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Korea Records Asia's Lowest GDP Growth
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patchy

Joined: 26 Apr 2005

Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 8:47 am Post subject:

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I will grant you that the North outpaced the South until about the mid 1960's,

The South only caught up in the 70s. North Korea was doing quite well until the 90s (the "Roaring 80s") when the famine hit.

A store in Pyongyang in the 80s (the apogee of the North Koreans' economic success) was frequented by 'hundreds of Koreans ... 'examining Gucci purses, gauzy Paris frocks, Savile Row suits, and Japanese frozen foods.'" (Cumings "North Korea")

You need to take into account that North Korea was doing well and outstripped South Korea for about 30 years even though North Korea was not a capitalist country AND was turned into a moonscape by the Americans during the Korean War.

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when the economy essentially stagnated due to an excessive proportion of the GDP going to the military, and lack of manpower.

I don't think the economy "stagnated" due to these things. (When you're in an arms race for survival against the world's richest country that spends one-third of its budget on defense, you've got to be well-armed. North Korea did that - and more - it even helped arm its allies. It's not a choice the North Koreans have - if they want to survive as a sovereign nation - they have to spend all that money on their defense and put all those people into uniform - the USA is setting the bar (ever higher and higher) - not the North Koreans.) But it was still doing well despite all these tribulations up until the 90s. It was mainly the natural disasters and collapse of the Soviet Union that tipped the scale.

Lack of manpower? Don't know what you're referring to here.

Interesting you mention a huge infrastructure with nobody to man it - this is a problem of Japan, not really a problem of North Korea - read "Dogs and Demons". This is a problem of capitalism when the 'bubble' bursts.

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Gulags enabled the construction of the infrastructure required to rebuild the country. Slave labour provided by dissidents built the North Korea of today.

Those gulags consisted of 150,000 people at the most. I doubt 150,000 people is a sufficient number to have built the country of today... besides how could they if they were kept in prison camps?

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No system built in such a fashion is worthwhile. And this particular system failed, and I will argue that it was due to a lack of manpower, as there simply aren't enough North Koreans to maintain their armed forces at the current level, and still operate industry and grow food.

The system hasn't failed (North Korea is still going strong: see http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GL17Dg01.html "China raises its stake in North Korea"), and the famine wasn't due to lack of manpower. It was due to natural disasters (probably related to global warming) and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USA is not helping the crisis - it wants to see more people starve - while their own country gets fatter and fatter.

I will theorize that it was due to an overdependence on chemical fertilizers as well. Unlike China and South Korea (up until relatively recently) which used manure for fertilization, the North Koreans used chemical fertilizers from early on and lots of it. With the supply of oil much reduced and a change in environmental conditions brought about by the floods and droughts, this heavy dependence on chemical fertilization IMO proved very deadly. They could have learned very much from Cuba which uses innovative self-sustaining methods of agriculture such as permaculture which means that it is relatively self-reliant in producing food and doesn't depend on the supply of man-made chemicals (it also helps that Cuba is a relatively fertile country).

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And I would really love to see your sources that illustrate the North Korean dynamo for "decades" after the Korean War, as opposed to the single decade that I've seen in most literature on the topic.

In most 'literature'? Are you kidding? You mean in most US news media don't you?

In Cumings book, "North Korea", the visit of a Swedish diplomat is described, in 1975. What he saw: the "finest Siemens equipment in the top hospitals, fleets of Mercedes and Volvos, and entire pantyhose factory for urban women, ... air conditioning, ...." From the "ashes of the Korean War', the North Koreans were able to re-build and provide free housing and health care for everyone, achieving a standard of living higher and 'more equitably distributed than in the South' with no sign of homelessness and 'widespread poverty ..visible in the ROK at the time". You didn't even see any beggars at that time.

(p185 Cumings) "Published data from the CIA indicated IN 1978 that the ROK had only drawn even with the North in per capita GNP; the DPRK used as much electricity as the South, with half the South's population; it produced more crude steel and three times the number of machine tools .. as the South ... industrial production ... more than doubled in the North, growing at an annual average rate of 14% between 1965 and 1976 ... Its agriculture was far ahead of the South's in productivity; it used miracle seedlings and its chemical fertilizer application was 'probably among the highest in the world,' [hence my speculation that this was one of the causes of the later famine]".

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If having the Soviet's install Kim il-Sung equates choice, then the American installation of Rhee must qualify as an equal choice.

