Long-term Effects of Indoctrination

There was a modest but interesting piece about North Korea on the news site Vox recently: https://www.vox.com/world/2018/1/12/16882574/north-korea-fire-fury-south-trump-war. In it is a quote attributed to a former South Korean general: “I have had the opportunity to speak to North Korean soldiers who have defected to South Korea — and you cannot imagine how indoctrinated they are...These are people who have defected, and yet there is still an innate belief in their system which is close to ridiculous.”

I’m no expert on brainwashing and its effects. But like everyone else in North Korea I was subjected to brainwashing. There are different ways an individual may acquire the ability to think critically and independently but they all require, among other things, a desire to pursue it. But desiring a certain outcome presupposes awareness. And I think this is where the regime is most deadly: Suppression of awareness. If a society has no “issue/problem” then there is nothing to analyze and evaluate. Brainwashing starts early there. I can still sing the very first song I learned in kindergarten: “…Our father is Marshall Kim Il Sung and our home is the Party’s bosom…And there is nothing to envy.” Add adults who are too scared to tell you the truth if they are not themselves thoroughly brainwashed then you are in for a treat. A Neverland!

Cracks have appeared however. Illicit South Korean/American movies and TV dramas have been reaching many North Koreans. No doubt they (or any outside information) can be powerful in a country so deprived of everything but Rambo has limits in undoing decades of brainwashing. And I think the South Korean general is alluding to those limits in the Vox piece.

Oh, the guards of this Neverland did teach me to be critical of certain things: Shortcomings of mine and my fellow Neverland creatures in following the teachings of the Great Leader.

Pyongyang Olympics

Imagine that the US is hosting the Olympics and you are a Nazi concentration camp survivor. You risked your life to reach America. Then America begs the Nazis to send their athletes and musicians and cheerleading squad to the Olympics AND foots the bill with your tax money. Also, America abandons the Stars and Strips in favor of a neutral flag for the Olympics so that they can form joint teams with the Nazis. Maybe it would feel like a slap in the face? 

North Korea in the MFA Boston

What has the MFA Boston got to do with North Korea? Earlier this month my family visited the MFA on the other side of the Charles River in Boston. In the center of the rotunda of the museum was a large Christmas tree decorated with flags from all around the world. In one of Boston’s cultural centers nonetheless. I was surprised and dismayed to see a couple North Korean flags on the tree. I don’t know how many people noticed them but I briefly considered asking the museum staff to remove such a horrific symbol of inhumanity on display. 

The South Korean government will allow this symbol to be displayed in Seoul, in Pyeongchang, and likely other cities in South Korea during the Winter Olympics. Remember that the South Korean government begged KJU to send cheerleaders and a big band in addition his athletes. Most likely with South Korea's full financial support, too.The world failed to take stand against the Nazis during the 1936 Summer Olympics. In 1936, according to the USHMM, “most newspaper accounts echoed the New York Times report that the Games put Germans 'back in the fold of nations,' and even made them 'more human again.' Some even found reason to hope that this peaceable interlude would endure.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Wooden Toys

My son received a few wooden toys from his grandparents for Christmas. They are mass-produced toys made in China. They are found in every toy store large and small in the Boston area. Their appeal (for my family anyway) is that they are not made of plastic. Oddly enough though these wooden products aren't more expensive than the "cheap" plastic ones. I sometimes wonder where the pine comes from. It is no secret that an estimated 50,000 North Korean slave laborers are working in logging camps in Siberia. According to defectors who worked in Siberia (and NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/world/europe/north-korea-russia-migrants.html) the Kim family and their mafiosi seize most their earnings outright and whatever crumbs these laborers see will be taken away by their North Korean managers for various fees such as rent and food. As a result in addition to working long hours at the camps they must find other jobs to earn money for their families. Think about this: In North Korea these laborers are considered fortunate. I remember how envious everyone was when a man in my neighborhood was "chosen" for this job and his family received a black and white Russian TV from him a year later from Russia.

Pine nuts and 555

A few years back I bought a pack of 555 cigarettes in a tiny convenience store in Harvard Square. 555 is/was a British tobacco manufacturer whose product was as coveted as Dunhill, another British brand. You don’t see 555 much in the US so I was rather excited to see them in the store and bought one. My father who lived abroad smoked them when he returned home for a brief stay once in a while. One of his fancy leather bags would be full of 555 and I would pilfer them to smoke with my buddies. The cigarettes had distinct smell when you opened a pack. That smell was deeply ingrained in my memory as it was more than a smell but one of few small windows through which I viewed and imagined the world beyond. The cigarettes I bought in the store had a different look and were of poor quality in every way and listed Singapore as the country of origin—the ones I smoked were made in England. Anyway, I really bought the cigarettes for the smell but to my disappointment the smell wasn’t there either. When I recently saw a headline on NK News about a Singaporean conglomerate’s joint venture cigarette factory with North Korea I immediately thought about the pack. Could that have been one of those counterfeit cigarettes made in North Korea?

One of the things that defectors from the border region mention is endless hours they spent shelling pine nuts at home in the dark since normally there was no electricity. There are traders who buy pine nuts in shell from the market (not sure where the nuts come from. Russia, China?) and have the villagers shell them so that they can sell the product to China. There was a point many years back when my neighborhood Whole Foods store started selling pine nuts. It struck me odd at the time that pine nuts were flooding Whole Foods stores in Cambridge so suddenly because until then I had to go to a Korean grocery store named Reliable Market in Somerville for them. I figured then that maybe some breakthrough in pine nut shelling technology was responsible for it but maybe something else was at work?

Jong-un shares his food with the hungry

According to KCNA (https://twitter.com/NoKoNews/status/935718426500313091) "Kim Jong-un declared with pride that now we have finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.” I’ll spare you the rest of it but KCNA goes on to claim that the successful launch was a victory for “the simultaneous development of the two fronts.” Of course “the two fronts” refer to military and the economy. So either KCNA does not understand what “simultaneous” means or they set the bar on the economy front very low. Anyway, does the success mean Jong-un will finally share his food with the hungry North Koreans? I would not bet on it.