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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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I wonder what their reaction will be when KJI loses his grip and the North throws open its doors to the world.
They'll want to know why so many of their Southern brothers praised KJI and stuck their fingers in their ears when they heard the truth. My guess is that they'll dissemble and mumble something incoherent about the US. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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The United States will consider expanding its broadcasts to North Korea and providing literature for its people to learn about the outside world, a U.S. government report said Sunday.
The State Department report to Congress said non-governmental organizations have proposed a number of ways to reach the people in North Korea, an isolated communist country.
They include expanding Korean-language broadcasting, increasing medium-wave radio broadcasts, and providing radios or other devices capable of receiving foreign broadcasts in North Korea, it said.
Providing literature from outside North Korea and recording programming onto cassette and video tapes for use in the country have also been proposed, it said.
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How exactly would this work? Would they smuggle it in from China? My big concern is that any average North Korean caught in possession of the literature, videotapes, etc would just be hauled off to a conentration camp, along with their families and anyone else they happened to come into contact with. I think the propaganda would have to be very specifically targetted at groups with some degree of immunity from persecution, not just(for example) dropped from an airplane onto schoolyards.
I started another thread on here about the incursions of western pop culture into ruling party circles in North Korea. Going by this article, I'd wager that the greatest potential for dissent to develop is among these elite circles, who already have some exposure to the outside world. But of course they're also the people who have the greatest material interest in keeping the current system afloat.
Does anyone with the releavant background here know exactly how you would get propaganda into North Korea, without endangering the safety of the people who come into contact with it? |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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Here's as good a run-down of the argument as I think you're going to find.
http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone/entry/2004/10/winning_the_inf.php
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The regime would also send soldiers and police to try to pick up every smuggled item. Let them. This leads us to the most interesting part of the analysis. Could North Korea��s road-bound, mechanized army and all of its antiquated vehicles effectively keep the countryside free of radios, leaflets, and other contraband? How would this impact the nation��s infrastructure? Would it force the army to send its personnel away from their guns and tanks along the DMZ? Would it force the North Koreans to disperse their forces? Would it loosen the regime��s control in the cities? Would it force the cancellation of military training exercises? Would it strain ageing equipment and lead to a maintenance fiasco? Would it, in effect, keep the regime perpetually off-balance as its army tried to cover vast areas of mountainous countryside, its navy tried to protect two long coasts, and its air force tried to stop thousands of inexpensive balloons and UAVs from penetrating its airspace?
What these key provisions of the NKHRA offer us is a creative, non-violent, but cunningly effective option for bringing true sunshine to North Korea. Think OPLAN 5030 meets Martin Luther King. It would leave North Korea with two choices, both of them bad: spend the entire national budget on litter control, or let the people see the truth. This could force Kim Jong-Il to do what he will never do through diplomacy alone—negotiate in good faith. The other alternative would be his departure from this world. Either way, the big winners would be the people of North Korea. |
I haven't given this strategy a lot of thought but I think I agree with him. I believe the rural people are the key here, not the elites. People living under the Soviet thumb always hated it. But they didn't do anything until a tipping point was reached -- and then things unraveled with astonishing speed. I firmly believe the North will collapse from bottom up and not the top down.
And I think we can count on the South to be outraged about public executions in the North just as soon as someone dies for reading a leaflet dropped by the US. |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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| My big concern is that any average North Korean caught in possession of the literature, videotapes, etc would just be hauled off to a conentration camp, along with their families and anyone else they happened to come into contact with. I think the propaganda would have to be very specifically targetted at groups with some degree of immunity from persecution, not just(for example) dropped from an airplane onto schoolyards. |
Well put. It might be an enormous waste of resources, and horrible PR for the US. Whoever would keep the literature would be in considerable personal danger, and at any rate, most would believe that the literature dropped is lies anyway. The government would certainly tell the population so if the leaflets became impossible to ignore.