I think you are incorrect in believing this: I was actually wrong in what I wrote above - I attributed much of North Korea's successful fight for independence from the Japanese to the Soviets. It is actually the other way around: the North Korean guerilla fighters were instrumental in keeping the Japanese from invading the USSR by keeping them busy in Manchukuo. And Koreans formed the majority of the anti-Japanese resistant groups in many cases in China. In Manchukuo, 90% of the CCP were Korean - it should have been called the Korean Communist Party (Cumings).

Stalin even ordered the Koreans to stop fighting the Japanese around 1940 - he didn't want to upset the Japanese into attacking the USSR. He signed a neutrality pact with the Japanese which they kept until 1945. He also ordered the execution of every Korean agent of the Communist International 'he could get his hands on', suspecting they might be Japanese spies in the late 30s. (Cumings).

In the 30s the Soviets were alone among the major powers in confronting the Japanese. But this wasn't much of a sacrifice anyway, and all they had to do was to convince the Japanese to turn south rather than north. "There is no evidence of substantial Soviet support to Korean and Chinese .. guerillas thereafter, yet they bore the brunt of the struggle to keep the Japanese [southward] instead of [northward]." (Cumings)

The Soviets had no plan for Korea when it occupied the North in August 1945 (Lankov), unlike the Americans who had been planning "for a postwar occupation of Korea within six months of Pearl Harbor". The US were the first to "build up an army, a national police force, and an interim government under Syngman Rhee", with all three elements accomplished by the end of 1945.

Kim Il Sung was not even handpicked by the Russians "but for a number of months was subordinate in Russian minds to Cho Man-Sik; Kim was going to be defense minister under an interim regime headed by Cho". (Cumings)

"It was only after the guerillas returned that they pushed Kim Il Sung forward as a first among equals." Kim later made no reference to the Soviets in helping to build the KPA (Korean People's Army) in an inaugural speech.

It was the North Koreans who anointed Kim Il Sung as their leader, not the Soviets who had in their minds another man (Cho). It was the North Koreans who decided to call Kim Il Sung "suryeong" ("an ancient Koguryo term meaning supreme or maximum leader"), 'which had been reserved for Stalin until that time'. And doing this was a 'form of nationalist heresy to Soviet ideologues'.

Moreover the KPA was the "'newborn baby'" of the "Kim guerilla detachment", not a legacy of the Soviets ... "The KPA inherited and carried on the guerilla tradition [of the North Koreans] ..."

Syngman Rhee was a tool of the US. He spent most of the occupation in the USA studying theology. Nobody liked him or respected him when he came back to Korea to claim the presidency. He was no hero of the occupation.

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I don't seem to recall comparing NK to the US.

Well I also said 'similar countries' meaning the US which is capitalist like South Korea.

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But your argument that North Korea is "fine" considering the embargo, the military threat, the juche doctrine..

You are mixing things up. North Korea doesn't have an embargo on anyone. It faces a military threat from the USA. North Korea has a juche philosophy - so what?

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it pales in comparison to Cuba, a communist country that faces similar circumstances. I will give the Cubans credit, they are probably better off today then they would be if they embraced capitalism. Communism can work, it just didn't in NK.

Well, it didn't pale in comparison to Cuba for a long time, only since the mid 90s when the famine struck. In fact NK's infant mortality, standards of health care, education, literacy and life expectancy was that of the First World, and better than many countries that are capitalist - India for example - right up until the time of the famine. And North Korea doesn't have the benefit of having a good climate like Cuba nor fertile soil like Cuba; and Cuba never went through a war like Korea did, it had a civil war but not on a scale like the North Koreans where 2 million North Koreans were killed, mostly by the aerial bombing of the Americans, which also devastated the land as well. The bombing of the Americans is actually a war crime. They hit civilian targets and destroyed two dams that the farmers depended on for agriculture. Hundreds of thousands starved because of this. North Korea was a moonscape wasteland after the Americans left. Hardly a house was left standing. Every city and town was leveled. The North Koreans survived this by living underground in a network of tunnels which were virtually cities - they had schools, hospitals and so on in these tunnels.

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Well you apply similar logic to South Korea, which asked its ally to assist it, but which you interpret as being "imperialist forces" trying to subvert the North. I counter that communist imperialism sought to expand communist influence to another part of Asia, as a significantly stronger nation (China), intervened in the war and invaded a much weaker one (South Korea). Not to mention the significant assistance in terms of cash, arms, resources and volunteer pilots that the Soviets supplied.

I don't remember the South Koreans asking the US to come over, take over its government (by kicking out the government that had formed after the Japanese left), kill a few hundred thousand Communists, and install a gormless puppet, Rhee, as their lapdog president.

