North Korea has asserted that those people who impede the solidarity of the North Korean people are traitors.
On the 13th, “Saving Korea Frontier,” a North Korean internet outlet aiming at South Korean left wingers, cited a quote from Kim Jong Il; “People who lean towards the solidarity of the people are the patriots, and those who do the reverse are traitors.”
The Frontier continued, “Our people, who boast a 5000-year history, have been separated into North and South by outside powers; such a tragedy, where the autonomy of the people is being violated, is a disgrace which cannot be accepted. In order to achieve the independent unification of the Fatherland and to put an end to the tragic division of the people, solidarity must be achieved.”
It also mentioned historical nationalists Kim Ku and Kim Kyu Shik, leaders in the unification movement’s history, as people who abandoned their private ism or assertions and contributed to the work of achieving the union of the people. Conversely, it called those who would sell out their people for personal comfort or glory abominable traitors.
It also mentioned historical nationalists Kim Gu and Kim Kyu Shik, leaders in the unification movement’s history, people who it alleges abandoned their private beliefs and embarked on the work of achieving the union of the people. Conversely, it called those who would sell out their people for personal comfort or glory abominable traitors.
In other words, the North evaluates the patriotism of its people by the standards of pro- and anti-foreign. In other words, North Korea, which is isolated from the international community in the modern era of globalization, separates out patriots and traitors according to the logic of imperialist times.
Ultimately, even though the North Korean regime is a dictatorship which allowed millions of its citizens to starve without batting an eyelid, it wears the mask of a patriotic government and attempts to project confidence to the outside world.
But the North Korean regime, which cannot even sustain the livelihoods of its people without outside aid, is actually by far the inferior party. So desperate is it that in its propaganda it describes its channeling money from the outside world through provocations and threats as a grand form of diplomacy.
Does a minority ruling body which is driving the North Korean people to starvation in order to maintain a dictatorship which is dying due to its inhumane, tyrannical and wild methods of governing have the right to say anything about autonomy? Does a regime which completely disregards the lives and livelihoods of its people have any right to speak about the “solidarity of the nation?”
Before shouting out about autonomy and other slogans, North Korea ought to reflect on the welfare of its starving citizens.
For people on the brink of starvation, autonomy is not achieved through nuclear weapons; it is achieved through rice and bread.
We are now in the era of globalization. It is an era in which the international community can cooperate and share information and resources. If North Korea believes that it can feed its people by holding aloft slogans about the solidarity of the people and their autonomy, it is even more foolish than we had suspected.