While I'm no Russian history major, I don't believe the common populace had a great role in the dissolution of the USSR. Many lower-class people to this day still wish for the good old days, and if NK collapsed tomorrow there would be peasant farmers twenty years from now saying that life was better under Great Leader. What caused the USSR to fade away was its financial inability to continue while trying to keep up with Reagan's military budgets, which also led to military inability to retain its hold on satellite states. Also, as OTOH noted, awareness of the outside world came from the top; Gorbachev's policy of openness and a rising awareness among the politburo that the system was untenable led to changes in mindsets percolating downward.
We know so little about NK's actual power structure, but this may or may not be the case there when there is so little power sharing. If KJL actually does control absolutely everything, there isn't much opportunity for senior politicians to risk attitudes of openness. In the same way, the problem with Hussein Iraq wasn't that it was unstable, but that it was so very stable in its bloody stagnation. At least NK doesn't have oil to prop it up, and if China stopped funding it the country could be forced to change quite quickly. Perhaps the best American strategy would be to drive a wedge between China and NK, and that's difficult when China would most certainly use Taiwan as a bargaining chip.
Ken:> |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 3:49 am Post subject: |
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And I think we can count on the South to be outraged about public executions in the North just as soon as someone dies for reading a leaflet dropped by the US.
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I often agree with your posts, but I disagree with this statement. If anything, (IMO) just the opposite would happen. Many South Koreans are able to discount what is happening in the North by saying whatever the US says about conditions up there is a big lie. My guess is that if someone were caught with a smuggled radio that could receive outside broadcasts, the Southerners would sympathize with the government because 'obviously' the US was lieing to the Norks and KJI was justified in protecting his people from outside propaganda.
It's my sneaking suspicion that if the North ever does fall, the people up there will be more pro-west than the Southerners are now, quite similar to how Eastern Europe is more pro-American than Western Europe...because they actually experienced the horrors of communism, rather than listened to their college profs soft soap the concentration camps and purges as the moral equivalent of god-knows-what.
PS: I wish the OP would edit the title of the tread: The skittish horse skidded on the slippery manure and fell on its pattuty. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:02 am Post subject: |
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From hater's link:
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| It would leave North Korea with two choices, both of them bad: spend the entire national budget on litter control, or let the people see the truth. |
I think they would try litter control before they tried glasnost. And unfortunately I think that part of "litter control" would be locking up anyone who came into contact with the litter, including people who just happened to pick up a pamphlet without knowing what was written on it.
I heard somewhere that during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Red Guards used to blare anti-Kim Il Sung propaganda from loudspeakers just the other side of the border. Stuff denouncing him as an "aristocratic socialist" and whatnot. I wonder how the Norks responded to this.
Last edited by On the other hand on Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:29 am; edited 1 time in total |
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BigBlackEquus
Joined: 05 Jul 2005
Location: Lotte controls Asia with bad chocolate!
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:19 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
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| I have realized that a lot of the reason why schools are as crappy as they are is because those elites who run everything behind the scenes WANT South Korean people to be dummified lemmings who memorize math problems in hagwons and vocabulary words from the dictionary. |
I don't agree with this analysis at all. The chaebol owners know, probably better than anyone, that well-educated people are needed to work in the chaebols.
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You can be educated, yet not educated in the ways of thinking for yourself. That was more along the lines of what I was trying to say.
Koreans don't think well for themselves, as a whole. They are sort of like watching a massive flock of birds going this way, then that way, then up, then down, seemingly without reason except their own. But there are certain individuals who are controlling things, whether the realize it or not. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 10:51 am Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I do think there is more to it. |
I realize I wrote "they have to pander to" when I meant to write "they believe they have to pander to". A small distinction perhaps but I wanted to mention it. |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 12:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
I often agree with your posts, but I disagree with this statement. If anything, (IMO) just the opposite would happen. Many South Koreans are able to discount what is happening in the North by saying whatever the US says about conditions up there is a big lie. My guess is that if someone were caught with a smuggled radio that could receive outside broadcasts, the Southerners would sympathize with the government because 'obviously' the US was lieing to the Norks and KJI was justified in protecting his people from outside propaganda.
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Right, this is pretty much what I was trying to say. As much as my cynicism about the Korean left only continues to grow, and I'm certain that at first they would be pissed at us for 'causing' the deaths of North Koreans, I'm not yet cynical enough to think that they wouldn't eventually think about why people were being killed for reading pamphlets.