Unlike the North where the patriots took over the running of the state - they stopped the USSR from interfering too much - by choosing their own guy and saying no thank you to their man. Then Kim Il Sung's 'temerity' in trying to get South Korea back, "the gall of that man!", what could he have been thinking of, this guy who had devoted most of his life to getting Korea back from the Japanese?

China only intervened when the US went all the way up to Yalu River; they couldn't be sure the Americans were just going to stay in Korea. That's why they helped out the North Koreans. And right after the war, the Chinese went back to their home. Unlike the Americans.

Quote:

I agree totally with your assessment there. That side just happened to be the losing side, while the South picked the winning side. Hence the South having an economy to speak of now, and people in North Korea eating clay and tree bark just to kill the hunger pangs.

It doesn't help that the US has imposed an embargo on the North Koreans. no ally of the USA can assist it. Though South Korea gets around it. They've even choked the supply of cash that the North Koreans can use to buy food, by freezing bank accounts.

It's not the first time that the enemies of the North Koreans have chosen starvation as a weapon; the Japanese did that too to the North Koreans.
Hundreds of thousands of them died but they pulled through in the end.

"Also huddled on the east side of the mountain .. were twenty to thirty children, most of them orphans of guerilla parents, murdered in the purges and the monstrous counterinsurgency campaigns mounted by the Japanese, or starved to death in Japanese wintertime blockades of the mountains. These children were supervised by Kim Chong-suk .. later to become the wife of Kim Il Sung. Kim Il Sung brought these youngsters to sleep with him at night (an ancient Korean custom, still practised); every bedtime, they fought over who got to be next. Among these children was .. Yi O-song ...." One of his brothers died in a Japanese 'pacification' campaign, two died as guerillas on the battlefield, his mother starved to death in a blockaded guerilla base, a brother-in-law was executed in a purge, two sisters (both guerillas) died of starvation. "Extremely malnourished himself, Yi never reached full adult growth." (Cumings)

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I admire those who stand up to great evil in spite of the liklihood of harm to themselves and their families. I admire the way that both North and South Koreans opposed the Japanese tyranny.

It was mainly the North that stood up to the Japanese. The South mostly didn't and collaborated with the Japanese. Hence the North-South split. A guerilla who fought the Japanese became head of North Korea's KPA. A Korean who collaborated with the Japanese during the occupation hunting down the guerillas was appointed the head of the ROK army.

This is the difference between North and South. That's why the Grand National Party is headed by the daughter of a Japanese army officer who even had a Japanese name and proud to use it. It's like a major political party of the US being headed by one of Benedict Arnold's offspring.

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I just don't believe all that crap about Kim il-Sung the patriot. I believe the real history of Kim il-Sung, the Kim il-Sung who rode out WW2 in the Soviet Union, and only came back to the North with Soviet occupation forces in 1945 who then installed him as President. I bet you believe that Kim Jong-Il was born on Mt Paekdu and once got 13 holes in one in a game of golf. I bet you also believe that thousands of cranes came and took Kim il-Sung to paradise when he died. I personally don't buy any of those stories out of the North.

It doesn't matter what you personally believe or not... it is a fact that Kim Il Sung was a hero of the occupation and that he fought the Japanese. These stories are not only from the North, they come out of the South as well. All I can do is point you in the right direction and recommend you read Cumings because there is not enough space to outline the exploits of Kim Il Sung. He deserves all the hype and then more. Many collaborist South Koreans went to the USA and spread false stories about him because they were afraid of him as they had been collaborators. A big deal has been made out of him adpting the nom de guerre that he did but that was a common custom of that time. Even if he hadn't, his own achievements stand well enough on their own. Even dissidents who escaped NK to the west speak no ill of Kim Il Sung even though they might disagree with his policies. They remain respectful when they speak of him.

And those rumors about the human mattress circulating about him and his son are just that - rumors. If you read about Kim Jong Il in Cumings book, you will realize how ridiculous this rumor is. Kim Jong Il is a family man who dotes on his children and if anything is the opposite of a sex maniac - "Kim Jong Il is not the playboy, womanizer, drunk, and mentally deranged fanatic 'Dr. Evil' of our press. He is a homebody who doesn't socialize much, doesn't drink much, and works at home in his pajamas ... he most enjoys tinkering with his many music boxes ... at other times he would sit with Jong Nam [his son] and play Super Mario games. He is prudish and shy, and like most Korean fathers, hopelessly devoted to his son and his other children ..." He doesn't even buy the famous French cognac for himself to drink, but buys them as presents for his friends and colleagues. Even his adopted daughter says he is conservative in his attitudes: "after reading her account [she now lives outside of NK], one doubts that Jong Il has much of a libido." (Cumings)

And Kim Il Sung was devoted to his first wife (maybe second wife, the first one was killed by the Japanese) who died in childbirth. I really doubt he engaged in those orgies that westerners like to talk about.

