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    Korea
     May 4, 2011


Page 1 of 2
The inevitability of Kim revisionism
By Andrei Lankov

Once every decade or two, television screens show powerful and memorable images such as the toppling statue of a tyrant. The destruction of a dictator's statue makes for a potent political symbol, and few revolutionaries can resist the temptation.

It is said that sooner or later this fate will befall statues of Kim Il-sung, in 1945 a minor guerrilla commander who, with much Soviet backing, took power in North Korea and remained its absolute ruler until his death in 1994. However, this author is somewhat skeptical about the prospects: I would not be surprised to learn that some time in the 2030s it is trendy to keep a portrait of the long-deceased dictator in a North Korean house.

Let's be blunt: the rule of the Kim family was a disaster which has

 
few parallels in world history - even if judged by the brutal standards of the 20th century. The ratio of the political prison camp inmates to the total population in North Korea is roughly similar to that of Stalin's Russia. The famine of 1996-1999 killed a larger part of population than the Great Leap Forward famine in Mao Zedong's China. The Korean War (1950-1953), launched by the Kim Il-sung as an unsuccessful attempt to unify the country, was the bloodiest conflict in Korean history.

And, unlike many other strongmen of the last century (not least Joseph Stalin, Kim Il-sung's mentor), the Kims cannot even justify this manslaughter with social or economic success. On the contrary, during the 60 or so years of their rule, the Kims have ruined what in 1945 was economically the most developed region of continental Asia.

In short, the Kim family regime has been a disaster. So, it seems only logical to assume that after its eventual demise (and few would doubt that this demise will happen sooner or later), the Koreans in both South and North will be unified in despising the North's former rulers. The names of the two Kims, and in heir apparent Kim Jong-eun possibly a third, may well be damned by history. However, something makes the present author a bit skeptical about the unavoidability of such an outcome.

Maybe it is my Soviet/Russian background? When nowadays one drops into the average Russian bookshop, he or she sees in the history section a large number of treatises which extol in great length the superior wisdom of Generalissimo Stalin and the wisdom of his devoted generals and statesmen. Sometimes these books mention the terror of 1936-38 or the famine of the 1930s, but usually as tragic mistakes or, rather, results of some intrigues by anti-Stalin conspirators.

More frequently, though, references to the Great Purge are laughed at, with an explicit assumption that reports of mass executions were grossly exaggerated and that those few who were killed by Stalin's police actually got what they deserved (being spies and saboteurs). It is a bit more difficult to ignore the famine of the early 1930s, but it also can be blamed on bad weather and bad officials.

One should not dismiss these books as fringe writings (after all, Italy has its share of Mussolini admirers, too). They clearly belong to the mainstream. Stalin's popularity hit a record low in the early 1990s, but he is now again popular in Russia, and his admirers are by no means small fringe groups.

The attitude is even more powerful when it comes to the discussion of the Soviet past in general. Every Russian politician knows well that he or she is not going to win votes by being excessively harsh in appraising the achievements of the glorious Soviet past. The same trends exist in many (but not all) ex-communist countries: in Germany, at the some point in the late 1990s as many as one third of East Germans told pollsters that the unification was a mistake, and that they would prefer to move back to the DDR (German Democratic Republic).

Educated Western readers tend to see the case of de-nazification in Germany and the complete rejection of Hitler's past by the Germans as something normal. But it is actually an exception with few if any parallels worldwide. Japan, for example, is far less willing to admit the scale of its former misdeeds, and in Turkey the mainstream opinion is not ready even to accept the fact of Armenian genocide - probably, the first "modern" genocide. Each case has its explanations, but one should realize: the total rejection of the recent past, German style, is by no means typical.

We cannot know the future, but currently it seems that the eventual unification of Korea under the Seoul regime is the only possible long-term outcome of the Korean crisis. But once the Kim family regime is gone, the 25 million human beings who lived under their rule will have to make something of their sad and terrifying experiences. Frankly speaking, the entire era was a massive waste of time, resources and lives, but can the average North Korean person accept and admit this? Some people, no doubt, will come to such painful conclusions, but many more will probably not.

There will be no shortage of people who are bound to lose out from unification and/or regime change in North Korea. The Kim family has produced a small army of professional indoctrinators and overseers. Many a well-educated North Korean has made a decent (that is by North Korean standards) living by lecturing his/her compatriots about the finer points of the Juche (self-reliance) doctrine or the heroic deeds of the Kim family. Many others have been employed to enforce the manifold regulations and rules. Under the new system, these people will instantly find out that their arcane skills will be of little use. They are bound to feel unhappy about the new world and they are also bound to search for ways to justify and embellish their past.

The social and material difficulties of these people can be trivialized by describing them as "willing collaborators of a brutal regime" (as if informed career choice would have been possible in their youth). However, in the post-unification Korea there are social groups whose problems cannot be dismissed so easily.

Once the country is unified, the majority of North Korean professionals will find out that in the new world, their skills are of little if any value. What can be done by a North Korean medical doctor who knows nothing of 95% of all the procedures and treatments which are routine in modern medicine? What can be done with an engineer who has spent all his life repairing rusting industrial equipment of 1960s' Soviet vintage?

What about a school teacher who has spent decades teaching Korean literature but still has no clue about the majority of authors who really constitute its mainstream (Korean literature as understood in North Korea is essentially a collection of eulogies to the Leaders, whilst everything produced in the South since 1945, as well as a significant part of the colonial era literature is ignored)?

None of these people can be portrayed as a regime collaborator, but they are likely to share the sorry fate of former ideological indoctrinators and minor police clerks. Some of them will manage to re-educate themselves, while others will find new and rewarding career paths, but the lucky will be few in number. The majority is bound to have at least ambivalent feelings about the post-unification situation.

However we should not be too elite-orientated. Unfortunately, the common North Korean will also have many good reasons to feel dissatisfied about the state of the country after unification. Assuming that North Korea will not change much until its collapse (and this is very likely), after unification more or less every North Korean above the age of 30 will find his/herself restricted to low-paid, unskilled or semi-skilled jobs.

This does not mean that unification will bring ruin to a majority of North Koreans. On the contrary, their incomes, their nutrition and their consumer lives are likely to improve dramatically and almost instantly. Nonetheless, they will probably soon take the new relative prosperity for granted, and will compare their income and social standing not with Kim Il-sung's past, but with the situation of South Koreans.

Alas, this comparison is almost certain to be discouraging. Most North Koreans are likely to remain second-class citizens because the lack of relevant skills will prevent them from acquiring skilled work in the post-unification economy (reeducation is difficult in their age, with a heavy burden of social responsibilities on their shoulders). Formerly skilled blue-collar workers as well as many office clerks will have to spend the rest of their work lives sweeping streets and washing dishes. They will probably earn more than a minor official under the Kims' rule, but their relative inferiority will cause much problem.

In most cases their inferior social position will be a result of their low skills but one should not count on them admitting and accepting this. It will probably be thought of as discrimination by the "arrogant and greedy" Southerners - and, to be sure, this allegation will have much truth to it. The experience of North Korean refugees in the South today seems to confirm that such discrimination is indeed very likely to be present. Like it or not, in the post-unification at least some North Koreans (perhaps many of them) will see themselves as collective losers who were first seduced by visions of South Korean prosperity and then let down by the (real and alleged) arrogance of Southerners. 

Continued 1 2  


North Koreans out of revolutionary loop
(Mar 1, '11)

 

 
 



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