Right now they can stick their fingers in their ears when they hear an unpleasant truth. But a story like that -- at first they would use it to bash the US, sure. But they wouldn't be able to use the story to bash us without also speaking honestly about gulags and public executions, which in the end would backfire on them. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 1:55 pm Post subject: |
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Here is a short piece from today's Chosun Ilbo that puts some numbers to the topic on this thread.
50 Percent Want Seoul to Vote for N.Korea Resolution
More than 50 percent of South Koreans believe the government should vote for an EU-led resolution condemning North Korea��s human rights abuses in the UN General Assembly, a snap survey suggests. The poll by Research & Research of 800 adults nationwide found 53.3 percent in favor of voting for the resolution. The government has decided to abstain.
In the survey published Wednesday, only 22.2 percent agreed that the government must create a favorable mood for inter-Korean reconciliation and greater bilateral cooperation and abstain.
Of those in favor of voting for the resolution, men made up 63.8 percent, and people in their 30s 60.2 percent, educated respondents starting with undergraduates 62.6 percent and the self-employed 65.6 percent.
Asked if South Korean intervention in North Korean human rights could help with a basket of issues including six-party talks on Pyongyang��s nuclear program, 34.3 percent replied it would make no significant difference. However, 22.7 percent said it would have a positive impact and the remaining 25 percent said it would adversely affect inter-Korean ties.
The poll was conducted shortly after the resolution was introduced at the General Assembly on Oct. 2. The margin of error is a substantial 3.46 percent. The vote is expected on Nov. 18. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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BTW, Bulsajo, it's nice to see your classic avatar back at work. This is a fine addition to it: "Why yes, as a matter of fact that IS Spidey112233 on the left". It pretty well sums up my feelings, too. There seems to be a higher than usual number of trolls in this season's crop of newbies here at Dave's.  |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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Koreans don't think well for themselves, as a whole. They are sort of like watching a massive flock of birds going this way, then that way, then up, then down, seemingly without reason except their own. But there are certain individuals who are controlling things, whether the realize it or not.
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Can you explain your views a little more?
When I think about South Korea, I think about them transforming a military dictatorship into a democracy where the two opposing parties have transferred power peacefully. The last two presidential elections have been very close contests. The news article I posted above says 53% disagree with the government's policy. I can't square all that with what you are saying.
I think the media creates an appearance that is not in tune with the reality on the street. |
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roybetis1
Joined: 13 Jun 2005
Location: Not near a beach like my recruiter promised.
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| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:28 pm Post subject: |
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From what I remember one of my uni prof's saying, isn't the status quo in North Korea best for everyone? Except obviously the North Korean people.
If unification occurs China and Russia have a US allied country and US military at their borders. Nobody, including the US, wants this. China's already freaking out about US missiles in Taiwan. There's no way they're going to let soldiers at their borders.
It seems to me that China and the US are both propping up the North Korean state. They also don't want a collapse or a coup because missiles tend to be accidently launched at those times, and North Koreas missiles are capable of hitting two of the US's biggest trading partners, South Korea and Japan. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2005 7:38 am Post subject: |
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They want to reach a rapprochement with the North leading to unification later on. They don't want to provoke them.
It's wrong to assume that South Koreans in general aren't quite well aware of the North's appalling human rights record and economic and other failings. Aside from the young generation they grew up with a diet of virulent anti-Northern propaganda, after all. They just don't see the need to dwell on it publically and they don't need outsiders blundering in and upsetting things. |
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Yu_Bum_suk
Joined: 25 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 8:23 pm Post subject: |
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I think that because they see themselves so much as "one people" (even if others don't) they find it an embarrassment they'd rather avoid. If your brother was a murderer and a wife-beater and a child abuser would you like it to be widely advertised?
I'd love to take a tour of the North and talk to my 'escorts' about the two Koreas. "All of my high school students have handphones. Do you have a handphone. Here are some pics. This is of the two huge garbage cans of food that my students waste after every meal. If I brought those cans into a school cafeteria here I wonder how long they'd last?..." |
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