I hope you read "North Korea" by Bruce Cumings. That is if you're interested in Korea's history. You might get a more accurate picture of North Korea then.

Hater Depot

Joined: 29 Mar 2005

Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 9:19 pm Post subject:

Quote:

You've just finished your life's work, a bold new history of the Watergate burglary in which you manage to prove that the White House was out of the loop, but the ink is hardly dry when an eighteen-minute tape surfaces in a Yorba Linda thrift shop, and soon the whole country is listening to Nixon gangsta-rap about how he personally jimmied the door open. It's every revisionist's nightmare, but Bruce Cumings, a history professor at the University of Chicago, has come closest to living it. In a book concluded in 1990 he argued that the Korean War started as "a local affair," and that the conventional notion of a Soviet-sponsored invasion of the South was just so much Cold War paranoia. In 1991 Russian authorities started declassifying the Soviet archives, which soon revealed that Kim Il Sung had sent dozens of telegrams begging Stalin for a green light to invade, and that the two met in Moscow repeatedly to plan the event. Initially hailed as "magisterial," The Origins of the Korean War soon gathered up its robes and retired to chambers. The book was such a valuable source of information on Korea in the 1940s, however, that many hoped the author would find a way to fix things and put it back into print.

Instead Cumings went on to write an account of postwar Korea that instances the North's "miracle rice," "autarkic" economy, and prescient energy policy (an "unqualified success") to refute what he calls the "basket-case" view of the country. With even worse timing than its predecessor, Korea's Place in the Sun (1997) went on sale just as the world was learning of a devastating famine wrought by Pyongyang's misrule. The author must have wondered if he was snakebit. But now we have a new book, in which Cumings likens North Korea to Thomas More's Utopia, and this time the wrongheadedness seems downright willful; it's as if he were so tired of being made to look silly by forces beyond his control that he decided to do the job himself. At one point in North Korea: Another Country (2004) we are even informed that the regime's gulags aren't as bad as they're made out to be, because Kim Jong Il is thoughtful enough to lock up whole families at a time.

The mixture of naiveté and callousness will remind readers of the Moscow travelogues of the 1930s, but Cumings is more a hater of U.S. foreign policy than a wide-eyed supporter of totalitarianism. The book's apparent message is that North Korea's present condition can justify neither our last "police action" on the peninsula nor any new one that may be in the offing. It is perhaps a point worth arguing, particularly in view of the mess in Iraq, but Cumings is too emotional to get the job done. His compulsion to prove conservative opinion wrong on every point inspires him to say things unworthy of any serious historian—that there was no crime in North Korea for decades, for example—and to waste space refuting long-forgotten canards and misconceptions. Half a page is given over to deriding American reporters who once mistook Kim Il Sung's neck growth for a brain tumor—talk about a dead issue.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200409/myers

bigverne

Joined: 12 May 2004

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 3:11 am Post subject:

Well done Patchy, you've read one very biased book on North Korea and are now an expert on the country.

Shooter McGavin

Joined: 22 Nov 2005
Location: ROK

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:21 am Post subject:

It's impossible to argue with an ideologue. US supported leaders = "puppets." Soviet supported leaders = "freedom fighters." US invasions = "imperialism." Soviet invasions = "liberation." US bombing = "war crimes." North Korean mass executions = well, lets see how you spin that. Let me guess, it didn't happen, just like there were "only" 150,000 in the Gulags (which looks like a made up number to me... even if accurate that's 150,000 too many). Your assertion that North Korea has some kind of amazing consumer culture is based on ONE book. Also worth noting is how you repeatedly reference the enormous blockade imposed by the United States, yet mention the "finest Siemens" equipment in hospitals, and "fleets" of Mercedes and Volvos on the streets. Where did they come from? There was a blockade that seemingly kept everything out and suffocated the economy, by your own admission. Yet there are fancy imported electronics and cars? If there were any at all, I'm sure they were gathered up to provide the desired image during the guided tour (you are aware that any foreigner is accompanied by at least 2 guides at all time who only let them see what they're supposed to see, right?). So not only do you rely on one book, it's a biased, illogical work as well. And if the Russians were so desperate to suppress the Korean resistance, as you claim, then why did they allow Kim il-Sung to stay in Khabarovsk for the duration of the war, and why did they give him official rank of Captain in the 88th Brigade of the Red Army (the Chinese/Korean guerrilla unit)? I should read this Cumings book to get an accurate picture of Kim il-Sung the patriot? Please. You should read the volumes of texts available on the history of World War Two. Some of them even reference the now-declassified Soviet archives. I trust a library full of books more then some half-assed attempt at revisionism. I think you should expand your sources beyond those approved by the Dear Leader. Try reading books like the "Aquariums of Pyongyang." I also recommend watching a documentary entitled "Welcome to North Korea," which is readily available on the internet. It paints a picture quite different than what Cumings gave you. And it uses real film footage instead of BS stats and "some guy who went there told me" stories.

