of cars or other items capitalist nations take for granted. If the inclination is there, they can go to the large shops which dismally stock nothing but pens, plastic kids’ shoes, shampoo and rusting stovetop irons. It is the consumer equivalent of Hades and it is best that they do not know what goes on at the Heavenly equivalent of Wal-Mart.
The personality cult achieves messianic status in the role of the President of North Korea. Kim Jong-il is Head of State but the presidential post is held by Kim Jong-il’s father, Kim Il-sung. The problem is that he has been dead since 1994. In an astonishing play of godhood, he has been assigned the Presidency “eternally”. Whilst Kim Il-sung posthumously presides over North Korea like God, the Father, the story concerning his son’s birth borders dangerously on a nativity play. According to communist legend, he was born at the top of a mountain and was heralded by a new star and a double rainbow. If they weren’t atheists, we would be expecting a choir of angels to join in. The truth is less flattering as the present leader was actually born in 1941 during his father’s exile in Soviet Siberia and not during the Korean War.
The people of North Korea deserve better than these megalomaniacs – anyone deserves better than them. As the last Stalinists begin to look towards a nascent market economy, we hope a chapter is about to close on human history that will never be written again.
July 22 , 2002
