RES: a trip to North Korea

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Mon Apr 24 18:59:11 PDT 2000



> Anti-Stalinism as a
> marketable intellectual commodity,
> doesn't say anything
> about how North Koreans thought and think about Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong
> Il, & North Korean political economy in general, for instance. One
> may enjoy Zizek's brand of anti-Stalinism, but one remains ignorant
> of North Korea (its past, present, and possible future directions)
> after reading it.
> Yoshie

North Koreans' admiration for Kim stemmed from his composure under US bombing that left separated families, widows, orphans, disabled in its wake (about 25% of NK population was killed and another 50% was wounded). In immediate aftermath of 1953 armistice, Kim gov't undertook determined economic planning that succeeded in steady improvement of people's lives for about 2 decades (heavy defense burden would be factor in eventual development lag). Irrespective of later Kim-worship - emergence of which coincides, not coincidentally I think, with onset of economic stagnation in late 1960s/early 1970s - not hard to understand why folks might have praised him. Michael Hoover



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