Roch

Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Location: Seoul

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 12:37 pm Post subject:

patchy wrote:

It's because the economy is based on Park Jung Heeism. This was all predictable and was predicted some time ago when the Japanese economy started to go shaky.

Park Jung Hee was a fool, and so were the other dictators: they thought they could command-style the economy - make it into a copy of Japan's, by throwing a lot of tax money and foreign loan money into various companies of their friends and make enormous chaebols, like the Japanese equivalents, kereitsu, and then squash labor unions and drive the people as slaves with no rights to make the products and build up these companies 'to conquer' the world.

It worked in a short-term way like many things, but its inevitable doom was built in as China and other countries like India and Vietnam had the potential to go down the same road as Korea, and they have; and their workers are a lot cheaper than Korea's.

Koreans should have realized this - oh, about twenty years ago when everything they bought was "Made in China" - that the writing was on the wall - that they simply couldn't compete in this plane (manufacturing cheap products) with the massive populations of India and China and the 'more hungry' people of Vietnam, who will work for less.

Before the financial crisis hit, Koreans became more prosperous and their expectations grew and rightly they demanded more money and a higher standard of living.

These other Asian countries and India will catch up technologically - it's only a matter of time - just like the Koreans 'caught up' back in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Too bad, they lost the chance to do anything about their economic structure (regardless of Hwang's breakthroughs) and they are paying the dividend for their mistakes, like supporting Park Chung Hee.

You could even say North Korea has a brighter future than South Korea in many ways: their workforce seems more disciplined than South Koreans, they have a "hungry" mentality like the communist Chinese and Vietnamese that the S. Koreans lost a long time ago. They have a sense of unity too that the cynical South Koreans lost a long time ago when they first sold out to their Japanese overlords and then to the Americans - the North Koreans never sold out - they never sold out to the Japanese, well the resistance fighters and their supporters never did anyway, and then they also stood their ground against the biggest superpower in the world, the USA, too, during the Korean War and are still standing up to them (a tiny rocky scrabble-poor country that had just emerged from a barely sustainable existence under the Japanese and fighting them too from the fringes of their country). So they have earned their nation's birthright you can say, whether you agree with communism or not.

And unlike the Japanese, South Koreans have never reached the status in the west that the Japanese have, which Japan can use to its advantage though many of its economic woes are similar.

And unlike countries like Canada, Australia and a few European countries, S Korea is poor in natural resources and is relatively overpopulated and the middle class has gotten the taste of the good living - it ain't going to be easy to get them to go back to the days of old when life was hard - when there was no such thing as cellphones, cars, PCs, or videos.

Wait for it - as Korean society busts at the seams - there will be some kind of anarchy - collapse is inevitable as the economic collapse of the late 90s was and the coming collapse is.

But countries like the US won't stick around - the US's eyes are on China and India - Korea is old business - no longer a place to invest its money in - in fact it's the other way around - Korea invests a lot of money in western countries by sending people there to become educated and hopefully migrate there and 'leave a burning ship' so to speak.

In a freer society, that the US helped to snuff out with its imposition of dictators and its control of Korean politics in other ways ever since its arrival on Korean soil, things may have been different as another style of economy most likely would have evolved - as usually happens when there is decentralization and relaxation on expression of thought and ideas - perhaps some innovative industries might have been created to take place of those chaebols - many creative individual-run small companies finding niches in the world market and driving the economy - and a social support system to buffer the people who fall through the cracks - but none of that has really eventuated with perhaps the exception of the Korean Wave, bringing in a few extra hundred billion won - but how long is the Korean Wave going to last? ... not forever, I bet. And the social support is far from being a reality despite Roh's socialist leanings - nationalizing health and so on (which actually subsidizes the middle class and the rich reducing the help the government could give to the truly needy and less fortunate - the disabled, the orphans and the like).

Koreans keep 'reaping' the results of Park Chung Hee's short-term policies over and over again - helped by the self-interested promotion of the US of these policies ... but ultimately Koreans need to do something about it themselves - and raging against MBC for exposing Hwang's crookedness is not going to cut it - in fact it makes things worse - it keeps the Koreans chasing the false dreams of a 'great Korea' and delays their rendevous with reality.

Sad, and yes, the Americans are involved in the causation of these problems, and so are the Japanese too, for invading Korea in the first place, but harping on that is not going to change things - because frankly the Americans and Japanese have got problems of their own, and their 'friendship' with South Korea was always for their self-interest and nothing more - that they have got their use out of Korea .. who cares if Korea is heading for economic collapse? ... their interest is elsewhere, their self-interests have shifted and although S. Korea is still a little relevant, especially with regards to the North Korean issue, S. Korea is rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things for them.

Growth of the economy through increasing its population is never going to work as the country is relatively tiny as it is (it is one of the most densely populated nations on earth) and resource-poor - it might work in big countries like the US, Russia, Australia, Canada, but the fallout in Korea from pursuing this another short-term policy - the lack of land, pollution, congestion in cities, the decreased quality of life for everyone - puts a cap on this. The cap will also be reached in those other countries too but it takes a lot longer in these than it does in Korea.

Already the environmental disasters and damage predicted for China in the wake of its industrialization are already in stark evidence (the recent toxic spill into the drinking water of millions of Chinese to cite one situation).

Korea did not become the country it aspired to become - a high-tech society running on its exports of electronic products a la Japan; the Chinese are taking over this role and the Japanese are still holding onto its edge in certain areas, even though its products are still more expensive than Koreans'. The Koreans have not earned a reputation for quality and innovation that the Japanese have so they cannot use this when competing with the Chinese.

That's why the pinning of the hopes on the stem-cell research. But even if this had proceeded well without scandal - how much difference could that have made to the economy anyway? And then the rottenness of Korean society, the corruption, the blind nationalism only got exposed to the world with these recent revelations - diminishing the country's reputation even further.

But the rich never suffer, they just shift their operations offshore and offer the jobs to the lowest bidders - but the middle class and below them will suffer - and in a great way in the near future.

This is the best example of Poltical-Economic Analysis ever written on this board (Jungo's neat quips aside): The "Truth" is too hard to handle, eh.

God Bless you!

patchy

Joined: 26 Apr 2005

Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 6:42 am Post subject:

.... Last edited by patchy on Thu Dec 22, 2005 7:05 am; edited 1 time in total

patchy

Joined: 26 Apr 2005

Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 6:44 am Post subject:

[quote="Hater Depot"]

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Might this reviewer have a jaundiced view of Cumings' book because Cumings tells him things he doesn't like to hear? Cumings is the pre-eminent academic authority in the US on 20th century Korea - he is a University of Chicago historian who has been studying Korea for over 40 years, and the years of scholarship is evident in his work.

His work goes far beyond the oft-rehashed 'revelations' about North Korea - in fact, it doesn't just go beyond these, but peels back layers of misinformation shoveled out endlessly by these potboiler journalists ( Obendorfer, Breen, Martin, ..... ) seeking to profit opportunistically from the current hysteria about North Korea (and in so doing, add to it, which is convenient from the American government's point of view, considering its policy of negative spin on North Korea). In contrast, Cumings has been consistent from the first (he has been writing and researching Korea including North Korea since the 60s), and his approach is an academic one's: levelheaded, balanced and thorough. He is a veteran watcher of Korea, North and South, and has visited the North many times in his life.

Quote:

Instead Cumings went on to write an account of postwar Korea that instances the North's "miracle rice," "autarkic" economy, and prescient energy policy (an "unqualified success") to refute what he calls the "basket-case" view of the country.

It was not only Cumings who did not think North Korea was a basketcase (prior to the late-90s), it was also the CIA:

(Page 185 Cumings, "North Korea") "Published data from the CIA indicated in 1978 that the ROK had only drawn even with the North in per capita GNP; the DPRK used as much electricity as the South, with half the South's population; it produced more crude steel and three times the number of machine tools .. as the South ... industrial production ... more than doubled in the North, growing at an annual average rate of 14% between 1965 and 1976 ... Its agriculture was far ahead of the South's in productivity; it used miracle seedlings and its chemical fertilizer application was 'probably among the highest in the world."

Speaking of basketcases, South Korea was a 'basketcase' nation for much of the time up until the late seventies. And this was so inspite of its status of being a poster-child for capitalism (or more accurately 'crony capitalism'), with all the propping up by the US that that entailed, including saving it from starvation in the 60s. And don't forget the financial bailout of the 90s. All the images of starvation you see of North Korea could very well have been a picture of South Korea in the sixties and seventies if the west hadn't intervened. The only differences were that the US bailed out South Korea and didn't impose economic and aid sanctions on it; in the North, its major ally was too busy dealing with political and economic changes to help it, and crippling economic sanctions were slapped on it by the US at a time when NK needed money the most.

You can make fun of North Korea's juche philosophy but without this philosophy NK would have been much worse off after the famine and the political and economic isolation that followed it. It helped bring North Korea back to its feet after the crisis of the 90s and early 2000s, even though the US cut off as much external support as possible. It is almost as if the founding fathers of North Korea foresaw what was going to happen and they prepared North Korea to make it as self-sufficient as they could. They experienced terrible times during the occupation by the Japanese when their allies (the Soviets and the Chinese) abandoned them, hunted them down and killed them (in political purges, and in witchhunts when they thought the Koreans were betraying them). The North Koreans realized that they could not trust anyone - even their so-called allies, who could turn against them on a hair; hence their prescient resolve to make themselves as independent as possible - in military, agriculture, industry, weapons manufacture ....

(And according to the OP, it looks like the ROK is going down again..... It's fairly ironic that the ROK is looking at China, a communist country and a country it used to look down on, as its current hoped-to-be economic savior. China is increasingly displacing the US in this role.)

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With even worse timing than its predecessor, Korea's Place in the Sun (1997) went on sale just as the world was learning of a devastating famine wrought by Pyongyang's misrule.

Misrule? Then you must call the political administration of South Korea in the 60s and early 70s (and perhaps even before that) 'misrule' because South Korea was teetering on starvation back then, and South Korea did not experience the floods and droughts that NK did.

"Korea's Place in the Sun" is not a book about only North Korea, it is a book about Korea as a whole and covers its history from its foundation to (back-then) contemporary times (late 1990s). Cumings is a first-rate historian but he's not God. You can't blame him for not being able to predict the climate changes that brought about the floods and droughts that wiped out agriculture in North Korea, just as nobody was able to predict the tsunami of 2004. North Korea is not a big country. It is smaller than the state of Iowa. When Iowa's agriculture fails, only Iowa is affected and it has the other 49 states of the nation to support it. And North Korea's soil is poorer than Iowa's.

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The author must have wondered if he was snakebit. But now we have a new book, in which Cumings likens North Korea to Thomas More's Utopia,

Just because Cumings (factually) describes how North Korea used to be -in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s (and uses CIA reports as one of his references) - and this is in conflict with the picture that prevails in the popular imagination of Americans and other westerners (who are used to seeing North Korea as a country of people starving, eating roots and barks, etc) does not mean Cumings is making out North Korea to be an ideal country.

There is a lengthy passage in the book where Cumings discusses this subject of 'Utopia'. I have a feeling the reviewer has missed the entire point of Cumings' discourse on this theme and his comparison of North Korea to Thomas More's Utopia: Cumings essentially says Thomas More's Utopia was more akin to a totalitarian state than otherwise: in More's Utopia, travel was restricted, discussion of politics was punished by death and the nation was deliberately isolated from the outside world ....

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and this time the wrongheadedness seems downright willful;

No, the reviewer's misinterpretation of Cumings's writing (see the discussion of Utopia above) is 'downright wilful', not Cumings.

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it's as if he were so tired of being made to look silly by forces beyond his control that he decided to do the job himself.

The reviewer hasn't shown Cumings to be silly so far - only himself. I wonder if the reviewer is qualified to review someone's book when it looks like he hasn't even mastered reading comprehension - that of a junior middle school level.

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At one point in North Korea: Another Country (2004) we are even informed that the regime's gulags aren't as bad as they're made out to be, because Kim Jong Il is thoughtful enough to lock up whole families at a time.

Well, I suppose you could put that down to the fact that the people who were locked up in the gulags themselves don't think that they're as bad as they're made out to be. Cumings bases the description of the gulags mostly on the experiences of the people featured in the book "Aquariums of Pyongyang" (see the references, Chapter 5). If you don't like Cumimgs' account, you won't like the account in "Aquariums of Pyongyang".

[Strange and ironic then that another anti-Cumings' critic in this thread, Shooter McGavin, says: 'I think you should expand your sources beyond those approved by the Dear Leader. Try reading books like the "Aquariums of Pyongyang."' Actually it's not that strange and ironic when you consider that these 'critics' are trying to criticize a book they've never even read.]

"Kim Jong Il's got a gulag the size of Houston!" George Bush exclaims. More like Greenwich (counters Cumings, with references). And I don't think Americans should be pointing fingers, not when they've been caught redhanded wih torture prisons all over the world, from Europe to Africa.

Sorry to deflate your expectations. The reality of North Korea is more mundane than the lurid fantasies the west routinely cooks up would suggest.

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The mixture of naivete and callousness will remind readers of the Moscow travelogues of the 1930s

Cumings is the opposite of naive and callous. Cumings is under no illusions about the no-small role his country, the US, played in creating the current divisions between the North and South. Not only does he outline the brutalities of the North during the Korean War, he also unflinchingly outlines the brutalities committed by the South under the guidance of the USA. It's not his fault the USA and the South come out looking worse than the DPRK.

If anybody is naive and callous, it is the west; it is naive and callous in its attitude to North Korea.

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but Cumings is more a hater of U.S. foreign policy than a wide-eyed supporter of totalitarianism.

Maybe Cumings has got good reasons to be a hater of his country's foreign policy? Maybe we should pay attention when somebody who has devoted his life's work to studying a country (and the US's effect on it) criticizes US foreign policy? The killing of thousands of dissidents by the US-controlled South in SK (and in NK when they invaded it). This is what Cumings criticizes.

Supporter of totalitarianism? Didn't the USA support the totalitarianism of the dictators that ruled the ROK from the 40s to the 90s?

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The book's apparent message is that North Korea's present condition can justify neither our last "police action" on the peninsula nor any new one that may be in the offing. It is perhaps a point worth arguing, particularly in view of the mess in Iraq, but Cumings is too emotional to get the job done.

I think it's the fact that Cumings is relatively unemotional that bothers the reviewer. That Cumings doesn't dwell on the human-mattresses rumor or the other dozens of rumors you hear about North Korea. Just a dry, factual and well-referenced account - and at times amusingly ironic - Cumings recounts how Bush once castigated Kim JI, "Kim Jong Il is a pygmy!", which he follows with an anecdote about Kim JI's first meeting with a South Korean actress, "Well, Madame Choe, what do you think of my physique?" Kim JI is reported to have asked, "Small as a midget's turd, aren't I?".

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His compulsion to prove conservative opinion wrong on every point

I think it's more a case of conservative opinion proving itself wrong on every point [about North Korea]. As I say, Cumings provides mainly facts. He can't help it if his research disspells the popular beliefs about NK that hold sway in the west. People's notions about North Korea should change, not the facts.

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inspires him to say things unworthy of any serious historian

Again, it should be pointed out that the reviewer has not been able to produce one error in Bruce Cumings' book, not one example of misreporting or incorrect referencing - no evidence at all as a matter of fact to refute anything that Cumings says about NK.

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that there was no crime in North Korea for decades, for example

It's a fact that NK has had a low crime rate for many decades, probably the lowest of any country in the world, and it still has today. The reviewer can look up the sources himself if he doesn't believe it (looking up the references in Cumings' book is a start). However, Cumings doesn't say North Korea has "no crime" -- this is entirely an embellishment on the reviewer's part.

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and to waste space refuting long-forgotten canards and misconceptions.

Well, you have to admit the west does hold a lot of canards and misconceptions about NK; and the reviewer does a good job of showing what some of these are.

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Half a page is given over to deriding American reporters who once mistook Kim Il Sung's neck growth for a brain tumor;talk about a dead issue.

That wasn't Cumings, that was another author who wrote half a page about the neck growth, plus a couple of pages about the human-mattress rumors and other assorted 'gems'. (I thought it was Colonel Okamoto (Park Chung Hee) who had the harem, not the Kims.) And the American reporters were the ones making a big deal about the tumor in the first place; the author (I don't think it was Cumings) might have been describing how wrong western reporters could be about North Korea, and used the tumor thing to make his point.

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http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200409/myers

Have you actually read the book yourself, Hater Depot?

Maybe you should read the book FIRST, Hater Depot (rather than putting forth a rather lame secondhand review as proxy for your attack on this author), and THEN disparage it (if you can) - using your own words and your own opinions. It might make your criticism of Cumings look less inauthentic, and your views on North Korea less prejudiced than they already reveal themselves to be.

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